Transparency, Investment, and Struggle - with Rand Fishkin

Rand is an author, founder, recent founder/ceo of SparkToro. His book "Lost and Founder" is one that I wish I would have been able to read before we started Catalyst Sale.

This episode has a fair amount of range, we cover a number of topics including investment, learning, diversity, and struggle.

Thank you Rand for the awesome discussion.

Questions Discussed

• Do Founders feel like they are the only ones struggling with their problem?
• Why should Founders not think that the organization who is going to provide some funding has their best interest at heart?
• How do you explain the different types of investment?
• Is there something you can do to help inspire curiosity?
• Where does diversity play in all of this?
• How do the MVP and EVP concepts apply to intrapreneurs?

Key Takeaways

• When Founders take capital or attempt to raise capital, they don't fully understand the mechanics of the investors from which they are raising and they don't understand how priorities can shift from year to year.
• VC is kind of a default for a lot of Founders when it probably shouldn't be.
• Only 20% of capital firms that beat the market
• This changes the fundamental incentives of what you need to do as a business
• It enforces the importance of communication, transparency and alignment
• Sometimes the story you want to tell, isn't the one they want to hear
• I cannot think of a good reason to intentionally impair the most important part of your job which is decision making
• Find four or five people that you have a connection with who do the same work as you, but are not directly competitive and ask if you can join an e-mail/slack/what's app group to share your experiences
• There is a ton of opportunity in doing some extra work in order to get a better outcome
• If you know you are going to launch to a large audience, don't launch until people are truly impressed

Show Links

• Rand on Twitter
• SparkToro
• Lost and Founder

Call to Action

What processes, roles, systems, do you want to "blow-up" in your organization? Let us know via twitter, facebook or LinkedIn.

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