Lost and Founder

Outline

Lost and Founder (2018) offers an honest look at what building a startup is really like, beyond the success stories. Rand Fishkin shares lessons from co-founding and leading the software company Moz, including mistakes with fundraising, hiring, product focus, and growth, and the personal toll of running a company. The book gives founders practical, candid advice they rarely hear elsewhere.

• Startup success stories leave out the mistakes, so founders benefit from hearing an honest account of what building a company is actually like.
• Rand Fishkin draws on co-founding and leading the software company Moz to show where fundraising decisions can go wrong.
• Hiring and product focus are areas where founders commonly make costly mistakes, and the book walks through examples from Moz.
• Chasing growth has trade-offs, and the book is open about how growth decisions shaped the company.
• Running a company takes a personal toll, so founders need to protect themselves while building the business.

Rand Fishkin is an American entrepreneur and author who co-founded Moz, a well-known search marketing software company, and later founded the audience research company SparkToro. He is known for his transparency about the realities of startups and for his expertise in online marketing. Lost and Founder is his first book.