As people have proclaimed about it, it's truly a painfully honest, unadulterated and transparent take by Rand on building Moz. I've always been a big fan of Rand's transparent style and hard working attitude, which has always come across in his writing / speaking, but Lost and Founder really takes this to a new level. And if you've ever wondered if the 'timeless wisdom' you often hear about startups is bullsh*t, here's the proof. Anyone who has worked in a start-up, or knows the "grow at all costs" attitude that surrounds the industry, will find this refreshing to read. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others.

Lost and Founder isn't as much a "warning" story about the state of the startup industry, but is more of an honest look from a founder who was part of that industry, saw what was happening, made some mistakes, and is happy to own up to them and provide simple advice to people looking to run their own companies. But at times Rand shares general if not basic information about the way certain parts of tech companies work, and these bits really slowed the book down for me. In this book, he shares the true story of how he successfully started Moz and then at some point failed with its growth, why he recently left the company, and what he learnt during these 16 years. We are facing many of the same pitfalls that Rand faced, and were heading towards some of the same mistakes before I picked this book up. This is not only a startup story but also a practical guide to marketing management based on genuine numbers and real names.I love how Rand openly shares the real stories behind hard decisions and failures, where you know his approach is always trying to do the right thing for people first. Rand's book is a practical, transparent guide into building a startup and the responsibilities and unsuspected challenges it comes with.

Many companies raise excess capital before they have PMF, the book clearly demonstrates what happens because of that. Raising and spending capital, hiring and firing, and launching and removing products were all tricky balancing acts. The book highlights the softer parts of running a tech startup - parts that are usually ignored as they fall behind more urgent tasks.

As someone that's been familiar with the story of Moz and Rand for the last few years, Lost and Founder wasn't a surprise. There's a lot of storytelling in the startup world that really idolizes fast growth companies as literal 'unicorns'. While there are a few arguments against his bashing of some of the other public figures, I'm really compelled to believe that someone who says out loud in public that he might not know how to build a startup and that his company and his career might have just been an accidental success, even an undeserving one, I think there might be some substance in the former part as well.

Because if the former talked about how to deal with precarious situations in business, the latter talks about how to deal with the precarious yourself while leading a business. Salaries are often lower than those of employees at bigger companies because they’re determined by outside investors. His grandparents would like you all to know that they remain disappointed about this, nearly twenty years later. After all, if the balance sheet looks healthy enough today, why bother investing and planning for tomorrow? It is especially important because he talks about its most difficult stages, using hindsight to evaluate them.

He notes that the median startup founder ends up with 11% of the company, though without attribution so I'm not sure how canonical the source is. Selling more now, however, can get in the way of sustainably improving your products to leave you well positioned to meet future challenges. Using a web site improvement project as an example, he talks about the benefits to taking the time to go out and collect objections from real people who would otherwise use the product. The empathy shown comes across hugely in many situations in the book - where taking care of people is top of his agenda, ahead of growing his own business / keeping shareholders happy. He delivers a refreshing open and honest account of his start up journey and how he dealt with the pitfalls, pressures and perversities of his own start up.