He gave up on chasing unicorns. Now he earns $500K+/year from his 3-person startup. | Rand Fishkin, Founder of Moz & SparkToro

A Product Market Fit Show

If you feel like the ‘unicorn or bust’ playbook isn’t for you, then this episode definitely will be. Rand Fishkin is a multi-time founder and published author of Lost and Founder. He founded Moz, raised $29M in VC, grew to $50M in revenue and exited for $70M.
But he ultimately realized that the VC-backed life wasn’t for him.
So he went on to start SparkToro, a profitable 3-person startup that does $2M in revenue and takes only 30 hours a week of work. For those of us in the VC-backed startup world, it’s a totally different way to play the game. It won’t make you a billionaire. But it very well may make you $10M— with less stress, less work, and less risk.
If you want a transparent account of the pros/cons of a venture-backed vs a bootstrapped startup, check this episode out.