Lost and Founder: A Painfully Honest Field Guide to the Startup World

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The book is so well-written and entertaining, though, that I found myself reading it as much for entertainment as for education. It covers a lot of the theory stuff that you read in other books, but really does give a ton of insight beyond that too. These may be valuable regardless of where you are in your founder journey - assuming you are on the brink of bringing in external capital or at least consider it.

This book is an honest, generous, and useful look at what actually happens when you build a company, including the downs as well as the ups…I wish I had read it thirty years ago. To me these biases are part of the appeal of the book, because you get to see his world view rather than an attempt at an objective reality. Rand does a great job of providing a balanced view of the advantages and disadvantages of taking VC money and forces you to think differently and consider other options. On top of his incredible candor, the fact that Rand packages this all together with humility and humor is the icing on my favorite (book) cake of the year.What makes the book work is that Rand is super honest and talks openly about his successes, failures and the tough decisions he had to make. They started as a consulting company that benefited a great deal from free advice its founder gave on YouTube. I, for one, wouldn't have got to the realization of the importance of these elements, had I not experienced the pain resulting from neglecting them - clear values, mission and a clearly defined culture, just to name a few. Rand explica, de manera muy honesta, cuáles son las ventajas y desventajas de las inversiones, de no vender tu emprendimiento pronto o tarde, la importancia de los valores fundamentales y por sobre todas las cosas lo valioso que es estar enfocado. In the end he states that the "not so much fun times" happened much more often, which is something I can relate to.

Fishkin pulls back the curtain on tech startup mythology, exposing the ups and downs of startup life and sharing his hard-won lessons with you. Everyone knows how a startup story is supposed to go: A young, brilliant entrepreneur has an cool idea, drops out of college, defies the doubters, overcomes all odds, makes billions, and becomes the envy of the technology world. From a marketing point-of-view he also says it gets MUCH more difficult to SELL a larger number of products (and why). And if you've ever wondered if the 'timeless wisdom' you often hear about startups is bullsh*t, here's the proof.

Here he tells how the company spent so much energy growing new products (and why they did so) that his key product features became an 'also-ran' in three-quarters of the main features. He demonstrates why he wishes he took an offer to be bought out by Hubspot years ago, despite the company's growth since then. This is a somewhat unique business book primarily for its exceptionally transparent view of the life and history of a small-to-mid-sized software startup company, as well as noting some nuggets of wisdom along the way.

However, I think the book rises well above this kind of company biography and offers us thoughtful takes on tactics and strategies to think about, anchored by experience. Having employees on board with different backgrounds and skills provides a greater range of expert opinions and insights. The guy seems pretty damn sour about the fact that he didn't accept an early acquisition offer for Moz and is broadly shifting blame onto Silicon Valley culture.

One example of this is how one of his values he mentions a lot in the book, is being empathetic and looking at things from someone else's point of view. Most startups take years to see success and only a small percentage of those that make it go on to make their founders millionaires. However, he makes a case for being transparent whenever you can, that the long-term benefits are often well worth it, and the costs of not doing so can be far greater than often recognized. Here we see a case where this company would be far better off always making the priority keeping primary products competitive before moving on to build out the line. He’s dedicated his professional life to helping people do better marketing through the Whiteboard Friday video series, his blog, and his book, Lost and Founder: A Painfully Honest Field Guide to the Startup World.

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. Covering everything from his unhealthy decisions, his own unstable self and the mistakes he committed while building. As people have proclaimed about it, it's truly a painfully honest, unadulterated and transparent take by Rand on building Moz. May have been helpful for author to put lessons he's taking into his next start up in beginning as well, so we could look out for red flags with traditional VC backed approaches from start. As opposed to how it's populated, building a startup is a murky adventure, marred with serious mental health repercussions.It makes more sense to learn about building a business from someone who has real-life experience in starting and running one. This was very different Fishkin is very candid and transparent throughout the book, I felt like I was genuinely learning things that apply to the startup I work at.