A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders
00:18:28 · Pablo Srugo, Rand Fishkin
[00:18:28] S0: Walked you to the door and you took the last step . Sorry , <laugh> . Yeah, yeah, yeah, [00:18:32] S1: Yeah. I think I wrote in, in the blog post that I wrote about my departure, which was, which was like the next morning on SparkToro's website , um, which I had started that night that , um, that post said on a scale of zero to 10, where zero is, you know, escorted outta the building by security, and 10 is like, everybody hugs and it's tears and happiness, and congratulations. My departure was like a four. [00:18:56] S0: I , that's common. I think there's few cases very common . I mean, like Google is one where they actually, you know, very much graciously gave it off to , to Eric Schmidt or whatever. But in general, CEO goes from CEO to not CEO , you know, again, the company has to do, I mean, Google <laugh> did exceptionally well. So I think everybody was pretty happy with that outcome. But yeah, I think in most cases it looks more like the gym track or, or like what happened to Moz where , uh, it's, you know , yeah, a three to five out of
00:18:56 · Pablo Srugo, Rand Fishkin
[00:18:56] S0: I , that's common. I think there's few cases very common . I mean, like Google is one where they actually, you know, very much graciously gave it off to , to Eric Schmidt or whatever. But in general, CEO goes from CEO to not CEO , you know, again, the company has to do, I mean, Google <laugh> did exceptionally well. So I think everybody was pretty happy with that outcome. But yeah, I think in most cases it looks more like the gym track or, or like what happened to Moz where , uh, it's, you know , yeah, a three to five out of [00:19:21] S1: 10 messy , messy , ugly . That's right . You , I think the, the heartbreaking thing about a lot of it is, you know, Geraldine and I, my wife and I have this conversation, have had it a couple of times where, where we're like, gosh, you know, if we could go back in time and Moz failed completely, like, it just, you know, kind of went to zero. It never sold, didn't come worth anything, but all those relationships were preserved. Like everybody had stayed on the same page, fighting the good fight together, going down with the ship together, you know, and we were still going out to dinners together and looking after each other's kids and going on vacations and being like, Hey, you know, we, we tried our best and I still love you. I would, I would take that deal, huh? I would take that deal in a heartbeat. [00:20:05] S0: Malls worked out for you, I would think as a shareholder, [00:20:07] S1: Yes. And I think for, for Geraldine and I alone, nobody else. [00:20:13] S0: I see. So we,
00:20:13 · Pablo Srugo, Rand Fishkin
[00:20:13] S0: I see. So we, [00:20:14] S1: You know , I had done, I had done, over the years, I had done a , an intentional sort of, you know, tough negotiating job of retaining a tremendous amount of my shares in the company. So I think at the, at the end of the company's life, I still own , you know, Geraldine and I had 18% of the company, 17%, something like that, which is very, very high for a f for a founder, especially a founder who's no longer at the business. But , uh, when the company sold a ton of people's shares were underwater, they, they lost money working at the company, which me off so badly. I wanna say every swear that there is , right? [00:20:47] S0: Because they had what options that were worthless or RSUs that they bought into or something. Okay. [00:20:52] S1: Exactly. Which you have to pay taxes on those options when you execute them. And then if the money is not worth anything, like, you technically get the credit, I guess, towards future tax payments. Sure. The [00:21:02] S0: Tax laws have <laugh> .
00:21:04 · Rand Fishkin
[00:21:04] S1: Yeah, great. Like, wow, I, I prepaid 40 grand worth of taxes. Like, I'm so glad I worked at that company. You know, insane. And, and the reason that it's structured that way is to benefit investors, right? Because most people don't execute their RSUs , which goes back into the pot, which means investors and, and preferred shareholders get a bigger stake, you know, at the end of the company's life. And so, you know, our investors, I, I don't think our later stage investors even made two x on their money, may maybe just barely, which of course is not, you know, that doesn't , uh, beat the market rate of returns at all. Right? And, you know, for Geraldine and I, like we got, we got a giant check, but it, it was certainly a less giant check than the offers we had received for the company four years before and five years before and six years before and, and all that kind of stuff, right? So it was an outstanding life-changing amount of money outcome, but certainly lower than what we could have done years earlier. Sure. Um, which really sucks. And, you know, we ended up writing dozens of personal checks to people who'd been screwed , uh, at the company. I say that not to brag, but because I think any founder who does well out of their business should make sure that all of their employees are taken care of. And if I can shame you into feeling terrible about taking your $10 million and being like, well, it's all mine <laugh>, like Yeah. Legally, and technically it is all yours. And if you didn't write some checks to cover people who, you know, contributed to that success and, and made you all that money , uh, you're a bad person and you should feel bad. The gift has limit Pablo is, is, is high. Like Geraldine and I were able to, under the gift tax limit, write checks of 30, 32, 30 $6,000 to a ton of people.
00:22:46 · Pablo Srugo, Rand Fishkin
[00:22:46] S0: Huh. Okay, well, let's get to know founders, like exited founders that are listening. <laugh>, [00:22:51] S1: Go take care of the people who made you rich. That's [00:22:53] S0: Right. But, you know, the other thing that comes outta that to me is like, maybe, I don't know how many , a month or two ago, I did a podcast with, with another founder friend of mine, and he had this like talking about the venture, non venture kind of , uh, debate, right? He made 10 million off his startup . It was a $30 million exit. It was ba it was bootstrap. I mean, at one point he raised 2 million, but it was like way later. Um, and, and I don't know that enough people realize like just where you actually need to get a venture backed startup to, and I'm, I'm on the VC side, that's the only people I can work with, right? But like, just understand like where you really need to get to. You talked about this in your book, in order for you to be able to make say, 10 million in actual cash versus, like, if you own 50% of a $20 million business, to be clear, it's not easy, but you can bootstrap over a decade, let's say, to something that gets you there. You might be better off, or at least as well off with a lot less stress. Right?
00:23:46 · Rand Fishkin, Pablo Srugo
[00:23:46] S1: I'm gonna say this, the venture environment is a little bit less so right now because of the, the sort of end of cheap money era. But yes, you know, for the, for the 17 years that I was in it, it was growth at all costs. And, and all costs means a lot of costs, right? It means personal health and happiness. It means relationships. Uh, it means sacrificing sort of profitability and, and a safety net , uh, for growth. It means taking low probability bets like, Hey, SEO isn't big enough. We should go expand to a bunch of other marketing channels. You know, that the strategy that, that Moz pursued rather than, Hey, we have this great business. Let's see if we can keep growing that, or if that field keeps growing and double down on this thing that , um, is clearly workable. Uh, and it also means a lot of uncomfortable, very challenging personal and professional growth. So I, you know, I had 200 plus employees at the end of my tenure and I hated it. Hated it. I don't enjoy politics and challenges that come from running a large team. I don't enjoy, I don't get value or joy from sort of resolving interpersonal issues or intra team issues or inter-team challenges. That's true [00:24:58] S0: For most founders. Most founders actually don't want to be managers, which is what you have to be like , you cross a certain amount of people and you're more of a manager, and you're dealing with the problems you're mentioning you're not building. Right. Which is what most founders like to