Rand Fishkin

Rand Fishkin

Cofounder and CEO of audience research startup SparkToro

Rand Fishkin is cofounder and CEO of audience research startup SparkToro. He’s dedicated his professional life to helping people do better marketing through his writing, speaking, startups, and his book, Lost and Founder. When Rand’s not working, he’s usually cooking a fancy meal for the love of his life, author Geraldine DeRuiter. If you bribe him with great pasta or great cocktails, he’ll spill big tech’s dark secrets.

In 2004, Rand created the SEOmoz blog, which, over the next decade, became the world’s most popular community and content resource for search marketers. In 2007, Rand became CEO of Moz (prev. SEOmoz), the software company he co-founded with his mom based on the blog’s success. That same year, he proposed to his longtime girlfriend, Geraldine DeRuiter, with a TV commercial that received widespread publicity (and, later, an awkward appearance on the Oprah Winfrey show). The two married in 2008 in a move Rand consistently refers to as the best, luckiest one of his life.

Over 7 years as CEO, Rand grew Moz to 130+ employees, $30M+ in revenue, and traffic to 30M+ visitors/year. He raised two rounds of funding, led three acquisitions, and a rebrand. Rand stepped down as CEO in 2014 during a rough bout with depression and left the company 4 years later. Rand was also the co-founder of Inbound.org alongside Dharmesh Shah. The site was sold (for no profit) to Hubspot in 2014.

Rand may be best known for his popular blogs and regular Whiteboard Friday series, watched by tens of thousands of marketers each week. Rand is also a frequent keynote speaker at marketing conferences around the world, averaging (before the pandemic) ~100 days on the road each year and 30-40 speaking appearances. He has, much to his own surprise, amassed a large following on Twitter, LinkedIn, Pocket, Facebook, and Instagram.

In 2018, Rand founded SparkToro and published, with Penguin/Random House, Lost and Founder: A Painfully Honest Field Guide to the Startup World. Rand previously co-contributed to two books: Art of SEO, and Inbound Marketing & SEO. He’s been profiled in the Seattle Times, featured in Puget Sound Business Journal’s 40 Under 40, named to BusinessWeek’s 30 Under 30, written about in Newsweek, The Next Web, the Inc 500, and hundreds of other publications. He is, however, most proud of his prominent appearances in Geraldine’s first book, All Over the Place. Geraldine and Rand are also small investors in TinySeed Accelerator, LegUp, TeamSportz, Techstars Seattle and Backstage Capital.