Joined in 2023 
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He suggests to think really hard before making that big pivot, perhaps trying pivots IN EXECUTION first in some cases before pivoting entirely. 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. 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.
I bought it because I wanted to learn more about the approaches and processes of SaaS startups, and it gave me lots of that - the chapter on venture capital was particularly interesting and eye-opening. 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.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. I really enjoyed how Rand shared his story, gave his perspective on the difficulties of starting a business, and was completely transparent (my favorite part of the book was when he discussed his personal finances and how much he could have really made if he had a large exit and how he regretted not taking the out).
Established “big players” have had the ground cut from under their feet by upstart disruptors playing by an entirely different rulebook. Most people don't want to talk about those startup stories, but the truth is, they're a lot more common than the Zuckerberg-esque tales of success we so often hear about. 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.
It's exactly what I expected it to be: transparent, to the point, straight-forward and incredibly useful. He talks about the strengths and weaknesses of different investor categories (VC, speciality VC's, angel, debt, equity crowdfunding, debt crowd funding, etc.
The good: A refreshing book with a raw and truthful perspective on the problems that plague founders and that SV has chosen to hide for long. 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. After all, if the balance sheet looks healthy enough today, why bother investing and planning for tomorrow? It makes more sense to learn about building a business from someone who has real-life experience in starting and running one. His honest account destroy many of the start up myths that perhaps cause many start ups to fail in the first place.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.
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