Building SparkToro: How Rand Fishkin Turned Revenge Into Revolution
After losing Moz, Rand Fishkin built SparkToro by rejecting every Silicon Valley rule—proving that profitable, sustainable companies don't need to chase unicorn status.
Written by: Brianne Garrett Original photography by: Reuben Evans Additional photography provide by: Rand Fishkin
Summary
- The 11-Hour Reset: Rand Fishkin was pushed out of Moz in 2018 after 17 years and launched SparkToro the next day to prove he could build success on his own terms
- Breaking Every Rule: SparkToro breaks Silicon Valley rules: LLC structure instead of C-Corp, no traditional VCs, team of 10 max, and 25-30 hour work weeks
- Inverted Priorities: The company prioritizes team first, customers second, investors last—opposite of typical VC-backed startups
- Small by Design: SparkToro generates several multiples more revenue per employee than Moz while deliberately staying small and avoiding billion-dollar markets
- BELUX in Action: BELUX values (Boundary, Egalitarian, Long-term, Uncomplicated, Example) guide operations, from easy cancellations to refusing customers whose values conflict with theirs
This is the second part of a 2-part look at Rand's entrepreneurial journey. Read part one here.
Introduction
Rand Fishkin gave himself exactly 11 hours to process the end of the company he spent 17 years building.
On February 28, 2018, Fishkin was pushed out of his SEO software startup Moz, the SEO software company that, by the time he exited, was bringing in $50 million in annual recurring revenue with 40,000 customers.
The very next morning, March 1, the spark for his next venture, SparkToro, was lit.
“I [needed] to prove, not just to them, but to myself, that I can still do this,” says Fishkin. “That I am not a failure of a CEO who shouldn't be listened to, that I can build another successful software company.”
But success was going to be on his terms. Unlike at Moz, where Fishkin watched things “careen off the cliff” — hiring ahead of revenue, expanding beyond its SEO core into broader marketing software customers didn’t want, and ultimately laying off 25-30% of the team — this next venture was going to keep Fishkin firmly in the driver's seat.
SparkToro wasn’t going to be about scaling bigger. It was about building smarter, working less, and proving that success doesn't require suffering.
“I can't handle being in a situation again where I know what the right thing to do is, but I can't impact that change,” says Fishkin.
So after building and losing Moz, Fishkin’s next act went drastically against the grain.
And yet, it still generated multiples more in revenue than Moz.
The Anti-Playbook Structure
Designing for Control
“If you look at the top 50 things recommended by all sorts of experts in the startup world, you would see SparkToro do next to none of them,” says Fishkin.
By design, it broke every rule in the Silicon Valley playbook.
Among the first of the rule breaks was registering the company as an LLC, not a typical C-Corp, a decision rooted in maintaining maximum control.
He now knew better than to be satisfied with a founder status: When Fishkin stepped down from CEO of Moz in 2014 during a bout with depression, he played a major role in hand-picking his successor. “I take complete responsibility for that,” says Fishkin. “I also obviously could have left but I didn’t. I chose to stay.”
It wasn’t long before the leadership team, backed by the board, made strategic decisions he fundamentally disagreed with: Decisions like expanding beyond SEO, chasing billion-dollar markets and VC appeal, and neglecting customer satisfaction.
SparkToro’s LLC structure meant, “I can never not be CEO,” says Fishkin.
Naturally, the unconventional classification came with its trade-offs. Investors would have to do extra tax paperwork every year, and the company wouldn’t be able to go public through a traditional IPO.
But for Fishkin, those kinks were worth it in the name of the agency that was lacking at Moz.
Inverting the Investor Hierarchy
Within most venture-backed startups, the unspoken hierarchy places investors at the top, then the company, then customers.
SparkToro flipped that order completely: It was the team first, customers second, community third, and investors dead last.
When it came down to raising necessary capital, “we were completely upfront with them,” says Fishkin, referring to the 1.3 million dollars he raised from private investors, in lieu of traditional VCs. The lead investor was Dharmesh Shah, co-founder of HubSpot.
Shah and the other cohort of investors accepted the LLC structure despite the tax complications and the fact that SparkToro might never become a billion-dollar company or reach acquisition status.
The Partnership Philosophy
When Fishkin first started thinking about SparkToro, he imagined a team of 30 people max, which was substantially smaller than the 200-plus employees that comprised Moz by the time he left.
That was, until he first consulted with Casey Henry about joining the team. Henry had an even smaller number in mind: 10 people, max.
“That’s how I knew I had the right co-founder,” says Fishkin.
Amanda Natividad, who soon after joined as VP of marketing, completed the trio. Her marketing expertise coupled with a similar stance on sustainable work culture made her an ideal fit.
A few things worked well about the leadership team. For one: They genuinely enjoyed spending time together, yet they were “extremely low meeting, low touch” in how they operated from the start, says Fishkin. Trust and respect played a big role in the dynamic.
So did the fact that Fishkin opted out of any founder hierarchies. The trio have consistently maintained similar salaries.
“I don’t think my work is somehow worth way more than Casey’s or Amanda’s,” he says.
BELUX Values as Operating System
Beyond TAGFEE's Failure
At Moz, Fishkin had coined the term TAGFEE, an acronym standing for Transparency, Authenticity, Generosity, Fun, Empathy, and Excellence. It became central to the company's culture, at least while he was there.
When he left, TAGFEE in practice fell apart — what he believes to be a signal that the values didn’t fully integrate within the company. “If it’s not authentic to what the leadership really values, it doesn't work,” says Fishkin.
SparkToro's approach is different. Values might be less formal — they’re not aspirational statements on a wall or company-wide memos every quarter — but are instead core practices organically considered on a daily basis.
This new approach came with a new acronym that Fishkin felt better reflected SparkToro’s culture. This time, it was BELUX.
The Five Pillars in Action
BELUX is made up of five pillars: Boundary, Egalitarian, Long-term, Uncomplicated, and Example.
Boundary means boundaries around all systems, but primarily it’s about ensuring team members can live fulfilling lives beyond work. In order to make that happen, SparkToro operates on 25- to 30-hour work weeks. It also means saying no to some external requests. When potential customers ask for a personalized product demo, often the answer is no. The team has recorded videos instead — prospective clients are prompted to watch those instead.
“The company should not mess up or destroy our abilities to have happy, healthy, functional family and home lives, take the vacations we want to take, knock off work early if we’re not feeling it, and focus our efforts in the areas where we think we can be best,” says Fishkin.
Egalitarian shows up in how SparkToro serves customers. The company deliberately focuses on small and medium businesses, ensures pricing and tools are actually accessible, and doesn’t accept any kind of special treatment across its stakeholders. “Our goal is not to make the most money by being enterprise focused,” says Fishkin.
Uncomplicated appears in the product itself. SparkToro’s primary metric is “Percent of Audience” — a straightforward number that tells you what percentage of a specific audience follows a particular account or visits a specific website. “We like simple things,” he says. “We like things that are easy to understand.”
Long-term thinking is exactly how it sounds, and it’s centered on building solid relationships internally and externally. The goal isn’t to trap customers into long contracts, it’s to minimize poor-quality experiences. The company also thinks long-term about staying power. Fishkin references Ferrari and Japanese craft businesses that have operated for centuries, not quarters. “We want to exist for a very long time,” he says.
Example is about pioneering a model that others can follow. “SparkToro is a very tiny company, and we’re not going to have the impact or reach that something like Moz or HubSpot or LinkedIn or Netflix is going to have,” says Fishkin. “But if we can help further this movement around zebras versus unicorns and set an example that inspires other companies to take up the mantle… that would be very exciting for us.”
The Customer Paradox
Embracing High Churn as Strategy
Fishkin is well aware of SparkToro’s churn rate — 15-20% of customers leave regularly — which is typical with most SaaS companies.
That said, between 15% and 20% of SparkToro’s customers are the people who quit previously and realize they could benefit from its services a second time. These are the metrics that actually matter to Fishkin.
It’s lifetime value redefined: instead of calculating revenue over continuous subscription length, SparkToro thinks about the total relationship value, including periods when someone isn’t actually a customer.
“I’m thinking about churn as, did someone leave with a bad taste in their mouth? That’s what I want to minimize,” says Fishkin.
The Pre-Cancellation Email Philosophy
Three days before re-charging a credit card, SparkToro always sends a heads-up email.
“Just click this one button and you don’t have to pay us anymore, and your subscription will stay until the day it runs out and then you can come back anytime,” Fishkin explains.
Fishkin compares this against his experience with subscriptions like The New York Times, where he stayed subscribed for six years longer than he wanted because cancellation required calling during specific East Coast business hours. “I did not have the wherewithal to wake up between 9 a.m. and 12 p.m. Eastern Time to be called to cancel my subscription,” he says.
He thinks of this as the long-term math of honest relationships. To Fishkin, the priority is building trust over capturing revenue, which has ultimately yielded a much higher ROI for SparkToro.
The Anti-Customer Strategy
SparkToro reviews every customer who signs up. Out of 4,000 to 5,000 customers over the years, Fishkin has refunded exactly two.
One of those two refunds went to the Republican National Committee. Another went to a law enforcement agency. The company has a strict policy: they don’t serve firearms companies or organizations whose values conflict with their own.
"If you’re selling firearms, no, I don’t want to help you sell more,” says Fishkin.
But there’s a reason this has only happened twice out of thousands of prospective customers, he believes. “If you’re a marketer for firearms companies, you’re not interested and attracted by the things that SparkToro does,” he says. “The overlap is just not there.”
“Manifest something you want to see in the world that doesn't exist today.”
— Rand Fishkin, co-founder of Moz and founder of SparkToro
Building for Craft, Not Scale
The Small Market Advantage
SparkToro operates in what Fishkin calls “probably not a billion dollar market.” That’s by choice.
By deliberately choosing a niche “nobody else was really doing anything in,” SparkToro positioned itself where venture capitalists won’t follow. That’s where Fishkin sees the greatest opportunity. To him, that’s where useful businesses can serve real customer needs in markets that often get underserved.
“Success is possible at two million dollars a year or 10 or 20 or 50 or 200,” says Fishkin. He feels no pressure to be a “one in a million success story.”
The Company as Art
Fishkin describes SparkToro as “a very crafted artistic kind of startup.”
He adds: “It’s us painting the brushstrokes we want to paint in the places we want to paint them on that canvas because we like it, because we think that’s how it should be, because we want the world to see that, not because we think it's going to give us the biggest hyper growth we can possibly get.”
Fishkin has seen what happens with a growth-at-all-costs mentality — and he’s disinterested in what becoming that requires.
The Ferrari philosophy Fishkin stands by appears again: “Manifest something you want to see in the world that doesn't exist today," he says. That’s how he believes sustainability is built.
The Financial Architecture of Independence
Profitable by Design
SparkToro was built to be profitable from the early stages. By staying profitable, it hasn’t needed to rely on additional funding rounds.
The investors it has brought on receive returns through profit distributions rather than waiting for an acquisition or IPO.
It’s a fundamentally different model from typical Silicon Valley rules, but the results speak for themselves: SparkToro generates “several multiples more revenue per employee than Moz” did at its peak.
The Egalitarian Economics
It bears repeating that the salaries across SparkToro’s leadership team began and remain in similar ranges. And as the team grows, “the plan is never to hire people who make much less or much more than what the rest of the team does,” says Fishkin.
A similar strategy extends to investors: No investor has put in more than three to four times what another investor contributed.
“That’s how we want to play it for the long term,” he adds.
The Entrepreneur's Evolution
From Revenge to Revolution
SparkToro started out as a revenge story. To prove Moz wrong, Fishkin needed to prove he could build something successful without compromising the morals he had tried so hard to push for.
Over time, that driving force has evolved. First into validation: proving the zebra model works, that profitable small companies can be successful without chasing unicorn mythology. Then into demonstration: showing others what’s possible.
After losing everything at Moz, Fishkin discovered the ultimate entrepreneurial act isn’t growing fast. It’s growing deliberately. In the process, he continues to showcase how success can be redefined to be rooted in sustainability over explosive growth.
“I’m just trying to build a small business,” says Fishkin, “and occasionally hang out with a film crew.”
While his impact is larger than his modesty suggests, Fishkin isn’t too concerned about leaving a legacy. “History will judge,” Fishkin says. And judging by the course SparkToro has charted, Fishkin is nowhere near finished.
Author: Brianne Garrett
Brianne Garrett is a journalist, editor, and producer focused on entrepreneurship, lifestyle, and food. Before pivoting to freelancing, she held editorial roles at brands including Sweet July, Forbes, and Wine Spectator. She’s also the founder of Stella, a newsletter, podcast, and community platform that champions and connects Black women in media. A dual citizen of the United States and the United Kingdom, she splits her time between London and New York. She’s both a tiramisu lover and a Chardonnay hater.
