Rand Fishkin co-authored/co-founded the Art of SEO, Inbound.org, and Moz.com and uses the ludicrous title, Wizard of Moz. Take that you corporate ninjas.

Rand has made a name for himself, not just because of the things that he has done and achieved, but from the way he has approached business with the aim of being honest and transparent about everything he does.

In the wake of his candid Business of Software Europe 2016 talk, we caught up with Rand to allow you to ask him anything. You delivered, quizzing him on a range of topics from the changes happening at Moz right now, to SEO, to building a corporate culture. The video of the conversation is available in full below.

Rand Fishkin, Founder, now Wizard of, Moz…

…gave a very honest and open talk at BoS Europe this year reflecting on what he could have told his younger self. We’ll let Rand provide some context for the talk from his blog post about it but take it from us, it will both make you smarter and move you. A talk that is not just about SEO and Inbound marketing but the entrepreneurial journey. Thanks to Rand and Geraldine for sharing this story.

Slides, Video, AMA, Notes & Transcript below

Ash Maurya is the author of ‘Running Lean’ and the newly published, ‘Scaling Lean’ as well as the Lean Canvas business modeling tool.

He regularly hosts sold out workshops around the world and serves as a mentor to several accelerators including TechStars, MaRS, Capital Factory, and guest lecturers at several universities including MIT, Harvard, and UT Austin. So, all in all, he’s  pretty good guy to listen to if you want to think about scaling lean methods in your business.

Ash is speaking at Business of Software Conference 2016 on Scaling Lean Methods, but before he does, he took your questions based on your particular problems.

In an entertaining half an hour, Ash covered a range of topics and previewed what is to come in his talk perfectly.

See the video below.

Game room, free lunch, fully stocked kitchen, on-site barista, and free beer. These elements of a job description are used to capture the the attention of industry talent.

However, it’s not what truly engages or retains them. In today’s technology field, perks are a game of one upmanship in the recruiting wars and while they may land you some good people, your best people stay for the culture that underlies the glossy perks.

Culture is a very different animal, but unfortunately I often see it conflated with perks. I understand the value of perks for both businesses and their employees. At TapInfluence, I want to make our office an enjoyable place for people to work, and providing creature comforts helps employees stay in the game. But perks should simply be an extension of culture, not a mask for a weak one.

15 Years of Continuous Improvement

When you are running your business based on a single software product, decisions about software development are as integral to your success as business decisions—in fact, they are directly related to your business. This is why the second part of this blog series about the inseparable connection between growth and agility focuses on the top 6 software development decisions we have taken in the last 15 years. These are the decisions that, in retrospect, we consider important—most of them didn’t feel so important at the time:

Congratulations to Chan Hon Meng who runs a street food stall, HK Soya Sauce Chicken Rice and Noodle, in Singapore that has just been awarded a Michelin star.

At S$2 (US $1.50), Mr Chan’s soya sauce chicken rice and noodle is the cheapest Michelin-starred meal you can get in the world.

Guest blog post from Matt DeLeon, Chief Programmer at KnowYourCompany on the value of a conference.

“So, what’d you think of the conference?”

my co-worker asked me on our way home from Business of Software last year…

“I don’t know… Good, I guess?”

I had doubts.

All the talks from previous Business of Software Conferences from one place. Great SaaS & Software Talks.

If you want to watch previous BoS Talks, you can access all of the publicly available ones from here, listed by year. The more recent talks will link to the video of the talk, a transcript, the speakers slides, any follow up online AMAs and attendee notes. Great talks on building SaaS and software businesses.

Enjoy!

Patrick McKenzie, StarFighter

Patrick McKenzie (or patio11 as he is better known on the Internets) gave a great, practical and actionable, talk about how to get better at hiring engineers at Business of Software 2015.

“Every hiring process sucks, but think of hiring as a funnel.

• Outreach — Creating the eco system (100 nerds)
• Attract — Getting people to come to you (10 nerds)
• Assess — Do they meet the requirements? (6 nerds)
• Close — Give them an offer (Your new employee)

Slides, Video, AMA & Transcript below

Alex Osterwalder, Co-Founder, Strategyzer

At Business of Software Conference USA 2015, Alex Osterwalder described the key steps in designing an effective organizational culture.

In most companies, there is a gap between the actual culture and the desired culture.

“Your company’s culture is your operating system” – Dave Gray.

Conference Video & AMA Video Below

We often add something silly in our content just for our own amusement – and strangely, we often get notes from people saying, ‘X made me smile’. We’re always pleased when it entertains others. We get that little rush of dopamine you get when you let someone out into slow moving traffic and they thank you with a wave or by indicating right-left-right.

Delight is good too!

BoS Conference Pricing FAQs

Like most conferences, we work using a series of price points over the course of the year so that the closer to the event, the more it costs to attend. The logic behind this is fairly simple – the earlier someone commits to attend, the less they pay. This gives us visibility on attendee numbers and cash to operate earlier than if everyone just turned up on the day.

There are a few questions we get asked a lot about pricing…

At BoS 2015, we asked all attendees to write down one thing that they resolved to do as a result of coming to the conference that would make a positive difference to their business and to suggest a date that we should check in.

How did they do?

The Lightning Talk section of Business of Software Conference is always a highlight.

Great ideas delivered in 7 and a half minutes: energetic, fast paced, sometimes funny, but always useful. A lightning talk takes all that is good about Business of Software, and then makes like a ZIP folder and compresses it.

Business of Software Conference USA 2015’s Lightning Talks were no exception. A wide ranging section for what was 37 and a half minutes of talks. Included is talks on women in tech, entrepreneurialism, design mistakes, problem solving and tech for good. See the playlist below for all the talks from last years event.

Jason Lemkin, founder CEO of EchoSign (acquired by Adobe), offers an interesting take on why so many SaaS companies fail to move beyond $20 million ARR.

In this talk, Michael McDerment (@mikemcderment) , CEO/co-founder of FreshBooks and serial entrepreneur, talks about how FreshBooks has survived and what they’ve learned. Michael shares his insights on decision making during product management and mistakes made along the way.

Video and Notes Below

BoS USA 2016 Provisional Program and Agenda

Please note, subject to change.

When it comes to building products, Agile and Waterfall just don’t cut it anymore.

It’s 2016.

Both of those things were popular in an era when talking to customers and getting feedback was hard. But today, there’s no excuse. Every team at your company should be talking to customers daily.

Your customers don’t operate in six-week release cycles.

They don’t think about weekly sprints.

They don’t want to hear “it’s on our roadmap for next quarter.”

Customer expectations have changed along with the rise of software-as-a-service and the on-demand economy.

And with so many options and competing products for your customers — do you honestly think customers are going to stick around until you fix that bug in your next release cycle in six weeks?

I wouldn’t stick around. And your customers won’t either. As a result, the way that we build our products and structure our product teams needs to change too.