Moz CEO Rand Fishkin announced in a blog post that he is stepping down as the CEO of Moz (formerly SEOmoz). But don’t worry, you won’t be seeing less of him. In fact, from the sound of it, you’ll be seeing more.
Fishkin is not leaving his company or anything like that. He’s just decided that he’d like to focus less on things like people managing and more on product and marketing – the areas where he is more comfortable. He’s handing the reins over to President and COO Sarah Bird.
Fishkin shared an email sent to staff, in which he says:
My role will actually be very similar. I’ll likely be spending more time in the weeds with product design, marketing initiatives, and evangelism (blogging/speaking). I’ll continue to represent Moz externally quite a bit. But I won’t be doing much people managing (only Nicci will continue to report to me), work on our finances, organizational development stuff, or recruiting/hiring of senior staff. I’ve also promised to write a book next year on startup marketing!
I want to change my title to “individual contributor.” Mostly because it reflects my belief that you don’t need to manage people in order to have influence, I love and want to promote the IC track/concept, and that titles are kinda BS 🙂
I will continue to be on the eteam and on the board of directors, representing internal shareholders (like y’all).
Later in the email, addressing the question of if this means he will leave in the near future, Fishkin says, “Hell no…You’d have to push me kicking and screaming. I plan to be here for a long time to come.”
The timeframe for the transition isn’t clear yet, but Fishkin says it will be more so after a board meeting next week.
Long story short: I love doing a lot of things at Moz that aren't necessarily "CEO" stuff, so we're talking about @SarahBird taking that on.
— Rand Fishkin (@randfish) December 11, 2013
But I'm definitely not going anywhere, and will certainly be spending much more time on our tools, data, content, etc. back "in the weeds"
— Rand Fishkin (@randfish) December 11, 2013
Transition isn't 100% planned yet, but might happen as early as January, so we thought it best to be TAGFEE and share.
— Rand Fishkin (@randfish) December 11, 2013
Image: Rand Fishkin