Jason Fried
@jasonfried
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Started & runs 37signals (makers of Basecamp, HEY, and ONCE). Non-serial entrepreneur, serial author. DM or email me at [email protected].
Joined April 2008
What do they got?. A big team, lots of money, a strong brand, seemingly unlimited resources, panache, reputation, all that. They’re established. They’re your competitors. You want to look away, but you see them everywhere. Their ads on your social, their name in the media, your.
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When Google puts 4 paid ads ahead of the first organic result for your own brand name, you’re forced to pay up if you want to be found. It’s a shakedown. It’s ransom. But at least we can have fun with it. Search for Basecamp and you may see this attached ad.
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If your company requires you to work nights and weekends, your company is broken. This is a managerial problem, not your problem. This is a process problem, not a personal problem. This is an ownership problem, not an individual problem.
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Big week. @elonmusk goes 2 for 2 for us. 1. Found myself in the middle of a wildfire. Bad situation. Putting out spot fires the next day, loads of smoke. Had N95, but wasn't doing the job. Wasn't feeling great, breathing labored, starting to get light headed. Neighbors who were.
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A passage from the Tao that’s frequently worth revisiting.
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LAUNCH: Today we launch Basecamp Personal - a completely free version of Basecamp designed with freelancers, students, families, and personal projects in mind. Use it for hobbies, weddings, small events, side projects, volunteer gigs, etc. Here you go:
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If your company requires you to work nights and weekends, they’d require you to work even more if there was more time! It’s not that nights and weekends are the exact amount of extra time required, it’s that that’s all the extra time there is. They’d take more if they could.
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When I was starting my first business, I remember using a totally large random number as my first invoice number to make it seem like I’d sent *a lot* of invoices before. Hands up if you were as insecure as I was when you started your first business.
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Pathetic… even Apple is promoting workaholism now. Check out this ad for their Planet Of The Apps show.
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6 years ago we went all-in on Basecamp. One company, entirely focused on one product. Today we’re announcing we’ve changed our mind. The best Basecamp ever - Basecamp 4 - is coming in 2021, but first we’ll be releasing something brand new this April:
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Instead of a hackathon, try a sleepathon. You’ll be better off.
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Rename “cookies” to “trackers” and you’d see some progress. Who wouldn’t want to “accept cookies”?! Has anyone ever turned down a delicious cookie? But who would want to “accept trackers”?.
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Company culture is not written down, it’s acted out. A company’s culture is a 50-day moving average of *how it is*, not how it thinks it is, wants to be, or was supposed to be.
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Prediction: If Github ends up selling itself one day, Microsoft will be the buyer.
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Top skill for entrepreneurs: Being great at ignoring what everyone else is doing.
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After 10 years, our office lease is up July 31. Our landlord just asked if we’d like to stay through the end of the year. WITH A ~30% INCREASE IN RENT. During a pandemic! Commercial landlords are about to face a new reality. This is an odd approach to keeping a tenant in place.
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You don’t sharpen your skills with resources, books, or articles. You sharpen your skills with practice. If you want get better, go do the thing.
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Productivity is for machines, not for people. There’s nothing meaningful about packing some number of work units into some amount of time, or squeezing more into less. Think about how effective you’re being, not how productive you’re being.
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I've served on three boards. One was a prominent private university. One was an exceptionally fast growing company about to go public. One was a small private company that owned their niche. Every board meeting was about money. We barely talked product, customer (or student).
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People don't have short attention spans. They have short interest spans. If they're interested, they'll give you their full attention.
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I don’t 100% agree with anyone - not even myself. I’m always surprised when Person A disqualifies Person B as a source of learning simply because Person B said/did something that Person A doesn’t agree with. Full agreement is a terrible requirement to place on anyone.
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You can only iterate on something after it’s been released. Prior to release, you’re just making the thing. Even if you change it, you’re just making it. Iterating is when you change/improve after it’s out. So if you want to iterate, SHIP.
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We just announced that all Basecamp employees get this Friday + Monday off to create a 4-day “get prepared” weekend. Time to think about childcare, elderly care, extra time to go to the store, etc. If you’re an employer who can afford to do this, I hope you’ll follow suit.
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Out of the current 56 people who work at Basecamp, 33 have been with us for 5+ years. Of those 33, 25 have been with us for 7+ years, and 10 have been with us for 10+ years.
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When making something new that clearly competes with something that exists, gravity will pull you towards trying to do everything they do PLUS the new stuff you want to do. I’d encourage you steer clear of feature parity. Instead, handle common struggles in novel, unique ways.
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Good time to preview the next ONCE product. We're calling it Workbook. You know, it's really easy to publish short form content on a variety of social platforms. And individual blog posts on a number of other platforms. These are solved problems. But it's surprisingly
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What an interesting moment. We're staring at two distinctly different visions of the future. They may co-exist, but they are radically different takes on what's modern, what's current, and where things are headed. One vision gets the UI out of the way. The other vision is UI
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Just shared this update with our whole staff. In times like these, businesses need to be the ones that give, not take - especially for employees with kids at home. As school/daycare closes, companies need to relax expectations and be extra accommodating. See image.
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Two years of work comes alive today. Couldn’t be more proud of our team. It wasn’t easy, but it was incredibly fun. And today we get to show the world what we’ve been working on. Email’s new heyday is here. HEY:
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Giving out equity in startups benefits ownership way more than employees. It allows the owners to push employees harder and harder because “you’ve got skin in the game now… you’re an owner.” No you aren’t. Owning less than 1% of anything isn’t ownership.
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“People are frugal in guarding their personal property; but as soon as it comes to squandering time they are most wasteful of the one thing in which it is right to be stingy.” -Seneca, On the Shortness of Life.
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Today's the day: Writebook is here! And it's free. Blogging and posting on social is easy. But why is it so hard to publish a whole book on the web? It’s not anymore. Writebook is remarkably simple software that allows you to publish text and pictures in.
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Thoroughly inspired by the business side of the @elonmusk biography. Most overused and inaccurately applied word in the book: Reckless. I find most of his business decisions snugly wrapped in *practicality*. Much of the stuff that’s branded risky actually feels like risk.
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In homage to the introduction of the iPhone in 2007, we just sent out 2007 more invites for HEY. The next batch will be 1984 for you know what.
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Out of everyone who applied for the Basecamp Head of Marketing job, only one person used an ad on LinkedIn to get an extra ounce of notice. This doesn’t get her the job, but it’s a clever, thoughtful technique to stand out against 1000+ other applicants.
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Whenever I find myself slipping - not liking how I’m acting, thinking, or reacting - I reread The Manual. It’s the simplest, most profound barely-60 pages I’ve come across. Read it again today. I needed it.
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Humans don’t have short or long attention spans. They have attention spans commensurate with their motivations. If you don’t care about something then you have a short attention span. But care about it? You’ll make/find all the time in the world.
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Managers… I understand the temptation to want to track your employees’ every moment while they’re newly WFH, but I implore you to trust them to do the right thing rather than assume they’re taking advantage of the situation. Don’t look over their digital shoulder.
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Today’s the last day of our 10-year office lease. What a run. We’ll be entirely officeless for the foreseeable future. Wishing the new tenant all the best, whomever you may be!.
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I have the hardest time finishing business books. Many are twice as long as they should be, and are quite repetitive. Super proud that you can read “It Doesn’t Have to be Crazy at Work” in just about *2 hours*. Quick read, no filler, no fluff. No excuses.
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Email tip: If you know someone is very busy, occupied, focused on other things, the best way to get a chance at a piece of their time is with a very short email, not a very long one. I understand the tendency to go into detail, but it works against you. Think about the receiver.
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One of my favorite interview questions: “What's something you know you need to get better at?”. It’s revealing.
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Idea for @grok and X… let me describe what I don’t want to see in my timeline. Simple plain English. “No AI, no politics, no someone telling everyone else that what they do for a living is about to be replaced, no advice from people who haven’t done the thing they’re advising.
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In the same way that sound isn’t music, traffic isn’t audience.
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I've consulted. I've advised. I've served on boards. I've done client work. I've written books. I've spoken on the circuit. I've blogged for years. I have to say, I've found no greater professional joy than working with a tight group of people to ship and support our own.
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At 37signals, three is a magic number. Nearly all new product work is done by teams of three people. A team of three is usually composed of two programmers and one designer. And if it’s not three, it’s two or one — not four or five. We don’t throw more people at problems, we.
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LinkedIn should be renamed “have 15 minutes for a quick call?”.
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(To be extra clear since some have made them point, I’m talking about nights and weekends *in addition to* a standard day’s work. Not talking about people who work night or weekend shifts as their only shifts).
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It took me a while to fully realize the value of something my company achieved years ago, and continues to savor today. It’s one of our greatest quiet advantages, full stop. It’s not something you hear much about in business circles. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I.
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The real question isn’t whether you want a new *phone* every two years, it’s do you want a new ~$1000 *camera* every two years? The primary noticeable difference from year to year on modern smartphones is camera/picture quality. Smartphones are really Smartcameras.
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It’s unfortunate that the default response when somebody changes their mind is often “gotcha!” or “told ya!”. A changing mind should be met with praise, not scorn.
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Real profits, shared. One of the most rewarding things about running a profitable business is rewarding others with a share of the profits. For years we've had a profit share system in place where we take 10% of our annual profits and distribute them to our employees based on.
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Seek fewer mentors. Seek more self-confidence. Too many people are stuck waiting for someone wiser to show them the way. There is no way.
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It's remarkable how unliked Jira is. Hard to come up with another piece of software that seems so universally panned by people who have to use it, yet has clearly proven popular. I guess there's Salesforce, but. So what is it about Jira that so many don't like?.
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When prototyping, always try wackier/quirkier stuff first. The deeper you get into a project, the more conservative it tends to get. Stranger ideas are more at home earlier in the process.
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People often ask “How do you convince customers to XYZ?” Answer: I never try to convince anyone to do anything. There are plenty of people who *want* to do something, *want* to try something, are *ready* for a change. Sell to those customers.
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I don’t plan long term because I want to do what I think, not what I thought.
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Attention spans aren’t about time, they’re about motivation.
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Yesterday I recorded a single take, ~37 minute walkthrough of HEY (one snafu, sorry!). So if you really want to see it in action, and you have a half-hour to spare, check it out here:
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In 2020, we’re introducing a brand new SAAS product in two flavors, a new content product, and beginning work on the flagship revamp for a 2021 launch. Plus this year we’ll reveal a major new technical direction for building web apps. All in 40-hour weeks. Excited!.
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Most salespeople would be better at sales if they studied the buying process more than the selling process.
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Company culture isn’t a moment in time. It’s not something you write down. Culture is the by-product of consistent behavior. It’s what you do over time. Your current company culture is essentially a 50-day moving average of your actions.
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You typically compete more against habits than you do against competitors. In most cases, comfort and familiarity are stronger forces than new, better, and different.
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A manager’s top responsibility is to shield all the bullshit that happens at work from the people that need to do the work. Managers should be making sure each person on their team gets as close to a full eight hour day to themselves as possible….
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I’ve been doing this for 25 years, so I’m often asked why I’m still in it and how I stay motivated. It ain’t the money, as I’ve been fortunate enough to make more than I’ll ever be able to spend. I enjoy the work and we have a great crew, each a true pleasure to work with. I
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"Here's what our product can do" and "Here's what you can do with our product" sound similar, but they are completely different approaches.
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Decks are worse than documents. Far worse. It's why we don't create decks for internal or external communication at 37signals. Not one. No Powerpoint, Keynote, Slides, whatever. There's no presenting, only communicating. If we want to communicate an idea, a direction, a.
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It doesn’t take talent to do something new. It most certainly doesn’t take experience to do something new. It takes courage to do something new.
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Best way to run a bunch of stuff? Don’t put yourself in charge of everything.
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The Basecamp Employee Handbook, including all our benefits, responsibilities per role, code of conduct, and everything in between has been reformatted and published for all to see. Here you go:
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Generally, nobody at Basecamp really knows where anyone else is at any given moment. Are they working? Dunno. Are they at lunch? Dunno. Are they picking up their kid from school? Dunno. Don’t care. Escape from the Presence Prison —>
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I’m sending $100k to & I’ll 2x it if just 100 people email me their donation receipts. jason@basecamp.com.
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If you want to feel good, brainstorm it. If you want to appear good, test it. If you want to know if you’re any good, ship it.
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People are plenty productive. It's systems that aren't. It's the process, the methods, the overbearing oversight, the absence of trust, the incessant checking-in, the lack of contiguous time, and the red tape that bog things down, not the people doing the work itself.
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I’ve often thought about starting a biz conference called “Versus” where every session is a disagreement. We need more debate on stage, and less agreement.
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Reviewing applications for our Head of Marketing position. Saw something on a candidate’s CV I’ve never seen before: “Reason for quitting/leaving” on each previous job. I like that a lot.
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People are asking… “If you go remote, do you pay people differently based on where they live?” We don’t. We pay everyone the same salary (top 10% San Francisco rates, based on role/level) no matter where they live. Remote isn’t a reason to pay less —>
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If you like saying yes, get better at saying no. No gives you more opportunities to say yes to the things you really want to do/make/try/explore/discover.
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You don’t have a brand until someone else tells you what it means. Until then you just have a logo, a mark, a word, a personal vision of what you want your business to be. A reflection, not introspection, is what gives a brand shape and meaning.
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Your company isn't your baby, and your company isn't a family.
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I’m starting to believe nothing should be designed in a day. A design needs to stand up to fresh eyes in the morning.
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If you want to feel good, brainstorm it. If you want to appear good, test it. If you want to know if you’re any good, ship it.
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WEB-BOOK LAUNCH: The deepest dive into our unique way of working. No post-its, no backlogs, no sprints, no stand-ups, no velocity tracking, no agile, no scrum, no roadmaps, none of that. We’ve gone a different way, and now you can too. Read up, Shape Up:
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Busting your ass doing what doesn’t need to be done isn’t a strong work ethic - it’s a strong waste of time.
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HEY LAUNCH DATE: We will be begin rolling out invites to the ~40,000 people on the invite list starting on June 15, 2020. If you want to get on that list, go to and follow directions at the bottom. Here we go!
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You’ll often hear people say someone has good “work ethic” if they’re putting in long hours. But 60, 70, 80 hours a week doesn’t equal work ethic. 60, 70, 80+ hours a week simply equals 60, 70, 80+ hours a week. Work ethic is about showing up, being on time, being reliable,.
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Project stuck? Throwing more time, money, and people at it is like struggling in quicksand - you only get more stuck. Instead, scale it back, slice it up, siphon resources away from it on a specific date. Limits, not unlimited, helps things finish up.
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I’ve never met a deck that tells a better story than a well written page of text. Write it up, don’t deck it out.
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A while back I got an email from a fellow who asked:. —."I’ve been trying to think about my next B2B play but everytime I think of an idea I stop myself due to how saturated the markets are. How do you still win in a packed category? I feel like it’s a lot harder to win now than.
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The problem with software estimates is that they're both entirely right and entirely wrong. Yes there's a 3 week version of something. And a 6 week version. And a 4 month version. And a 12 month version. That's correct. Yet, you'll almost always be wrong whichever you pick.
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The more you pay attention to your competitors, the more you end up just like them. Obsessing over what everyone else is doing doesn’t help you differentiate, it causes you to assimilate.
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Have you ever noticed that feedback is implicitly considered to be right, when it’s purely opinion? What someone thinks of something is their opinion. Feedback is rarely about facts, it’s about feel, which is great except when it’s taken as truth.
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