Discover great authors from HEY World

Osmo Wiio: Communication usually fails, except by accident

Osmo Wiio was a Finnish researcher of human communication. His laws of communication are the human communications equivalent of Murphy’s Laws. Wiio's laws state... • If communication can fail, it will. • If a message can be understood in different ways, it will be understood in just that way which does the most harm. • There is always ...

Surface area vs. Depth in product design

Some of the most rewarding features to add to products are ones that don’t increase surface area, but increase depth. This is how you continue to make a product a whole lot better without it feeling like it got a whole lot bigger. Basecamp’s new References feature is a great example of this. Video + write-up: https://updates.37signals....

Motivation

I can fake enough. I can fake a lot. But I’ve noticed there’s one thing in particular I can’t fake: Motivation. And in the end, at least for me, it all comes down to motivation. I may have the talent, I may know the tricks, I may be able to go through the motions. But if I deeply don’t want to do it, it won’t be good. Simple as that. I...

Avoiding pile-ups

One of the reasons we work in six week cycles, is that it gives us a different definition of later. When you work on really long projects — say 3, 6, 9 month projects — or projects that don’t have any end in sight, “we can do that later” typically means you’ll get to it eventually, as part of the current project. Long time frames give ...

Hooks, towel bars, and software

Strangely, a recent bathroom renovation crystalized my perspective on product development. When being asked to choose between towel hooks or a towel bar, the choice was obvious: Hooks, of course. Hooks take up no space. Towel bars suck up space. Hooks hold towels no matter how you place them. Towel bars require towels to be balanced le...

Do learn

Imagine teaching guitar without putting an instrument in someone’s hands. Or teaching ceramics without having people work with clay. Or teaching tennis without swinging the racket and hitting balls. I’m sure there’s some way to teach those things without doing those things, but come on, we all know you have to do those things to really...

You couldn't know

Have you ever been asked "What do you wish you knew then that you know now?" I have. And I hate the question. It's usually framed in a way that encourages you to pretend to place yourself in the nascent days of your career, or early adulthood. Back when you didn't know much, when you were trying to figure things out. Essentially it's a...

Don't delegate your word

As you build your business, you'll end up delegating plenty. Much of what you did before is now better done by someone else. To make more progress, you release your grip and allow. But there’s one thing you should hold tight and never let go. It’s the thing that should never be delegated. It’s your voice. Speak for yourself. Don’t let ...

The data came from where?

Now you have the data. Thousands of responses from a survey with dozens of questions. You worked hard to come up with questions that painted the picture you felt you needed to make the decision with the data you gathered. And now you've got it. Comprehensively. Quantitatively. You're data driven, and now you have the stuff that drives ...

Basecamp turns 20

20 years ago today I wrote a blog post that changed my life. I'd never really launched a product before, so posting to our blog was only way I knew how to do it. And social media hadn't even been invented yet, so where else was I supposed to put it? In fact, guess what else happened to launch the same day as Basecamp? Facebook. So we'r...

Making it balance

One of my greatest pleasures at work is trying to find that point where everything feels just right. Nothing more, nothing less, but right there in the pocket. It's almost fractal. It's there in every component, in every feature, in every flow, in every sequence, in every product, in every decision, inside everything across the company...

Enough feedback

Enough feedback comes quick. Invite 100, get 10, 5 probably tell you all you need to know. Or at least 80% of it, which is all you need to know. Another 10, 20, 50+ will end up telling you mostly the same as those core five. And you'll find yourself repeating yourself — explaining the same thing you already explained, just to new peopl...

It’s all a judgment call

It's all a judgment call. Every human decision is a gut decision. The decision itself is the messy integration of many disparate pieces of information, experiences, instincts, stories, and unknowns. Data may inform, but as long as a human is making the decision, it's ultimately a judgment call. If you're just going by the data, then yo...

Apple Vision Pro POV

The thing that excites me most about the Apple Vision Pro is the ability to capture someone's point of view. General purpose vision tracking at this scale and resolution, in a consumer device, is entirely new thing. And I think it has the potential to alter the course of the human experience. Cameras can record a scene. Video cameras c...

Swimming the center or the edge

Imagine a vast swimming pool 25 miles long, 50 miles wide, and 25 feet deep. Swimming this pool is akin to running a business. And how you swim this pool is akin to how you run the business. Everyone starts at the beginning, but you decide how close to the center or the edge you swim. There’s only one rule: You can’t turn around, there...

To make

I've consulted. I've done client work. I've advised. I've served on boards. I've invested. 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 products. And for those products to find people wi...

Cars and business

I’m going to draw a parallel that isn’t quite straight, but it’s close enough. It’s between old (analog) cars and new (digital) cars, simple (analog) businesses and complicated (digital) businesses. Lately I’ve been driving two distinctly different cars. One from 1970, and the other from 2023. They essentially have nothing in common ot...

Live with it for a while

In the course of building products, you'll likely experience moments when you're unsure of a certain screen, flow, condition, label, idea, whatever. Maybe this button doesn't feel right. Or the name of this feature feels unresolved. Or some color is jarring, but kind of interesting nonetheless. Or the way something gets set up seems a ...

Commodities, generics, and software

Once a product category proves popular, it's common for more companies to enter the market. Eventually, many options appear that are essentially mostly the same. Now we've got something that quacks like a commodity. Once we've got a commodity, generics eventually follow. Devoid of fancy packaging, marketing, and advertising, prices fal...

Heard Something, Read Something, Saw Something [#16]

Hey there! Here’s the 16th installment of my popular Heard Something, Read Something, Saw Something series. So, what do we have this time... Heard Something Lately I've been enjoying listening to discussions about free will. Do we have it? If so, how much? Always? Sometimes? Never? Is it real or an illusion? I find the concept fascinat...

Look back less

I have a theory. One of the reasons companies have a hard time moving forward is because they've tangled themselves in the near past. Eyes aimed backwards rather than ahead, staring at the dark, feet in their own concrete. They've trapped themselves looking for certainty where there isn't any. Searching for actionable advice where ther...

An influence or a trap?

Watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9NruIjkGEw Roger Smith is a watchmaker, in the most traditional sense. He apprenticed under George Daniels, one of the best there ever was. And for the first few years, he made everything himself — just him, no one else. Even if you aren’t into watches, I bet you’ll be into Roger W. Smith af...

Always cheer

I often hear from people writing in asking for advice about some broken team dynamic. Someone's against them, they're against someone, another group doesn't want them to do well because it'll make them look bad. Management this, team that, individual something or another. People want to know how to handle these unfortunate conditions. ...

Then just say it like that!

Over the last 20+ years I’ve been part of too many discussions where someone goes “I’m having a hard time explaining this or that…” Then they say “I just really want to say this…” And then they say it and it’s clear, concise, and obvious! They nailed it, but… …it’s as if they aren’t even listening to themselves because they’re right ba...

Teaching iteration

I’ve written about the class I’d like to teach, but what I’ve been thinking about lately is the class I’d like to attend. Not necessarily now, but when I was growing up. In the 6th grade, let’s say. I don’t know why people ask me this, but I’m often polled for my opinion on the American education system. What’s my take? What would I do...

No one's complaining

I’ve heard this one before. I’ve used this one before. “No one’s complaining” so it's fine. “No one” really means “no one has complained to you“. It doesn’t mean no one is complaining to someone else, somewhere else. In fact, if the thing you make/sell isn’t meeting someone’s expectations, there’s a good chance you’re the last one who’...

Don't take their word for it

A few years ago, we needed some hardware fast. After some back and forth with the vendor, they promised “expedited delivery”. That sounded like a good thing, but it meant nothing. To us, expedited delivery meant overnight delivery. That’s what we had in our head. Our experiences elsewhere equated expedited as overnight, but expedited i...

Keeping easy from becoming hard

Each Basecamp project has eight built-in tools you can toggle on or off. One for to-dos, one for file storage, one for scheduling, one for a message board, and so on. One of those tools is called "Campfire". Campfire is a real-time group chat. Think of it like Slack, but built right into Basecamp so you don't need Slack or anything els...

Company culture is the last 50 days

There's nothing complicated about company culture. Culture simply happens. It's emergent behavior. There's nothing to do, it just is. A company's culture is a 50-day moving average. It's what you've been collectively doing as a company over the last 50 days. How do you treat people? Who have you hired (or fired) and why? What do you wh...

Feeling it

I'm often asked how you know if an idea — product, business, or otherwise — is good. Good enough to pursue. Good enough to follow. Good enough to invest in. Good enough to get behind. You don't know. You feel. You give into your intuition, you tune into your senses, you notice goosebumps. What does it feel like? What's the vibe of this...

Admiration makes the team

When people talk about great teams, they'll talk about hard work, trust, respect, looking out for one another, etc. All good things. But there's one quality amongst teammates on great teams that often goes unrecognized by all but the most astute organizational observers: Admiration. Great teams are made of people who *admire* one anoth...

Scatter

Scatter. Scatter is the silent killer at work. Scatter is tools siloed by teams. Scatter is multiple apps to do one thing. Scatter is doing the same thing at the same time in multiple places. Scatter is asking around rather than doing it right now. Scatter is pulling people off this to jump on that. Scatter is wondering where something...

Effective > Productive

So much talk about hacking productivity these days. There’s an endless stream of methodologies and tools promising to make you more productive. But more productive at what? 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 les...

Stalking, not sales

What you see above is a 17-day sales sequence, or cadence. A friend of mine just sent it over and it creeped me out. From email to LinkedIn to phone to email back to LinkedIn back to phone, and so on. I assume day 18 would be a bullhorn outside your window. Somehow this is allowed to be called sales. But in any other realm it would be ...

Who do you do business with?

Way back when we launched the first version of Basecamp in 2004, we ran all our credit card charges through a merchant account provided by JP Morgan Chase. Charging credit cards wasn't easy in the early 2000s. This was back when being an "internet company" was a major red flag. The process required mounds of paperwork, proof, and busin...

You only compete with one thing

There's so much chatter and advice out there about how to handle "the competition". How much should you worry about them, what you can do to beat them, how much should you pay attention to what they're doing, how you should respond when they release or say something new, what you should say when a customer compares you to them, etc. Es...

73% of what?

Look around in the tools you use. Especially project management tools. You'll likely find the products proudly displaying the percentage of this or that that's been completed. This project is 73% done. This task list is 57% done. This process is 42% complete. It's almost certainly wrong. A lie would be more accurate. Most of these perc...

Promise not to promise

Since the beginning of Basecamp, we’ve been loath to make promises about future product improvements. We’ve always wanted customers to judge the product they could buy and use today, not some imaginary version that might exist in the future. It’s why we’ve never committed to a product road map. It’s not because we have a secret one in ...

Heard Something, Read Something, Saw Something [#15]

Hey there! Here’s the 15th installment of my popular Heard Something, Read Something, Saw Something series. So, what do we have this time... Heard Something These 11 minutes will restore your faith in humanity. A student pilot loses her front nose gear on takeoff on her 3rd solo flight ever. An incredible amount of support comes in ove...

Advice Expires

The internet's a living, breathing, professional self-help platform. If advice on how to run your company isn't coming at you 280 characters at a time on Twitter, you can hear it on a podcast, read it on a Substack, or get it right here on your LinkedIn feed. There's hardly a CEO, an entrepreneur, or a cultural figure these days who do...

Two visions of the future

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 everywhere you look. One vision gets the computer out of the ...

Protectionism

Companies love to protect. They protect their brand with trademarks and lawsuits. They protect their data and trade secrets with rules, policies, and NDAs. They protect their money with budgets, CFOs, and investments. They guard so many things, but all too often they fail to protect what’s both most vulnerable and precious: their emplo...

Kill Overkill

Business is often seen as the art of acquisition. Acquiring talent, customers, revenue, profits, mindshare, marketshare. Building and growing requires consumption, addition, parlaying some of this into a lot of that. But the smartest businesses — the ones that tend to stick around for the long haul — know that existence is also about a...

Yet

In the past I’ve written about how I used to be a hothead, reacting instantly to whatever I disagreed with. I didn’t even let someone finish their thought before I started forming my rebuttal. The remainder of their statement was just filler before I could slam back. I’m far from perfect, and I still occasionally catch myself doing thi...

We stand with the Underdogs

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 dream clients on their website. But you know what else they...

You can learn AI later

Throw a dart on LinkedIn, or toss one into the ether on Twitter, and you'll likely hit a post proclaiming that you better "learn AI" or you're falling behind. Master the tools and become a prompt engineer or someone else will tell the AI to summarize the long documents, kick off initial first drafts, and rewrite the headlines for you! ...

On hiring, rehiring, and one question to answer them all

Out of all things I’m asked about, hiring tops the list. From the actual hiring process, to reviews, to motivation and retention strategies, curiosity about hiring is on full charge. There’s a lot to cover, but I’d like to share some thoughts about a moment that doesn’t get enough attention: The end of the first year and the beginning ...

Heard Something, Read Something, Saw Something [#14]

Hey! It’s been many months since my last installment of the Heard Something, Read Something, Saw Something series. Let’s get back into it. So, what do we have this time... Heard Something A buddy randomly sent me this Turkish Electro Funk Güzel Mix on YouTube. This wasn’t on my radar at all, which is all the more reason I was glad he s...

Evaluating a redesign

We're fortunate we get to make things. But sometimes something sticks around long enough that we have the good fortune to have a chance to remake it. When evaluating a redesign, your first instinct is to compare the new design to the old design. But don’t do that. The first step is to understand what you’re evaluating. If you just put ...

Founder & CEO is kinda a BS title

Founder & CEO is a common title, especially in tech. It happens to be my title too. I've come to believe it's an impossible title. You're either CEO, or you're Founder. You can't hold both full-time jobs. And unless your company is probably 100+, CEO isn't really a job anyway. It's more of a role someone needs to play occasionally. The...

Innovation is overrated

Yesterday I was speaking to a university class and, as it usually does, a question about innovation came up. "How do you stay innovative? How do you encourage innovative thinking at work?" My answer: You don't stay innovative and you don't encourage innovative thinking at work. WHAT? Yes. Innovation should almost never happen. It's inc...

Rescuing a project in progress

A friend of mine called. He was overwhelmed by a home renovation project that ballooned in size. What started as a simple kitchen countertop replacement turned into more work in the kitchen, new lighting throughout the house, a master bathroom gut rehab, and new flooring in every room. It became too much. He felt like he was sinking an...

How we built something useful

The product development process encompasses many moments. Moments of novel breakthrough, moments of mundane maintenance, and everything in between. But some of the most rewarding moments consistently come from making something simply useful. Yesterday we shipped a feature in HEY called "Reply to Everyone" that was exactly that: Simply ...

The improv instinct

Last week I was talking with another business owner from a different industry. He was frustrated with an employee who kept asking him what to do if x, y, or z happens. This was a long-time employee who'd been in these situations before, not someone new who was learning the ropes. With this particular employee, it's always the same set ...

Don't be a knee-jerk

At most companies, people put together a deck, reserve a room (physical or virtual), and call a meeting to pitch a new idea. If they're lucky, no one interrupts them while they're presenting. When it's over, people react. This is precisely the problem. The person making the pitch has presumably put a lot of time, thought, and energy in...

Delegating projects, not tasks

We recently received this email from a REWORK Podcast listener who had a question... “...I think it was in Shape Up that the idea of delegating projects rather than tasks came up. And I'm trying to move this way, of working with my own team. I just wonder if you guys have any tips or help for making that transition, helping team member...

Just the two of us

There's a lot of talk right now about smaller, slimmer, tighter teams. Economics are forcing companies to cut back, and what they're finding is progress. Trim the overgrown crown, let the sunshine meet the ground, and all sorts of new life blooms on the forest floor. Even Zuck, master of a megacorp, is noticing it: https://twitter.com/...

On Sabbatical

I'm out. Today marks my last day of work until March. I'm taking my first sabbatical in 23 years. It's embarrassingly overdue. I do the 8 hour day, 40 hour week thing just fine, but when it comes to taking extended time away from work, I'm terrible. Subtracting time away when my kids were born, and aside from from personal days dotted ...

The new normal

Normal comes on quick. First it starts as an outlier. Some behavior you don't love, but tolerate. Then someone else follows suit, but either you miss it or you let it slide. Then people pile on — repeating what they've seen because no one stepped in to course correct. Then it's too late. It's become the culture. The new normal. This ha...

Where's the bug?

The feature doesn't work. It's not critical, but there's a rush to fix it. Two people are pulled off something else to deal with this. The code is sloppy, but the original problem is gone so the fix is deployed. A post-mortem is scheduled so 9 people can review what happened. New QA procedures are applied to every project moving forwar...

On company size

I have no idea how the the Musk-era Twitter saga will end up. That's a time will tell situation. And this isn't a post about Elon, his management style, decisions being made, talent drain, morale at the company, or the thousands of people who've been laid off or outright quit. There's plenty to be said there, and plenty of people are s...

Collaborating away

"But how do you brainstorm remotely? Or riff remotely? Or collaborate creatively remotely? Isn't it better when you're in a room, tossing ideas back and forth?" I hear some version of this fairly often from people who aren't used to making things with others from far away. There's an assumption that four walls, a whiteboard, a table, s...

Against Maximization

In business, maximization is the minimization of joy. I can’t imagine anything less interesting in business than maximizing shareholder value. Yet this is what public companies are pressured — if not legally required — to do. A lot of non-public companies follow the same path towards performance and results. To take it further, maximiz...

Do you have to love what you do?

Attend enough business conferences, read loads of LinkedIn posts, or listen to enough motivational speakers and you’ll hear one piece of advice repeated over and over again: You’ve got to love what you do! If you don’t love what you do, you might as well stay home. No less a giant than Steve Jobs famously told Stanford’s 2005 graduatin...

Just get moving

In business, moving is one of the hardest things to do. People think change is hard. It is. But moving is harder. Morphing from thinking and talking to actually doing and moving is the hardest. It's hard because talk is easy. Theorizing is easy. Imagining is easy. Waiting is easy. Second guessing yourself is easy. Third and fourth opin...

It's not an experience

Alto.com is a wonderful pharmacy that offers same day delivery. I have nothing but great things to say about them. But they're following a pattern I'm seeing far too often these days. They're trying to track everything, and asking people to attribute "experience" to things that are mere, routine happenings. Most things just don't need ...

The longer

The longer you do something, the more you'll be asked "what keeps you motivated?" People are typically looking for a goal-based answer. Or some big mission. Or some sort of target you just haven't hit yet. The question is often aimed at revealing a deep, purpose-filled motivation. The assumption is that you're still doing it because yo...

Tossing a key

This weekend I was riding my stationary exercise bike when I noticed a sharp poke in my pocket. I reached in, pulled out a house key, and looked for a place to put it. But since I was on a bike, there's really no where for it to go other than not here. So I tossed it on the ground, broadly aiming — without accuracy or expectations of p...

How it goes downhill

Comparing warning labels on gym equipment. From the 80s on the left, from the 2000s on the right. The one from the 2000s says a lot more, but the one from the 80s means a lot more. -Jason

Binaries over priorities

Low, medium, high. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Must have, should have, could have, don't need. These are various forms of priorities. People seem to love them. I've always hated them. Especially when it comes to product development. When it comes to choosing what to do, it's always binary for me. Yes or no. Now or not now. Do or don’t. What about m...

Down in front

Look around YouTube at car reviews, and you’ll see a lot of people standing in front of cars. Below I’ve snapped captures of early frames in three car reviews. These represent the first time the car is shown whole, in profile. Who’s on review here? The car reviewer or the car? Get out of the way people! Take it from Doug DeMuro. His re...

Return On Effort

Over the last few days, a few department heads at 37signals got together for an offsite gathering, lead by Bill Joy from The Joy Group. We've worked with Bill in a somewhat different capacity in the past. This time he was here to help us understand some truths about how we really run the business, make decisions, and value what's worth...

Like a squirrel

Stick with me on this one. I've been spending more time watching birds, squirrels, and insects lately. Nature has always fascinated me, and the more I observe, the more I notice. And one thing I've noticed in general is that birds, squirrels, and insects stop and start a lot. They're headed somewhere, but context plays an enormous role...

Working around people

We all know it’s important to work with people. That’s collaboration. But it’s perhaps even more important to learn how to work around people. To uncollaborate. Not by ignoring them or dismissing them. But moving without them because they simply aren’t available to move with you. This isn’t about avoidance, it’s about “ah, you’re busy,...

Heard Something, Read Something, Saw Something [#13]

Hey! Back again with another installment of Heard Something, Read Something, Saw Something. So, what do we have this time... Heard Something Really enjoyed this heady Making Sense episode that asks "Do you really have a self?" Theoretical conversations like these feel like a massage for the mind. They get down to root assumptions upon ...

Risk, decisons, and scarcity

This weekend I took a long walk with a fellow founder/CEO. We had talked on the phone before, but never met in person. We found ourselves in the same city, so it felt like it was time to shake hands and catch up IRL. He runs a company that's an order or magnitude larger than 37signals, so his experiences, responsibilities, and perspect...

Wait to concentrate

Procrastination is often tagged as a negative. If you're putting something off until the last minute, it's assumed it's because you don't want to do it, or it's too hard, or you've been avoiding it for some other reason. Maybe I'm making excuses, but lately I've found procrastination can be aimed to your advantage. Not always, but more...

Don't defer quality

Ever find yourself about to ship something that isn't good enough? You know it, you feel it, but you still want to get it out there because regardless of outcome, lots of work went into it. You want something to show for it. You can often make yourself feel a lot better by wrapping the uneasiness with a statement like "We can always co...

37signals: Hello again

When we launched our company in 1999, we were called 37signals. We started out as a web design firm that ultimately transitioned into a software company. As 37signals, we made a bunch of products over the years including Basecamp, Backpack, Campfire, Highrise, and others. We wrote a number of books, and blogged like crazy too. We were ...

Heard Something, Read Something, Saw Something [#12]

Hey! Back again with another installment of Heard Something, Read Something, Saw Something. So, what do we have this time... Heard Something My friend Bob Moesta is out with a new podcast on product development and innovation, and this 27-minute episode is an especially good one. By the end, you'll have a new framework for thinking abo...

Getting together again

We've worked remotely for nearly 20 years, but we've sustained the distance by lining up intense, one-week-together-in-person bursts twice a year. Over the last 10 years, we've mainly held these bi-annual all-company meetups at our Chicago office. But the combination of the pandemic, and an expiring office lease in July of 2020, conspi...

Reframing it

A friend of mine is pissed off. He hired someone to replace a bunch of windows at his house. The guy did the work. Poorly. And now it turns out he needs to have everything redone. Given how badly the job went, he's going to work with someone else to get it done right the second time. What's there isn't really salvageable. Even the wind...

How to land the job you really want

As someone who's been hiring people for 23 years, I've seen, read, and reviewed tens of thousands of job applications. The ones that typically rise to the top are the ones that demonstrate effort to get this job, and not just any job. We recently hired our first Email Marketing Manager. Nearly 400 people applied for the position. As ap...

Watch out for 12-day weeks

Way back when, we used to release new software on Fridays all the time. That often meant working Saturdays and Sundays to fix an urgent problem with the new stuff, wrecking the weekend for whoever did the release. It was stupid yet predictable, because we kept setting deadlines at the end of the week, as most naturally do. But Friday i...

Getting better vs. feeling better

Over the past few months I've been taking guitar lessons from a friend of mine who happens to be an exceptional teacher. I got lucky. I used to play years ago, but probably only retained 10% of what I knew, so I was as close to starting from scratch as any barely-experienced player could be. Basically, I could dabble and play some chor...

Heard Something, Read Something, Saw Something [#11]

Hey! Back again with another installment of Heard Something, Read Something, Saw Something. So, what do we have this time... Heard Something While this is a video, it's really about sound. If you like cars, or simply dig physics, I bet you'll find this video (and audio) fascinating. I sure did. Why do engines sound they way they do? I ...

No big deal or the end of the world?

Here’s something that should be obvious: People don’t like to have their grievances downplayed or dismissed. When that happens, even the smallest irritations can turn into an obsessive crusade. Imagine you’re staying at a hotel, and the air conditioning isn’t working right. You call the front desk to mention it, and they say, oh yeah, ...

The Presence Prison

As a general rule, nobody at Basecamp really knows where anyone else is at any given moment. Are they working? Dunno. Are they taking a break? Dunno. Are they at lunch? Dunno. Are they picking up their kid from school? Dunno. Don’t care. The vast majority of the time, it just doesn’t matter. What matters is letting people design their ...

Creativity requires optimism

Pessimism can spark an idea. Annoyance can drive ingenuity. Disappointment can redirect effort towards change. But creativity requires optimism. Creativity isn't about starting something. It's about making something. Making requires sustained effort, and sustained effort requires fuel. That fuel is optimism. When you run out, momentum ...

Deployments: How we announce new features and updates internally at...

A few weeks ago I shared how we write Heartbeats at Basecamp. Heartbeats are written by team leads that summarize their team's work over the past 6-week cycle. They are published to Basecamp, and shared with everyone at Basecamp, so everyone knows what's happening across the company. The post was really well received, and people have b...

Faith in eventually

Making something new takes patience. But it also takes faith. Faith that everything will work out in the end. During the development of most any product, there are always times when things aren’t quite right. Times when you feel like you may be going backwards a bit. Times where it’s almost there, but you can’t yet figure out why it is...

Why the hell not?

Whenever I dive into something new, I try to find at least one “why the hell not?” moment. And when I can, I try to leave evidence of that moment in whatever it is that I’m building. When we launched our company (37signals) back in 1999, we launched a black and white, text-only site without a single piece of portfolio work to be found....

Does it make you enjoy?

My friend and I have been discussing cars. He's thinking of buying his first fancy one. His dad had one years ago, and he's thought about buying a car like this — like his dad's — for years. He's stressed over it, he's agonized over it, and he's spent a few too many hours thinking about all the reasons why and why not. This morning he ...

What's in a Heartbeat?

We're famous for having very few meetings at Basecamp. We generally think meetings are toxic. Yet, meetings do convey information, and we need to convey information, so what's our replacement? Writing. Long-form, complete-thought, considered writing. We write a lot at Basecamp. Since long-form writing is an asynchronous form of communi...

Distracting? Is it?

In the course of designing user interfaces, and processing feedback about designs, one sometimes runs into a "That's distracting" comment about something specific in the design. You may even say it — or feel it — about something you're designing. What's distracting about it? Maybe something's too colorful. Maybe it's something regardin...

Heard Something, Read Something, Saw Something [#10]

This is the tenth post in a new series I'm calling Heard Something, Read Something, Saw Something. I'll post these periodically whenever I can fill up three slots — one for something interesting I recently listened to, one for something I read that I liked, and one for something I saw that caught my eye. Hope you enjoy these. — Heard S...

Fewer options can create more optionality

Designing products is one of my favorite things to do — period. There's a lot to love. The twists and turns, the surprises, the creative explorations, the collaboration, and the moments when things really come together. But it's the practical choices, the tough decisions, and the tradeoffs that really make the work challenging and inte...

How we acquired HEY.com

As more and more people discover our new email service, HEY.com, I continue to get questions about how we acquired the domain name. While I can't tell you how much it cost, I can share the story behind the acquisition process. Here goes: — Back on June 9, 2018, I cold emailed help@hey.com: “Hey there– Curious… Would you entertain an of...

Introducing Elaine Richards, our new COO

2021 kicked off a new era for Basecamp. One of renewed ambition and a desire to excel on a variety of fronts, simultaneously. We're no longer just going all-in on something we make, we're going all-out on everything we do. To get there, David and I realized we needed a peer, someone who can help us run the business day-to-day, and thin...

Idea protectionism

On the 10th anniversary of Steve Jobs' passing, Jony Ive reflected on the man he worked with for nearly 30 years. It was a lovely remembrance, primarily orbiting the sanctity of the creative process and the burbling of ideas. It reminded me about something else Jony said about Steve in shortly after his death: “"And just as Steve loved...

Heard Something, Read Something, Saw Something [#9]

This is the ninth post in a new series I'm calling Heard Something, Read Something, Saw Something. I'll post these periodically whenever I can fill up three slots — one for something interesting I recently listened to, one for something I read that I liked, and one for something I saw that caught my eye. Hope you enjoy these. — Heard S...

Is a business different from a company?

Is there a difference between building a business or building a company? They've always seemed synonymous — interchangeable — to me, but now I think there's a difference. We just completed the search process for a new COO at Basecamp. It's essentially a brand new position at the company. We had a COO for one year about five years ago, ...

Heard Something, Read Something, Saw Something [#8]

This is the eighth post in a new series I'm calling Heard Something, Read Something, Saw Something. I'll post these periodically whenever I can fill up three slots — one for something interesting I recently listened to, one for something I read that I liked, and one for something I saw that caught my eye. Hope you enjoy these. — Heard ...

Tricks of the trade

Yesterday I was pruning trees with our landscaper. This was an aesthetic exercise — aiming to find a better balance of leaves, branches, light, shadow, density, open space, shape, etc. Part of this process was also getting rid of suckers, crossing branches, and limiting general verticality. We wanted the trees to look more relaxed and ...

How ideas come together for me

First the idea hits. Then I think about it some more and it takes a direction. As I work through the direction, I’ll see another direction. Usually relatively similar, but different enough that it demands its own exploration. As I dig in into the problem, more layers and possibilities reveal themselves. Sometimes they point in entirely...

Heard Something, Read Something, Saw Something [#7]

This is the seventh post in a new series I'm calling Heard Something, Read Something, Saw Something. I'll post these periodically whenever I can fill up three slots — one for something interesting I recently listened to, one for something I read that I liked, and one for something I saw that caught my eye. Hope you enjoy these. — Heard...

Questions I ask when checking references

When hiring for key positions, speaking with references is important. For us, it's typically the last step in the hiring process. A phase for the final-finalists. Anyone who makes it to the final stage of the hiring process has already been well vetted for skill and disposition. We have a great sense of how they interview, and their to...

The path to Basecamp 4

Something new is on the way. But first, some history. Basecamp Classic, the very first version of Basecamp, launched in 2004. In 2012, we followed up with the all-new Basecamp 2, the first major ground-up redesign in the product's history. Then we did it again in 2015 with Basecamp 3. We've been updating Basecamp 3 ever since, and toda...

The difference between time and attention

A few years ago I realized that if I’m too busy to take something on, I shouldn’t say “I don’t have the time”. In fact, I often do have the time. It’s not that hard to squeeze in some extra time for someone. What I don’t have – and what I can’t squeeze in – is more attention. Attention is a far more limited resource than time. So what ...

Heard Something, Read Something, Saw Something [#6]

This is the sixth post in a new series I'm calling Heard Something, Read Something, Saw Something. I'll post these periodically whenever I can fill up three slots — one for something interesting I recently listened to, one for something I read that I liked, and one for something I saw that caught my eye. Hope you enjoy these. — Heard S...

It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work

“It’s crazy at work.” How often have you heard that? Or said it yourself? Probably too often. For many, “it’s crazy at work” has become their normal. But why's that? At the root is an onslaught of physical and virtual real-time distractions slicing work days into a series of fleeting work moments. Tie that together with a trend of over...

It's not remote if you have to go to the office

As companies begin to experiment with pulling people back to the office, you're hearing a lot of talk about hybrid work arrangements. Work at the office a few days a week, work remotely the other days. In general I think that's a fair approach for a lot of companies. But it's not remote work. That's work from the office + work from hom...

Brands and rental cars

Every time I get off a plane and head to the rental car counter, I'm surprised by what I see. Hertz, Avis, National, Budget, Dollar, Enterprise, Alamo, etc. What I'd expect to see: Audi, BMW, Tesla, Volkswagen, Mercedes, Lexus, Cadillac, Ford, Volvo, Porsche, Hyundai, Land Rover, etc. I know you can rent those cars from the rental car ...

Heard Something, Read Something, Saw Something [#5]

This is the fifth post in a new series I'm calling Heard Something, Read Something, Saw Something. I'll post these periodically whenever I can fill up three slots — one for something interesting I recently listened to, one for something I read that I liked, and one for something I saw that caught my eye. Hope you enjoy these. — Heard S...

A static business is a healthy business

If you have a small handful of customers paying you significantly more than most of your customers, you’re no longer a product company — you’re actually a consulting company working for those big payers. You’ll do what they say — often at the detriment of your smaller customers — because the big companies pay the big bucks. And if you ...

HEY turns 1, Happy Birthday HEY!

One year ago, we launched HEY, our brand new email service, with a huge waitlist, some Tweets and a 37-minute video tour. Launching a paid email service was strange thing to do, and a long-ass video was an odd way to do it. It was also a surprising change of direction for us. While we used to have a number of different products, a few ...

Heard Something, Read Something, Saw Something [#4]

This is the fourth post in a new series I'm calling Heard Something, Read Something, Saw Something. I'll post these periodically whenever I can fill up three slots — one for something interesting I recently listened to, one for something I read that I liked, and one for something I saw that caught my eye. Hope you enjoy these. — Heard ...

Listening to last year, at this time

Lately I've been making it a habit to occasionally listen to podcasts from about a year ago. I scroll back in time until I find one that's about this same date from 2020 and hit play. And I have the inventory, another 12 months back to 2019. Last year at this time we were smack dab in the middle of COVID, a pivotal political campaign i...

Hiring future perfects

Last week I announced an open call for product designers, and we've already heard from some outstanding candidates. Huge thanks to everyone who's applied so far. I'm reviewing every application personally, and it's been a joy. Lots of smiles. Keep 'em coming! Unlike years past when we had a specific position to fill, and a deadline in ...

Hiring up! Product designer?

Over the past few weeks, many people have emailed asking me if we're hiring, or about to hire. Good news: Yes we are! In fact, we're aiming to hire a lot of people across a number of positions. If you're interested in joining our team, I'd encourage you to get your name on the list at basecamp.com/jobs to be notified when we post any p...

Heard Something, Read Something, Saw Something [#3]

This is the third post in a new series I'm calling Heard Something, Read Something, Saw Something. I'll post these periodically whenever I can fill up three slots — one for something interesting I recently listened to, one for something I read that I liked, and one for something I saw that caught my eye. Hope you enjoy these. — Heard S...

What's modern?

I’ve got two machines on me. One’s strapped to my left wrist. The other lives in my pocket. The one on my wrist can tell me the time (precisely in 12 hour format, roughly in 24), the day of the week, the month of the year, which year of the leap year cycle we’re in, and the current moon phase. But that’s its limit. There’s no software,...

Heard Something, Read Something, Saw Something [#2]

This is the second post in a new series I'm calling Heard Something, Read Something, Saw Something. I'll post these periodically whenever I can fill up three slots — one for something interesting I recently listened to, one for something I read that I liked, and one for something I saw that caught my eye. Hope you enjoy these. — Heard ...

Active? Away? How about neither.

As a general rule, nobody at Basecamp really knows where anyone else is at any given moment. Are they working? Dunno. Are they taking a break? Dunno. Are they at lunch? Dunno. Are they picking up their kid from school? Dunno. Don’t care. The vast majority of the time, it just doesn’t matter. What matters is letting people design their ...

Heard Something, Read Something, Saw Something [#1]

This is the first post in a new series I'm calling Heard Something, Read Something, Saw Something. I'll post these periodically whenever I can fill up three slots — one for something interesting I recently listened to, one for something I read that I liked, and one for something I saw that caught my eye. Let's see how this goes. — Hear...

An Update

Last week was terrible. We started with policy changes that felt simple, reasonable, and principled, and it blew things up internally in ways we never anticipated. David and I completely own the consequences, and we're sorry. We have a lot to learn and reflect on, and we will. The new policies stand, but we have some refining and clari...

On making decisions

Decisions, decisions. Decisions aren't hard — it's the moments after that are. As it's said, you live with a decision. They come with you. They mix and swirl with new times ahead you can't see yet. A decision is a guess about later. Whenever I make decisions, I don't think about now, I think about eventually. How will this feel then. R...

Changes at Basecamp

At Basecamp, we treat our company as a product. It's not a rigid thing that exists, it's a flexible, malleable idea that evolves. We aren't stuck with what we have, we can create what we want. Just as we improve products through iteration, we iterate on our company too. Recently, we've made some internal company changes, which, taken i...

I bought a sauna

I bought a sauna. Which one doesn't matter. I barely know. I don't even care. Model number? I couldn't tell you. Maker? I'd pronounce it wrong. I just know it goes up to about 184 degrees Fahrenheit. I bought a sauna on a second-hand recommendation from someone I don't know, but do respect. I bought a sauna sight unseen, heat unfelt. I...

Pale Blue Dot

Photograph of Earth taken Feb. 14, 1990, by NASA’s Voyager 1 at a distance of 3.7 billion miles (6 billion kilometers) from the Sun — “That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering...

Staying Out of It

Over the past few years I've been practicing the subtle art of Staying Out of It. On any given day, there are dozens of discussions I could be part of. A deluge of decisions I could weigh in on. An overmuch of opinion on which I could opine. But I'm choosing to Stay Out of It. Not because I don't care, but because I don't need to be th...

Why be an entrepreneur?

Earlier this week I caught up with a friend and fellow CEO over lunch. We're in entirely different industries, but, as we usually do, we talk a little shop. We've both been at the wheel for a while, and we've both built lasting businesses without outside capital. One of the topics we slid into was "Why be an entrepreneur?". Not why sor...

How much is Basecamp worth? I don’t know and I don’t care.

A few years back I was speaking to a class at a local university and the topic of valuations came up. One student asked me what our valuation was. I gave her the honest answer: I haven’t a clue. Today I still don't. How is it possible that a successful software company today doesn’t know what it's worth? A valuation is what other peopl...

Four letter words

When collaborating with others, watch out for these four letter words: • Need • Must • Can’t • Easy • Just • Only • Fast They are especially dangerous when you string them together. How many times have you said or heard something like this: “We really need it. If we don’t we can’t make the customer happy. Wouldn’t it be easy if we just...

Excitement is a fleeting moment, not a steady state

As part of my involvement in the Edmund Hillary Fellowship, I've been conducting office hours sessions with a handful of New Zealand-based entrepreneurs. These are typically 1-hour calls focused on a specific struggle they're having. Questions typically revolve around remote work, marketing, differentiation, hiring, messaging, product ...

Company history is a myth

Everything you've heard is fabricated, manipulated, or exaggerated. It probably didn't happen that way. The way things are, likely aren't. It wasn't because of this, it was because of that. The longer its been since it was said, the less likely it's still true. It didn't start there. The founding quote is misattributed. That's not why ...

What I think, not what I thought

A core tenet of how we work at Basecamp is that we make it up as we go, 6-weeks at a time. No big plans beyond that. We have some big picture directional ideas of where we may be headed — like a sailor on an exploratory expedition, aiming for a distant shore — but we're tacking with the prevailing winds, and our whims, until we eventua...

Why should I buy yours vs. theirs?

Sometimes I get asked a direct A vs. B sales question. Like... "Why should I buy HEY instead of Fastmail?" My honest answer: "I don't know. You should try both and see which one you like best. And once you've made your choice, I'd love to hear which one you picked and why." I'm not selling, I'm learning. I can surely point someone to m...

Giiggle it!

Traditional search engines like Google are pretty good at helping you find something specific. Like a research paper on a clinical trial, or a picture of Wrigley Field, or a product if you know the name. If you kinda know what you want, and you'll recognize it when you see it, there's a good chance that stodgy old search engine will he...

How Coronavirus kids see the world

I've got two young kids. Because of the pandemic, a good portion of their outside experiences have been masked. I think this is ultimately to their advantage. Much of our emotions, reactions, and communications come from the bottom halves of our faces. Our noses, cheeks, and mouths express so much of what's on our mind. The shapes, con...

Validation is a mirage

Spend enough time talking with entrepreneurs, product people, designers, and anyone charged with proving something, and you’ll bump into questions about validation. “How do you validate if it’s going to work?” “How do you know if people will buy it to not?” “How do you validate product market fit?” “How do you validate if a feature is ...

Nodding heads, not turning heads

There's so much energy spent on trying to convince someone to do something, or buy something, or change their mind. It's all possible, but it's the hard road. Instead, I tend to try to get people to naturally nod their head in agreement. Whenever I write something with the intention to explain, sell, or promote, I'm aiming for head nod...

An alternative to competition

Businesses love to compete. To beat, to win, to go 1-0. We don't. I have no interest in competing with anyone. And we don't frame internal decisions in a competitive way. Business has never been about competition for me. Market watchers may think HEY competes with Gmail, but we don't think that way. Gmail has nearly 2 billion users. We...

Stem cell or organ?

Lately, I've been thinking about how new features are either launched as stem cells or full blown organs. I'm well aware this is an imperfect analogy, but I'm OK with that. It's close enough to make me think, which is all that matters in my book. A stem cell is essentially an undifferentiated cell that can change — or differentiate — i...

Ditch the elevator pitch

There’s no shortage of lore about the importance of the elevator pitch. There’s the 1850s version, in which inventor Elisha Otis’s dramatic demonstration of his innovation — a safety brake that keeps elevators from falling during a cable failure — set a new bar for colorful, efficient salesmanship. There’s the Hollywood version, in whi...

A product's gravity

I'm often asked how I know when an idea might make a good product. First, I never know. It's always a guess, a bet. I'm just trying to do what I can to increase the odds, to beat the house. But more specifically, it's always a feeling. It's never a number. It's never a quantity of yesses. It's never about early feedback. It's never abo...

Remote work is not local work at a distance

Back in the mid-90s, just as Netscape Navigator was giving us our first look at what the visual internet could be, web design came in two flavors. There was the ultra basic stuff. Text on a page, maybe a masthead graphic of some sort. Nothing sophisticated. It often looked like traditional letterhead, or a printed newsletter, but now o...

The only metric that matters to me

At Basecamp we don't manage our products with numbers. No goals, no KPIs, OKRs, or WHATEVERs. We do keep a close eye on performance and speed numbers as they relate to infrastructure, serving up pages, and rendering screens, but that's the extent of our number gazing. We aren't flying blind — there are reports available. If you want yo...

Foam, tape, shims, and glue

I'm having a new window system installed at my home office. And I'm finding it a wonderful microcosm of business — and life — itself. Here's what it looks like right now: Foam, tape, shims, and glue — they're holding the whole thing together. It's the guts, the organs, the cartilage, and the bones to keep things lined up, and upright. ...

The Obvious, the Easy, and the Possible

Much of the tension in product development and interface design comes from trying to balance the obvious, the easy, and the possible. Figuring out which things go in which bucket is critical to fully understanding how to make something useful. Shouldn’t everything be obvious? Unless you’re making a product that just does one thing – li...

I've never had a goal

I can’t remember having a goal. An actual goal. There are things I’ve wanted to do, but if I didn’t do them I’d be fine with that too. There are targets that would have been nice to hit, but if I didn’t hit them I wouldn’t look back and say I missed them. I don’t aim for things that way. I do things, I try things, I build things, I wan...

Give it 5 minutes

Years ago I used to be a hothead. Whenever anyone said anything, I’d think of a way to disagree. I’d push back hard if something didn’t fit my world-view. It’s like I had to be first with an opinion – as if being first meant something. But what it really meant was that I wasn’t thinking hard enough about the problem. The faster you rea...

"Hey, World!"

I've never had a personal blog. It wasn't for lack of things to say, observations to share, or opinions to float. It was primarily because setting up a personal blog was just too much of a hassle. It felt formal, it required yet another tool, yet another place to write, yet another platform to pay for just one feature. I had to pick a ...