In the spring of 2019, Danny Caine, the owner of the Raven Book Store in Lawrence, Kansas, overheard a customer saying she could buy a new hardcover online for $15. Danny took to Twitter to explain the economics of independent bookstores and the thread went viral, putting the 32-year-old small business in the national spotlight.… keep reading
A couple of weeks ago, Automattic announced it had raised $300 million from Salesforce Ventures in a Series D round. In an interview with TechCrunch, Automattic founder and CEO Matt Mullenweg said: “I think there’s potential to get to a similar market share as Android, which I believe now has 85% of all handsets. When… keep reading
The ongoing debate about Big Tech surveillance and consumer privacy has prompted a fair amount of internal discussion and policy changes at Basecamp over our own practices. We’ve stopped using tracking pixels in emails and no longer collect emails for people who download Getting Real, our free ebook. And in late August, David Heinemeier Hansson… keep reading
“Dreams shouldn’t be sensible.” In 2011, David and Clare Hieatt launched Hiut Denim in a small Welsh town that had been home to a jeans factory for 40 years. The Hieatts saw an opportunity to restore those lost jobs—and to do it in a way that fit with their ideas about building a sustainable business. In this… keep reading
Basecamp has a new website and a new logo. If this is the first you’re hearing about it, it’s because we opted out of the big rebranding announcement that many companies undertake. There should be a post from Jason Fried forthcoming here on Signal v. Noise, but in the meantime, check out the latest episode… keep reading
The Rework podcast is back from summer break! It’s time to get back to work, but it’s important not to overdo it. In this episode, Ty Fujimura, president of web design firm Cantilever, talks about how he escaped the Cult of Overwork; why it’s important to rethink the relationship between hours “worked” and actual productivity;… keep reading
Pam Daniels had an idea to make an everyday household item—a set of measuring cups—more useful and fun. When her first plan to get her product into the world fell through, she found a different path. The latest episode of the Rework podcast tells the story of what it took to get one product launched.… keep reading
Basecamp’s new book, Shape Up by Ryan Singer, explores the way designers and programmers at the company build and ship software. In the latest episode of the Rework podcast, Ryan, designer Conor Muirhead, and programmer Jeff Hardy go deep into Shape Up principles, talking about the parts of the process they find most useful and sharing real-life… keep reading
Earlier this month, Basecamp released a new book by Ryan Singer, the head of strategy. Shape Up: Stop Running in Circles and Ship Work that Matters is a “spiritual follow-up” to Getting Real, Jason and David’s 2006 guide to how product development happens at Basecamp. In Shape Up, Ryan goes deep into how small teams… keep reading
You may have noticed that Basecamp is in the midst of what qualifies around here as a mini hiring boom: five open positions across customer support, programming, and ops, as well as a newly created marketing role. The company has received more than 4,000 applications and every single one is read by a human being.… keep reading