I’m not exaggerating when I say that since I joined Basecamp, I’ve been questioning everything about the way I’ve traditionally worked. For example, let’s take the knowledge worker’s staple — email. Most professionals (including me) went from using email to communicate asynchronously, as intended, to expecting people to be trapped in email all day. Once we started… keep reading
The latest version of Basecamp 3 is available today in the App Store! If you Basecamp on iPad we think you’re going to be particularly pleased. Here’s a quick look at what’s new… When I’m not drawing, I’m making Basecamp 3 for iOS with Dylan Ginsburg, Zach Waugh and the rest of the team at… keep reading
They’re only this smooth at firing people in the movies Maybe if you fire a hundred people, you’ll eventually get used to it. But I doubt it. Firing people is horrible. Nothing has stressed me out more in the past twelve years of running Basecamp. Of course, however hard it is to be the one to… keep reading
Illustration by Nate Otto In 1999, Jenny Yang discovered a small tofu company in her Chicago neighborhood that made the fresh soybean curd she remembered from her native Taiwan. Seven years later, when Jenny learned the business was in danger of closing, she impulsively stepped up to buy it. Jenny didn’t just guide Phoenix Bean Tofu… keep reading
Saddle Mountain at dawn — photo by Natalie Keshlear In June, I went on a 5 week sabbatical from work — I ventured out into the woods with my boyfriend and we hiked. We climbed mountains, slept in a tent and got dirty — we took showers infrequently and we had a hell of a time. We went all over Oregon and… keep reading
During Q&A at a conference I spoke at a few years back, someone asked me “What’s your take on the true value of a university education?” I shared my general opinion (summary: great socially, but not realistic enough academically) and ended with a description of a course I’d like to see taught in college. In… keep reading
I explain why I pursued speaking gigs as Know Your Company’s main means of marketing, and if you should do it too… Me speaking at Big Omaha last year. “How do you get the word out?” As the CEO of Know Your Company — a two-person company with over 12,000 people using our software — I’m often asked this question. Figuring… keep reading
An unexpected email makes my day Even 6 years after the release of REWORK, I still receive about a dozen emails every week from people who’ve just read it for the first time. The book is now in it’s 23rd printing in the US, and it’s also available in over a dozen translations all over the… keep reading
The Leica M-D 262 — A digital camera with no settings, no screen I’m a sucker for controversial trade-offs. Companies that dare say “this one thing is more important than this entire set of other things people usually consider must-haves” take a shortcut to my wallet. Apple is the oft-heralded example. When the first MacBook Air came out,… keep reading
Running a large, long-running open source project like Ruby on Rails is very rewarding but can also be exhausting. The glimmers of glamour usually only sparkle around release time, but the grunt of the grind is daily. The grind is an endless stream of bug reports, requests, demands, questions, and occasional inquisitions. To avoid getting… keep reading