It’s our first mailbag episode! Jason Fried and DHH answer listener questions on topics like the role of luck and timing in starting Basecamp; how they approach pricing (spoiler: It’s something called “ass pricing”); hiring in the early stages of a business; and more. We’ll have Part 2 with even more questions next week, so… keep reading
The glowing haze won’t cover things up forever It’s been a tough year for the tech startup capital of the world. One marred by scandals, flame-outs, and pissy, defensive postures by its royal court. I get the sense that a common thought is “what happened?!”. Why all the scrutiny, why now? Because you’re not a punk… keep reading
Two things I’ve found helpful to consider when trying to decide what to share with my team – and what to keep to myself. How transparent should you be as a leader? This is a question many leaders struggle with — including myself. Do you share financials with the company? Or how about salary? How open should you… keep reading
I had a vague inkling of an idea for a company in 2005. A friend of mine mentioned this new program called Y Combinator that was investing in teams willing to move to Silicon Valley and build out their ideas. We were older (by a bunch) than the college/new grads they seemed to be targeting.… keep reading
A couple days ago we launched Phase I of a Basecamp 3 refresh/redesign. One of the more significant changes was a redesigned nav bar at the top that consolidated the Pings, Hey, and Campfire menus into a single, unified Hey! inbox menu. Sometimes when you push for a big change, you overstep. We overstepped, plain… keep reading
How do we get bigger? Get more money? Grow the team? Get bigger office space? More clients? My three year old daughter has been literally dreaming of going to a magic show. So we went to the first one that crossed our path and seemed relatively kid-appropriate. I regretted going immediately. The tickets were general admission.… keep reading
Over the next few months we’ll be rolling out a visual refresh to make Basecamp 3 even easier to use — and more approachable for new users. Today we launch the first set of updates. Most products get more complicated as they go. More stuff, more screens, more options, more ways to do things. It’s natural — evolution tends to… keep reading
Domino’s Pizza was in the spotlight of the Wall Street Journal the other day. It was a front page story on the success of the Domino’s mobile app allowing you to track your order from start to delivery. Over 480,000 people have left reviews on the Apple app store giving it 4.8 stars out of… keep reading
If you’re looking to leave your company to work for another, you’ll want to consider this. A few months ago, someone asked me for advice about potentially leaving one company to go work for another. He was curious what factors he should consider before making the decision. He’d already vetted the role, the company, and the… keep reading
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… keep reading