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 got? Bigger company bloat. Overflowing obligations. Narratives to uphold. Appearances to maintain. Entitlement. Too much overhead. They’re slow. They’re conservative. They talk too much. They’ve stopped taking risks. They’re resting on their laurels, gliding on their reputation. They’re on defense. What they’ve really got is a lot to lose. What do you got? Hunger. Drive. Grit. Scrappiness. Independence. You’re on offense. You don’t have enough, which is why you’re dangerous. You have no choice but to be clever and creative. To make up for what you don’t have with something they can’t have: The underdog spirit. You can move. You can adjust. You can adapt. You can get it done while they’re still stuck deciding what to do. Small is not a stepping stone. Small is not less than. It’s greater than. It’s faster than. It’s better than. Savor your position. You don’t get to be the underdog forever. The baton will be passed. But for now, it’s your magic wand. Use it. We stand with the underdogs.

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.

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.

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 helping were in the same boat. We jumped in my Model Y, turned on Bioweapon Defense Mode on the HVAC, and took an hour breather in fresh HEPA + negative pressure air. Popped in a few other times as well. Felt a bit like a rescue to be honest. Huge. So grateful for this. 2. A week on, our internet is still out. Wires melted somewhere, Frontier still not out here to fix it. Verizon wireless data is also dead. Went to a BEST BUY and bought a @Starlink Mini on the spot. Brought it home, pointed it at the sky, and had high speed internet in a minute. This is our family's only data connection at the moment, and it was absolutely effortless. Again, huge. So grateful for this. Hopefully there's no 3.

A passage from the Tao that’s frequently worth revisiting.

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: m.signalvnoise.com/launch-ba…

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.

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.

Pathetic… even Apple is promoting workaholism now. Check out this ad for their Planet Of The Apps show.

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: hey.com/

Instead of a hackathon, try a sleepathon. You’ll be better off.

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”?

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.

Prediction: If Github ends up selling itself one day, Microsoft will be the buyer.

Top skill for entrepreneurs: Being great at ignoring what everyone else is doing.

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.

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.

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.

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) experience, brand, or anything remotely close to the thing the company did. It was fundraising and financials, and, for me, frustration. It was mystifying. We don't have a board at 37signals, so I didn't have my own experience to fall back on, but wow, I just didn't get it. If you're going to have a board, make it an advantage, not an obligation. Find the best damn product people you can, and take advantage of a half-dozen incredible improvement-focused minds you could never hire to work for you, but are there for you. A product board. A service board. A board in service of the product, or a product for the service.

People don't have short attention spans. They have short interest spans. If they're interested, they'll give you their full attention.

This is so fucking stupid.

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.

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.

Ideas are never in short supply, focus is.

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.

Coding in movies vs. real life.

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.

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.

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 challenging to publish books on the web in nice, cohesive, tight, easy-to-navigate HTML format. A collection of 20 essays can be a book. Or a company's handbook can be a book. Or an actual book like Shape Up can be a book. But usually you have to make a custom web site, or stretch to use a blog publishing tool to kinda-sorta squish separate posts together into a packaged whole. It's really not ideal. We know — we've published a variety of books online, and we've had to go the custom route each time. Having to go the custom route for something that should be fundamentally simple is a red flag. And an opportunity. It really shouldn't be this hard. So we're doing something about that. That's Workbook. It's a dead simple platform to publish web-based books. They have covers, they can have title pages, they can have picture pages, and they can have text pages. Each book gets its own URL, and navigating and keeping track of your progress is all built right in. I'll be sharing much more about this soon, but here's a screenshot on the editing end. This is how you put a book together. Make the pages (there are three styles of pages available), drag them around to put them in the order you want, and Workbook takes care of the rest. A page can be a literal page of text, or an entire chapter — you can set it up however you'd like. Text editing happens in Markdown. Once you're done, and ready to publish, you'd flip the toggle on the left under the cover, customize your URL (at your domain, of course), and the book is live on the web for the whole world to read. Workbook will be a ONCE product, so you get all the code too. And for the first time, it'll be entirely free. You don't even have to pay once! You pay zero! Workbook is our love letter to truly independent, zero-cost web publishing. We'll be republishing all our public books (Getting Real, Shape Up, The 37signals Employee Handbook, etc) using Workbook as well. That's it for now, more soon.

A young entrepreneur in his mid-20s just emailed me asking for some $$$ advice. He just sold a business and ended up with a couple million in liquid cash. He wanted to know if he should invest it, use it to build a new company, or do something else with it. My advice wasn't what he was expecting. I just said don't lose it. Do nothing with it. Put it in the bank. Something safe, earning a little, but not too much that it's at risk. Money doesn't need to work. It can rest. Leave it be. You're 26 — you can get back to work. A couple million liquid cash is a huge haul. Maintain! Don't lose. Always have that. And add more to that safe pile as you go. That's yours now. Keep it that way.

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 way. The other vision mounts a computer on your face. One vision is get it and go. One vision is get it and stay. One vision is about information. The other vision is about immersion. One vision is natural and understands you. The other vision requires new methods of interaction that you have to learn and master. One vision feels like an assist. One vision feels like obstruction. One vision fits with whatever you already have. One vision requires you buy something that fits. One vision is simply text. One vision is anything but. One vision feels like before. One vision feels like after. But I'm not sure which is which.

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.

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: hey.com

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.

“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

Today's the day: Writebook is here! And it's free. once.com/writebook 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 a simple, browsable online book format. It's perfect for publishing instruction manuals), a collection of short stories, poetry, graphic novels, handbooks, and anything that fits better together than apart. Writebook isn't a service, it's software you download and install on your own server. We've made it incredibly easy to get going — it just takes a few minutes. Even non-technical folks can get it all set up. We'll email you a single command you paste into a terminal and it takes care of the rest. No maintenance required either, it takes care of itself, auto-updates, etc. And it also comes with all the Rails code so you can see how it's built, modify it for your own use, and learn how applications like this are made. So, grab it and dive in! We'd love to see what you publish. once.com/writebook

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 reduction to me. Like most things, it depends which lens you look through. Bold, simple, and practical is how I see it. Many of the decisions appear reckless if you’re peering through the antique monocle of corporate America. Musk looks through a telescope. The focal points are entirely different. Looking at what he’s done, and what he’s doing, traditional corporate America has actually taken the riskier route - fear, marginal decision making, complexity, and mediocrity slathered in marketing. Mistakes come in all shapes and sizes, but the ones that come with slow decisions, committees diluting responsibility, sloppy cost control, and the prerequisite of pseudo-certainty before making a move are the worst kinds. Musk doesn’t make those kinds, his critics often do. His mistakes are real, and, like all mistakes, have real consequences, of course, but they’re rooted in forward motion, rather than anchored in preservation of what was. I’m glad there’s someone out there unafraid of making those kinds of mistakes, and showing all of us what’s possible when you pierce the membrane that holds most things back. Interesting times!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

Just call. Don't schedule, don't send me a link to pick a time, don't show me your open slots, just pick up the phone and call. I'll answer or I'll call you back. I bet we'll naturally find a time to talk that day. It'll all work out.

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 heard anyone spend much time on the topic, or even bring it up in conversation, on a conference stage, or behind a podcast mic. There is, however, lots of discussion about achievement in business. A company can achieve product market fit, operational efficiency, influence, revenue goals, or, ultimately — and hopefully — profitability. But I’m not taking about those things. Those are the obvious things, the common talking points. And to those you can add the vanity metrics of achievement — social media followers, traffic, views, impressions, open rates, press mentions, gross this or gross that. All those are what they are, but they aren’t where it’s at. What I’m talking about is optionality. Achieving optionality is where it’s at. Optionality is a hearty mix of profit margin, small size, independence, attitude, and freedom. You’ve got to have all of it to have optionality. If a board is calling the shots, you don’t have much optionality. If your margins are thin, or non-existent, you don’t have much optionality. If the public owns a piece, you don’t have much optionality. If you’re too big to change direction quickly, you don’t have much optionality. And if you’re afraid to speak your mind and stake your point of view, you don’t have much optionality. Optionality lets you do things no one would give you permission to do. It lets you write excellent software and give it away for free if you choose. It lets you do things that don’t make sense in the current climate, but will long-term. It lets you be early while eventually catches up. Optionality is ecstasy. It’s making it up as you go, without making excuses. It’s openly changing your mind without having to save face. Optionality is equanimity, the corporate equivalent of enlightenment. So, entrepreneurs, ditch the bullshit. Abandon growth-at-all-costs. Reject conventional metrics. Scorn hollow acceptance. Instead, hunt for optionality. It's freedom. It's power. It's everything you crave, wrapped in a single, potent package. Chase it relentlessly. And when you get it, don’t let go.

One of my favorite interview questions: “What's something you know you need to get better at?”. It’s revealing.

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 people to do, no multi-post threads with the little 🧵 at the end…”

I find the new @Tesla Cybertruck thoroughly inspiring. This is what groundbreaking looks like. tesla.com/cybertruck Yes, the market will be the ultimate arbiter of success, but fuck yeah for taking a major bold and brash step ahead. Bravo chances. Bravo @elonmusk.

I’ve owned a lot of cars in a lot of categories and I have to say, the new 2026 @Tesla Model Y is the best overall car I’ve ever owned. By a mile. Huge upgrade from the previous Y. So well done.

In the same way that sound isn’t music, traffic isn’t audience.

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 products. And for those products to find people willing to trade their own hard earned treasure for a little bit of ours. Betting on an idea — and seeing it through — is enormously fulfilling. The creative and intellectual stimulation is beyond compare. Especially when you're the first customer for anything you make. When I was a consultant doing work for hire I thought it was the peak. I got to bounce from client to client, sign big contracts, do a lot of work, cash large checks, etc. But then you realize most of what you do is never implemented. Yes, you got paid for it, but it was just advice, recommendations, and suggestions. Words on pages that were received, but not really read. Designs in files that were delivered, but never really deployed. There was nothing there in the end. You didn't get to make any bets, you just played with someone else's chips. You thought you were changing things. Changing them. But it wasn't change, it was an exchange. You handed it over, they handed you something in return, and that was that. I'm glad I went through it, otherwise I wouldn't have known it. Been giving other people advice for years? Give yourself the advice and see if it's any good. Meet the market. Go make something. Join a team that's making something. Put your fingerprint on something that won't just sit on the shelf somewhere.

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 chisel problems down until they can be tackled by three people, at most. We rarely have meetings, but when we do, you’ll hardly ever find more than three people on a call. Any conversation with more than three people is typically a conversation with too many people. What if there are five departments involved in a project or a decision? There aren’t. Too many dependencies. We don’t work on projects like that — intentionally. What is it with three? Three is a wedge, and that’s why it works. Three has a sharp point. It’s an odd number so there are no ties. It’s powerful enough to make a dent, but also weak enough to not break what isn’t broken. Big teams make things worse all the time by applying too much force to things that only need to be lightly finessed. The problem with four is that you almost always need to add a fifth to manage. The problem with five is that it’s two too many. And six, seven, or eight on a team will inevitably make simple things more complicated than they need to be. Just like work expands to fill the time available, work expands to fill the team available. Small, short projects become bigger, longer projects simply because all those people need something to do. You can do big things with small teams, but it’s a whole hell of a lot harder to do small things with big teams. That’s a disadvantage of big teams! Small things are often all that’s necessary. The occasional big thing is great, but most improvements come as small incremental steps. Big teams can step right over those small moves. Three keeps you honest. It tempers your ambition in all the right ways. It requires you to make tradeoffs, rather than keep adding things in. And most importantly, three reduces miscommunication and improves coordination. Three people can talk directly with one another without introducing hearsay. And it’s a heck of a lot easier to coordinate three people’s schedules than four or more. Three is all-in for us.

LinkedIn should be renamed “have 15 minutes for a quick call?”

(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).

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.

Wonderful leadership from @elonmusk.

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.

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 their tenure. For years we've been knocked by the valley/VC crew for not offering equity. We think we offer something better: Real cash, every year, directly to our employees, when we show a profit. And given that we've been profitable for 25 years, it's not a maybe-one-day-dream, it's been an annual reality. Never a guarantee, but far more reliable than equity that runs at the whim of a public or illiquid private market, rounds of dilution, preferred vs. common, etc. And this year, I'm especially proud to say that we've been able to distribute 6-figure profit shares to 20 employees. That's over a third of our company, including folks in customer service, design, programming, ops/SIP, HR. The rest who were eligible received 5-digit shares, with a few employees new to the pool earning 4-digit shares. Real cash people can spend today on real things today. Not fantasy maybe money later. Last year was an especially great year for us. Both on the revenue side and cost side. We saw a double-digit boost on the top line, and cut our costs significantly at the same time. The result: more money to our profit-share eligible employees. And a lot of it. Independent, self-funded, profitable, 25-years and running. We wouldn't have it any other way.

Lazygit is exceptionally good software. It's like software's greatest hits. Clear, quick, easy to command, drive-by-keyboard if you want, contrasty, glanceable, peacefully powerful, the list goes on. So impressed. github.com/jesseduffield/laz…

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.

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?

Brilliant interface design. Via @taramann

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.

If I had to guess, whatever they make together will not have a screen. This would be the true divergence from devices today. Screens are obvious, breaking away would be the move. So the guess would be some sort of AirPod-style thing that is audio only. Audio feels future.

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.

I don’t plan long term because I want to do what I think, not what I thought.

6-week sabbaticals every 3 years. 4-day weeks May - September. 10% annual profit sharing. 10% liquidity pool in the event of a sale. Full list of benefits, as well as our entire employee handbook, available online here: basecamp.com/handbook/benefi…

Attention spans aren’t about time, they’re about motivation.

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: piped.video/watch?v=UCeYTysL…

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!

Most salespeople would be better at sales if they studied the buying process more than the selling process.

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.

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.

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…

Loved this 6 hour conversation between @lexfridman and @dhh. Listened to the whole thing on a long drive this weekend. It's well worth it. It's also nice to see so many people discovering the David I know — whip smart, energetic, persuasive, funny, reflective, self-aware, reasonable, and principled. A gifted linguist as well. Watching this interview reminds me how fortunate I've been — and am — to build a company, a team, many products, many books, and plenty of ideas together. So many experiences of a lifetime. What a run, and we ain't done!

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 remain filled with ideas. So that’s part of it. But it’s more that than. It’s more of a justice thing, really. Look at the screenshot attached below. This is software my neighborhood uses to manage guest parking passes. It’s shit. Maybe you recognize it, maybe you don’t, but the name doesn’t matter. You know what the company charges for the privilege of using it? $10,000/year. $10,000 A YEAR! $10,000 year after year of our HOA budget goes to this crap. It feels borderline criminal. I’m still doing this because the world is flooded with overpriced, crappy, subpar software. It hurts people, and it hurts the economy. I feel a moral obligation to do what I can to replace bad options with great options, at vastly reduced prices. I even want to replace great options with equally great options, just at reduced prices. Good software should not be expensive. Software is an absolute miracle. You can make exceptionally good stuff at exceptionally reasonable prices. It’s not like hardware manufacturing where you have to cut all sorts of corners to keep costs in check, or charge a ton for stuff that’s truly well made. Raw materials, machinery, manufacturing, physics — this stuff costs a lot to get right. Software does not. Yet bad — and great software, frankly — remains way over priced. And some is absolute highway robbery. Like this parking pass software. It’s clear no one cared about it — it’s just built to some spec by people who will never use it. It’s all there, the features tick the boxes, and technically it works, but we’d never ever find it acceptable if it was a physical product. But since it’s software, it can suck and we can still be sold on a $10,000/year contract. This fuels me. So hell yeah I’m motivated. And the more bad stuff I bump into, or even great stuff with silly numbers attached, the more motivated I get. It’s a deep well that keeps on providing. To that end, we’ve just started working on two more new products this year. We’re on a tear. We’re going to keep on putting quality stuff out there at reasonable prices. Not just to prove that it can be done, but because it must be done.

"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.

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 concept, or a pitch, we write it up. It can be short, it can be long, but it just needs to be what it just needs to say. No fancy formatting. No template to choose from. No designer time making anything. Simply words, and sometimes low-fi "as quick as possible" sketches, strung together in a simple, readable top-to-bottom page, not a next/previous/left/right slideshow. Easy shouldn't be hard.

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.

Best way to run a bunch of stuff? Don’t put yourself in charge of everything.

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: basecamp.com/handbook

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 —> m.signalvnoise.com/the-prese…

5g is a whole lot of interesting. Been there a few times. Get ready to meet more of your mind.

I’m sending $100k to rescue.org & I’ll 2x it if just 100 people email me their donation receipts. jason@basecamp.com

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.

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.

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.

Want someone to read the whole thing? Write half as much.

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.

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 —> m.signalvnoise.com/basecamp-…

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.

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.

Your company isn't your baby, and your company isn't a family. m.signalvnoise.com/the-compa…

I’m starting to believe nothing should be designed in a day. A design needs to stand up to fresh eyes in the morning.

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.

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: basecamp.com/shapeup

Busting your ass doing what doesn’t need to be done isn’t a strong work ethic - it’s a strong waste of time.

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 hey.com and follow directions at the bottom. Here we go! hey.com/problems-with-email/