Jason Fried: Build for Yourself, Keep Costs Low and Stay Small

1. 0:00 – 1:40

   Build Products for Yourself

   1. DSDavid Senra0:00

      [upbeat music] I wanna start with what you told me last night, that you feel the best way to make a product, or the best way to make a product for you, is by you are the actual customer. You are making the products that you want to use.

   2. JFJason Fried0:14

      Yeah, I don't know how to do it any other way. Like, I-- this is how I've always done it. So back when I was fifteen, sixteen, I started in software, making stuff, actually, something called FileMaker Pro, which is, like, way back when, where you can make these databases for yourself. And I, I made this database to keep track of my music collection because I was loaning out tapes and CDs to friends and never getting them back. So I'm like: I need a way to keep track of this stuff, because I keep losing these things. So I made this product, which I eventually called AudioFile, but I made it for myself. It was just this, this database, right? And I made a nice interface because I liked art, I liked making stuff, and so I made this thing, and, uh, I, I eventually just decided that, like, I'll put a little text file in this, in this archive of the software that said, "If you like this, send me twenty bucks." And I put it up on AOL, so this is, like, pre-internet, right? Put it up on AOL, and I got this envelope, actually, an airmail envelope, the one of those with, like, the red and blue check marks, like, old school, like, envelope from... And it's from Germany. And I open it up, and someone had printed out this, this piece of paper, uh, which was the thing I included with the software and gave me a twenty-dollar crisp US bill, right? And that was the moment I think it all clicked for me, which is, make stuff for yourself. There's probably other people out there like you who want what you want, and make it available to sell. So you are the customer, you are the audience. It's you, you, you, and then there'll be other people just like you. We're not all that unique. There's plenty of people who like what we like, plenty of people who don't, and there's plenty of products for them, too. But there's enough that like what you like, and so that's where I got started.

2. 1:40 – 3:06

   Low Costs, Small Company, Enough Customers

   1. DSDavid Senra1:40

      Yeah, you have this, uh, this interesting idea where if you're just making what you want, right, doesn't matter-- You just have to go and collect more people that like the things that you like and kind of ignore the people that don't.

   2. JFJason Fried1:51

      Yes, and this is all tied into, like, keeping your costs low. So, you know, you-- if you have a lot of costs, high costs, big company, you have to find a lot of people like you. But if you keep your costs low, keep your company small, at the time, it was just me, you know, when I was doing the software thing, and I was making, like, I don't know, twenty grand a year, like, selling software as a solo person when I was, like, sixteen years old or something like that, or seventeen, then I went into college a little bit as well. And it's like, that's an amazing little small side business, a huge side business when you're that age, right? Because I had no expenses. And so, so it's easy. I only had to find, like, you know, a few thousand people to, to pay me that money, twenty bucks, right, to, to, to, to get that eventually. But if I had a big business and had a lot of people and a lot of overhead, I'd have to find a lot of people like me, and that's harder. So the whole game for me is to make things as simple as possible, as easy for me as possible. So keep your costs low, keep your company as small as you possibly can, and make great stuff, and then you don't have to find as many people just like you, but the ones you find who really love what you do. And that's like, that's enough. Like, that is enough. You can stop there, keep doing stuff, but you can kind of stop there conceptually and go, "I'm gonna make stuff for me, people like me. I don't need the whole world to like what I like. I need, like, enough of a small world to like what I like, and we're,

3. 3:06 – 5:25

   Your Only Competition Is Your Costs

   1. JFJason Fried3:06

      we're golden."

   2. DSDavid Senra3:07

      You put it in a, a very interesting way. You said your real competition is your costs.

   3. JFJason Fried3:10

      Yeah.

   4. DSDavid Senra3:11

      Is that the line that you have?

   5. JFJason Fried3:11

      Yeah. It's your only competition.

   6. DSDavid Senra3:13

      Explain that.

   7. JFJason Fried3:15

      Well, like, a business is very simple. You gotta make more than you spend. That's a business, basically. [chuckles] Like, I mean, you can keep borrowing money, and then you can, you know, borrow more than you spend, and eventually, you gotta make more than you spend. So if you're making more than you spend, then your competition is your costs, and that's what you're really in business against, is how much it costs you to stay in business. It's not all the other alternatives that are on the market. Of course, like, they exist, and they're real, but you can't do anything about them. They're gonna do what they're gonna do. You're gonna do what they're... You're gonna do. You can't control what they're gonna put out there, what they're gonna price it at, all the things they're gonna do, they're gonna do what they're gonna do. What I can control is how much it costs me to run my business, how much I sell my product for, and as long as I make more than I spend, I get to stay in business. And isn't that what this is all about, staying in business? Like, that's what it's all about because I like this. We like this. I wanna keep doing this. I can't keep doing it if I don't stay in business. I can't keep doing it if I make less than it costs me to make the things that I make. So I'm always thinking about the only competition I really have on an annual basis is to make sure that we make more as a company than it costs us to run the company. That's my real competition.

   8. DSDavid Senra4:22

      This is something I talk about over and over again on my other podcast, Founders, where it's just like, it is kinda weird how every single one of history's greatest entrepreneurs, they were obsessed about watching their costs, from s- from Sam Walton to even Steve Jobs when he first started Apple-

   9. JFJason Fried4:35

      Yeah.

   10. DSDavid Senra4:35

       - Andrew Carnegie, Rockefeller. Like, this, this, this theme reappears over and over and over again. It's one of the reasons why, you know, my main partner is Ramp, because they wanna s- they wanna help, uh, companies control their costs.

   11. JFJason Fried4:44

       For sure.

   12. DSDavid Senra4:44

       There's, like, the perfect alignment for the audience and what these, these history's greatest entrepreneurs are, are, are saying. But we, we, we were talking the other day, where it seems very fascinating how, you know, you can have a software company that has insane margins and still lose money.

   13. JFJason Fried4:58

       Yeah.

   14. DSDavid Senra4:59

       And when I talk to these young founders, I'm like: "Just go study the early days of Microsoft."

   15. JFJason Fried5:02

       Yeah.

   16. DSDavid Senra5:03

       It's like Bill Gates, the first... One of the most interesting stories was that the first thirty, it's probably the most successful, arguably the most successful software company of all time, first software company to get to a billion dollars in sales of just-

   17. JFJason Fried5:14

       Mm-hmm

   18. DSDavid Senra5:14

       ... pure software in a year.

   19. JFJason Fried5:15

       Yeah.

   20. DSDavid Senra5:15

       But the first thirty, uh, employees of Microsoft were Bill Gates, his secretary, and twenty-eight programmers. There's no-

   21. JFJason Fried5:23

       Yeah.

   22. DSDavid Senra5:23

       There was no fat at all.

   23. JFJason Fried5:24

       No

4. 5:25 – 9:43

   How 37signals Stays Lean

   1. JFJason Fried5:25

      fat.

   2. DSDavid Senra5:25

      Yeah.

   3. JFJason Fried5:25

      All product.

   4. DSDavid Senra5:26

      That's something you talk about a lot.

   5. JFJason Fried5:26

      Yeah.

   6. DSDavid Senra5:26

      Can you talk about your, the importance of keeping costs low, small teams, and then you want essentially, like, no fat anywhere?

   7. JFJason Fried5:33

      We have sixty-two people at, at 37signals, and we've gotten as high as, I think, eighty at some point, and then we're about sixty-three or sixty-two right now, which is a, feels really good. Um, but we also built a lot of things when we were much smaller. We had, like, twelve people way back in the day, or four people way back in the way, way, way days when we started out. So I've always been comfortable with small teams. I think that small teams work better, are better. There's fewer-- There's less room for miscommunication.... 'cause I don't think companies really have communication problems, they have miscommunication problems. Like, when you have too many people and too many layers, and someone misses this, and someone has to repeat something that happened, like, I wanna avoid all of that and get rid of all the things that get in the way of making good stuff. And I actually think too many people get in the way oftentimes, and you actually end up making worse stuff, the more people who are involved. So we just try to keep the team small. Any team we have making something is usually two people, like two people are working on a feature, one programmer, one designer. That's pretty much it. Sometimes someone else will come in here and there, but for the most part, it's two people. And it also keeps us honest. It prevents us from making things that we can't make with two people. So it just keeps everything tight and simple and clear, and you just keep parlaying that, keep adding that stuff up, and you end up with a very tight product with a small surface area. That's-- You can see the whole thing, you can hold the whole thing, you know how it all works. Your customers can see the whole thing and hold the whole thing and know how it works. And that's all people want. People don't want complicated stuff. They don't want software that's full of things they don't use. People will sometimes buy things like that because they're sold things like that, but when it really comes down to it, that's not what they actually want. And people who buy software, who buy our software, are the people who use the product. A lot of enterprise companies sell software to a buyer who then makes other people use the product, and everyone hates those products. But people who use our products buy our products, and it's the same person, so they're looking for stuff that just works really well. And I've just found there's no better way to do that than to keep the company small and tight. And, and that, that, that goes everywhere. Like, we don't have any middle management. Um, we've tried a little bit. We've had-- That's why we had eighty-three people at one point. We hired a few more people to build out a little bit of a team and then pulled back from that and go, "We don't... That wasn't helpful."

   8. DSDavid Senra7:40

      What did you not like about that?

   9. JFJason Fried7:41

      There's two people on the executive team: me and David, my business partner. That's, that's it. We've had a COO for a while. They were fine. They were good people. We just didn't-- There was enough work for them, frankly, to, to do the work, so they just doing things that they didn't need to really do. And then when you do stuff you don't really need to do, you feel bad for them in a sense, 'cause they're, like, wasting their professional life doing things they don't really wanna do, that doesn't need to get done. So that doesn't feel good. Um, we've had, like, engineering managers, and we found out again that there was, like, too many levels in between David, who's the CTO, and the people doing the work. He had to, like, talk to someone else, who talked to someone else, and it's like a game of telephone. Things are lost in translation along the way. So you just-- we, we tried those things. We had some thoughts that maybe this would be a better thing for us to do, and we turned out-- it, it turned out not to be a better thing to do.

   10. DSDavid Senra8:27

       How long does it take you to realize?

   11. JFJason Fried8:29

       A year.

   12. DSDavid Senra8:30

       Okay.

   13. JFJason Fried8:30

       Basically. COO roles were longer. They were three years. We tried it twice. For the most part, we give everybody about a year to prove themselves at 37signals. And so we hire somebody, and they have about a year until we decide if we're gonna hire them again. That's how I think of the second year. It's a rehire. It's not like a performance review, where we look at numbers, and... It's like one simple question. I always try to like, if I can, I always try to boil everything down to a question that answers all the other questions. So the question we ask after the first year with any new employee is: knowing what I know now, would I hire them again? And that answers pretty much every question. It answers every question about performance, about attitude, culture fit, all the stuff. If I know what I know now, would I hire them again? And so it turned out with the management stuff, we're like, it wasn't even about the people. It was more like: Now that we know what we know now, would we create this position again? And the answer was no. So we eliminated those positions and never rehired for them. So that's how we kind of got back a little bit to, to a smaller size.

   14. DSDavid Senra9:33

       Does that work with products too, or features of products?

   15. JFJason Fried9:36

       It can. It's harder.

   16. DSDavid Senra9:37

       You've rolled back people-

   17. JFJason Fried9:38

       Yes.

   18. DSDavid Senra9:38

       -you've rolled back entire products.

   19. JFJason Fried9:39

       Yes.

   20. DSDavid Senra9:40

       Do you ever roll back features?

   21. JFJason Fried9:41

       We have done that in some

5. 9:43 – 13:42

   Rewriting Basecamp & Fighting Software Bloat

   1. JFJason Fried9:43

      ways. Typically, so every five, six years, we kind of reinvent Basecamp, which is our main product, our biggest product.

   2. DSDavid Senra9:49

      Do you write it from scratch?

   3. JFJason Fried9:50

      We have in the past. So from, from Basecamp One to Basecamp Two was our total rewrite. From two to three was a total rewrite. Three to four was not, and four to five, which we're working on now, is not. But it's a chance to revisit a lot of fundamental assumptions about what the product does and how it works. And I'm always trying to make-- I'm trying to buck the trend, right? The human nature is, is about expansion, typically. Like, things tend to expand. But in the physical world, there's also, like, limits that push back on those expansions. Like, if this mug was burning hot, like, we would know that's a bad design. If, if this handle, if there's no handle here, and I had to hold it this way, uh, maybe not a good mug. Like, there's, there's physics here. Like, you look at this, if this thing was made of, of a really, really fragile material or something that would, like, melt if it got wet, you'd be like: That's a bad design. Like, there's some things that are telling you this is a bad design. In software, you don't get that. Software can be anything. It's infinitely malleable, and what ends up happening is, because there's nothing pushing back, it just expands forever and gets worse. Software slides downhill. It gets better for a while, then slides downhill. So I'm conscious of that, and I'm always trying to make sure that every new version we make of something is a little bit simpler in the fundamental ways than the previous version. It might have more features, but the experience hopefully is simpler. That's, like, the big challenge and actually the, frankly, like, the most fun part of, of, of building products over the long term is: Can we buck the trend of having them slide downhill and instead, like, maintain or make them even better over time?

   4. DSDavid Senra11:23

      Why is that fun?

   5. JFJason Fried11:26

      It's hard, and that's fun. It's a bit of a puzzle. It's a bit of pushing back against the forces of nature, typically, which again, would be to expand. It's forcing us to come up with clever solutions to problems, more creative solutions to problems. It forces me to understand what something really is and not, like, what it could be or what I think other people think of it as, but, like, what is this really trying to do? And it's fun to, to have these insights. So, like, my, my favorite thing in life, frankly, is to, like, have an insight, and I don't get to decide when I have them, right? No one does. You just, like, have one, right? Maybe it's in the shower, maybe it's whatever. You just have an insight....And it's cool to work on a problem in software and then have an insight about how to make it simpler. And I find that, for me, for whatever reason, I bounce into those insights very frequently, making software, more so than pretty much anything else I do. So it's fun to make something new because I get to have more insights into how to make it simpler and better. And that's just like, what- for whatever reason, that, that's where they come from, like, the shower and the software.

   6. DSDavid Senra12:26

      A lot of the conversations that Jason and I have are about craft, about the importance of putting your soul into your work and making the best possible product that you can. Our conversations remind me a lot of the conversations I have with my friend Karim, who's the co-founder and CTO of Ramp. Ramp is the presenting sponsor of this podcast, and Karim is one of the greatest technical minds working in finance today. Karim is obsessed with crafting a high-quality product and using the latest technology to constantly create better experiences for his customers. Ramp has one of the most talented technical teams in finance, and they use rapid, relentless iteration to make their product better every day. In the last year, Ramp has shipped over three hundred new features. Ramp is completely committed to using AI to make a better experience for their customers and automate as much of your business's finances as possible. In fact, Karim just wrote this: "AI is all I think about these days. It is our duty to be first movers and push limits so we can make the greatest possible product experience for our customers." Many of the fastest-growing and most innovative companies in the world are running their business on Ramp. Make sure you go to ramp.com to learn how they can help your business save time and money. Let AI chase your receipts and close your books so you can use your time and energy building great things for your customers. Get started today by going to ramp.com.

6. 13:42 – 17:44

   Why "Enough" Beats Growth

   1. DSDavid Senra13:43

      We, we were talking a lot about this conversation I just had with Toby Lucay. I know both you and I admire him.

   2. JFJason Fried13:47

      Oh, yeah.

   3. DSDavid Senra13:48

      And what I love about Toby, that you have in you as well, is, like, when you talk to him, the next response out of his mouth is, like, not predictable. [chuckles]

   4. JFJason Fried13:57

      Yeah. [chuckles]

   5. DSDavid Senra13:58

      And, uh, some of his, like, views are not correlated with one another, which also makes it really interesting.

   6. JFJason Fried14:04

      Yeah.

   7. DSDavid Senra14:04

      So, like, for example, you've been running your company... You started your company when you were twenty-five.

   8. JFJason Fried14:08

      Yeah.

   9. DSDavid Senra14:08

      Uh, you've been running it for twenty-seven years.

   10. JFJason Fried14:10

       Yeah.

   11. DSDavid Senra14:10

       You guys have been profitable every single year.

   12. JFJason Fried14:11

       Yep.

   13. DSDavid Senra14:12

       Uh, you have made, you know... You have millions of customers over the lifetime of the customer, of, of the business. You've made hundreds of millions of dollars. [chuckles] And yet you told me that if you ever sell the company, you don't want to look at a computer again. [chuckles]

   14. JFJason Fried14:26

       Yeah, I don't. I- first of all, I, I don't like being consistent. I'm not that interested in being consistent, first of all. So your point about, like, saying something that kind of conflicts with something else, you said, to me, it's just like, it's all about context. It's not about consistency. I don't find consistency interesting in any way, shape, or form. To me, it's all about the context, which is why, like, I don't like to plan. I don't have long-term plans. I like to make things up as I go, so that's all tied, tied into that. Um, but yeah, I don't particularly like business. I like running my business. Like, I figured out how to run my business, but the idea of me running another business, like, I don't wanna do that. I don't wanna do that. Maybe I, maybe I could create another one that's mine, and I would like it, but I don't think I could, actually. And I think that we're a product of timing and, and, and teams and the right people at the right time and the right ideas at the right time and all that stuff. That's what made this thing and continues this thing. But to start over again, to run a business? No, thank you. And frankly, [chuckles] the other thing is-

   15. DSDavid Senra15:26

       [chuckles]

   16. JFJason Fried15:27

       ... I would never trade my business for anyone else's business. I, I don't want anyone else's business. I don't want to put myself in someone else's shoes. I, I, I know how to do my thing, and, like, that's enough for me. I don't need to, like, stroke the ego and go, "I could do this again somewhere else. I could turn something..." I, I don't think I could do this ever again, but I don't need to, and that's okay. Like, I-- this, this, this sense of just being comfortable with what you've built and what you're working on now, being enough, is, for me, a very peaceful place to be, and I think that that's, uh, unfortunately not something that's talked enough about in our ind- my industry, which is tech, which is grow, grow, grow, get as big as you can, sell valuations, do it again, serial entrepreneurship. Like, I-- it's boring to me. All that's boring.

   17. DSDavid Senra16:14

       Okay, there's a million things I wanna unpack-

   18. JFJason Fried16:15

       Let's go. Let's do it

   19. DSDavid Senra16:15

       ... I wanna unpack there-

   20. JFJason Fried16:16

       Yeah

   21. DSDavid Senra16:16

       ... because you said a bunch of things. The serial entrepreneurship I wanna, um, hit on-

   22. JFJason Fried16:20

       Yeah

   23. DSDavid Senra16:20

       ... because you and I were talking about the conversation I had with John Mackey-

   24. JFJason Fried16:23

       Yes

   25. DSDavid Senra16:23

       ... where he was referencing, uh, some of his friends just love to, like, start. And you're like, "Oh, I actually have, like, this metaphor that I wanna start talking about," and it is envelopes and letters.

   26. JFJason Fried16:33

       Envelopes and letters.

   27. DSDavid Senra16:34

       Yeah, okay.

   28. JFJason Fried16:34

       Yeah.

   29. DSDavid Senra16:34

       And then we'll go back to the fact that you don't like business- [chuckles]

   30. JFJason Fried16:36

       Yeah. [chuckles]
7. 17:44 – 22:41

   Product People vs. Business Shells

   1. DSDavid Senra17:44

      to you?

   2. JFJason Fried17:44

      It means a lot of things to me, but, but I think there's a lot of people who, who... This is-- Let's get into the envelope thing, 'cause this is kind of part of that.

   3. DSDavid Senra17:50

      Okay.

   4. JFJason Fried17:51

      And I remember when I was getting started being an envelope guy. So the envelope, to me, there's, there's this two sides of business, basically. There's the envelope, and there's the letter. The envelope is the outside, the shell, the business, the vehicle that holds-... the letter, and the letter is the product or products. I'm a product guy. I love product. That's all I care about. The business side just has to exist to hold the product, right? Like, it just, it- that's the vehicle in which the product travels in. But I don't care about the envelope so much, but there's lots of people, and I remember this early on when I first started my business, I was thinking about the brand, and, and the business, and how big it could be, and what-- how do I describe it, and what do I call it? That's all envelope work. That's, like, all on the outside. And I think there's a number of people-- and by the way, it's fine. All this is fine. What I'm getting at is, you gotta know who you are, and what you want out of yourself, and what you wanna do. And if you're an envelope person, that's fine. If you're a product letter person, that's fine, but you gotta know who you are. I know I'm not an envelope person. I don't just wanna build shells that gets filled, and then I sell it, and build another shell. It gets filled, and I sell it, and build another shell, and it gets filled, and I sell it. I wanna just work on a letter, and the, the envelope is just the thinnest little thing that needs to be there to hold the letter. I think playing entrepreneur is like spinning up businesses all the time, making all sorts of stuff, and giving it a name, and giving it a logo, and trying to raise money, and, and coming up with valuations, and talking about all this stuff, and there's, like, nothing there of substance inside that yet. Maybe there will be, but in a lot of cases, there's nothing. There's just losses. And, and then it's like a mu- mad rush to get out at a certain valuation for other people who put money in. Like, that's like turning a business into an asset, a financial instrument. It's just not interesting to me. I wanna make things. I wanna build products. And, and that's what I do. Again, that's what we do, and just the idea of, of a business being a financial instrument is just like... it's anathema to me. I, it's just kind of, it's re-repellent, actually.

   5. DSDavid Senra19:48

      Why does it need to-- you just used the word thin shell to describe the envelope. Why do you want a thin shell?

   6. JFJason Fried19:53

      I want it to be a thin shell. Oh!

   7. DSDavid Senra19:54

      What does that mean?

   8. JFJason Fried19:56

      Well, I would say this. Um, the more mass of an object, the more energy it takes to change its direction, right? This is just like, this is getting back to basic physics. A thick sh-- when I think of this stuff, and sometimes these metaphors don't perfectly line up, but in my head, I think of, like, a thick business. It's, it's hard to change, it's heavy, it's massive, it's, it's-- there's too much distance between it and the customers, it and the product. There's space, like, right? You can imagine, like, if you just imagine something very thick, this is the thing that matters, and you gotta go through all this and compress all this down to get to the thing that matters. Like, I don't like that. I think the thing that matters should be big, and the, the rest of it should be as thin as possible, and so that's what we've tried to build at 37signals. It's a very thin business with a thick set of products that are good, and solid, and real, and generate real profits and are real businesses, and then the rest of it is just enough to hold it all together. That's, like, my vision for business. It's not the only vision. I-- plenty of people, way more successful than me, don't see it this way. I don't care. Like, this is just how I see it and how I'm sharing it. But a-and, and it's ma-mainly just to show people that, like, you don't have to go big. It doesn't have to be a big, thick, heavy, busy company. It can be very thin, and then focus on the product, and get to a place where you can find out people like you, get to this place where enough is enough, and then maintain. Another way to think about this for me, I always go back to these sort of weird metaphors, is like, you know, there's the hockey stick, right? Chart, right? That is, like, unappealing to me. I like more of, like, a, a metaphor where it's more like, um, like a rocket into orbit. So I-- you, you gotta get off the ground, and you gotta break free of, of gravity. But then there's a point where you actually just wanna sit in orbit and sort of maintain. You wanna be within a certain range and fluctuate a little bit up, a little bit down, but be in this comfortable place where you're just orbiting. You're not breaking a force anymore. You're not pushing super hard. You're maintaining, and, and maintaining a level of quality, maintaining a level of enjoyment, and just orbiting now, and I think that that's a really wonderful place for businesses to be. But I wouldn't encourage you to be trying to get to orbit in year two. You've gotta be, like, on the ride up to break free of all the forces that are holding you back, but then you should also find a place where you can settle in in orbit, versus people who I think are just busy constantly trying to grow, grow, grow and get as big as they possibly can. And I always say, like, "Why?" I'm like: So what if you-- if you're massive and you're twice as massive? Like, so what? Why? Why? What's that all about? And they may have an answer for you. I, I don't. I don't, I don't know what the answer would be, other than, like, just growing for growth's sake. But I, I'm a big fan of getting somewhere and then holding.

8. 22:41 – 27:45

   The "So What?" Mindset

   1. DSDavid Senra22:41

      When I think of you, I think one of your maxims that you repeat the-

   2. JFJason Fried22:43

      Mm-hmm

   3. DSDavid Senra22:44

      ... m- the most is that, that idea. Like, I hear you say, "So what?" all the time- [chuckles]

   4. JFJason Fried22:47

      Yeah. Yeah, so what?

   5. DSDavid Senra22:47

      ... on most questions.

   6. JFJason Fried22:48

      Yeah.

   7. DSDavid Senra22:49

      Explain more about that.

   8. JFJason Fried22:50

      Well, you'd have to ask a question, and I would be like: "So what?" [chuckles]

   9. DSDavid Senra22:52

      I don't know. [chuckles]

   10. JFJason Fried22:53

       Like, why, why grow? I, I mean... Or maybe that's not a good one, but, um, y- for example, like, we're definitely leaving money on the table. I'm sure of it. Like, we don't optimize our pricing. I'm not, I'm not testing pricing, not constantly. We're not A/B testing constantly. I'm, I'm certain there's some formula that we're not following that could lead to more growth, more revenue, more whatever, more whatever, and my answer is, like, "So what?" Like, I'm very comfortable with where we are. We've got a great business, high margins, very predictable. Um, we make new stuff all the time. We enjoy ourselves. We have a great time. Like, I don't wanna fuck that up. [laughing]

   11. DSDavid Senra23:33

       [chuckles]

   12. JFJason Fried23:34

       I think people fuck it up all the time. They, they-- you get to the right size, and for whatever reason, you can't be content there, and you push a little bit too much, too hard, and you lost what was great about what you were doing. And so this whole thing about there's money on the table, and m-maybe there is, and maybe there isn't, maybe there's a way to optimize, maybe there isn't, I just... it doesn't interest me, so it's "so what" to that. I don't really care.

   13. DSDavid Senra23:57

       Tell me if this observation that I have about you is correct.

   14. JFJason Fried23:59

       Yeah.

   15. DSDavid Senra24:00

       You seem to have this inherent natural revulsion against optimization.

   16. JFJason Fried24:06

       Yeah, I don't like optimization. [chuckles]

   17. DSDavid Senra24:08

       Okay.

   18. JFJason Fried24:09

       Actually, okay, so-... there's, here's the consistency thing: it's all about context. I don't like optimization around numbers. Like, I'm just picking, "We can make five million on this." "Well, it'd be amazing if we could make 5.1 if we did XYZ." I, I don't care about the XYZ to make 5.1, but I am interested in optimizing a product to make it better. That, to me, is a worthwhile optimization. Like, it's better for me 'cause I use it. It's better for our customers because they use it. That's fun! But, like, squeezing out an extra hundred grand off five million or something is just, like, not fun. It's boring. Not fun boring, like, actually beyond not fun boring. I don't even know what would be beyond that, but I'm not interested in that at all. I'd rather spend the money making the thing I make better. That is the thing I'm here for, not to squeeze an extra hundred grand onto something or an extra million onto something. I, I don't care. It doesn't matter. Like, there's a point where you're doing well enough where it shouldn't matter anymore. Um, now, that might make me a bad CEO. Maybe someone else would come into my business and double the business overnight. That might be totally true, and I'm willing to accept that that's the case. My answer would be: "So what? I don't care."

   19. DSDavid Senra25:17

       I don't even think you think of yourself as a C- [chuckles] and there goes the so what again. [laughing]

   20. JFJason Fried25:20

       [laughing] You asked for it, so...

   21. DSDavid Senra25:22

       No, [chuckles] I don't think you can help yourself. I don't think you think of yourself as a CEO.

   22. JFJason Fried25:27

       I, I don't. I don't actually even like the term, frankly.

   23. DSDavid Senra25:29

       Okay.

   24. JFJason Fried25:29

       Like, executive officer? What? Of what? [chuckles] Like, I make products. I run the company with David. Dave and I run it together. Like, uh, I don't need the CEO-

   25. DSDavid Senra25:43

       How do you say-

   26. JFJason Fried25:44

       ... chief, chief executive officer. Of what, again? Like, of what? [chuckles]

   27. DSDavid Senra25:48

       [chuckles]

   28. JFJason Fried25:49

       Like, we make decisions. That's what we do. We make decisions. We make products. We hire great people that we like. We find people with zero drama. Like, we put together a team, and we set out to make things. We take really good care of people, really good care of our customers. We make good products that we really like. Great products, hopefully, right? Um, I gotta leave a little bit of, of, of room there for some humility. Like, we can always make better products, so I'm not gonna call our products fantastic. They are good, great. There's always room for, for making those better. But as far as, as, like, being a CEO and whatever that's supposed to mean, I don't know what the hell that means. Yesterday, I answered, like, two hundred emails from my customers. Is that like... Some people would say that's irresponsible for a CEO to spend their time emailing customers. Like, I think it's the best thing you can do.

   29. DSDavid Senra26:30

       Yeah.

   30. JFJason Fried26:30

       But I don't think of myself as a CEO.
9. 27:45 – 34:43

   Staying Close to Customers

   1. DSDavid Senra27:45

      possible.

   2. JFJason Fried27:45

      Yeah.

   3. DSDavid Senra27:45

      One of my favorite examples is this. This example for over a hundred years ago, the found- Jim Casey, the founder of UPS.

   4. JFJason Fried27:50

      Uh-huh.

   5. DSDavid Senra27:51

      He-- what he realized is, like, he had all these executives. He paid attention to incentives. He realized they would, over time, just tell him what he wants to hear, and so therefore-

   6. JFJason Fried27:59

      Of course

   7. DSDavid Senra27:59

      ... he was only getting-- he was getting his ass kissed all the time, not getting useful information. So he's like, "Forget this. I'm not-- I don't wanna talk to them."

   8. JFJason Fried28:06

      Yeah.

   9. DSDavid Senra28:06

      He would, he would have-- he had a driver, and they would drive on the streets, and he just says, "Every time you see a brown truck, brown UPS truck, you pull over," and he would just talk directly to the drivers.

   10. JFJason Fried28:15

       Awesome.

   11. DSDavid Senra28:15

       He spent all his time-

   12. JFJason Fried28:16

       Awesome

   13. DSDavid Senra28:16

       ... talking to the person-

   14. JFJason Fried28:17

       Yeah

   15. DSDavid Senra28:17

       ... that's-

   16. JFJason Fried28:18

       Doing the work

   17. DSDavid Senra28:18

       ... actually doing the work for the customer. So I don't think-

   18. JFJason Fried28:21

       They know the most.

   19. DSDavid Senra28:21

       I, I don't think anybody saying... Jeff Bezos, eh, I know he-

   20. JFJason Fried28:25

       Yeah

   21. DSDavid Senra28:25

       ... he owns- he's a partner of your, of yours.

   22. JFJason Fried28:27

       Yeah.

   23. DSDavid Senra28:27

       He owns a percentage of your company. You know, he railed about this forever.

   24. JFJason Fried28:31

       Right.

   25. DSDavid Senra28:31

       And he made every single executive, you'd have to spend a day or a week or a month where I was-

   26. JFJason Fried28:35

       On support or whatever

   27. DSDavid Senra28:35

       ... on customer support.

   28. JFJason Fried28:36

       Yeah. We do the same thing. We haven't done that for a bit, but we u- used to do that. We should do it again, actually. We used to have this thing called Everyone on Support, where people would do it for, for a day, uh, rotate through the company. Um, mostly, so I would do it, and so David would do it, and now I do it anyway. Um, but it's very important. I think, um, you know, there, there's a, there's a, there's a... When I lived in Chicago, there was a grocery store down the street called Livius. There still is. Um, and I got to know the owner, and I appreciated the fact that he got to know his customers personally because they'd walk in the store, and he would say, "Hello," right? That's how I got to know him. I don't, unfortunately, have that opportunity. Like, we have hundreds of thousands of people who use our products, and it's- it actually frustrates me that I don't know all of our customers. Like, I could walk past, on the street, I could walk past seventy-five of our customers on a given day, and I wouldn't know that. He would know 'cause he would know who they are, and he knew their family, the whole thing. So I've always tried as best I can to get as close to... I can't get as close to our customers. We have too many of them in that sense. But whenever you sign up for Basecamp, the first thing you see is a letter from me, um, with my email address, with my signature and my email address, and I want my customers to email me. I don't wanna hide from anybody. There's no AI. There's no assistant. There's no levels between at all. Just write me, and people do all the time. And we have in our books as well, we have our email address in our books. I wanna get as close to poss- as possible to the people who use the things that we make, not just to make them happy, 'cause I wanna make myself happy, too. We are the first customer of our products. But to understand what they're doing with them, to understand the language they use, how they describe them, who they are, I wanna know these things because somehow it permeates me, and I, and I just, I get to feel what it's like to be them, and-... get to understand what it's like for them to use the lever that we've made for them to move something. And there's no other way to do that for me than to just share my email address, 'cause I don't get to meet people in person, like this guy who runs a grocery store. But I love businesses like that, people who-- I love the, the dry cleaner who's been there for forty years. I love the local grocery store. I just love businesses. I, those to me are so much more interesting than the billion-dollar whatever.

   29. DSDavid Senra30:42

       Why?

   30. JFJason Fried30:42

       I just don't... That's a great question. Um, I feel like, I feel like they're more real. I like real things, um, for whatever that means. I, define it however you'd like, but a billion-dollar business or a ten billion-dollar business just, it doesn't feel like a real thing to me. It feels like a, a concept. Um, meanwhile, the dry cleaner down the street, I can drop off my shirt, I get it cleaned, I bring it up, I pick it up from the person who owns the place. This is her living. This is what they do. There's something for me that I connect with something that's real, uh, that I feel like I can hold in my head and I can, I can understand. I keep coming back to this- well, not keep, but I have already in this interview once. So this idea of surface area and, like, and a business as an object. I want to be able to see the whole thing and understand the whole thing. A massive entity with tens of thousands of people and billions of dollars and whatever, I just, I don't understand it, and that's maybe my own shortcoming or whatever. I don't really care, again. Like, I don't need to understand that. It's not my thing. Um, but I just prefer smaller businesses, and that's mo- our customers are small business owners, and I just, I don't care about enterprise customers. I don't want them. I like small, medium-sized businesses. They're more like me. I understand who they are, I understand what they do. I like that kind of stuff.
10. 34:43 – 39:57

    The Reward for Good Work Is More Work

    1. DSDavid Senra34:43

       Are you proud of how long that you've been able to stay in business?

    2. JFJason Fried34:48

       I'm not proud of it. Like, I'm not... N- I didn't mean that, like, in a negative way. It's like pride is not a i- i- i-

    3. DSDavid Senra34:55

       Is it important?

    4. JFJason Fried34:56

       I feel fortunate.

    5. DSDavid Senra34:57

       Is the time important to you? Like, if I could tell you, "Okay, you can make the same exact amount of money that you made in twenty-seven years, but you made it in fifteen, and you're done," you would take the twenty-seven?

    6. JFJason Fried35:06

       Right. I would take the twenty-seven.

    7. DSDavid Senra35:07

       Because-

    8. JFJason Fried35:08

       I like to, but the money is a side effect-

    9. DSDavid Senra35:10

       I know

    10. JFJason Fried35:11

        ... of all of this.

    11. DSDavid Senra35:11

        I know.

    12. JFJason Fried35:11

        So, so all the money does, like Patrick, who, who you interviewed, O- O'Shaughnessy, right?

    13. DSDavid Senra35:15

        Yeah. Yeah.

    14. JFJason Fried35:16

        I, I love what he said about work. It's like, I think something like: "I work so I could work more," or something like that, right?

    15. DSDavid Senra35:22

        The, the, the reward for good work is more work.

    16. JFJason Fried35:25

        There you go.

    17. DSDavid Senra35:25

        Is to keep going.

    18. JFJason Fried35:27

        Great way to phrase it. And so that's why twenty-seven years is more interesting than fifteen. I like this stuff. Like, the beauty about this for me is that somehow we've managed to build this system, this thing, this company, these products that sustain over a long period of time, that allow us to enjoy our craft and our work over a long period of time, and we are in control of that as much as we can be. The market can change. Anything can happen at any time. But I can control my costs, I can control my quality, I can control my messaging as best I can, and we can make the best thing we can over time and keep making that thing. Like, that's... Like, that's why, l- like, I wanna, that's what I wanna do. This is my whole point. I don't wanna trade my position with anybody for anything. I can love what other people do, too. I do. Like, there's great products all over the place, and I'm like: Wow, that's an amazing thing that someone made. Like, for example-... um, one of my favorite products is the Concept2 Rower. Are you familiar with this?

    19. DSDavid Senra36:24

        Yes.

    20. JFJason Fried36:25

        I don't know anything about the company, but I can reverse engineer that I bet it's a badass, killer company, too, because that's how I look at things, by the way. I look at the products, not the companies. I look at the products and go, "Oh, that's a great product. I bet that's a great company," or, "This, this product is, is, nah, I don't like this product. I bet the company's kind of-"

    21. DSDavid Senra36:43

        I do this for people.

    22. JFJason Fried36:44

        "-kind of terrible."

    23. DSDavid Senra36:44

        If you can make a great product, you're probably an interesting person to talk to.

    24. JFJason Fried36:48

        Yeah, I could see that reverse thing as well. I mean, again, look to the inside to figure out what, what forms on the outside. So Concept2 is probably one of my favorite products of all time, the Concept2 Rower. Uh, their bikes are good, too, and they, they make a ski machine, too, but the rower is, like, my favorite machine. And I love it because it is so well-built. First of all, it's under a thousand bucks, and it's been under a thousand bucks, I think, forever, and it's been around forever. There's been different variations of it, but they're always improving on a theme. It's s- roughly the same thing every iteration, but slightly better. It comes in a big box, very easy to assemble. It's a big machine, but comes-- it's very easy to assemble. Um, the, the display is black and white LCD, not even LED, LCD, with, like, five rubberized buttons, and then I think there's two other ones. It runs on C or D batteries. No electricity, no plugging in, no recharge. Oh, shit, like, it's done, uh, get some new batteries. Like, it just works. The buttons you press, there's no touch screens. The thing is reliable. It always works. It's incredibly durable. It does exactly what it's supposed to do with nothing else. And I look at that, and I go, "That is a perfect product," one of the few perfect products I've ever seen. Like, a paperclip and a Concept2 Rower.

    25. DSDavid Senra38:01

        [chuckles]

    26. JFJason Fried38:01

        Like, hard to improve on both of those things. Like, I, uh, have deep admiration for that kind of thing. I still wouldn't want to trade my company for theirs 'cause I don't know anything about what they do. I know what I do. But, um, I can still, like, respect and admire all sorts of things and all sorts of companies, but I still wouldn't want to be them. I like what we do, and I like that I can do it for a long period of time. And hopefully, I'll do it for as long as I feel like I want to do it, and then, at some point, we'll decide that we're not gonna do it anymore, and I don't know when that'll be. Um, I'm always a year-to-year guy. I'm a day-to-day guy when it comes to planning. Like I talked about a little bit earlier, I don't, I don't believe in long-term planning. I believe in being around for the long term, but I think the best way to do that is day by day, not like quarter by quarter or year by year. Just figure out today and figure out tomorrow and figure out tomorrow. I've always been, like, mystified by people who think they can figure out the next three years today, but they're afraid of figuring out tomorrow, tomorrow. Like, the, I, I, I need to plan the next three years, so I can do that. I can plan, like, what, uh, nine hundred or a thousand days in advance, but, like, tomorrow I can't figure things out if I don't have a plan. Like, you can figure things out tomorrow if you can figure things out for the next thousand days.

    27. DSDavid Senra39:13

        Explain how you plan day by day.

    28. JFJason Fried39:16

        There's no plan. I mean, like, we have a direction.

    29. DSDavid Senra39:18

        Yeah.

    30. JFJason Fried39:18

        So the way, the way I think about this, and this is, like, again, another weird metaphor perhaps, but I, I think of our business and maybe me even like a, like, like I'm a squirrel, [chuckles] okay? I probably weren't expecting this. So you watch a squirrel run across a field. What does it do? Like, it knows where it wants to go, roughly, and it runs, and it scurries, and it stops, and it looks around, and then it scurries some more, and it stops, and it looks around, and it scurries some more. It doesn't need to get exactly where it wants to go. It knows roughly where it wants to go, and it clearly doesn't know how exactly it's gonna get there, but it knows, like, where it's headed, and then it course-corrects. That's how I do it.

11. 39:57 – 45:20

    Six-Week Horizons & Compounding Decisions

    1. JFJason Fried39:57

       So at our company, we typically s- think about six weeks in advance, um, and that's about it. There's some occasional projects, maybe a few over the twenty-seven years that we've done, that we needed to think further ahead. Um, like we just recently left the cloud, left AWS, and we're running our own stuff now in data centers. That was, like, a much bigger project, okay? But most projects, ninety-nine percent of them at our company, take six weeks or less, and most of them take just much less than that. But six weeks is the most we're willing to think ahead, and then day to day, like, I... The six weeks is like where the squirrel is headed, so it's not super clearly defined, it's generally defined, and then we figure it out as we go. We just figure it out as we go on a day-to-day basis. Like, the teams figure it out as they go. Like, they're... I kind of set or so David or someone sets, like, the target generally, not, yeah, not like financial targets, but, like, generally, we're headed in this direction with this idea. Figure out how to get there on your own. We'll check in when we need to. You ask if you want some help, happy to come in. I'll review stuff as we go, but it's a bunch of course correction to get us there. And, uh, I find that that is the most honest, real way to get somewhere good because in general, you know more about things the closer they are to you. So I don't know what's gonna happen five Mondays from now, but, well, today's not... Today's Thursday, so let's just take Friday. Five Fridays from now or tomorrow, I probably have a better idea of what might happen tomorrow than I do five tomorrows or five Fridays from now. So I'll worry about those when I get there. Let me worry about tomorrow. Let me nail tomorrow. Let me get tomorrow right. Let's do the right stuff tomorrow. Let's make the right decisions tomorrow, and then we'll make some more on Monday, and make some more on Tuesday, and make some more on, on Wednesday. Like, just make small decisions all the time, and don't put yourself in a place where you're making huge ones you're afraid of, and you can sort of get wherever you want to go for twenty-seven plus years.

    2. DSDavid Senra41:50

       There's a question that I, I keep getting asked by different people-

    3. JFJason Fried41:53

       Yeah

    4. DSDavid Senra41:53

       ... so it must be a popular question, and I'm always perplexed by it. They're like: What is, like, you seem to have something good going right now. What does success look like-

    5. JFJason Fried42:00

       Ugh

    6. DSDavid Senra42:00

       ... five years from now?

    7. JFJason Fried42:02

       Yeah, [chuckles] so I'm, I-

    8. DSDavid Senra42:03

       You hate the question. I'm gonna ask you-

    9. JFJason Fried42:05

       Yeah.

    10. DSDavid Senra42:05

        I'm gonna ask what your answer is, and I'm gonna tell you what my answer to that question is.

    11. JFJason Fried42:08

        I, I don't know is the answer. I don't care. [chuckles]

    12. DSDavid Senra42:11

        So what?

    13. JFJason Fried42:12

        So what?

    14. DSDavid Senra42:12

        [chuckles]

    15. JFJason Fried42:13

        What is five... I don't even know five years from now. Like, what, what, what, what's the difference? Like, it's, it's an interesting question 'cause it's a directional question.... but I don't care. I don't have an answer.

    16. DSDavid Senra42:23

        My answer is boring. Just more of this.

    17. JFJason Fried42:25

        Yeah, sure.

    18. DSDavid Senra42:26

        Well, exactly.

    19. JFJason Fried42:26

        I think there's-

    20. DSDavid Senra42:27

        And that's essen- essentially what it is.

    21. JFJason Fried42:28

        I-

    22. DSDavid Senra42:28

        Until... So here's the thing about those questions. People answer those questions today for who they think they're going to be then. You don't know who you're gonna be then, so, like, it's a kind of a silly thing to answer. I, I- or even to ponder. So yeah, I'm with you, which is like this-

    23. JFJason Fried42:47

        I, I feel-

    24. DSDavid Senra42:47

        This is the answer, basically.

    25. JFJason Fried42:49

        I've read all your books. I've listened to almost all your episodes. We've shared a bunch of meals together.

    26. DSDavid Senra42:53

        Yeah.

    27. JFJason Fried42:53

        Um, and I never even knew that you just did the day thing, too, because that's what... I, I was like, I just feel, I was like, I try to make a good twenty-four hours.

    28. DSDavid Senra43:01

        Yeah.

    29. JFJason Fried43:01

        And then I was like, "Oh, I like this day, so, like, I'll do it again tomorrow."

    30. DSDavid Senra43:04

        Yeah.
12. 45:20 – 50:55

    Anti-Fragile Business With Tiny Units

    1. JFJason Fried45:20

       right, and then... And by the way, if tomorrow wasn't right, this, this is the thing: I think i- this gets back to, like, in some ways, tying it back to the thinness. You wanna find tiny units. Find small units. So a day is a good small unit, right? A simple decision is a good small unit, and the good thing about that is, if you screw up, it's not a big deal. Like, if, if tomorrow sucks 'cause whatever happened, and, uh, okay, it's behind you in twenty-four hours. It's over. Like, versus big, huge decisions where you take eight months to think about it and pull in all these people and set up all these contingencies, and you make the big decision, and it goes sour, it goes south, whatever. Maybe it works out, but maybe it doesn't, and then it's like, it's, it's so hard to make those calls. It's so hard to deal with the ramifications of those things if they don't work out. Like, make things small, tiny little units that you can throw them away if it, it doesn't matter. It's like what you basically want then is enough good things, enough good units in a year, right? Not like one great year, one great plan, but enough good little things, and 'cause you know you're gonna miss a few things, so who cares? Throw them away, it doesn't matter. Small units, bricks, build that way, and I think that you just... You, you, you're, y- you become, like, more anti-fragile, basically, in that way, you know, when you're just, like, little things, and they can't throw you off too much if you get something wrong and it's small. Now, someone could say, "Well, you're gonna miss big opportunities," and, eh, maybe so. So what? So what? Like, if I can stay alive doing the thing I'm doing and running the business I wanna run, I don't need the other big opportunities. Like, stop worrying about all the other things you can maybe do and just focus on the thing that you're doing, and, like, make that work over and over and over and over, as long as you wanna do it.

    2. DSDavid Senra47:05

       Brad Jacobs has started eight separate billion-dollar companies. He said, "I've come to know a lot of extremely successful people in my life, and they all have one thing in common: they think differently than most people. All of them, to a person, have rearranged their brains to prevail at achieving big goals in turbulent environments where conventional thinking often fails." What Brad noticed is that great business leaders are pattern spotters, but you can't spot patterns if you can't see all of your data. Most businesses only use twenty percent of their data. Why? Because eighty percent of customer intelligence is invisible. It's hidden in emails, transcripts, and conversations. That's where HubSpot comes in. With HubSpot, all of your data comes together so you can see the patterns that matter. This is important because when you know more, you grow more, and that is a pattern that never fails. Visit hubspot.com today. That is hubspot.com. Do you feel you have, like, a narrow aperture with the world? I feel like you-

    3. JFJason Fried48:08

       No

    4. DSDavid Senra48:08

       ... you're, you're like-

    5. JFJason Fried48:09

       I don't.

    6. DSDavid Senra48:10

       Okay.

    7. JFJason Fried48:11

       ... Well, actually, what do you mean by that, first of all? Like-

    8. DSDavid Senra48:13

       Like what you just said, like, why are you worried about all these other opportunities out there in the world? Like, you just seem to be focused on, like, I'm building the business the way I want. It's a perfect business for myself. You're kind of, uh, not oblivious, I don't mean this obviously in a disrespectful way by any means, like, yeah, you just-- you don't really care what other people in the, your industry are doing. You, you have a, like a narrow focus on-

    9. JFJason Fried48:34

       Yeah, I don't know if it's narrow or wide, it just is. Like, I'm doing what I'm doing, and it doesn't matter what they're doing.

    10. DSDavid Senra48:41

        How often are you, like, breaking-- like, paying attention to how other people are making their products?

    11. JFJason Fried48:46

        Very rarely. I don't actually want to pay attention to it.

    12. DSDavid Senra48:49

        Why?

    13. JFJason Fried48:50

        I think what ends up happening is, and you see this in, in my world, you see it everywhere: everyone follows everybody else. Because when you're paying so much attention to what everyone else is doing, you tend to just... That's the way you think it has to be done or can be done. You're not open to, like, alternatives because you don't see them anywhere. And then you get a people, people then build out of fear, like: "Gosh, they're doing this, they're launching this. I have to m- meet them. There has to be parity between my product and theirs." Then you end up following everybody. I don't like that. I'd like to take inspiration-- If I'm gonna take inspiration from anything, uh, product-wise, it's gonna be outside my-- it's, it's the Concept Two rower. It's not another piece of software. I'm not inspired by other software. I like buildings, I like furniture, I like, uh, Concept Two, I like watches. I like other things outside of my world that I can sort of admire and, and understand a- and sort of get fired up about, and I don't know if those things come back. I don't think they need to come back. Like, everyone's always like: "How does that come back and help you build your business?" Like, I don't know. I don't care. Why, why does it have to? Why does everything have to come back to business? Like, i- it-- why does everything have to influence your decisions? It's like these are all things that just happen, they exist in your world, they, they happen to you, and they, and they form you, and you're not even aware of most of it. And, and you just bec-- Like, I think if you admire a variety of different things and pay attention to different things and enjoy a walk in the woods... Like, a few days ago, I was just-- it's like four forty-five, you know, California, here, the light is just beautiful at the end of the day. I'm just sitting outside, looking at the way the sun is raking over the hills. Like, I'd rather look at that than this piece of software. A- a- I'm learning more from that. I'm getting more from that than I am a competitor's product. I don't want to look at that. I want to look at the sun. I want to look at the ocean. I want to look-- go for a walk. I want to look at nature. I want to look at great furniture. I want to be in great architecture. Like, that fills me up in a way. I'm getting enough of the software world by being in it. I don't want to s- soak in it. I want to soak outside of it, and then my only soaking in the software world is my own stuff. That's enough. It's enough for me to focus on.

13. 50:55 – 52:44

    Galápagos Product Design

    1. DSDavid Senra50:55

       Tell me about your idea of Galápagos Island product design.

    2. JFJason Fried50:58

       [chuckles] I just... Like, there's something really cool about islands that, like, have evolved on their own. I just, like, I don't know. I've never been to the Galápagos. My wife's been. She asked me if I wanted to go. I didn't want to go because I don't-- I-- it's too far, but I should have gone, probably. But, um, a- actually, I didn't want to go, frankly, because [chuckles] part of that was it was too far. I also felt like, like, let it... Can we let it be? [chuckles] Although I-- it's gotta be-- I mean, she loved it, and I'm so glad she went, and the pictures are incredible, and it seems like an amazing experience. But there's something very cool about, um, things that have just evolved on their own, that are not influenced by other things, and I try to think of us as the Galápagos. I don't think of us this way, really, but, like, conceptually, there's-- I don't like to use the word the Galápagos Island of the software industry. I don't use that. But I do think of us as, um, actually an insular group focused on solving a problem our own way without paying too much attention to what everyone else is doing. I'm, like, aware of it because I live in it, but I, I'm not seeking out ideas from other companies in our field. I, I think that that's actually a, a slippery slope. It is because we see so much copying in our industry. Like, someone has a successful product, and then all future products for the next three years look just like theirs. That says to me that there's a-- there's danger here. Don't fall into that trap. Our stuff looks different than everybody else's stuff. Our stuff works differently than everybody else's stuff. Nothing works like Basecamp, HEY, Fizzi, it's all different. And some people hate the way our stuff looks and works. Fine. Don't care. We have enough people who love what we do, um, and it's an expanding pie of people who are into what we do, and we love what we do. And again, that's, like, enough for us.

14. 52:44 – 1:27:39

    Radical Authenticity Over Marketing Tricks

    1. DSDavid Senra52:44

       Even your landing pages look different. They're essentially a, a letter from you describing-

    2. JFJason Fried52:50

       Yeah

    3. DSDavid Senra52:51

       ... what the product is and why it exists.

    4. JFJason Fried52:52

       Yeah, I wouldn't-- like, I, I always try to build things that I would want to see. Like, I build the company I want to work at. Um, I hire the people I want to work with. I try to write... I do all of our writing, so all of our-- I don't do the design on the land. I work with our designer to do a lot of that, but, um, he's sort of the visual, uh, person there. Um, but I do all the writing, and I, I want every word to land with meaning. This is, again, like thin, thick. I don't like thick stuff. Thin. Like, how can I just get to the right point but not be sterile? It's a problem sometimes with getting to the point. You can be sterile. So, like, there should be a little bit of bounce, a little bit of rhythm in the writing. It should feel nice. Um, you should be carried through it. It sh-- there should be some momentum in there, and I just love doing it. That's my favorite thing to do, actually, at the company, is write. We just do stuff that we like. I like that style. If you look at my product demos, I always do the demo for the product, like the launch. It's-- they're long, and they're unedited, and I screw up a bunch, and I don't care. Like, this is... If I was sitting with you, what I want to try to get to with this kind of stuff is, if I'm showing you something, my-- our product, literally, you're, like, behind me or sitting next to me, and we're looking at this thing together, if I screw up two minutes in, I'm not gonna go, "Let's start over." I'm just gonna keep going. And so that's how I want these to feel. I wanna, like, connect with people in a real way. This is, like, a real person showing off a real product. This is a real person writing a real thing. My name's on it, my signature's on it, my email's on it. Like-... We are who we are. We are-- we represent ourselves as we are. We are not a corporate entity hiding behind a structure. We're not a CEO or we're a CTO hiding from our customers. We don't have a board. We're not, like, we don't have any of these things. It's just us running the show, and the show is open for anyone to see, and, you know, we open source most of our, of, of our work. We're very open about sharing everything we know as best we possibly can. I just feel like there's no reason not to. Um, I, I just, I just wanna be direct and clear with people, and, like, hopefully, they like that, and some people don't. Some people are like: "Oh, you guys are too small. I can't trust you." Like, uh, I'm not out to convince anybody of anything. Like, that's the other thing. Like, I don't, I don't wanna convince anyone. I don't like marketing language. I don't like tricks. Here we are. Here's what we do. Here's what our product does. Like, that's the best we can do, and that's the best I wanna do, and I think it's the honest way to be.

    5. DSDavid Senra55:13

       So-

    6. JFJason Fried55:13

       And, and, and take it or leave it. Like, some people don't like it. That's totally fine. I get it.

    7. DSDavid Senra55:17

       I love the idea of doubling down on authenticity and leaving the mistakes in. I remember reading one of your essays a long time ago. It was... I can't remember the culture, but they would do rug-

    8. JFJason Fried55:25

       Navajo rugs. Okay, I'll tell you the story.

    9. DSDavid Senra55:27

       Yeah.

    10. JFJason Fried55:27

        I was in Wisconsin, um, in this little town called Mineral Point, Wisconsin, small little town about fifty miles west of Madison, and I was wandering through this gallery, strange. It was like, w- it, it was this weird building. It looked like a, like a junkyard inside. Like, you peered in, and it's like, what is going on in here? Something in-- And I saw some, like, old man on the back. Like, there's gonna be something cool here.

    11. DSDavid Senra55:48

        [chuckles]

    12. JFJason Fried55:48

        So I knock on his door, I walk in. There's some rugs hanging, but there's also, like, junk everywhere. Anyway, he comes out, and you're like: "Okay, this guy's a character." I love characters. I love old people. There's something going on there, right? I'm like: "Who is this guy?" So he's a, he's a Navajo. He collects Navajo... He's dead now, but he collects Navajo rugs. Um, so anyone can't go there today, is what I'm saying, but he collects Navajo rugs, and I was looking, and I, I find them very beautiful. They're, they're very simply patterned, and the colors are very vibrant, and they're very interesting, and there's just-- I don't know what it was. It-- they spoke to me, right? Um, and I don't wanna analyze why either because I, I, I find that that's a great way to ruin any [chuckles] experience is to try to figure out why. Just does it or does it not? It does. I love these things for whatever reason. So I go in, talking to the guy, and I notice that they have a lot of errors on them. Like, there's what I thought was an error. Like, there's geometric shapes. So their, their rugs are very geometric. They're, they're, they're stripes, they're squares, they're triangles. They're all sorts of different shapes. Um, and a lot of them, like, weren't quite right. You know, you can s- like, look at a shape and go, "Eh, it's not..." They're trying to make a perfect triangle, but it's, like, not quite right, and I, and I asked him about that. Or there's a stitch that's off, very clearly off. I'm like: "They could've just taken that out and redone it." And he said to me, he said, you know, and again, I don't know if this is true, but this is what he told me, um, which is the Navajo, like they don't see those as mistakes. They're just like a moment in time, and he, he related it this way: He's like, "If you're walking on a path, if you're climbing a mountain or something, and you're going on a path, and you trip or you stumble or whatever, like, you don't start back. You can't take that stumble back. It just happened." The Navajo leave these in their rugs because they just happened, and this is a record of what happened. I love that. I just thought it was, like, so lovely, and I've tried to do that with the things that I do. I mean, I, I, I don't, like, wanna leave typos and stuff. Like, that's not quite the same thing, but like, if I make a mistake on a video or something or whatever, like I-- whatever! That's what you would do in the real world. So I'm comfortable with that. I've always found that to be very, um, just again, a very beautiful thing that, that, like, these are not mistakes. Mistakes are a concept we put on ourselves when we do something that w- wasn't what we intended. Why does that have so much weight? Maybe what we intended was wrong, too. I don't know. Does... Are, are these rugs worse because there's a stitch off? No, they're not worse. They're better. And that's kinda what I'm striving for with this stuff, is not to take things so damn seriously and build a company that's afraid of itself and afraid to do anything wrong and afraid to have an opinion. You know, all these companies, not all, that's a, that's a very broad statement, all these companies.

    13. DSDavid Senra58:33

        Yeah.

    14. JFJason Fried58:33

        You know what? Like, everyone's afraid. Companies are afraid. Like, they have PR people, and they gotta talk to lawyers before they publish anything. Everyone's afraid of everything, of, of, of, of saying something wrong, doing something wrong, being wrong in some way. That is not endearing. I think people wanna do business with people, and they have to do business with companies 'cause companies provide a lot of product. But I think they really wanna do business with people, and maybe this is why I like the, the dry cleaner. Maybe this is why I like the grocery store. Maybe this is why I like running my business my way. I feel like people are dealing with people. We don't have a big corporate structure. We're just sixty-two people currently doing the things that we're doing. We're all accessible, all reachable. No one's hiding from anybody. This is what we do. And I just find that to be... there's, there's, a again, a thinness, a directness to that which just has an aesthetic value to me that I can't quite explain. Um, it's like the quality that cannot be explained. I think it might have been Christopher Alexander or something, who was an architect, uh, who, who talked about this. I, I might be totally off on this, but I think conceptually the idea was, you can go see buildings in, in, like, in, in native villages, and there's no architect that made any of this stuff. They didn't have any architects. They had people making places for them to live and work and worship, and there's a certain quality to that which is not, um, textbook high quality, but is beyond high quality because it's a perfect fit for what they wanted for themselves. That's the kind of stuff I like to build.

    15. DSDavid Senra1:00:07

        It's kind of how you're designing your company.

    16. JFJason Fried1:00:09

        Yeah. Perfect fit for us, for what we want and what we need, and again, getting back to the original thing, like, how many other people are there out there like us? Enough. That's the business model.

    17. DSDavid Senra1:00:19

        This is exactly how I started, um, doing the podcast. I think I'm drawn to that, too, like the, the-... I, I, I think in people, not companies, right?

    18. JFJason Fried1:00:28

        Yeah.

    19. DSDavid Senra1:00:28

        And this is why I was drawn to podcasts to begin with, because you- it's impossible. Some of these pod- these, these podcasters that I was fans of before I had a podcast, I've heard them speak for hundreds of hours. Like, you can't hide who you are at that point.

    20. JFJason Fried1:00:41

        Right.

    21. DSDavid Senra1:00:41

        You're gonna like the good-- you're gonna hear the mistakes, and I use the word endearing, and that's exactly-

    22. JFJason Fried1:00:45

        Mm

    23. DSDavid Senra1:00:45

        ... how I feel for, like, some of the people that I admire.

    24. JFJason Fried1:00:47

        Mm.

    25. DSDavid Senra1:00:47

        There's, like, something about them that is endearing. In fact, a friend of mine just texted me this morning, uh, my friend Lulu, she was listening to one of my old podcasts on, like, Napoleon's maxims on founders.

    26. JFJason Fried1:00:56

        Uh-huh.

    27. DSDavid Senra1:00:56

        Like episode three thirty-seven, if I remember correctly.

    28. JFJason Fried1:00:58

        Yeah.

    29. DSDavid Senra1:00:58

        And she was like, uh, she thought it was hilarious that I didn't edit out the fact that I was mispronouncing all these French names. [chuckles]

    30. JFJason Fried1:01:04

        Right.
15. 1:27:39 – 1:42:25

    Rick Rubin & Intuition-Driven Building

    1. DSDavid Senra1:27:39

       Did you read Rick Rubin's book, The Creative Act?

    2. JFJason Fried1:27:41

       Yes.

    3. DSDavid Senra1:27:42

       Do you think you're s- you think about things similarly to him?

    4. JFJason Fried1:27:45

       Yeah. When I read that book, I was like, "Uh, did I write this book?" [chuckles] Not like, really-

    5. DSDavid Senra1:27:51

       Yeah.

    6. JFJason Fried1:27:52

       He wrote the book.

    7. DSDavid Senra1:27:52

       Okay.

    8. JFJason Fried1:27:53

       But-

    9. DSDavid Senra1:27:53

       With-

    10. JFJason Fried1:27:53

        But the, but, but you know what I mean? Like the-

    11. DSDavid Senra1:27:54

        I just, I just read it, just an episode on it.

    12. JFJason Fried1:27:56

        Yeah. Yeah.

    13. DSDavid Senra1:27:56

        And when I hear you speak, I'm like-

    14. JFJason Fried1:27:58

        Yeah

    15. DSDavid Senra1:27:58

        ... you're, he, he's just like, "We live in a magic world. All this stuff's not uh," you have a, you have an intelligence that is not coming-

    16. JFJason Fried1:28:05

        Yes

    17. DSDavid Senra1:28:05

        ... from your brain. Uh, the world is beyond your comprehension. You have to be comfortable with, you know, ambiguity-

    18. JFJason Fried1:28:11

        Yes

    19. DSDavid Senra1:28:11

        ... and not knowing, and I just feel I hear that from you constantly.

    20. JFJason Fried1:28:15

        Uh, there's, like, Daoism in that, which is like not knowing, not trying, not doing. Like, there's just- there's thing- the world just works somehow in some magical way that we don't fully know. Um, and this isn't about getting metaphysical, actually.

    21. DSDavid Senra1:28:28

        So-

    22. JFJason Fried1:28:28

        I actually want to kind of bring it back, but, like, the ... I do think that there's- this is part of the da- like, make-it-up-as-you-go philosophy of business-

    23. DSDavid Senra1:28:34

        Mm-hmm

    24. JFJason Fried1:28:35

        ... which is just kind of going a bit more with the flow of where things go. This is the squirrel. Like, there's something very honest and real about that that works to me, and so it's, it's similar to what he's talking about, which is, like, things just happen. Um, you don't need to know exactly why all the time, like, but feel into them and understand them and pay attention to them and, and, um, and, and trust them and trust your intuition, your gut. Like, I'm a fully intuition and drut- and gut-driven drut, [chuckles] gut-driven entrepreneur, and I don't even, I don't even love that word, entrepreneur. Um, I make products. There has to be a business around it. I run the business, but I'm gut and intuition-driven. I don't look at numbers. I don't care about the numbers, as long as we're profitable, and I know there's enough blubber in the business, as we've talked a little bit about, [chuckles] to, to make-

    25. DSDavid Senra1:29:28

        No, no one's gonna get that.

    26. JFJason Fried1:29:29

        That's fair. [chuckles]

    27. DSDavid Senra1:29:29

        You, you have to talk about the blubber-

    28. JFJason Fried1:29:31

        Yeah.

    29. DSDavid Senra1:29:31

        ... and then I want to get back to intuition.

    30. JFJason Fried1:29:32

        Okay.
16. 1:42:25 – 1:50:29

    Lightning in a Bottle & Knowing When to Stop

    1. JFJason Fried1:42:25

       dangerous.

    2. DSDavid Senra1:42:25

       Is that why I've heard you say a few times that you don't think you, you could start, you could do Basecamp again today?

    3. JFJason Fried1:42:30

       Yeah, no way. No way. No way could I do it again.

    4. DSDavid Senra1:42:34

       The amount of friends that I have that sold a company-

    5. JFJason Fried1:42:37

       Yeah

    6. DSDavid Senra1:42:37

       ... and just thought, like, "I'm a, like, I'm good at company building."

    7. JFJason Fried1:42:40

       Yeah, yeah.

    8. DSDavid Senra1:42:40

       And then their second shot is not going well or-

    9. JFJason Fried1:42:43

       Right

    10. DSDavid Senra1:42:43

        ... ended in failure-

    11. JFJason Fried1:42:44

        Right

    12. DSDavid Senra1:42:44

        ... and really made them question who they are. I think that's actually an important thing to say. It's like, maybe, you know, you don't know why-

    13. JFJason Fried1:42:51

        Yeah

    14. DSDavid Senra1:42:52

        ... it actually succeeded.

    15. JFJason Fried1:42:53

        I think that's true. You don't know why it didn't work, and you don't know why it worked. [chuckles] I really think that's true.

    16. DSDavid Senra1:42:59

        But, but it's, people don't understand how devastating that is, where you sold a successful company. First of all, it's almost nearly impossible-

    17. JFJason Fried1:43:04

        Right

    18. DSDavid Senra1:43:04

        ... to build a successful company.

    19. JFJason Fried1:43:06

        Yes.

    20. DSDavid Senra1:43:06

        Like, there's just a tiny percentage of people-

    21. JFJason Fried1:43:07

        Lighting in a bottle

    22. DSDavid Senra1:43:08

        ... humans have, have-

    23. JFJason Fried1:43:09

        Yes

    24. DSDavid Senra1:43:09

        ... that have ever existed, have been able to accomplish-

    25. JFJason Fried1:43:11

        Yes

    26. DSDavid Senra1:43:11

        ... this goal.

    27. JFJason Fried1:43:11

        Yeah.

    28. DSDavid Senra1:43:11

        This is why I started one of the shows, 'cause I wanna celebrate the people that have done this and say, "Hey, if you want a role model, maybe we should..." You know, people that build companies and products that make other people's lives better, those are maybe good people to, like-

    29. JFJason Fried1:43:22

        Yeah

    30. DSDavid Senra1:43:22

        ... listen to hear speak. They probably know some shit if they've been doing it for multiple decades.
17. 1:50:29 – 1:53:58

    Defining Success: Pride in the Work

    1. JFJason Fried1:50:29

       Mm.

    2. DSDavid Senra1:50:29

       When, when you were talking about selling a company, and then maybe your next company in this entrepreneur's life is not as financially successful, as big-

    3. JFJason Fried1:50:38

       Right

    4. DSDavid Senra1:50:39

       ... as well-respected, I, I, I've never heard a great definition of, like, what, uh, like, what success means, and the best answer I ever heard to, like, "What is success to you?" actually came from Steve Jobs.

    5. JFJason Fried1:50:51

       Mm.

    6. DSDavid Senra1:50:51

       And it was beautifully simple. It was like: Did I make something I'm proud of?

    7. JFJason Fried1:50:54

       It's good.

    8. DSDavid Senra1:50:55

       Yeah.

    9. JFJason Fried1:50:55

       It's good.

    10. DSDavid Senra1:50:56

        And that's the way I think about it, is like, Nick, for your podcast, you need X amount of listeners. It's like, no, did I make something I'm proud of?

    11. JFJason Fried1:51:02

        Yeah. That's great. I think that's great. The other way-- the way I think about it is, would I wanna do this again?

    12. DSDavid Senra1:51:07

        The next day?

    13. JFJason Fried1:51:09

        Just this, whatever this was. Like, would I wanna do it again? If the answer is yes, then it was successful. Like, I wouldn't want it... If, if, if I hurt myself, I wouldn't wanna do that again. If I was- wasn't proud of what I said, I wouldn't want... Like, it's a very-- it's the same thing like, knowing what I know now, would I hire this person again? It's the same question. Like, would I wanna do this, whatever I just did, again? If so, it's successful, and I think that that's enough of a definition for me. It's not about money. It's not about, it's not about any of those things. It's like, would I wanna do it again? Would I wanna spend my time doing that again, playing replay? And, and, uh, I know it wouldn't be the same outcome, but the experience of it would be different, but it would still be the same trajectory. I'd like to, like, do that thing again.

    14. DSDavid Senra1:51:50

        You were speaking earlier about, like, humans' propensity to take something simple and make it complex. Even though we crave simplicity, we abhor complexity, we kind of trend in the def-

    15. JFJason Fried1:51:59

        Yeah

    16. DSDavid Senra1:51:59

        ... the, the, the, this, the trajectory of making things just more complex. I don't know why when you were speaking, this came to my mind, but one of my favorite, um, podcast episodes ever was, uh, back in two thousand twenty-three, Rick Rubin interviewed Jimmy Iovine.

    17. JFJason Fried1:52:12

        Mm-hmm.

    18. DSDavid Senra1:52:12

        And they talked about one of the first... Rick Rubin tells the story of the first time he met Jimmy Iovine. Jimmy's already a legend. He's ten years older than Rick, so he's like, was well-known, and Rick plays-- he's there with some other music executive, and Rick plays him this song he just produced. And he said so- Jimmy said, Jimmy said something that changed, like, his life-

    19. JFJason Fried1:52:29

        Mm

    20. DSDavid Senra1:52:29

        ... or the way he thought about things. He goes, "Oh, I wish I could still make something that simple."

    21. JFJason Fried1:52:33

        Mm. Well said.

    22. DSDavid Senra1:52:33

        And Rick's like, and Rick's like: "What do you mean? I'm sure you can. [chuckles] Like, you're better at this than I am. You have a lot more experience than I do. You've been in doing this a lot longer.

    23. JFJason Fried1:52:41

        Yeah.

    24. DSDavid Senra1:52:41

        Of course, you can make something simple." And the point was that you don't know what you don't know.

    25. JFJason Fried1:52:45

        Mm-hmm.

    26. DSDavid Senra1:52:46

        And so he made this beautiful, simple thing, and then you tend to, like, think you need to add more things to it and make it more complex-

    27. JFJason Fried1:52:51

        Yeah

    28. DSDavid Senra1:52:51

        ... where Jimmy just, again, like, that's just the way he is when you're with him. He just... He'll say one sentence, he just gets right to, like, the heart of the issue.

    29. JFJason Fried1:52:57

        Yeah, it sounds like an incredible thing to have, like a skill to have, basically. I, I, yeah, I think, um, that is the trend is, it is, it is to just to, to add more things, I mean, naturally. And part of it is because you feel like, well, you people get bored of things, and so they have to kind of expand the things, or, like, there's expectations to, uh, do more, and people put a lot of pressure on themselves as business owners, or they take money from the outside world, and they have to grow a certain amount because they have to return the, the investment. And all of a sudden, they've, they've unmoored themselves. They've lost, uh, connection with why they started this in the first place. They're no longer running their own business. They're running someone else's business. They're now-- they just created a job for themselves, working for someone else. Um, that's what can happen when you, when you, when you just, like... when you've just taken-- w- when you've taken the simple thing that you had and added a layer to it, that just blows it up in a different direction. Like, in some cases-

    30. DSDavid Senra1:53:47

        It makes it worse.
18. 1:53:58 – 1:59:23

    Independence Through Profitability

    1. JFJason Fried1:53:58

       that works. This is optionality. Let me, let me get into this. Like, my, my feeling in general is that businesses, like... Okay, the most important thing to me is, in business, is independence, which is profitability is also the same, actually the same thing. As long as I make more money than I spend, I can stay in business. That's independence. Independence is also no one can tell us what to do. We actually feel obligated to do things nobody would allow us to do. That's, like, a thing David and I talk about all the time. Like: "We should do this. No one would let us do this. Let's do it!" You know, that- that's, like, the exciting stuff for us, is stuff we're not supposed to be doing. That, to me, is, like, just a big part of it, and I think what ends up happening is, this is, like, so funny because, like, there's no, there's no dry cleaner who's raising VC money, right? There's no pizza shop is raising VC money. So most businesses in the world are not like this. But in my industry, like, a lot of people s- have an idea and go raise money, and the moment they go raise money, they've cut off almost every option. They think they've expanded their experience and their opportunities, but they've cut off almost every possible off-ramp outcome because now they have to be a big business or they fail. That's it. That's one option. I mean, some people become very rich doing that, like, if that's what they want to do. But most people blow right through what would've been a good business and is now not good enough for someone else. And once it's not good enough for someone else, that's gotta be a shitty place to be as an entrepreneur, thinking that you just gave up this thing that was actually a good business, but it's not good enough anymore. And you can't get more money. You built a business to raise more money. You built a business that needs more money. Now you've gotta lay people off. Now it just falls apart, and it's just, like, over because you're-- you have no options except one. I'm a big fan of optionality. We could go IPO. I don't want to. We could raise money. I don't want to. We could raise more money. I don't want to. We could sell to PE. I don't want to. Like, we could quit. I don't want to. Like, these are all options that we have, and keep going for as long as we want, as, as long as the business survives. Like, we can do that, right? That is gold to me, is optionality, and, and I'd like to see more people think that way, 'cause I think it'll benefit them, and, and not cut themselves off when even they think there's, like, this, this mirage that, like, "Oh, I got a bunch of money, and, like, I can do anything now." No, you can't. You can do one thing: build a big business.... That's not a lot of things.

    2. DSDavid Senra1:56:11

       You feel- I feel you have, you're attracted to, like, timeless things. You have two, uh, tweets, one of them just went viral, and it, it's related to, like, this s- this, you know, basically craving simplicity and abhorring complexity.

    3. JFJason Fried1:56:27

       Mm.

    4. DSDavid Senra1:56:27

       One was about, was it the design of a Rolex over time, and they just start... Was it, that the brand of watch? It was some kind of watch.

    5. JFJason Fried1:56:34

       Mm-hmm. Yeah.

    6. DSDavid Senra1:56:34

       Which brand was it? Mm-hmm.

    7. JFJason Fried1:56:35

       It might have been Rolex. It might have been... I mean, there's a few.

    8. DSDavid Senra1:56:37

       Okay.

    9. JFJason Fried1:56:37

       Could have been, like, an Omega Speedmaster. They've just maintained the same design. N- Porsche 911, similar.

    10. DSDavid Senra1:56:42

        But you, you, you were showing pictures from, like, I think, let's just say it was Rolex.

    11. JFJason Fried1:56:45

        Yeah. Yeah.

    12. DSDavid Senra1:56:45

        Look at this Rolex design in 1960.

    13. JFJason Fried1:56:47

        Oh, yeah.

    14. DSDavid Senra1:56:48

        Basically perfect.

    15. JFJason Fried1:56:49

        Yeah.

    16. DSDavid Senra1:56:49

        Has everything I need, nothing I don't.

    17. JFJason Fried1:56:51

        Yeah.

    18. DSDavid Senra1:56:51

        Look at the updated version-

    19. JFJason Fried1:56:52

        Yeah

    20. DSDavid Senra1:56:52

        ... whatever, 2010.

    21. JFJason Fried1:56:54

        Yeah.

    22. DSDavid Senra1:56:54

        Look at all the other stuff they added.

    23. JFJason Fried1:56:56

        Right.

    24. DSDavid Senra1:56:57

        Why are you drawn to the first?

    25. JFJason Fried1:56:58

        Well, I'm drawn to the first- n- by the way, I don't think the new one is bad. So, like, it's just that what attracts me is the purity of the first one, because that is the purest form of the idea, and I love ideas and insights. Someone had an insight to design a watch that looked like that, and then from there, everyone based their designs off of that initial thing. But there was a time when that was the first thing that looked like that. That gets me going. I just... Like, for example, like, yeah, you take a, a Rolex Daytona today, and you look back at the first one in 1963. To me, the one in 1963, not just 'cause it's older, it's better, in my opinion, aesthetically, because it's the purest form of the concept, of the idea. Everything else from there has been layered on, because they need to sell more, and they need to come up with a new version and a new model, and this is what happens. Like, they wouldn't- couldn't still sell that first version. That's, like, not the way the world works. You have to keep making new stuff, right?

    26. DSDavid Senra1:57:53

        Purity is the way... That's the word that comes to mind, purity.

    27. JFJason Fried1:57:56

        Uh, purity and-

    28. DSDavid Senra1:57:57

        Interesting

    29. JFJason Fried1:57:58

        ... like, the, the pure idea, like, the pure form of the thing.

    30. DSDavid Senra1:58:02

        Could you use the word essence or no?
19. 1:59:23 – 2:04:11

    When Tech Adds Friction Instead of Value

    1. DSDavid Senra1:59:23

       tweet-

    2. JFJason Fried1:59:23

       Yes

    3. DSDavid Senra1:59:23

       ... where you kind of laid out this huge [chuckles] essay about smart electronics.

    4. JFJason Fried1:59:29

       Oh, God! My parents were visiting, um, for a couple months, so we rented them a house down the street, so they had some more room. That's... They like the room. So we rent them a house, uh, and, uh, it's a brand-new construction house, so we're like, "Oh, it's nice. There'll be no issues. You know, no, no leaks and no issues." So we get in the house and like, like most new construction, it's got digital shit everywhere, right? Like, the thermostats aren't like thermostats that you can just, like, turn anymore. They're like touch screens. And some of those are good, like Nest is good.

    5. DSDavid Senra1:59:57

       Yeah.

    6. JFJason Fried1:59:57

       This doesn't have Nest. Like, Nest is a great product. Um, it's funny, 'cause it's a great product based on the original Honeywell design that Ri- that Dreyfuss designed. I forget his first name. The round dial. Nest just updated that-

    7. DSDavid Senra2:00:10

       Yeah

    8. JFJason Fried2:00:10

       ... 'cause it's such a good design. These are, like, rectangular and big and have the weather forecast on them and, like- [laughing] ... or whatever. But actually, the thermostats don't. The, that's the alarm panel that has a... It's, like, a huge iPad screen. Anyway, screens and screens, and everything's a touch screen. Everything's a big, black, glass thing with too much stuff on it, 'cause you gotta fill up the screen. You can't just have a tiny screen. You gotta have a big screen, and if you have a big screen, you put stuff on it, so you put stuff on it. Um, a dishwasher couldn't be used the first time without an app to register it. So, like, my mom wants to do the dishes, like, they don't work. She had to call the house manager guy. He had to come down. He's like, "Why doesn't this work?" "I plugged it in, and, oh, there's an app. I gotta get an app." What?

    9. DSDavid Senra2:00:48

       You're adding and not making it better.

    10. JFJason Fried2:00:49

        To do the dishes.

    11. DSDavid Senra2:00:50

        Yeah.

    12. JFJason Fried2:00:50

        Exactly. That is- y- your insight is exactly right. Adding it, not doing- not making it better. The alarm panel is slow and laggy. The, the thermostats are, um, like, they say a number on them, and you're like, "Is that the current temperature or the temperature I want it to be?" Like, I changed the temperature, but then there's a schedule which I can't quickly simply modify because it's, like, in this little menu structure with this little laggy UI, and you're like, w- "Who... Does anyone use this?" Like, the people who built this certainly don't have this in their house. There's no way. [laughing]

    13. DSDavid Senra2:01:18

        [laughing]

    14. JFJason Fried2:01:18

        There's no way they have this in their house, right? Th- this is not a product built by people who are using the product they're building. This is a product built to specifications. Someone imagined this. There's this whatever. I don't know- I don't actually know how that happens. I, I'm baffled by how it happens. The TVs, you know, now, like, you know, and I don't... This is not like... I'm not, like, a Luddite, old-timer thing, but, like, you don't turn a TV on anymore. You boot the TV up-

    15. DSDavid Senra2:01:39

        [chuckles]

    16. JFJason Fried2:01:39

        ... and it takes, like, 12 seconds to get a menu before you can-- before, like, again, like, there were some things that were better before.

    17. DSDavid Senra2:01:46

        Yeah.

    18. JFJason Fried2:01:46

        You turn the TV on, and the channel that you were on would be on. Like, [chuckles] that was good! Like, you actually... It's amazing, like, you can't do that today. Like, that's actually not even a possible thing. Like, you turn it on, and you're back to some, like, menu with all the options again. It's like, how do we go backwards? I call this the great regression. Thermostats have gotten worse. Nest maybe is an exception. I'll give, grant them that. Good product. A really good product. Um-... A big alarm panels, a lot of panels, a lot of third-party products with big glass screens, bad. Touchscreens, often bad. In fact, car manufacturers, um, with the exception of Tesla, because Tesla is, is outstanding, but everyone else who put a bunch of screens in their cars, they're starting to move back to dials again and buttons again because people are like, "This sucks!" Software is hard, and a big piece of glass, there's no tactile feedback. I can't do it, and I have to look at it. There's no muscle memory 'cause I'm not sure I'm confirming what I'm doing. Like, these are bad things. So the y- technology can get worse, and then it can slide back, and hopefully it can get better again, and new lessons can be learned. But it was an, a revelation to me to go into a new home with the state-of-the-art stuff and see how backwards it was. And I'm in technology. I'm not like... Again, I'm not Luddite. I'm not afraid of this stuff. I get it. But to see how bad it's gotten, like the light switches, like literally, w- [scoffs] when we rented the place, my, my agent, who, who found it and whatever and did the negotiations and stuff, he's like: "Hey, they wanna, like, do a walk-through with you." And I go, "Cool, I'll be there tomorrow." And I thought the walk-through was gonna be just like: "Here's the house." But it was like: "No, here's how you use the lights." You're like, I have to what? [chuckles] What? Like, the best interface ever was, like, the switch.

    19. DSDavid Senra2:03:30

        It's on, off.

    20. JFJason Fried2:03:31

        It works. On, off, beautiful! It's almost like the way I see it is, like, that has not been discovered yet, 'cause had it... [chuckles] I mean, it had been, but then it had been forgotten. This is like an old technology from the Romans or something. Like, how do they build concrete so well? Like, we still don't know today how the Romans built concrete so well, that lasted so long. Like, there's a lost art there. I feel like the light switch is a lost art. It's just, like, gone, and it will be rediscovered one day, and people will: "Oh, my God, this is so much better than this, like, damn technical shit," you know? There's a room and a place for all sorts of advancements, but there also are regressions, and it's unfortunate that, that the industry I'm in is the one that tends to, to sell many of these to,

20. 2:04:11 – 2:08:14

    Ruthless Editing & What Never Changes

    1. JFJason Fried2:04:11

       to people.

    2. DSDavid Senra2:04:12

       It makes me think of, again, we're-- I'm gonna tie this back to Rick Rubin-

    3. JFJason Fried2:04:14

       Yeah

    4. DSDavid Senra2:04:14

       ... since we've been talking about him a lot. He has this concept of a ruth-

    5. JFJason Fried2:04:17

       Rick just has candles in his house, I'm guessing. He just doesn't- [chuckles]

    6. DSDavid Senra2:04:19

       I, I don't know.

    7. JFJason Fried2:04:20

       I don't know.

    8. DSDavid Senra2:04:20

       These guys are close with him.

    9. JFJason Fried2:04:21

       Okay. [chuckles]

    10. DSDavid Senra2:04:21

        I'll ask him. But, uh, he has this idea of ruthless edit, and so he's like: "Okay, you made thirty songs for your album?"

    11. JFJason Fried2:04:28

        Yeah, yeah.

    12. DSDavid Senra2:04:28

        He's like: "Pick the five that you absolutely can't live without."

    13. JFJason Fried2:04:32

        Yeah.

    14. DSDavid Senra2:04:32

        "Okay, so now we have a five-song album. It's a perfect album. Maybe it needs some more." So he's like: "But then we decide, out of the twenty-five left, before we add number six and seven, did it make it better?"

    15. JFJason Fried2:04:43

        Yes.

    16. DSDavid Senra2:04:43

        Going back to you're adding to it-

    17. JFJason Fried2:04:45

        Yeah

    18. DSDavid Senra2:04:45

        ... but you're not making it better.

    19. JFJason Fried2:04:46

        Yeah.

    20. DSDavid Senra2:04:47

        I think the, the through line here is you're, you, you see this, like, timeless design of the nineteen sixty-three Daytona.

    21. JFJason Fried2:04:52

        Yeah.

    22. DSDavid Senra2:04:53

        And you're like: "There's nothing to add to it."

    23. JFJason Fried2:04:55

        Yeah.

    24. DSDavid Senra2:04:55

        Y- there's nothing else that's going to make it better, so just leave it.

    25. JFJason Fried2:04:58

        Yeah.

    26. DSDavid Senra2:04:58

        It is perfect. Uh, y- I know you're a big fan of Porsche.

    27. JFJason Fried2:05:01

        Yeah.

    28. DSDavid Senra2:05:01

        I, I don't-- I th- it seems like the silhouette has f- it's very similar.

    29. JFJason Fried2:05:05

        Yeah.

    30. DSDavid Senra2:05:06

        In fact, here in Malibu, do you remember going up to PCH? There was that burnt-out-
21. 2:08:14 – 2:17:28

    Longevity as the Moat

    1. DSDavid Senra2:08:14

       Yeah. This is why I think people that have run companies for as long as you have are so rare, and it's why... If you look at the first few guests, I bet you the aver- if you took of the average length of time the person has been working in their business, it's probably, like, thirty years.... It's just like-

    2. JFJason Fried2:08:26

       Yeah.

    3. DSDavid Senra2:08:26

       I'm obsessed- You said you like old people.

    4. JFJason Fried2:08:28

       I-

    5. DSDavid Senra2:08:28

       People always say I'm obsessed with old people, which is funny.

    6. JFJason Fried2:08:30

       Yeah.

    7. DSDavid Senra2:08:30

       But I'm just not obsessed with old people, I'm obsessed with people that do things for a long-

    8. JFJason Fried2:08:33

       Longevity

    9. DSDavid Senra2:08:33

       ... long period of time. This is where me and you will actually have a disagreement, where you're like, "I don't work hard."

    10. JFJason Fried2:08:38

        Mm.

    11. DSDavid Senra2:08:38

        Do you remember talking about this last night?

    12. JFJason Fried2:08:39

        Yeah, yeah, I do.

    13. DSDavid Senra2:08:39

        And I was like, "Jason, [chuckles] Jason." And I was like, "We added up."

    14. JFJason Fried2:08:43

        Yeah.

    15. DSDavid Senra2:08:43

        So yeah, this is where, like, I would argue that you work harder than most people that have ever lived, you just have spread it across 27 years. So I literally pulled out my phone last night-

    16. JFJason Fried2:08:53

        You did

    17. DSDavid Senra2:08:53

        ... and I was like-

    18. JFJason Fried2:08:54

        Did the math.

    19. DSDavid Senra2:08:54

        Yeah, I was like, you were like, "But I only work 40 hours a week." I go, "Yeah, 40 hours a week-

    20. JFJason Fried2:08:58

        Right

    21. DSDavid Senra2:08:58

        ... over 27 years,"

    22. JFJason Fried2:08:59

        Right.

    23. DSDavid Senra2:08:59

        "whatever that number is, how many..." I think it's 54,000 hours or whatever the number is.

    24. JFJason Fried2:09:03

        Yeah, it's somewhere that.

    25. DSDavid Senra2:09:03

        And my, my q-

    26. JFJason Fried2:09:04

        Yeah

    27. DSDavid Senra2:09:05

        ... question back to you is, like, how many people have worked on the same thing for 54,000 hours?

    28. JFJason Fried2:09:10

        Yeah. I don't know. [chuckles]

    29. DSDavid Senra2:09:13

        Tiny.

    30. JFJason Fried2:09:13

        Yeah, I mean-

Episode duration: 2:21:21