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My First MillionMy First Million

The Cashflow King: “Here’s How I Do It”, Negotiating w/ Jeff Bezos, Elon’s Cracked Rocket

Use Sam's secret growth sauce: get more traffic for your biz with HubSpot's Free Landing Page Builder 🔥 https://clickhubspot.com/pgt Episode 564: Shaan Puri (https://twitter.com/ShaanVP) and Sam Parr (https://twitter.com/theSamParr) talk to Jason Fried about his 6-Week Sprint playbook, how he’s planning for the end of subscription revenue, and what it’s like to have Jeff Bezos as an investor. — Show Notes: (0:00) Intro (3:15) Long term planning is a fantasy (8:13) The 6-Week Sprint Playbook (14:12) Using 'no' as a precision instrument (16:02) Does Jason regret selling We Work Remotely? (18:04) Cash flow king (23:48) Taking money from Jeff Bezos (31:16) Who does Jason admire? (35:00) Non-recurring revenue is back (38:51) The Founder Letter Launch strategy (45:45) Campfire v. Slack (52:28) Pile on the wackier stuff early (in life and business) (55:13) Taking financial risks that don't put you at risk (58:58) Where does Jason spend his profits? — Links: • Jason on Twitter - https://twitter.com/jasonfried • Rework - https://tinyurl.com/38mfc66n • 37Signals - https://37signals.com/ • Basecamp - https://basecamp.com/ • We Work Remotely - https://weworkremotely.com/ • Once - http://once.com/ — Check Out Shaan's Stuff: • Shaan's weekly email - https://www.shaanpuri.com • Visit https://www.somewhere.com/mfm to hire global talent (like Shaan does) and get $500 off for being an MFM listener. Hire developers, assistants, marketing pros, sales teams and more for 80% less than their US equivalents. — Check Out Sam's Stuff: • Hampton - https://www.joinhampton.com/ • Ideation Bootcamp - https://www.ideationbootcamp.co/ • Copy That - https://copythat.com • Hampton Wealth Survey - https://joinhampton.com/wealth 💰 Pitch your startup for a shot at a $1M investment with Sam Parr as the MC https://clickhubspot.com/pitch My First Million is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by The HubSpot Podcast Network // Production by Arie Desormeaux // Editing by Ezra Bakker Trupiano

Shaan PurihostSam ParrhostJason Friedguest
Mar 20, 20241h 5mWatch on YouTube ↗

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At a glance

WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT

Jason Fried on Profitable Simplicity, Bezos, Founder Letters, and Owning Software

  1. Jason Fried says 37signals avoids long-term plans and goals, keeping profitability each year as its only target and working in roughly six-week chunks after a long, loose exploration phase.
  2. He recounts selling a small slice of equity to Jeff Bezos in 2006 to take personal risk off the table, describing Bezos as an unshakably optimistic, curious person who quickly grasped Campfire.
  3. Fried describes the Once initiative, which sells installable software like Campfire for a one-time $299 and pushes back on what he calls the church of recurring revenue.
  4. He explains his founder-letter approach, which depends on a genuine point of view, a mysterious opening line, and resonance with readers, and he admits Slack beat Campfire with better onboarding and bots.
  5. He describes a conservative financial life with index funds, annual profit distributions, low costs, a failed $5 million ad experiment, and a refusal to take risks that put him at risk.

IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING

5 ideas

Plans lock you into old thinking

Fried says he wants to act on what he thinks now rather than what he thought months ago, so the company works in six-week chunks and adjusts constantly.

Profit is the only goal that matters

37signals looks at one big pile at year-end and asks whether it earned more than it spent. It has been profitable for 25 years on a GAAP, net-profit basis.

Explore long, then commit short

Fried says new products may get around six months of wandering, driven by motivation and gravity, before the team commits and works in time-boxed chunks. They also give up on ideas that don't hold interest.

Take risks that don't put you at risk

Fried sold some shares to Bezos to take personal risk off the table, invests outside the business in index funds, and practices negative visualization about the company failing.

Subscription pricing can be obscene for commodities

Fried argues that commodity software like chat is priced like a luxury, so Once offers a $299 one-time purchase with code access, while Basecamp caps pricing at $299 a month.

WORDS WORTH SAVING

5 quotes

No is a very precise, you know, precision instrument, because you get to evaluate a thing and say no to it, and you have the whole spectrum of everything else that's possible available to you at that point.

— Jason Fried

Yes is a blunt force instrument that kind of damages a lot of things essentially.

— Jason Fried

I'll take risks, but I don't take risks that put me at risk. That is not an interesting risk for me.

— Jason Fried

The public doesn't demand unusual things. The public demands normal stuff. It's on you to find the unusual things, the things they didn't consider, but once they see, they go, "Of course, where's this been my whole life?"

— Jason Fried

What keeps me up at night when I am up at night because of work, it's excitement. Like I can't wait to start working tomorrow on this thing that we're working on.

— Jason Fried

Rejecting long-term plans and goalsSix-week cycles and wandering explorationSaying no as a precision toolBezos investment and negotiationOnce and non-recurring softwareFounder letter launch strategyLow-cost, high-margin cash flow

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