Freedcamp CEO/Co-Founder Angel Grablev Shares the Company’s Origins and Methods for Project Management – The Busy Creator Podcast 63

Angel Grablev (@AngelGrablev) is the CEO and Co-Founder of Freedcamp, an online project management and collaboration application. Angel began Freedcamp as a side project, but has since built a global distributed team, and now works full-time to improve project management for thousands of customers.

Our conversation covers Angel’s previous work as a web developer, Freedcamp’s origins and intents, as well as the trouble faced in conventional project management. We also discuss management style and company culture more generally, as it relates to measured results and keeping your co-workers informed.

Sign up for Freedcamp, for free, at Freedcamp.com

Show Notes & Links

Freedcamp is a collaboration system which helps any team work together on any sort of project.

Prescott learned about Freedcamp from Bryan Orr, when he appeared on Episode 31 – Project Management Tools & Collaboration Software

FTP, the best way to share files not that long ago

Jack Johnson

Lenny Kravitz

Angel’s former employer introduced him to Basecamp

UCSB – University of California at Santa Barbara

“No team is alike.”

—Angel Grablev

 Tweet This

Angel got the idea for Freedcamp after attempting to organize a camping trip on email

“Underdo The Competition” — Basecamp’s tagline

iPhone 1, started with basic apps, but the App Store added tons of functionality

“No one is interested in paying money to organize a camping trip.”

—Angel Grablev

 Tweet This

Freedcamp boasted 30,000 users in its first year

Some use cases include hurricane clean-up efforts, parent-teacher associations, university students

ADHD & Dyslexia led Angel to becoming a web developer with design skills

Angel built the first HTML5/CSS3 framework, 52 Framework

Santa Barbara City College 

Freedcamp’s team lives in California, Australia, Ukraine, and Netherlands

Eating your own dog food

GitHub

Agile Development

Scrum

Waterfall

AMC, users of Freedcamp

A gaming studio used Freedcamp’s Wiki application to plan an entire game

The Wall, a social, less formal place to have conversations within Freedcamp

Reddit

Animated GIFs & Emoji — adding flavour to group chatter

“The biggest gift I have is the people I work with.”

—Angel Grablev

 Tweet This

The One Thing by Gary Keller & Jay Papasan On Amazon and On Audible

Angel broke the daily habit of drinking a Monster Energy Drink each morning

bacn, the newsletters and other stuff in your inbox that isn’t quite spam

Ramit Sethi‘s example of Flossing One Tooth

“Take one step, everything else will take care of itself.”

—Angel Grablev

 Tweet This

 Angel Grablev on GitHub

 Angel Grablev on Twitter

 Angel Grablev on Facebook

 Angel Grablev on Instagram

 Freedcamp on Twitter

 Freedcamp on Facebook

 Freedcamp on YouTube

Tools

Freedcamp

Gmail

Google Docs

Basecamp

Jira from Atlassian

Trello or Asana, competitors to Freedcamp

Adobe Photoshop

PNGHat & CSSHat, plugins for Photoshop

XAMPP, to run local servers

JQuery & Angular.js frameworks

Skitch, for screenshots

Sketch, for interface design

Fireworks, InDesign, for vector-based design

Techniques

Reduce email; get everyone on a project mgmt. app as soon as possible

Don’t build a huge feature list; go for simple and easy to use

Think about where your product can grow

Find a technical co-founder; don’t suffer alone with skills you lack.

Go for 80% functionality and create a workaround for the final 20%

Be flexible with how you use any tool

Use [brackets] or #hashtags as a DIY way to have tags/categories

Create a catch-all “bucket” of to-dos for your company. It deters meetings & email.

Discover what works best for your team

Write down decisions made in [daily] meetings

Skim, don’t read, email. Just look for critical things.

Pause and look for the “most important thing”

Break down a project into two-week increments

Habits

Track time to get an accurate picture of your week, and to send invoices

Be social with your co-workers on the Wall

Establish a daily standup meeting to discuss what you’re working on

Follow-up and share results for projects or tasks

Continually gather ideas from your team

Use three monitors for Photoshop, Code, and Browsers

Quit Caffeine (be prepared for headaches)

Avoid email first thing; instead do your most important work first

Try Audible.com Free for 30-Days

Visit BusyCreatorBook.com for your free trial

Get Remote: Office Not Required by Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson as a free audiobook

Get The Episode

Download The Busy Creator Podcast, episode 63 (MP3, 52:35, 25.3 MB)

Download The Busy Creator Podcast, episode 63 (OGG, 52:35, 26.3 MB)

Subscribe to Get New Episodes

Subscribe to The Busy Creator Podcast on iTunes