Welcome to Remarkable By Design, where we share the stories of people building world class brands, products & experiences, and explore the choices they made along the way to create truly remarkable things.

On this episode I’m joined by Diogo Ferreira, the Founder and Owner of Tuga Pastries. If you’re in Sydney like me, you know that Tuga are so much more than a bakery. They’re at the heart of what feels like a movement, bringing Portuguese culinary experiences to Australia. Today, people on the coastal walk in Bondi, Bronte & Clovelly, as well as across the inner west, city and even Wollongong, are trading their croissants to don a coffee and Portuguese tart combo on their morning walk. 

Diogo and Tuga has an incredible story that we get to in just a few moments - a personal favourite detail is that Diogo’s father travelled from Portugal to Australia with his secret pastel del nata, portuguese tart recipe, handwritten on paper, however Diogo never learnt how to make pastel de nata from his father, but rather through a few years of testing, reading blogs, old recipes and speaking to his relatives. Today I hear through the grapevine that only 3 people know the incredible recipe Diogo landed on.

I’m fascinated to understand how Tuga has built such a beloved local brand, how they stay ahead in an industry where everyday is game day, how they sell and distribute b2b, what it's like growing a business with strong family origins, how they test and experiment with new pastries and offerings, the importance of training, but most importantly how they have contributed to this interesting cultural phenomenon.

You can find Diogo at Tuga in Alexandria, Clovelly and Marrickville (soon):

Support the podcast and get access to exclusive snippets and content by following Remarkable By Design below:

⁠⁠https://linktr.ee/remarkablebydesign

Welcome to Remarkable By Design, where we share the stories of people building world class brands, products & experiences, and explore the choices they made along the way to create truly remarkable things.

On this episode I’m joined by Dan Anisse, the Co-founder and CEO of Relume, a product & community that helps designers & now devs create high quality websites faster.

Dan lives and breathes start ups. Before Relume, Dan founded two businesses, Foenix & Lumio, the latter got acquired, but today he is truly writing the most exciting chapters of his story building a brand synonymous with design and having recently turned down $35m dollars to stay the course. Dan has built a world class team of 11 releasing incredible products month on month, that if you didn’t know better, you would expect 100 people to be behind. 

I’m fascinated by the way Dan and the team have expertly curated a tight knit community to help shape the best version of their product, they’ve bootstrapped their business, by building a remarkable product and finding interesting angles of growth and in my eyes, they have one of the best use cases of AI in the market, that has leveraged all of the value they have delivered to their design persona to date, and how Relume went global on day one. 

Where you can find Dan:

Support the podcast and get access to exclusive snippets and content by following Remarkable By Design below:

⁠https://linktr.ee/remarkablebydesign

Welcome to Remarkable By Design, where we share the stories of people building world class brands, products & experiences, and explore the choices they made along the way to create truly remarkable things.

On this episode I’m joined by Jason Fried, the Co-founder and CEO of ⁠37Signals⁠, which makes ⁠Basecamp⁠, ⁠Hey⁠ & ⁠Once⁠.

Jason sees himself as a bit of an outcast of the industry, but his point of view is considered and refreshing, having built a company that is unique to the ones you typically see in tech.

They have no investors, no board, no plans to go public or sell their business. They’ve made a profit every year they have been in business and now generate 10s of millions in profit each year. They don’t spend money on marketing or sales to acquire customers. They trust their gut and intuition over being data driven. They consistently spot trends, share their point of view and go early. And, they serve over 100,000 customers and counting with an intentionally small team of 75 who share in the spoils of 37Signals success.

I love how so many of the things Jason and his team do are shared openly for the world to learn from and use, whether that be the 37Signals they stand for as a business, the 5 books he has co-authored, Shape Up the way of working methodology they created, or in the creation of Ruby on Rails, a coding framework used by tech companies all around the world.

-

Where you can find Jason:

-

Support the podcast and get access to exclusive snippets and content by following Remarkable By Design below:

https://linktr.ee/remarkablebydesign

-

In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Episode highlights

(00:54) Introduction

(03:00) The backstory to the 37 signals

(08:02) Richard Feynman, Antoni Gaudi & David Ogilvy

(11:29) Applying inspiration & 'fully considered'

(18:02) Wandering, wondering & intent

(20:18) How Jason wanders through sketching

(21:50) Feeling & communicating 'being onto something'

(26:12) The importance of independence

(30:19) Profitability is incredibly mainstream

(33:15) How the tech narrative is changing

(36:22) How sharing publically is core to 37signals

(41:20) How to not spend on sales & marketing

(44:12) The power of constraint

(48:20) Revisiting "solved" problems

(56:02) Paying for software Once

(01:00:53) The right combination & overall experience

Welcome to Remarkable By Design podcast, where we share the stories of people building world class brands, products & experiences.