Whenever you start something, especially a business it's important to know why you're doing what you're doing. Having strong opinions, standing for something, can help tremendously when it comes to making crucial decisions and creating super-fans.

Show Notes

• 03:27 - Embrace Constraints (Getting Real)
• 04:09 - Signal v. Noise
• 04:18 - It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work
• 04:44 - Signal v. Noise is closed.
• 08:24 - Citizens United v. FEC (Wikipedia)
• 09:31 - Oracle
• 11:07 - Pinkberry
• 11:35 - Pinkberry sold to Cold Stone owner (CNBC)
• 12:38 - Basecamp Launches (Signal v. Noise)
• 14:38 - r/faxmachines (reddit)
• 22:07 - Badass: Making Users Awesome - Kathy Sierra (Bookshop.org)
• 25:53 - Tesla Model S Plaid

"There're just not enough hours in the day!" This is probably the most common excuse people give for not starting something. Well, guess what. There most definitely are a few hours you could probably squeeze in here and there. And, we're not saying you have to quit your day job to do it!

Show Notes

• 02:10 - Fortnite
• 02:21 - Tetris Effect
• 07:57 - Set Boundaries (Shape Up)
• 09:37 - Jerry Maguire "Who's Coming With Me?" (YouTube)
• 15:13 - How Millennials Became The Burnout Generation - Anne Helen Peterson (BuzzFeed News)
• 19:40 - Gary Vaynerchuk
• 23:43 - Stripe

This week Jason and David discuss the essay titled "Start Making Something." It's only when you start building something the real insights come. Until then, all you have is just an idea. We also talk about Stanley Kubrick films and Jason introduces groundbreaking concepts like perforated pizza and "The Mysterious Cat."

Show Notes

• 06:04 - Getting Real
• 17:22 - Collections
• 20:44 - Stanley Kubrick (IMDb)
• 20:57 - 2001: A Space Odyssey (IMDb)
• 21:10 - Music Box Theater
• 22:10 - The Shining (IMDb)
• 22:24 - The reason why Stephen King hated Stanley Kubrick film 'The Shining' (Far Out)

Basecamp was originally designed as a way to manage 37signals' client work and its success can be credited to the fact that it was designed to scratch a very specific itch by the people with that were itching. Now, we're not saying that building something for others is necessarily a bad way to go about things, but building for your own needs has huge advantages.

Show Notes

•  06:15 - "The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste. They have absolutely no taste. And I don't mean that in a small way, I mean that in a big way, in the sense that they don't think of original ideas, and they don't bring much culture into their products." - Steve Jobs in Triumph of the Nerds (PBS)
• 12:53 - Hotwire
• 13:57 - Not invented here (Wikipedia)
• 14:26 - Mary Kay Ash (Wikipedia)
• 18:12 - Second-system effect (Wikipedia)
• 21:35 - Minimum viable product (Wikipedia)
• 21:42 - Making sense of MVP - Henrik Kniberg
• 23:55 - The Homer (Simpsons Wiki)

This week we discuss the importance of doing meaningful work. At least meaningful to you. What you do is your legacy, but that doesn't necessarily mean you have to change the world. You just need to be doing something that changes YOUR world.

Show Notes

• 03:28 - Bullshit Jobs: A Theory - David Graeber (Bookshop.org)
• 04:37 - Drudge Report
• 04:38 - craigslist
• 05:01 - Flip Video (Wikipedia)
• 05:29 - iPod touch
• 07:46 - Rails
• 08:55 - Ta-da List
• 11:45 - Stoicism (Wikipedia)
• 13:47 - Aol.
• 16:44 - stripe
• 17:31 - Braintree
• 18:07 - shopify
• 19:01 - Paul Graham
• 19:36 - Viaweb (Wikipedia)
• 20:34 - Squarespace
• 21:21 - Stratechery

"Entrepreneur" sounds really fancy. Like a member of some exclusive club. But, what we're really talking about is just someone who starts something. Is it time to retire this word? Is there a better word to replace it? Can a business podcast go 30 minutes without talking about Steve Jobs, luxury cars, and watches?

Show Notes

• 09:42 - Andon (Wikipedia)
• 11:23 - Nürburgring 24 Hours (Wikipedia)
• 17:14 - The E Myth Revisited - Micahael E. Gerber (Bookshop.org)
• 20:51 - Monolith Titan Conical Espresso Grinder
• 23:19 - Saddleback Leather
• 23:34 - How to Knock Off a Saddleback Leather Co. Briefcase (YouTube)

Working long hours, putting in overtime, logging on on the weekends, have become badges of honor, but there's a big difference between work and getting stuff done. This week Jason and David push back against this idea of workaholism.

Show Notes

• 01:37 - Six-week cycles (Shape Up)
• 02:46 - On Apple's monopoly power to destroy HEY (Signal v. Noise)
• 09:10 - Oura Ring
• 10:47 - Test-driven development (Wikipedia)
• 12:50 - An Inside Look at Google's Best Employee Perks (Inc.)
• 17:12 - Paid Time Off (Basecamp Employee Handbook)
• 24:19 - Summer Hours (Basecamp Employee Handbook)

Basecamp has always prided itself on staying small and lean. But, with two major products, we're going to change that. The question when looking to grow, however, is "why?"

Show Notes

• 03:08 - Highrise
• 03:09 - Campfire
• 03:10 - Backpack
• 07:18 - Software as a service (SaaS)
• 09:41 - Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency - Tom DeMarco
• 13:33 - Hill Charts
• 14:23 - Ryan Singer
• 17:52 - Citizen Kane
• 18:15 - "Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell." - Edward Abbey

People put too much stock in making long-term plans, but let's call them what they really are: guesses. On this episode we discuss deadlines, business plans, world domination, and Dungeons & Dragons.

Show Notes

• 01:06 - Dungeons & Dragons
• 01:20 - Mind Flayer
• 02:00 - Six-week cycles (Shape Up)
• 05:54 - The meaning of a bet (Shape Up)
• 07:23 - Shape Up
• 08:32 - Setting the appetite (Shape Up)
• 09:57 - "Plans are useless, but planning is indispensable." - Dwight D. Eisenhower
• 12:29 - Carlos Segura - Segura, Inc.
• 12:43 - S Corporations
• 15:24 - The deal Jeff Bezos got on Basecamp (Signal v. Noise)
• 16:51 - Blue Origin
• 19:04 - “The reason that most of us are unhappy most of the time is that we set our goals—not for the person we’re going to be when we reach them—we set our goals for the person we are when we set them.” - Jim Coudal quoting Dan Gilbert (Creative Mornings Chicago)
• 19:12 - Coudal Partners
• 19:12 - Field Notes
• 20:59 - Key Performance Indicator (KPI)
• 21:01 - Objectives and Key Results (OKR)

"Fail early and often." You hear this all the time in the tech start-up world. Failure has long been held up as a badge of honor for new start-ups. This week Jason and David take on this idea and make a pitch for learning from your successes instead of your mistakes.

Show Notes

• 06:22 - Backpack
• 06:29 - Highrise
• 10:39 - Adobe Creative Cloud
• 12:27 - Campfire
• 12:31 - Slack
• 16:28 - HEY for Domains
• 18:16 - Work at Basecamp
• 20:33 - Hire good writers (Getting Real)
• 20:38 - Hire managers of one (Signal v. Noise)
• 23:09 - Microsoft Project
• 27:04 - Remote: Office Not Required