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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?”
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.
Rework Revisited“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.
Rework RevisitedWe continue our revisit of Rework with the essay, “Ignore the Real World.” Topics include new ideas failing, risk avoidance, and Marvel movies.
Rework RevisitedIn this episode we dive deep into the introduction and chapter 1 of Rework, The New Reality.
Rework RevisitedRework is coming back for season 2 this September! In the meantime here’s a little bonus to tide you over. Back in the late 90s and early 2000s, during the dot com bubble, Basecamp cofounders, Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson both had run-ins with venture-backed tech startups. These...
Rework RevisitedTibet Sprague is a “communitarian technologist” with a vision for building companies and communities outside of investor-driven, for-profit systems. His current project is Hylo, an online platform for collaboration that’s governed by its users.
How Basecamp’s Michael Berger approached accessibility during the development of HEY, including collaborating with a blind Basecamp user on accessible features that ultimately improved the experience for everyone.
Basecamp Behind the Scenes, HEYWhen Robin Petravic and Cathy Bailey bought Heath Ceramics from the company’s founders in 2003, they promised to keep the dinnerware maker and its manufacturing workforce in its home base of Sausalito, California. The pandemic provided an opportunity for Heath to recommit to this pledge and create a...
Upsolve makes a free tool that automates the process of filing for Chapter 7 personal bankruptcy. The organization is an atypical tech startup that’s also an atypical non-profit. Co-founder and CTO Mark Hansen comes on the show to talk about how Upsolve alternately embraces and subverts the norms of...
In 2016, software infrastructure consulting firm Truss made salaries transparent across the entire company. Salaries were revealed internally for all employees, from the executives on down. In this episode, Truss CEO Everett Harper and COO Jen Leech talk about why and how they approached their...
Imagine if gig workers like rideshare drivers or grocery shoppers were compensated for their labor through ownership stakes in the Lyfts and Instacarts of the world. Imagine if companies distributed profits not just to founders and investors, but to their employees and customers. Start.coop is an...
Basecamp co-founders Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson talk about HEY World, a new feature of the HEY email service where customers can create a super simple blog. HEY World has no templates, no endless scroll, no ads, no trackers, and no JavaScript. It represents Basecamp’s attempt to create...
HEYEquilibria, a company that makes CBD products for women, has a team of dedicated dosage specialists who do one-on-one consultations with customers. During the pandemic, this team has taken on an unprecedented amount of customer support—bearing witness to the heightened stress and anxiety that their...
Running a Calm CompanyA career climbing the ladder in tech and software left Jesse Noller feeling disillusioned and isolated. He found connection, community, and purpose in a different kind of complex distributed system—mushrooms. Today he’s the proprietor of a spore-to-table business called The Humble Fungus. (Content...
Small BusinessBasecamp recently set out to do a carbon accounting, looking at the company’s emissions, as well as meaningful ways to offset and mitigate those impacts. Jane Yang and Elizabeth Gramm, the two Basecampers who took on this daunting and nuanced project, come on the show to discuss not just the work...
Basecamp Behind the ScenesComfort and joy were in short supply this year, but we’re doing our best to end 2020 on a cozy note. Merissa of Basecamp support talks about surprising customers with gifts throughout the year, whether it’s to thank them for their fandom or apologize for a disappointing experience. Then Wailin...
Basecamp Behind the Scenes, Customer SupportHEY launch, App Store, we can’t take it anymore 🎵 Antitrust, masks a must, let’s go eat the upper crust 🎵 Comfy pants, TikTok dance, POTUS rants, protest chants 🎵 COVID cruise can’t disembark, David’s back in Denmark 🎵 We didn’t start the fire—well, in this case we did.
HEYBasecamp is winding down a busy year with one more thing: the rollout of its HEY email service for the workplace. Co-founders Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson talk about privacy, marketing, onboarding, and the other considerations that went into making HEY for Work. They also reflect on the...
HEYIn the last several years, a group of Basecamp customer support representatives has developed an expertise around “on-call support,” or tackling some of the thornier technical issues that require diving into the code base of our applications. This team of self-taught specialists grew out of...
Basecamp Behind the Scenes, Customer SupportSince releasing Shape Up, the book by Basecamp’s Ryan Singer about our approach to product development, we’ve heard from other companies who’ve also adopted this methodology. David Nichols is the co-founder and CEO of Loupe, a company that helps design machines for clients in sectors from aerospace...
Shape UpIn 2019, Basecamp released Shape Up, a digital book by head of product strategy Ryan Singer about our approach to product development. Since then, Ryan has added sections in response to reader feedback and released a print edition. Ryan comes back on Rework to talk about connecting with other...
Shape UpUnlimited paid time off is a common perk in the tech industry, but as one company discovered, an open-ended vacation policy led to confusion and even burnout. Dan Jimenez of Chatbooks comes on Rework to talk about how they shifted from unlimited to mandatory PTO, and how they’re recalibrating...
Running a Calm CompanyMore than ever, the tech industry is re-thinking how work gets done and how great ideas come to light when people are no longer linked by their physical location. In this episode, we have frank but hopeful conversations with Deldelp Medina of Black & Brown Founders and Michael Berhane of People...
Better Product is a podcast by Innovatemap, a digital product agency. We are playing their episode featuring Basecamp’s marketing designer, Adam Stoddard, who joins them to talk about Basecamp’s design philosophy and the thought process behind the look of HEY.com.
We talk to two very different small businesses about their Babies at Work programs, where new parents can have their infants with them at the office. With COVID sending so many office workers home—and pushing women out of the workforce altogether—acknowledging employees’ whole selves is more...
Small BusinessImagine a corporate privacy policy on a website that was actually comprehensible and written by and for human beings. We talk to companies who have done just this, and what it means to build a business that has respect for privacy baked in from the outset. We also talk to a researcher who’s...
PrivacyWe do a quick check-in with Basecamp CEO Jason Fried about what he’s been up to since launching HEY in June. He talks about running the company as the pandemic stretches on, the importance of not making promises, and learning to swim.
DHH and Jason FriedBasecamp co-founder and CTO David Heinemeier Hansson has been on a not-totally-intended sabbatical from both work and Twitter, and on an entirely intended break from living in the U.S. He checks in from Europe to talk about how he’s managing his time off as the boss, and what developments back at...
DHH and Jason FriedCulture writer Anne Helen Petersen, author of the new book Can’t Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation, comes on the show to talk about how the real estate agents of the reality show Selling Sunset embody toxic ideas around work, passion, and career success. Along the way, Anne and...
Just For FunBasecamp recently suffered three outages in a week. Programming lead Jeremy Daer and director of operations Troy Toman come on the show to discuss their approach to customer communication around these kinds of incidents. They talk about public accountability, mental health, and why the human side of...
Basecamp Behind the Scenes, Running a Calm CompanyBasecamp has closed its physical office after a 10-year run in Chicago’s West Loop area. In this episode, we say good-bye to the neighborhood and two of its businesses. J.P. Graziano and un-cooked are small, family-owned restaurants on either side of the longevity spectrum: Jim Graziano is the...
Small BusinessA group of startup founders, investors, and thinkers are reimagining corporate ownership to take into account all of the people who help build the business—not just executives and investors, but customers, users, and suppliers. Their vision for Exit to Community is outlined in this zine, and two of...
We’re back from our August hiatus! To kick things off, we have a conversation with Tara Reed, the CEO of Apps Without Code. She started an online art advising business without knowing how to code, and that early success led to an entire company and educational program that teaches others how to do...
Basecamp probably wouldn’t exist today if not for an email that David Heinemeier Hansson sent Jason Fried in 2001. That correspondence was the beginning of a partnership that produced Basecamp, several books, and most recently HEY, the company’s new email service. This episode is our love letter to...
Basecamp released its new email service, HEY, on June 15. It was supposed to be a calm, controlled product launch, but what followed was a period that CEO Jason Fried described as “chaotic, enthralling, (and) horrible.” Basecamp got into a public fight with Apple over the HEY iOS app and the...
HEY, Greatest HitsBasecamp co-founders Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson held a recent livestream session where they answered questions about HEY, the company’s new email service. You can listen to Part 1 or watch the entire livestream on YouTube.
HEYJason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson held a livestream session where they answered audience questions about Hey, Basecamp’s new email service. In Part One, they discuss feature requests, customer support, and plans for hiring. The full Q&A can be viewed on YouTube.
HEYBasecamp’s marketing designer, Adam Stoddard, talks about how Hey’s visual brand came to be. He discusses influences from Pixar to Charles and Ray Eames to The Raveonettes, and reflects on what it’s like to work as a department of one on such an all-encompassing project.
HEYTo show off the features of HEY, Basecamp’s new email service, we needed a fully featured and realistic demo account. That meant writing dozens of fictional emails—a task that fell to Merissa of Basecamp’s customer support team. She comes on Rework to talk about her epistolary opus.
HEYBasecamp design lead Jonas Downey was one of the first people to experiment with what would eventually become Hey, Basecamp’s newly launched email service. Jonas comes on Rework to talk about building software for humans, preserving a sense of fun weirdness as a new product evolves, and managing a...
HEYBasecamp has launched Hey, a new email platform with a strong point of view. It’s also one of the stupidest things Basecamp has ever attempted. Co-founders Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson talk about the philosophy around time, attention, and privacy that forms the backbone of Hey, why Inbox...
On June 15, Basecamp launches a new email service called Hey. One of its features is that it blocks tracking pixels that report back to the sender when and how you read an email. In this episode, Basecamp’s marketing team talks about their difficult search for an email newsletter provider that...
PrivacyAndy Hunter launched Bookshop.org in January as a platform to help independent bookstores take and fulfill online orders. Shortly afterward, the pandemic forced small businesses to close their physical doors and Bookshop.org found itself trying to manage three years of growth in three months. Andy...
Big Tech, Small BusinessThe pandemic has caused enormous job losses and forced many companies to rethink the nature of work. In this episode, two Stanford students talk about the online resource they built to help fellow students whose summer internships were canceled, and Wildbit CEO Natalie Nagele returns to Rework to...
A growing number of companies have turned to employee surveillance software to monitor their newly remote workforce. Basecamp, which has taken a hardline stance against surveillance of all kinds, decided to ban makers of this “tattleware” from integrating with our products. Basecamp CTO David...
PrivacyThe government may not consider comic book shops, indoor plant stores, and small boutiques “essential,” but these businesses are vital to the unique fabric of their neighborhoods and downtowns. Without foot traffic, they’re finding new ways to connect with customers and stay afloat, all while...
Small BusinessWe call up our friend and former colleague Esther Lee, who lives with her husband on a 35-foot sailboat named Hope in Jacksonville, Florida. Esther, an “idealist in hiding,” talks about how living smaller gives her more space to turn outward and care for others, especially now.
Endless Zoom meetings, being cut off from friends, the widespread cancellation of summer fun, ricocheting between boredom and anxiety—kids have it pretty rough! And it’s no picnic for their parents, either. In this episode, businesses built on offering in-person enrichment for children talk about...
Small BusinessBasecampers Nathan Anderson and Joan Stewart talk about their love of baking bread and how to get started if you’re a newbie. As Joan says, you just have to believe.
Just For Fun