Can you work sane hours and still be insanely successful?
Basecamp and its founders - DHH and Jason Fried set the precedent
Hi,
It’s that time of the year!
Reflections. Repentances. Resolutions.
Here’s mine:
Reflection: Good Surfer has had an average of >40% open rate and it’s subscribe is growing organically. This is good.
Repentance: I could have published more often.
Resolutions: I’m setting a direction for the Good Surfer newsletter from now on:
I won’t restrict myself with publishing deadlines - no weekly/bi-weekly/monthly commitments.
Instead, I will write a newsletter to describe a single surfing session that had me awestruck. Whenever it happens.
My focus will be to deliver something that has a long half-life rather than what is hot right now.
Here’s hoping that we all do well on our resolutions the next year! :)
Cool, recent surfing session:
YCombinator advises future startup founders to do little but work, eat, exercise and sleep. Elon Musk is a famous workaholic who often advocates 80+ hour work weeks for his employees. Kunal Shah says that all founders suffer from some kind of mental illness.
All the 3 entities mentioned above have had a great influence on me. I definitely want to make a great impact on the world like they have.
But recently, I have been wondering - Is it too much to ask if I also want to be mentally fit and relax every now and then?
Now, I don’t want a ‘work-life balance’. I want my work to be my life. But I want to work on multiple things in my life, both professional and personal. Does this mean that I shouldn’t even aspire to be a founder?
What I discovered in this surfing session made me optimistic about my hopes!
How I came across it:
It started when I read a newsletter by The Ken. It talked briefly about 37Signals -
In 2004, it built an application to help companies manage tasks, goals and other stuff in-house. Then after a decade of doing some really strange things—like ignoring revenue, building less and turning down over a 100 VCs.. it finally built a SaaS company, and changed the name. Today, Basecamp is worth $100 billion.
(If you would like a copy of that email, I would be happy to forward you if you ask me by replying to this email).
I had to Google for Basecamp now!
Basecamp — a successful company that is a “non-startup”
(How Basecamp Built a $100 Billion business by doing less on purpose by The Mission)First let me give you a quick primer on Basecamp, the company:
* The company’s name was 37Signals and it was in the business of redesigning people’s websites. It was started by Jason Fried in the late 90s.
* In 2004, Jason hired a Danish programmer named David Heinemeier Hanson (@dhh) to develop a dedicated project management tool which they started licensing to other businesses.
* In 2014, 37Signals decided to focus solely on this tool and take the name of this tool - Basecamp.Now here are the non-startup things that Basecamp did:
* Didn’t aim for being a startup: “The startup is a magical place. It’s a place where that pesky thing called revenue is never an issue. It’s a place where you can spend other people’s money until you figure out a way to make your own”
* Shunned upon having an ‘exit strategy’: “What’s with people who can’t build something without planning how to leave it? Would you go into a relationship planning the breakup? Would you write the prenup on a first date? Would you meet with a divorce lawyer the morning of your wedding?”
* Not innovate: It’s more important to build something good than something novel; it’s also much harder.
* Not give insane hours in the project when getting started: Between school commitments, David barely managed to squeeze it 10 hours a week over 6 months to work on Basecamp.
P.S.: As far as I could understand, the Basecamp isn’t really (technically) worth $100B. But they are profitable and have millions of people using its product!
Why you should dive deeper:
* “Do not innovate. Do not grow. Do not exit. And do not be a startup.” - the subtitle of the above mentioned article.
* This article presents a unique narrative on how to create a successful business.
* The Mission is currently the most popular active Medium publication.
* Basecamp is a fully remote company. Not only that - it compensates all of its employees based on Silicon Valley rates regardless of their local market rates!
* Their company is just fifty-six people. That’s it!
David Heinemeier Hanson
(@dhh on Twitter)Basecamp just became my idol company.
After this, I had to search for the 2 founders on Twitter.
I went for DHH, the CTO, first. He is the creator of the popular web framework - Ruby on Rails. And he races sports cars!
Yeah, who is this guy!?
DHH is pretty popular on Twitter. Even though I didn’t follow him, I had come across a few of his tweets in my feed in the past.
Why you should dive deeper:
* The bio on his website is what you probably hope your own bio to be like some day - “I am the creator of Ruby on Rails, cofounder & CTO at Basecamp, best-selling author, Le Mans class-winning racing driver, frequent podcast guest, and family man.” Everything I want to be and more!
* [Thread]
The internet is far too important to hand over to a couple of feudal tech lords, but that's just what we've done so far. We've traded our privacy and our dignity for combs and mirrors. Now that we know that this trade was done in bad faith, it's time to renegotiate the deal.* [Thread]
This is the moral cross that all patrons of AWS must bear. Including me. By providing the bulk of Amazon’s profits, we are enabling their abuses in all other domains. This is why Amazon too must be broken up, but until then, why all AWS users must recognize their complicity.You know, the logical conclusion here is that AWS is too expensive or Amazon retail is too cheap https://t.co/S6IwtEDJ1C https://t.co/DMnxxBLraXnilay patel @reckless* [Thread]
"Aaron Muderick, the founder of Crazy Aaron's Thinking Putty, said his receptionist spends 15 to 20 hours a week submitting forms asking Amazon and other ecommerce sites to remove products that use his company's trademarks", remind you of anything?*
Jason Fried
(@jasonfried on Twitter)He is the founding CEO of Basecamp.
He and DHH are also the co-authors of some popular books - It Doesn’t Have To Be Crazy At Work, REWORK and Remote: Office Not Required.
Why you should dive deeper:
*
When Google puts 4 paid ads ahead of the first organic result for your own brand name, you’re forced to pay up if you want to be found. It’s a shakedown. It’s ransom. But at least we can have fun with it. Search for Basecamp and you may see this attached ad.*
If your company requires you to work nights and weekends, your company is broken. This is a managerial problem, not your problem. This is a process problem, not a personal problem. This is an ownership problem, not an individual problem.*
It’s nearly 2020. New year, new decade. Modernize your workflow, project management, and internal communication. Change for the better with Basecamp. Our customers ditched Asana, Trello, Slack, Jira. Make the switch. Here’s what before & after looks like:* [Thread]
This is the official blog of Basecamp and I plan to devour it next. They have a really handy section called “Greatest Hits”, where I plan to start!
Why you should dive deeper:
I’ll tell you some of the articles that have piqued my interest on first look:
* Don’t let anyone overpay you
* How we structure our work and teams at Basecamp
Maybe this can be how you dive deeper too.
That’s all folks!
Think that friend of yours might find it interesting?
- It would be awesome if you could forward this newsletter to him/her.
And if you want to show some social media love for Good Surfer, here’s a line you may use:
This is Good Surfer - an email newsletter that shows you how to discover good, motivating content over the Internet.
If you liked it, please hit the hardly-visible heart icon below. It will help in improving the visibility of this newsletter on Substack - the platform that hosts Good Surfer :-)
Subscribe to Good Surfer newsletter to get occassional emails like this delivered to your inbox.