Last episode of the year and we're talking about startups. The new dry cleaner down the street doesn't call itself a startup. The pizza place on the corner doesn't call itself a startup. They're new businesses, that's all! So, what's so special about your tech company that you need a fancy word for it? Startups make you think of unlimited growth, huge investments, no expenses to worry about. This mindset can be unhealthy and detrimental to your new business.Show Notes 02:57 - Request for Proposal (Investopedia) 10:02 - Greater fool theory (Wikipedia) 15:57 - R.I.P. Good Times (Sequoia Capital) 23:00 - Hotwire 

Rework

Start a Business, Not a Startup

Before you start your great new business you'll NEED to hire some people, raise some money, rent an office, buy some ads, etc. etc. OF COURSE YOU DON'T. These are all just the trappings entrepreneurs tell themselves they need, when in reality, all you need is to start making something.Show Notes 00:03 - Budweiser Wassup Commercial (YouTube) 01:28 - Dungeons & Dragons 05:34 - Coudal Partners 07:36 - Minimum Viable Product (Wikipedia) 09:00 - Gumroad 09:03 - Stripe 09:22 - Squarespace 09:24 - Mailchimp 17:33 - Basecamp Merch 23:07 - Fingerspitzengefühl (Wikipedia) 

You Need Less Than You Think (Season 2)

Taking outside money to start your business may seem like a good idea, but there are a ton of strings attached... You give up control. Cashing out becomes the #1 priority. It's addictive. It's usually a bad deal. Customers become less important than investors... You get the idea. Outside money should never be plan A.Show Notes 03:15 - How WhatsApp Makes Money (Investopedia) 13:28 - 37signals changing name to Basecamp, shedding products (Chicago Tribune) 22:40 - The deal Jeff Bezos got on Basecamp (Signal v. Noise) 

Outside Money is Plan Z

Last episode we discussed how important it is to stand for something and you'd think writing your values down in a mission statement would be a great way to let people know exactly what you stand for. Well, you'd be wrong. Mission statements are almost always vapid, boring, platitudes that end up saying nothing at all. Even worse, they often turn people away entirely!Show Notes 00:11 - Lex Fridman (YouTube) 02:38 - The Soup Nazi - Seinfeld (Wikipedia) 04:18 - 37signals manifesto 05:08 - 1981 FedEx commercial (YouTube) 05:17 - About Us (FedEx) 05:45 - Values (Basecamp Employee Handbook) 10:04 - Elevator pitch (Wikipedia) 12:17 - About Us (Enterprise) 15:41 - Nudge Nudge Wink Wink - Monty Python (YouTube) 19:56 - What's the point of a Reservation - Seinfeld (YouTube) 

Mission Statement Impossible

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 

Draw a Line in the Sand

"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 

No Time is No Excuse

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) 

Start Making Something (Season 2)

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) 

Scratch Your Own Itch

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 

Make a Dent in the Universe

"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) 

Enough with "Entrepreneurs"

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) 

Workaholism

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 

Why Grow?

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) 

Planning is Guessing

"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 

Learning from Mistakes is Overrated

We continue our revisit of Rework with the essay, "Ignore the Real World." Topics include new ideas failing, risk avoidance, and Marvel movies.Show Notes 09:13 - HEY 16:49 - Black Widow 19:54 - Ruby on Rails 

Ignore the Real World

A podcast by Basecamp about the better way to work and run your business. We bring you stories and unconventional wisdom from Basecamp’s co-founders and other business owners.

hubhopper

Rework

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