Chase Jarvis Show: Jason Fried: It Doesn’t Have to be Crazy at Work
I don’t set out to be contrarian: I just do what I think makes sense. Maybe my version of what makes sense is different from other people’s versions. I also don’t pay attention to a lot of things. People can pay too much attention to other things and you start to think that’s the only way to do things.
Basecamp’s Values: Bootstrapped, small, and profitable. Doing whatever we want. True independence. We value that more than anything else.
The grass is not always greener: If we went out of business today and I started another one tomorrow I don’t think I’d be anywhere near as successful. Ever. Because we’ve been doing it for a long time. We were at the right place at the right time. Luck was there. We were good at it. I don’t think you can brute force some of this stuff.
Not all technology is helpful: Real-time communication at work [chat] has caused more problems than it has solved. It has sped up everything. You don’t have enough time to think before responding. Communication is scrolling by one line at a time.
We don’t have a meetings heavy culture: This means we write things down instead of saying them out loud. We write long-form detailed passages and let people absorb everything on their own time. It is the opposite of an inefficient meeting. As a result, we have to hire great writers. We don’t hire people who can’t write well.
When you are an entrepreneur you are building your own job: Think about where you want to go to work everyday. I want to keep doing this. I want to build the place for me to work. Then you find like minds.
Business is like any other skill. You need to practice: You’ve got to practice to get good at it. People have an expectation when they start a business that they have to have it all figured out. You won’t. You need to practice just like any other skill.
No one should listen to me about how to start a business: I haven’t started a business in 20 years. I can talk about how to run a business. How to be profitable. How to market. How to build products. How to make decisions. Because that is what I do every day.
Why you should trust your gut: If you are going to fight against what you believe if you are always doing what you don’t want to do [because someone else is telling you to or the data is telling you to] you won’t have a happy life.
Something to think about: If you talk to successful entrepreneurs and you ask them when was your best time. . . it was when they were smaller. It was when we were just a few people working out of an apartment.
Nature is the best design solution: These things have been perfected for millions of years. If I’m in the software world I never want to look at software to get inspiration. I want to look at leaves, plants, buildings, furniture. Things that are have been designed and thought through from a different perspective. If you just look at the software you will just end up making what everyone else is making.
What drives you crazy: Wasting time.
The downside to technology: These devices are highly addictive. They reward addictive behavior. They are a gateway for negative information to get into your brain. Some apps can contribute to unhappiness.
I wouldn’t be surprised if social media is eventually seen as the next cigarette:We might look back and say this was incredibly unhealthy for kids, for adults, for our brains, for our development, for our egos, etc. [Long live podcasts as the much, much healthier alternative to staring at a screen or mindlessly scrolling a feed]
Book recommendation: Revising Prose. This guy talks about how to write sentences. How to squeeze all the fat out of a sentence without making it sterile.
What Jason admires about Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger: Their fundamental understanding of what matters and what doesn’t. Their focus on value. Their rejection of trends. They run a massive company with a small number of employees. Buffet’s letters to his shareholders are a must-read.