The Basecamp way of Creating and Managing Products w/ Jason Fried, CEO of Basecamp

Hey everybody, this is Mike DelSito with Product Collective. Hey everybody, I'm Jason. Looks like we have some video issues on the other side, so I'm going to be getting questions by text and I will respond via video. Hopefully everybody can hear me and see me. And we'll just My pleasure. Glad to be here. All right. Basecamp has such a different approach to most software as a service companies. Why do you think? Well, it's hard to— I don't know what it means to say we have a different approach specifically. Of course, there's a number of things we do differently than others. So maybe I'll pick up on a couple of those. Number one, We charge for our products from the start. I think that there's no other way, frankly. I think if you want to figure out if your thing that you're making is any good, you have to put it out there and charge for it. I don't think throwing things out there for free— not saying free trials, free trials are fine— but if you don't have a price on something, you don't know if it's any good. If you don't know if it's any good, it's kind of hard to figure out where to go next. And if you don't make any money and don't take any money, if you don't, you know, generate any revenue generating some profits and you can't stay in business. So for us, charging for things early is really important. I would also say that, you know, the other thing that's different about us is that we, we don't believe in just trying to grow, grow, grow, grow, grow. We're not interested in rapid growth. We're not interested in market domination. We're not interested in conquering anything or anybody. We just want to do the best job that we can and put our best foot forward and see what happens. We don't have goals. We don't have key metrics. We don't have OKRs or KPRs or whatever the other acronyms are. We just try to do the best work that we can. I think that's quite a bit different as well. And then I think the last point I'll make here, I could go on on this one, I guess, forever, is that we work 40-hour weeks, 8-hour days, 40-hour weeks. In the summers, we only work 32-hour weeks. We don't think it has to be crazy at work. In fact, we just wrote a book about it called It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work. And, you know, we just don't think it has to be. We think 8-hour days are plenty of time to get great work done. And if you can't get your work done in 8-hour days and 40-hour weeks, you're probably doing the wrong stuff. You're probably spending your time on the wrong things. You're probably involved in a variety of things that don't actually matter. You're stuck in meetings, you're in conference calls, you're being pulled around by things that aren't actually important. I think it's a much better practice to figure out how to get the best work you can get done in 8 hours versus trying to squeeze more work into more hours and think that that's the solution. I'll stop there, but those are 3 specific kind of areas I think that you would say that we're quite different than the most on. Okay, so I'm going to read these out loud. I know you have a 6-week period of doing work and road mapping beyond that isn't something that you do. Can you talk about why this is? Most product people may not be used to this, but they are certainly intrigued. Buy it. Correct. So every 6 weeks or so, we begin what we call a new cycle of work. Now, these are not sprints. This— there's no backlog. We don't believe in that way of working. Every 6 weeks, we start from scratch and figure out what we think we want to work on next. And we typically pick a few projects that are going to take the full 6 weeks, and we pick a handful of projects that are going to take a few weeks or a few days each. And we put together a few small product teams. Each team has 3 people or less, and we do those projects. And so, uh, right off the bat, the, the idea is, is that nothing we're going to pick is going to take longer than 6 weeks, um, and that there's at least a 6-week or less version of just about everything. There are a few exceptions here and there, but we're talking about 1 or 2 exceptions a year. Almost everything else we pick takes 6 weeks or less. We do this because First of all, we think working on things longer than that tends to make them go on much, much longer than that. So we used to not work this way and we would work on things for as long as they took, and that's not healthy either. So we figured out 6 weeks is about the right amount of time. That's enough time to get into something deeply. It's enough time to take on something kind of big, but not huge, and figure out how to get it done in 6 weeks and then move on to the next thing. This way we can get 10, 12, 15, 20 really, really great projects done a year. And feel really confident about those projects, and also not get stuck on something that takes too long and pushes other things out of the way. And this is the thing I've noticed with other companies when they have deadlines they don't believe, or things that keep getting pushed back, or no deadlines at all, is that there's nothing more demoralizing than being stuck in a long-term project that never seems to end, and you don't know what it's gonna take to get it done. It's really frustrating. So at the very least, no matter what we're doing, we know it's almost over right when we start. And that's a very liberating feeling. It feels great to know that. And then between these 6-week cycles, we take about 2 weeks off, not off of work entirely, but off of, um, directed work. And people can sort of freelance around the company and figure out little projects they want to do in the 2-week period of time, tighten up some stuff they weren't happy with last cycle, work on a little pet project, whatever it might be. And then we figure out the next 6 weeks of work and we start again there. But there is no long-term roadmap. I have no idea what we're going to be working on 7 weeks from now. I only know what we're going to be working on over the next 6 weeks. We don't keep a backlog. I don't believe those— in those. I think that those are typically bad ideas. I don't think you should be picking off things you thought of way before. I think every 6-week period you should stop, put your head up, look around, figure out what you want to do next, not pick from something you decided you want to do before. Question from the audience: How does product discovery play a role in delivering effective products to market? And how do you balance it with the actual work of getting it delivered to customers? I must admit, I don't know what product discovery means, uh, in this case, so, um, perhaps someone can follow up. I'll take another question, perhaps you can post a follow-up and I'll dig into that, but I'm not totally familiar with exactly what that means in this context, so I don't want to give the wrong answer. For sure, you've not always been the leader you are today and might not have had the experience for remote teams since day one, and very likely you're not done improving yourself. What is your approach to reflect and grow as a leader, and how did it change over time? I definitely have a lot to learn. I've gotten plenty of things wrong and still continue to do so. You know, I think the thing is to be self-aware and reflect on, you know, your weak spots. Sometimes people tell you those things, oftentimes they don't. And one of the reasons they sometimes don't is because when you run the company and own the company, there's a product, or there's a power dynamic there that exists whether you like it or not. And you are typically the last to know anything about your failings or even in many cases, the failings of the organization because people just simply don't bring things to you as much as you might think they do. And so I think ultimately you have to really have a tight group of people who you really do trust to speak honestly and directly with you, but also you have to be self-aware enough to realize when you made a mistake. And when you said something that you weren't happy with, like, for example, last week, David, my business partner, and I were debating and disagreeing about something. And I just got sort of, I got irritated and I got hot in the discussion. And after it was over, I knew it, like I lost my cool. And, you know, you have to be able to spot those moments and go, why did I lose my cool? Why was I so frustrated? What happened there? And, you know, look forward to giving it a second chance the next time. I think it's a matter of taking stock, paying attention, realizing that you're not going to get all the feedback you want as the business owner, which it's different in different positions. If you have a manager, have a team lead, you're probably going to get feedback from that person. But as the owner, there's nobody above you giving you that feedback, and it typically will be held from you otherwise. So that's the biggest challenge about being an owner is not really hearing the truth about how you are with others. So it's got to be paying close attention to yourself, I think. Product discovery is ideation and keeping functionality and usefulness in mind. So another one, ideation, I don't know what that means. So that's a hard one for me to answer as well. Keeping functionality and usefulness in mind, I mean, the key thing is, and I'm following up, of course, on that other question, The key thing for us is that we use the product that we build. And I would encourage everyone who has a chance to work on a team or a product that they use or that the team uses, because it's the, it's the best way to really understand the product. It's the best way to really understand the quality of the product. It's the best way to really know if the product works or not. Everything else is an estimation by proxy, and that I am listening to other people tell me how well it works or how well it doesn't, but I don't ever truly know because everything is translated through somebody else. But when you use the thing that you build and you're the number one customer for the thing you make, you have a really good sense of what works and what doesn't, what's useful, what isn't, what's just a feature that you're building for someone else and you don't really understand it, but you're trying to check the boxes. And then what's a feature that you know absolutely you absolutely need and other people need too. So The fact that we make something for ourselves really helps with that. We also do a little bit of customer research by the way of doing interviews. We don't do focus groups. We don't ask people what they want. We don't beta test anything in front of other people really. A little bit of that on mobile, but primarily no, not at all. Nothing on desktop in fact. Instead, we just do the best job that we can and we put it out there because I believe the only feedback that's really valuable is real feedback. And real feedback comes from real usage in real situations. In the real world when the thing is out there for real. I just don't believe beta testing gives you that. I think labeling something a beta by default automatically puts something in someone else's head that this isn't ready for prime time, or maybe I shouldn't use it the way I want to, or whatever. I don't want to have any excuses. I want to put the best work I can out there, let people use it for real, and then they'll give us real direct feedback, which we always get through customer service and through other means. But If you want to know the truth, you have to put the product out there on the market for real and let people use it in their own environments based on their own motivations and their own necessity throughout the day versus when I put something in front of them and say, what do you think? Or can you tell me what you think about this? I just don't believe that really gives you accurate feedback. Okay. Okay. You just recently wrote a book that you have nearby and for so many— sorry, something in my eye here. Work is crazy. How do we get there in the first place? Why is it so crazy at work? So there's a few reasons. Number 1, and by the way, like, these are the reasons it's crazy at work. Okay? Hopefully this isn't backwards. I don't know what you guys are seeing, but 80-hour work weeks, packed schedules, super busy, endless meetings, overflowing inbox. Unrealistic deadlines, can't sleep, Sunday afternoon emails, no time to think, stuck at the office, all-nighters, chats blowing up. You know, these are some of the reasons, but the fundamental reason why those things are happening is primarily two reasons. Number one, an obsession with growth. When companies feel like growth at all costs is the path for them, then there's no limit to the amount of hours they're going to ask people to work and the amount of things they're going to ask people to do and the speed at which they're expecting people to run. That's what happens when, when growth is the objective. And so people run really fast, they take shortcuts, code gets messy, which makes it really difficult for developers to work, designers— it makes it very difficult for designers to work. People are stuck in meetings all day. There's change of heart constantly. New things pop up all the time that need to take precedence over the thing that just took precedence last week. And people are just scrambling all the time and they're working crazy amounts of hours because they're not getting work done at work because work is not where the work is getting done. Work is where meetings are happening, conversations are happening, stress is happening. So people have to find time to actually do the work they're expected to do, which they do on the weekends or they do early in the morning when no one's at the office or late at night when no one's in the office. And this just leads to a very crazy, crazy workplace. And I think it's very unhealthy and very unsustainable. So you've got long hours. Based on growth. And the other thing is that work is becoming more or getting more and more distracting all the time. Modern tech is making it worse, not better. Slack chat, horrible for work. It's a destruction or distraction factory. Anything that's real-time chat all the time as the primary method of communication is going to pull people off their work constantly throughout the day and distract, distract, distract, distract, distract. If you have to follow multiple real-time conversations on a conveyor belt all day long, your eye is constantly darting to the side of the screen to check if there's new unread in this conversation, that conversation, that conversation. You're going to be pulled off work all the time and you're not going to have moments to actually dive into the work. You're going to have all these individual 15-minute stretches of checking this conversation, checking that conversation, chiming in here, chiming in there. And these distractions destroy your day. They destroy your focus. It becomes very, very difficult to actually get real work done, real creative work done in short bursts of time. You need long stretches of uninterrupted time. And modern technology does not really give you that. It actually gives you distraction. So that's the other thing. There's this endless growth, this drive for endless growth, and the tools we're using and the methods in which we're working are distracting us more and more and more and more and more. And this is why— those are two of the reasons, but those are the two primary reasons why it's become so crazy at work. Okay, let's see. How do we get away from all that? My suggestion is that we start by reading this book. Well, thank you. Many of us are product people, not the CEO. What can we do? Yes, for sure. So admittedly, some of these ideas are difficult to enact if you don't have the power to enact them, of course. So it's hard to say we should be working 40 hours a week when your boss wants you to work 80. That's difficult, right? Obviously, it's gonna be very difficult to change your organization in that case. So the best advice I think for any change that you wanna affect is to start locally, as local as possible. And so you could think of the company as global. You may not have the power to change the world, right? Or your world, but you can change your, maybe your own team, or you can change your own personal behavior. If you are constantly being interrupted by other people and you know how difficult that is for you to stay focused, then you should look to your own work and go, "When can I not interrupt others? How can I pull back on my interruptions? How can I not ask people questions all day long? How can I figure some of this stuff out for myself? How can I not distract others in a variety of other ways?" So, you can begin by your own behavior and sort of be the change you wish to see. If you're a team leader perhaps, maybe you manage a team of 3 or 4 or 5 people, you can begin to help shield those people from yet another meeting, yet another distraction at the office. Perhaps you can allow people to work from home a few days a week if the office is distracting. You got to figure out what you have control over and what you don't. And the things you have control over are the things that you can change. So you can't try and go change the whole company if you don't control the whole company. But if you control a team, you can— you control just one other person. I don't— control is a bad word, but I mean like changes within your control, or if you can simply control your own behavior, that's where you have to start. And hopefully, if enough people change their own individual behavior, then they can change the collective behavior. Hopefully, people with some more power in the organization will pick up on some of these ideas and be able to make it easier for others to make some of these changes by encouraging people or by encouraging these changes from the top. So it's a slow process, just like anything, but I think it's worthwhile. Ultimately essential. Some of these changes, you're going to continue to feel exhausted. You're gonna continue to burn yourself out. You're not gonna do your best work. You're not gonna get enough sleep. And if you don't get enough sleep, everything else goes wrong. So they're really, you know, you don't have a lot of choice here. You gotta find a way to get a little bit more control over your day, have more time, work fewer hours, figure out the right things to do and not just be busy all the time with the wrong stuff. And the best thing to do is to start local. Okay. Let's see. All right. Question from the audience. In your book, you say find talents in unexpected places. How do you find those talents in unexpected places? Or how do you find those unexpected places to look for talent? So to expand on that a little bit, we wrote an essay in the book called— I actually don't remember exactly what it's called, maybe Pacifists or something. But the whole point is that We don't fight the talent war. There's a lot of people talking about the talent war. First of all, I don't think warlike conversation has any room in business. I don't think it's necessary. I think there's too much warlike conversation and language in business. But the truth is there's no reason to battle over any one person. There are plenty of great people all over the world who do great work. To feel like there's this one person you must have and you must battle another company for them and you must beat that other company so you can get that person. I just don't, I don't believe in that. I don't think there's anyone that's that valuable. And if, and by anyone I mean that there's only one person that valuable. There are many people that valuable. So one way to look is, you know, when you put a job ad out, for example, whatever the job ad is, you can explain who you're looking for. And if you start saying we're looking for rock stars, we're looking for gurus, we're looking for the best of the best, like, then you're probably gonna find people that are in extremely high demand and are going to require a battle to get. And/or those people are going to be in such high demand that even after you hire them, people are still gonna be reaching out to them looking to hire them away from you. I just don't feel like there's any reason to do that. So we talk in our job ads, we talk about imposter syndrome, we talk about people who are doing great work but sort of stuck in a place where they can't do their best work or who don't find the environment where they work to be the best place. People who are coming up in their career, not people who've already reached the top. You use different language and you put out signals for the kinds of people that you want. And you find those kinds of people. And there's wonderful, wonderful people at all stages of their career in jobs that don't give them the chance to do their best. Or maybe they're in a place where they did have a chance to do their best, but they're ready to move on to something new. But we just don't try to hire people who are, who are like at the top of their careers. I just don't see the reason for that. I'd much rather help and see someone grow here than someone come in and think they've already got it all figured out. Um, so basically you have to signal the kind of people you're looking for in your job ads. And I would say don't overshoot. I read a lot of job ads because I'm curious about how other people hire, and they ask— they set the bar so high, and then they can't believe that they can't find people. Um, well, the bar is too high, number one, and also the people you're looking for are extremely high demand by companies that are going to outpay you. So you're probably not gonna get those people. So anyway, I'd lower the bar, not in a way where you're looking for people who aren't good. There's plenty of amazing people, but you don't need to go right at the top. Bring it down a little bit and find people who are on their way up. I think it's way more rewarding to hire those kind of people. As far as, by the way, as far as where to look for them, specific job boards, there's a bunch of them. You can look in colleges if you want younger people. But I would, I just, it's mostly about how you signal in the job ad itself, 'cause a lot of people read your ads. Thousands of people, if you post them on job boards, will read the ads. And it's how you write about the people. I would encourage you guys to go look, go on Google and search for Basecamp data analyst job. That was our latest opening and you can read our job ad and see how we wrote it. And I think when you read it, you'll see, you'll get a good picture for the kind of person we're looking for. We got about 700 applications for that position and they're all over the place. And it was wonderful to see so many different diverse people apply from different parts of the world different experience levels. And I think it's because the way the job ad was written. So keep an eye out for that. All right. What mistakes do you often see product people making again and again? Are there common traps we should look out for? Yeah, sure. So one thing I see is a reaction to anecdotes and knee-jerk reactions. So you put something out there in the world, something new. And you're gonna get feedback on it pretty quickly, assuming you have a decent customer base. And you can go into panic mode pretty quickly. Like, oh my God, people don't like this. Or, oh my God, this, you know, they just wrote in about this and they're screaming about that because they're used to it the way it was and why'd you change it? And you could quickly go into this panic mode. I think the best thing actually to do over the first couple weeks of launching anything new is to, just kind of sit back. You can take the feedback in and read it, but don't do anything unless there is like a true crisis, like something's flat out busted. I think overreacting to early feedback is something people make a lot of mistakes on. You have to remember the initial feedback is going to be the most vocal because especially if it's a fundamental change, people are, you know, not going to be used to the new thing. It takes time to get used to the new thing. So that initial feedback is going to be filled with the most energy. And I think I think it's just a good idea to hold back, pay attention to it, listen to it, respond to people saying thank you for it, we're listening, we're keeping an ear open and everything, but don't do any knee-jerk reactions. Don't respond immediately unless again, something's flat out broken. So that's one mistake I see. The other again is something I alluded to earlier, which is taking beta test feedback as truth. Beta test feedback is beta test feedback. It's not truth. Truth is when you put something out on the market actual customers using it in their everyday businesses, 100% in without thinking of this as beta or not, that's true feedback because that's the true market. And that's the feedback I think that's worth paying attention to. So I think there's a lot of, sometimes there's a lot of second-guessing that goes on when you make something, you put it in front of a few people before you've shipped it for real, they give you feedback, you go, oh my God, what are we gonna do? They didn't like this or they didn't like this. Let's make some more changes, put it in front of a few more people and they give you conflicting feedback, and then you begin to lose your own sense of what to do. So I see that too, where people just aren't willing to make a commitment to an idea and see it through and put it out there. So that's another thing I think that I see quite a bit. And I would say the other one, frankly, is too many people involved in the process and too many voices as well. I know everyone wants to be more and more collaborative these days. I don't think that's necessarily a good direction. I think that you want fewer voices actually around the table making the decisions. You want to take in voices from all over the place, but you don't want them all in the room together making the decisions together. That's your job as a product manager to make decisions. You can listen all you want, get all the data you need, all the insights you have, and then you have to make the decision. Don't put 10 people in a room to make a decision together. I think that that's not the way decisions should be made. So you take the feedback in, you figure it out and you make the call. So I think that's another thing. There's a variety of other things, but I'll throw those out there to start. All right, well, that was the last one. Well, thank you very much. If you have other questions, you can get me on Twitter at @JasonFried, F-R-I-E-D, and I'm happy to respond on Twitter. And thanks again for the questions. Sorry I couldn't get to all of them, but hit me up on Twitter. I'll try to get to as many as I can. Within the next few days. So thanks again, and I hope you enjoy the book too if you get a chance to read it. Thank you.