Jason Fried and co-founder David Heinemeier Hansson sold personal shares to Jeff Bezos in 2006, pocketing the money as a safety net while Basecamp was young. Bezos found them after Fried spoke at a 2005 conference and liked his unconventional approach to business. Basecamp itself has never taken outside funding, surviving on customer revenue alone.
We did take some money from Jeff Bezos back in 2006. He bought some shares from me and from David. That money went into our pockets and never went into the business. No money's ever gone into the business except customer revenues. We did that to take a little bit of risk off the table. In 2006, Basecamp was 2 years old and we're like, this could be a fluke. I don't know what the hell is going to happen in this industry. Who knows? We could get wiped out tomorrow. Could we put a few million bucks in the bank each? Give us some confidence to just go for it at that point, because if it all went to hell, we have something to show for it. Jeff found us because a couple of his companies that he was invested in had used Basecamp. He saw me speak at a conference in San Diego. Ago in 2005 called eTech. He liked what I had to say. We were very different, as we still are now, but way back then, way different in terms of our point of view and the things we were saying. What does that mean? You were more harsh or more— I was a young punk. We'll call it punk rock. Jeff was a fan, so he reached out. He was. He's a fan of people think differently about how to run a business as he thinks differently about how to run a business. So we just kind of chatted. I knew this was like an investment opportunity for him because he wouldn't just come and say hello.
