SEASON 2 - EPISODE 0099 - MAR 6, 2024

Rapid Fire with Jason & David

Kimberly is switching things up this week and taking a more casual approach with the co-founders of 37signals, Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson, asking them a series of rapid fire questions. Jason, for example, reveals the book that granted them permission to forge their unique path, while David shares the profound advice from Jeff Bezos about investing in things that don’t change. The two of them also open up about their business journey, the meaning behind their work, and even hint toward upcoming projects. Get ready for a candid and insightful peek into the minds of Jason and David.

Watch the full video episode on YouTube

Key Takeaways

00:27 - How Ricardo Semler’s Maverick empowered Jason.
00:53 - David also credits Blue Ocean Strategy[1:25] - Best piece of advice?
04:39 - Productive habits?
06:20 - Most meaningful part of David’s and Jason’s jobs?
09:32 - Discussing inspirations like nature and architecture.
11:02 - First principles, tech exploration, and aesthetics inspire David.
13:16 - David is embarking on a grand adventure fueled by unresolved anger.

REWORK is a production of 37signals. You can find show notes and transcripts on our website. Full video episodes are available on YouTube and X.

If you have a question for Jason or David about a better way to work and run your business, leave us a voicemail at 708-628-7850 or email, and we might answer it on a future episode.

Links & Resources

Transcript

Kimberly (00:00): Welcome to REWORK, a podcast by 37signals about the better way to work and run your business. I’m your host, Kimberly Rhodes. I’m joined by the co-founders of 37signals, Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson. I am changing it up this week. We are going to do some rapid fire questions for Jason and David. They have not seen them in advance, so we’re just going to knock them through. David, keep your answer short. First question, Jason, I’m going to start with you. What book has been the most influential as you’ve built your business?

Jason (00:28): The first book was Maverick by Ricardo Semler. That book kind of I feel like gave us permission to, even though I think we were going to do it our own way anyway, gave us permission to really do it our own way and to see that if a company as large as Semco, which I think we had like four or 5,000 people or something in a very traditional industry, could be run very differently. So ours.

Kimberly (00:51): David, what about you?

David (00:53): I was also going to pick Maverick, but if I should pick a second one that’s full on the business book is Blue Ocean Strategy. I think that book has probably been one of the business books we refer to the most whenever we discuss new products or positioning of products. It talks about how you essentially find yourself without competition by building something different, not being in a red ocean. That’s where all the competition is finding a blue ocean where there’s no competition. It’s a phenomenal book and I don’t say that about a lot of business books.

Kimberly (01:23): Okay, David, this one I’m going to start with you. What’s the best single piece of business advice you’ve ever received?

David (01:30): The one that immediately comes to mind, I don’t know if this is best single ever, but Jeff Bezos, when we met with him maybe the second time, talked about investing in the things that don’t change, and I thought that was such an interesting idea. He made the parallel to Amazon investing in delivery actually. And what’s so funny about that is you can see the effects. We had this conversation with Jeff in 2006, maybe I think two day delivery at that time was state of the art, right? They’ve kept investing in it for whatever, is that going to be 18 years since now I can get stuff from Amazon same day, or I can order that 10:00 PM at night and it’ll be there 6:00 AM in the morning. I still don’t even fully understand how that is, but it is incredible and it’s actually one of the things that after wandering in the wilderness for a while, it brought me back to Amazon as a major way to shop. So investing in things that don’t change is really strong. I think where we’ve done it is investing in the web as our main fundamental platform, making the web much better, investing in our credibility, our long run. I bring out the fact that we run Tadalist, the free service we premiered in 2005 still. That’s an investment in brand longevity care, that kind of stuff.

Kimberly (02:48): Okay. Jason, you’re getting a different question. What’s the one thing you wish someone had told you when you were first starting your business?

Jason (02:55): I don’t have an answer for that honestly. No offense. I don’t like questions about what would you have done differently because I don’t think you can do anything differently. I think you’re going to do what you’re going to do at that moment in time. That’s what you’d have done. So I’m going to answer the question you asked David instead, if you don’t mind.

Kimberly (03:14): Okay great. Go for it. Best piece of advice.

Jason (03:16): That’s from my dad, which is basically no one ever went broke making a profit, which has been something that’s fundamentally pushed me all these years to make sure that we’re a profitable business. And profit buys you time. People say you can’t buy time, you can buy time in business if you’re profitable, it’s the one place in the world you can buy time. And so anyway, that’s the one piece of advice that I always reflect back on and go back to.

Kimberly (03:42): David, do you want to answer the question? Jason didn’t want to answer? Piece of advice you wish someone had told you?

David (03:46): It’s funny because I was nodding because I was going to give the same answer. I don’t want to know all of it upfront. Holy smokes. This would’ve been a boring journey if I knew everything I know now 20 years ago, I would’ve been like, ugh, that sounds like a hassle. Let’s not even bother. Let’s just get a job. I think part of the adventure of starting your own business is not knowing everything and not wishing you knew everything. Treating it as the treat it is to discover lessons and experiences and mistakes for the first time. So many fond memories I have of being in business with Jason have been like the smaller or the larger mistakes that we made over the years, the things that have really changed my mind, I would not trade that for a cheat sheet upfront any day of the week.

Kimberly (04:34): Okay. Jason, what habits do you have that help you be more productive?

Jason (04:39): Nine to five is one of them, which is like I don’t work at night. I mean sometimes I’ll work if I don’t work a little bit during the day, I’ll do something from nine to 10 before I go to bed or something, but I don’t typically work at night and I don’t typically work on the weekends. So that says I’ve only got eight hours. Got to make 'em work. So that’s one of the things. The thing is more practically, I use one screen, I use a laptop, 13 inch laptop. That’s it. That’s the only screen I have. I have an iPad too but I don’t share the screen. And then the last thing is I pretty much have notifications off on everything. Notifications, it’s a misnomer that they’re push notifications, they’re not pushed, they’re pull. They pull you into things. They don’t push you away from things. I don’t like things that pull me into things, so I tend to have them off except for very rare cases like my wife or David or something like that. We have a signal thing that we use sometimes and I want to make sure I hear that. If my wife texts me, I have a different tone for that. That’s kind of it though. Other than that, I’m a no badge, no notification person.

Kimberly (05:38): David, what about you? Habits for productivity.

David (05:41): A door, my own that I can close and seal from the outside world, which is essentially saying remote work. My career, I’ve absolutely took off when I got out of the open office, so I dunno if that’s a hack. For me, it was, a hack to get these long stretches of uninterrupted time, it kind of loses the same thing Jason is talking about getting these distractions out of the way. But to me the biggest distraction was to sit in an office with other people. I cannot focus on the kind of deep problems that I enjoy solving if I do it around a lot of other people all the time.

Kimberly (06:18): Okay. David, I’m going to start with you. What’s the most meaningful part of your job? Deep question here.

David (06:25): Yeah

Jason (06:25): There’s no meaning.

David (06:30): Well, I’d say actually the search for that meaning is a really interesting quest. And I think especially when you’ve been in business for as long as Jason and I have, you do occasionally run out of certain paths of meaning. In the beginning, maybe the meaning is to have success of any kind, to have customers of any kind and you achieve that and you have customers and maybe you have a lot of them and they pay you enough money that you can run a successful business and then you go along, huh? What’s the next thing? Where does it go from there? And I think where I often come back to and revolve around is that the independence to set our own path, to not answer to anyone, to not ask anyone for permission has been an enduring source of meaning. That we can have a direct relationship with customers and owners of our products who buy directly from us.

(07:23): This is why this whole nonsense with the app stores have kind of impacted me so deeply and frustrated me so greatly because it really feels like such a core attack on something I’ve otherwise built the entire business around. We built our entire business on the web, but we didn’t have to ask anyone for permission. We didn’t have to beg for shelf space. We didn’t have to do any of those things. And the longer I’ve been in business, the more I zoom out, the more I realize that’s it. If I can’t have that part, if I cannot have independence, I don’t actually want any of it. I’d rather just give it all away. This was some of the things we ran into when we had our thing a few years ago. Internally, there was this sense of the business getting comfort into this web where all the movements would just attract a bunch of spiders all the time. I can’t have all that stuff on me. Just got to shake it off and just got to be independent. Us driving things from our authentic perception of what we think is good, making great products for people who want to buy them. That’s so satisfying and I don’t want to trade any of that for any amount of money or advances.

Kimberly (08:33): Jason, same thing. Most meaningful part of your job?

Jason (08:37): Meaningful. I like to just make things, realizing that we like to make things. I think for a little bit, we kind of stopped doing that when we decided to go all in with Basecamp, which I think was the right decision at the time. And we did that for a number of years. And then I think we had an itch, and I think you have to follow those itches and scratch and if you deny yourself that I don’t think the aestheticism there is a good thing. I think it’s best to dive into that. So I’ve just found that for me, my most pleasant times at work are when we’re making something, primarily making something new actually, that’s what I enjoy and I don’t love the maintenance so much as I used to. I like that other people like that more than I do, but just getting into make something new, that’s what I value.

Kimberly (09:25): Okay. Jason, it’s for you, David, you’re next. How and where do you find inspiration?

Jason (09:32): Oh, I don’t look for it. Just sort of I come upon it. For me, things like nature. I mean if you want to find out what colors work, just go look out your window. If you want to find out what shapes work, go look out your window. If you want to see something that works, look out your window. What you’re looking at in the world is the best it’s ever been, the best version of that tree that it’s ever been. I’m talking about A/B testing, I mean, holy shit. It’s like A/B through every zillion tests ever. And what you have in front of you is the best thing that it’s ever been. I think that’s really interesting. So I look at that. I also love architecture, so for me, great architecture is wildly inspiring and I’m not entirely sure why it is for me, but something about the materials and the textures and the space and the way it makes you feel and how a space can give you an experience is just for me a wonderful, wonderful thing.

(10:26): So I’d say those two things specifically inspire me. And there’s a lot of other things though too. And the other thing I would say last, I know this isn’t that short, is that there are a hundred million things that inspire me that I don’t even realize. We are influenced and inspired by all sorts of things we don’t notice, we can’t see, we don’t think we saw, that do. And I like the mystery of that. I think it’s kind of an interesting thing to go through life with that mystery. Why am I the way I am? I’m not totally sure.

Kimberly (10:59): David, do you have anything to add? Inspiration?

David (11:02): Yeah, I really like peeling things back to first principles and almost like taking the whole Lego set apart and then just stepping back and looking at the blocks and going like, ah, I wonder if those five blue pieces over there, we could make something different with that. And I find that the inspiration to make something unique, at least for me, it requires taking things apart to their core constituent parts. I can’t subdivide it much more than that and then I can start thinking, oh, now all these pieces, there are shapes to them and those shapes can be put together in different ways. I think a lot of the technology that I’ve been interested in recently have come from that exposition. I’ve talked about how I looked into Docker, this technology for putting software together and the entire system into this one container. I just looked into that because I thought like, do you know what?

(11:53): This is really interesting technology and I didn’t have a purpose at first with where is that going to take me? I was just like, I’m going to spend two weeks just really learning this. And I spent two weeks really learning this and out of that came our technology for exiting the cloud, the Kamal thing, it came the ideas for building ONCE this whole new run your own software thing, a bunch of other technical things on the framework, I came from that one, go all the way down to the fundamentals, figure that out. Even if I don’t have an idea of how to use it, it almost is some sense of fundamental research. The other one is aesthetics. I really just like making things beautiful for their own sake. And I may mean here not design, but the technical inwards that I have my direct fingers on, making this piece of code as peak good as, like I’m out of ideas. I’ve been staring at it, I’ve been editing it for an hour. I’ve moved every freaking comment around. I’ve tried different alignments of characters I’ve tried to put in there, tried to build bigger methods. I’ve tinkered with it every once way and I go like, you know what? This is it. I can’t improve that further. That to me, that satisfaction is just injecting motivation into my veins. Let me do that again. Let me do that on a new problem.

Kimberly (13:09): Okay, last question before we wrap it up. What’s one thing on the horizon that you’re looking forward to? David, we’ll start with you.

David (13:16): Well, I don’t want to spoil the surprise here because I’m about to embark on a grand adventure that is born out of, not first, well part of your first principles, but primarily anger. I have a deep seated, unresolved anger in my pit right now about certain factors and state of the software world that I can glimpse and I can see a path out of. And I’m really excited to actually release that anger because I don’t think it’s actually good long-term to sit with the same anchors for too long. They’ll fucking turn into ulcers if you don’t do something with it, you got to expel it from your system. And I felt like I’ve been in a rut on this particular one topic for multiple years and it has developed into a precursor to an ulcer. And I’m like, do you know what? I’m fucking too old to have a goddamn ulcer over shit that I have the power to change, so I should just change things. So I’m really looking forward to that. That is about as vague as it can possibly get, but more detail on that soon.

Kimberly (14:18): Okay. Jason, can you be any less vague about something you’re excited about?

Jason (14:22): I’m looking forward to finding out what David’s talking about. That’s what I’m looking… interesting. I mean, we’re about to start another product this week probably, which is the next ONCE product. I’m always looking forward to the next product we’re building. And so in the short term, that is the next thing. And so that is what I’m really particularly curious about doing and excited to start.

Kimberly (14:43): Okay. Well thank you for humoring me with these rapid fire questions. If you have a question for Jason or David about a better way to work or run your business or just something random, leave us a voicemail at 708-628-7850. You can also text that number. You can also email us at rework@37signals.com. REWORK is a production 37signals. You can find show notes and transcripts on our website at 37signals.com/podcast. Full episodes are also on YouTube and Twitter.