Jason Fried Interview: Bootstrapping vs VC, Profit vs Revenue, How to Write, Basecamp, HEY & Once

all right welcome back to the founder marketing show in today's episode we talked with Jason freed the founder and CEO of 37 signals makers of base camp and hey it's a very special episode for me uh we use Bas cam at our company and I've been following him and his co-founder David for a long time we dive into all kinds of different things his writing process raising VC money versus bootstrapping what are the different tradeoffs prioritizing profits over Revenue how to make the most of your work dayss the 40-hour work week versus Hustle culture and many more things I hope you enjoy this episode all right Jason uh thank you for joining this is uh pretty exciting to me I mean uh you saw the post we've been using Bas cam at our company for 3 years I read a lot of yours and dhh blog post and and all that so I don't feel like introducing you because I feel like everyone knows you and I hate when like people spend five minutes on the podcast introducing fun and CEO of 37 signals makers of base camp and hay you guys are prolific book writers block BL post writers LinkedIn twitterers and obviously you guys run a company I think a lot of people know and follow you and so the topic I want to start with is basically VC versus bootstrapping for me I think one good place to start is you actually commented on a LinkedIn post where basically someone charted how long it took software companies to get to a million in ARR and it's like Zip Ram canva amplitude Loom figma and it's like all kinds of different time periods and you actually commented and you almost got your comment almost got as many likes as the actual post and you said make the same chart but how long it took them to reach a million and profit it will be a lonely chart too much focus on Revenue you can go broke generating Revenue who cares if you're generating a million if it takes 500 million to do so I think this is a great maybe analogy to talk about VC versus bootstrapping because all of those companies on the chart are are VC backed and so when we think about Revenue versus profit and a lot of these VC backed companies they go for Revenue growth that's what's being reported on that's what they measure themselves by Revenue multiples and all of these things versus profit what are maybe some of the tradeoffs if I'm optimizing for Revenue growth versus profit a lot of the decisions are the same right I still need to build a great product that people actually W I don't I don't think so I don't think the decisions are the same I think that's that's where I'm going to jump in on you I think I think they're different because uh for a lot of VC back companies that the endgame is is an acquisition or a sale or some liquidity event in a handful of years that's kind of the end game and so it it's certainly not going to be about making sure this the environment is sustainable it's not going to be about taking good care of your employees necessarily CU you may not need to keep them around that long it may not even be about taking care of customers as long as you can market share grab by buying a ton of of Mind share and market share through through ads or whatever and just get people in the door you might have mega churn but it may not matter as long as you keep getting more people in the door there's nothing about generating Revenue that's sustainable um it's just about generating Topline revenue and if it costs you more to generate that Revenue than the revenue itself you're not building a sustainable business you're building a business that's going to continue to depend on outside funding to stay alive now as we're seeing right now in this current market condition a lot of funding is drying up there's some funding going into certain things like AI for example but like standard SAS B2B tools is just kind of not the hot thing anymore right and that happened very quickly it happened like in a matter of a year rates flew through the roof in the US funding dried up um and a lot of people are looking for money they're not going to find it anymore so what they built is this engine to generate Revenue um but that engine needs more fuel and the fuel for them is outside funding which is now drying up and so now they have nowhere to go now they're left with this this husk of a business essentially a business is going to implode on itself so a bootstrap business however they need to basically make money as early as possible because their fuel is is they create their own fuel they get high on their own Supply essentially they need to generate Revenue to stay in business there is no other option but to stay in business and to do that they have to generate revenue and generate profit I should say so I think that the the the incentives are very quite a bit different uh the things that motivate you are quite a bit different and I think in the end I think customers will actually feel that and employees will feel the difference uh of a company that's trying to stay in business versus a company frankly that's trying to go out of business which is essentially what an acquisition is it's like you're aiming to go out of business I I think that if those are the two AIMS in business out of business the the everything that's going to make up those businesses are going to be quite a bit different so it's almost like short-term versus longterm term what are the downstream effect on how you build the product if you're optimizing for revenue and an acquisition rather than profit well it depends right because not everyone's going to do this the same way but but what I've seen you know I've been around for 25 years and I've seen a bunch of es and flows in this in this market in this world here when people are just focusing on Topline Revenue growth there's a lot more I think I would call it manipulation of of the customer there's more gamification there's more or efforts on on on I would call it sleazy retention efforts like when it's hard to cancel or what do you mean yeah it's hard to cancel because you know they need to show Revenue growth versus like this is not always true because of course if you're if you're a bootstrap company you need you need customers to stick around too but what I've noticed is that and this is just purely anecdotal but it's based on you know a couple decades of of anecdotes at this point is you can tell when a company's VC backed um it just feels like there's a different game being played it's not like we're actually just trying to make a really damn good product and treat our customers really well it's that we're trying to hold on to them and keep them uh there's a different feeling there because they need to show certain growth numbers they need to show certain customer count numbers they need to show you know year-over-year and month over month and quarter of quarter numbers that are different than someone who's just simply trying to stay in business again retention is important for all people but there's a different I would say intensity around the things that VC companies do and they feel to me like they're trying to lock more people in because the metrics they're being judged on are different than a than a company that's simply trying to make sure the customers stay around because the product is good and they're treated well um so anyway that's been my impression but again this is these are very broad statements of course and that's not always the case but that's if I had to draw the line I'd draw the line there I don't know if that's still true but I think every time I get an invoice from Bas cam in an email there's actually right there a link to say if you want to cancel it was definitely at some case I don't know if it's still the case yeah and we don't we don't have any like retention Engineers or you know there's no games to play there's no one who's going to talk you out of leaving um if you want to leave you can leave and you can leave with your data and you can come back as often as you want leave as often as you want no one's here to prevent you from choosing to do what you want to do I find that not to be the case in a lot of VCB companies and for what it's worth they might have higher retention than we do because of that but it's not the kind of game we want play I think I listened to a podcast on saster with the co with the founders of monday.com which is kind of like a competitor to base camp right and obviously they're the classic kind of VC backed high growth scale at all costs we've all seen their YouTube ads uh 20 times and my belief was always because I'm super bought into this bootstrap thing that you can't operate a company for years losing money and then suddenly make the switch and be profitable but it looks like they were actually able to do that I don't know if I get my numbers correct but basically with the economic situation within five quarters where they went from cash flow negative to cash flow positive do you feel like the bootstrappers we're almost duding ourselves a little bit of like saying no you can't operate in this way and then suddenly makes the switch because it looks like they were actually able to make that switch and and just be profitable I'd have to look at the financials right now but I I can tell you that like in 2021 Monday lost $126 million in 2020 they lost $149 million and the trailing 12 months is showing I think losses of $170 million as of a handful of months ago when I looked at this last so and their stock is down you know from oh at the high they were at 371 and now they're at 132 right so so the market is like and their their their earnings per share are Nega 94 so sense I I don't see what you're seeing in terms of being cash flow posit positive it's it's it's certainly possible I don't I don't know cuz I'm not looking at the latest latest latest but if you look at like Yahoo finance and look it up right now they're they're negative EPS almost a dollar a share they've got their business we've got our business they're running it their way we're running ours our way we've been profitable for 25 straight years I'd rather be in our position than their position I would not trade our company for theirs any day of the week now they might have a bigger company I mean they certainly not might they do we have similar customer counts actually the end of the day we have 80 employees I think they have I'd have to go look but hey look this is the choice they're making um what I would wonder is what's the stress level like inside that company compared to the stress level like inside our company and to me in my opinion like that stress will play its way out to customers you cannot not have that stress leak out on customers in some way in the way that you treat them and the retention techniques that you have when you're hemorrhaging money you know uh you're going going to do things that you might not normally want to do but you have to do so I wouldn't want to be in that environment that's not the kind of environment that I'd like to be in or work in or or create a company that that is that place but again they're a public company we not some people might look at that and go they're more successful than we are you know it all depends certainly some people made tons and tons of money on the IPO all those things are things but like how do you want to show up at work every day that's sort of the thing that we that we are focused on can you have a meaningful impact on a 40-hour work week and this is a personal crisis that I'm dealing with I'm 27 I feel like I'm at that age where I should be building something big I'm ambitious I want to have an impact but at the same time I have a wife I have a 9-month-old daughter turns out I actually like spending time with them and I do want to spend time with them I have hobbies I like reading I like so I'm like there's this side of hustle culture and almost anyone in the software space that you listen to whether it's Jason lkin from saster whether it's any of the founders of the companies that are on the podcast whether it's har stebbings Nathan lka it's all about like hustle 24/7 work 12 hours a day 7 days a week you need to answer emails within 3 minutes that they come in or 30 seconds that they come in you need to always be responsive you need to sacrifice your personal life and hobbies if you want to build a meaningful company and you guys to me are this kind of Beacon off yes you don't have the hundreds of tens of thousands of employees but you guys seem to have a disproportionate impact on the industry and on people and you guys are an inspiration to people and people read your books and listen to you so maybe you work 12 hours a day I don't know like no about 40 I mean here's the thing like um I don't know I I don't I don't see what you need to do like I don't I don't understand why you need to put in insane number of hours like what exactly are you doing all day long that require that says you can't get great work done in 8 hours that's the question I would actually have frankly like if you can get a good four or five hours of really good work in a day I think that's pretty good so what are you doing with all the other time that you have to that you're spending and and why why is this adding up to 10 12 14 hour days or whatever like over the course of of days and weeks and months and years like what what are you doing why are you so busy that's the question I would have what are you so busy doing I'm focused on building things for customers charging the money for it making more money than we spend that doesn't take an outsize number of hours that takes a good amount of focused work in a given day everyone does that here um and with that you can build something great like you don't need to spend an inordinate number of hours and feel like everything else in your life has to suffer I just don't understand why people feel like they have to do that and then of course it's celebrated to your point with all the people you were explaining there celebrating it and and hustling and hustling because if you're not making it it's really easy to tell someone well you're just not working hard enough dude you just got to bust your ass harder and if you do that then I don't I don't think that that's true you can bust your ass doing the wrong thing and bust your ass and triple bust your ass doing the wrong thing like working extra hard on the wrong thing or working extra hard on in the wrong way or working extra hard on something that frankly just isn't going to work no matter what isn't isn't going to get you anywhere um all this stuff is hard building something well is hard and building something poorly is hard it's it's it's hard to do any of this stuff you got to make sure that you're focused on the right things and to me that's the more important Focus here rather than the quantity although of course to your point you've got a wife you've got a kid you've got Hobbies you've got to make time for those things too because what does it really matter if your business is wildly successful if your life falls apart I mean for some people that's fine it doesn't sound like it's fine for you it's certainly not fine for me either and it doesn't have to be fine for others you don't have to do that so I I'm a big fan of basically 888 what is what I like to call 8 hours of sleep8 hours of work and eight hours of of Life Of course life encompasses all these things but you can do plenty plenty well that way I guess the argument is that you know if you work eight hours that what's that's is what everyone else is doing so even if you work smart for these eight hours and you prioritize the right things there's someone else who's working smart and prioritizing the right things for 12 hours and so okay well let's take that to The Logical extreme how many hours are there in a day maximum 24 right you don't get to have 32 no one else gets to have 48 so like you know assume assume everyone's working 12 assume everyone's working 14 assume everyone's working 18 like someone there has to be some differentiation here and part of this is the the the ACT I mean sometimes you're going to work your ass off and nothing's going to happen this can happen business is hard and a lot of it is luck a lot of it is timing a lot of it is Chance a lot of it is things you can't control there's a lot of stuff that is not up to you actually um but but hey everyone has the same limits on themselves and so you know the argument that someone else is working while you're sleeping well okay then go ahead and work while work don't sleep and see how long that lasts like all these arguments they fall down so fast because there's not that much Headroom here actually you don't you can't work more than you can work and and everyone else is out there doing the same thing so this is about um all the other things it's it's not about how many hours you put in it's first of all like how's your product um how do you talk about your product how do you treat your customers how do you treat your employees what's your pricing look like what's your cost structure look like all these things which have nothing to do with hours now you can get all that stuff right and still not make it let's just I mean buiness most businesses don't make it so all that can be true as well but to go if I only worked an extra three or four hours a day we would have made it I think is a it's it's a it's a false narrative that but it's an easy one to say because you didn't do it so it's like well you just didn't work hard enough that's that's sort of the answer and I think that's an unfortunate uh line of thought personally but I mean you guys are contrarian in that point I feel like you guys are really more or less the only people that I that I hear loudly that say you don't need to work really hard and so I don't like the word hard if you don't mind me just pushing back in that one word I mean a lot of hours sorry I don't know I think there's a lot of Silent people out there who are just putting in their 40-hour days or 40 hour week sorry and uh and and making progress um but you know that doesn't um it's not as exciting as saying just work your ass off man just work you're not working hard enough you're not working hard I mean motivational speakers are very popular for a reason like you're just not working hard enough work harder if you work harder just work harder you know um I think a lot of people are silent and just working and and being and getting the work done and and moving on but um you know at the end of the day you've got to figure out what works for you if working 14 hours a day works for you work 14 hours a day you know but but if it's not working for you or 12 hour if it's not working for you don't think like I just had to work 15 if I just would have put in 15 that would have been the difference that's the problem that's what I'm trying to kind of get at is that the problem with just hours is that you're always like w if I just want to put that one more hour in I don't think so can you talk to me about the texture of a good idea good good ideas are interesting they they do have a texture to them they they they feel like something um and they they they're smooth I mean to me there there's actually a couple different ways of thinking about this but things sort of flow effortlessly they feel smooth they don't burn your hands if you hold on to them they just there's a smoothness to them and it's something that you feel when you're working on something and it's sort of like this groove that you settle into um and that's at least how it comes to me if I feel like I'm struggling too much with something and wrestling too much with something it's probably not a good idea um I'd rather just kind of let that go and let something else come up um I I I think that sometimes struggle is um glorifying uh and it's not that there's different kinds of struggle there sometimes you you have something here and you just you know you're not turning it in the right direction or looking at it from the right angle that's sort of a a creative um uh curiosity uh and there's a little bit of struggle on that but I mean if something's just pulling you totally in the different in an opposite direction and you just simply don't have the energy to pull pull it with you to get it going I just let it would let it go and let it just run away um and and find that next thing that comes to you and and I I find is true to be or to be true with writing and a lot of different things which is basically um if it's really hard I just stop doing it um and I wait for something else that seems easy so I'll be writing a piece for example and I'll have this idea in my head and I'll start writing it and if I don't finish it in 5 to 10 minutes I'll just stop and usually throw it out and start over so I don't wait I don't struggle with that thing that I wrote the bad thing that I wrote to try and make it better I'd rather just start over from scratch and try it again um that's a way for me to to let go of the struggle and see if something else comes easier and I find that if I start over it tends to be easier then if I have this thing I'm like well I already wrote this thing let me work with this thing that I have eh throw it away start over and then let something else come the next 5 or 10 minutes that's typically how I enjoy working and how I find that the work ends up being better but then are good ideas just exciting ideas for me they have to there has to be a certain amount of of um excitement to sustain the idea because um I ideas are are pretty fleeting and you can have a great one but that's not really the hard part the hard part is actually like doing the thing and that tends to take some time so it has to be something that will sustain you over time which means it has to be exciting and interesting and it has to I think spur your curiosity because otherwise it will just become tedious and tedium kind of kills most ideas um there's going to be times in that development process where you're not like thrilled but in general you have to remain excited about what you're doing I think in order for it to pull you through otherwise you will just end up giving up on it or you'll struggle with it so much that it'll show in the product you'll take shortcuts you'll you'll just skip out on quality you won't care you're just then at some point just aiming to finish it and I think when you when when that's the case you can see these blunt edges start to form this isn't really a sharp idea anymore it's just this dull thing that they just had to finish at least that that's how it comes to me when I'm thinking about these sorts of things will you guys only ever build products that you can be a user of yourself yes so we we only build things that we need or we want to exist in the world um and the first version of anything that we build um is our version so we don't we don't ask people what they want we don't run it by customers to see what they think uh we don't ask people what they're willing to pay for it we first version is what do we want to make for ourselves um we're we're tough customers of Our Own work so we want to make something really really good then we put out there on the market and then when it's on the market then we hear from people then we hear real feedback because people are using it then in their real environment and paying it for with their real money it doesn't if it doesn't cost anyone anything to say yes or no like I don't want to hear it because if someone would you pay 99 bucks a month for this sure well if you don't have to lay out $99 a month that answer means nothing it means absolutely nothing in fact it can be highly misleading so I'd rather just put something out there on the market and see what actually happens and then iterate and adjust from there if we need to or double down on it or whatever it might be but um I don't really believe in in asking people what they want before something exists once it exists and it lands and people interface with it in the real world you will hear really good feedback from from them and then we can adjust as you go at that point do you think it would be a better world in which that's the only kinds of product that are being built from people who are actually users of it I think that's a really good question my experience is so I I don't think that's going to be possible um but my experience is that the products that are clearly made by people who want those products are the best products um there's an intangible level of detail and consideration perhaps it's not intangible perhaps it's tangible actually um but it's subtle let's say um there's a level of detail and quality and consideration and thoughtfulness that come from that comes from people who who are building the thing that they want and they understand the thing so well that they make really thoughtful decisions Tech they tend to make really thoughtful decisions that that are delightful you you like um you just sort of realize those things as you're using go wow they really thought of that wow what a clever thought and this dial this dial feels really good because it was built by someone who's going to use this dial not someone who's just like I need to find a part supplier who makes dials and needs to be this certain you know dimension okay and made out of this material fine but how does that dial feel that's something that someone who cares will dial this in to you dial in the dial um and you see that I think in a lot of different software products and Hardware products and in all sorts of different products so um I I enjoy using products built by people who are connoisseurs of those things but I don't think it's always possible but I think it would be I think it's it tends to be better and I tend to seek out those kind of products personally cool let's add a question here Kum Haku asked do Bas Cam and hay have North Star metrics you try to optimize not really um not metrics uh they have feelings um not like products feel something but we we have feelings about the product right uh yeah and I mean ultimately things need to be profitable so that's like that's our thing that's the only thing we're really ultimately focused on on a metrics perspective and also there's performance numbers in terms of speed and responsiveness but not in terms of um we don't look at like customer growth counts and we we know what our conversion rates are but we're not measuring against something that we're trying to hit we're never trying to hit a number we we are trying to be profitable but we want the products to feel a certain way we want the we want the reception to feel a certain way and and that means that there's many things we will say no to in our products so even if we can hit a certain metrics that that's made up um there might be ways to hit some number if we did this or that but if it doesn't feel WR for the product we're not going to do this or that so that's kind of how we tend to think about it but but we're not looking at a dashboard um of numbers we are sometimes curious about numbers and we'll look at a number but it's not we're not driven by that and I'm actually been I've been planning on writing about something like this I I this will probably be controversial or some I don't believe there's anything that's data driven um a lot of people talk about I think at the end of the day and if a computer's making the decision then it's data driven if a human's making a decision and they're looking at numbers they they they're looking at a dashboard they're looking at numbers they're look but if hum's asked to make a decision about those numbers then it's intuition it's still an intuitive decision that's being made it's being informed but if if it's not just the numbers making the decision there's still a human and the last step of the last step in the decision is the human making the call it's still an intuition driven decision it's intuitive I I think that that's something that's a good thing to recognize um and again if if the decision is purely outsourced to something that's purely rational and humans are not rational um then it would be truly data driven it can be data informed it can be data influenced but it's not a data driven decision if a human being makes it so you don't have growth goals no no we just want to be profitable I want to be profitable do you want a certain profit margin like 20% like 50% we like to stay in a general range so this is the other thing it's a range everything's a range for us so like you know I'm not going to share our margins necessarily but they're they're quite High they're double digits and they're in a certain range we feel good if they're in this kind of range sometime one year they might drop a bit because we invest a little bit more over here one year they might be more because we cut costs over here or we have more growth over here like it's it's about like it's again A Feeling what feels about right for us what are we comfortable with and are we comfortable sacrificing some margin for a few years for this reason are we comfortable doing these things it's never a number it's not like it's got to be 28% and if it's 27% we're going to be upset and if it's 29% we're going to cheer like it's it's a range how does it feel and and that's how we're driven truly we're just driven in general I would say versus being driven specifically I feel like you're your writing skills are underappreciated I think you're probably the best business copywriter or copywriter one of the best that I know for sure you wrote about that you would want to teach a writing class and it consist of giving people a topic and they write about it in three pages then they and then in one page then in three paragraphs then in one paragraph and then in one sentence talk to me about the idea behind why that would be the writing course I I try to write like I speak I think that's one of the things that more people um should try and I think people would become better writers if they just wrote like they spoke versus trying to write so I think when you try to write I think people overdo it so that's my little approach what what I think was important about that that class idea and this this is not just about writing necessarily it's about pretty much anything it's about revision but the writing the writing class specifically is um uh is helping people become better editors and cutting things down and being able to sort of summarize and be more concise um and it's not always better it's not always that you know one line is better than a paragraph sometimes you need the additional detail in certain things to make it more colorful and more expressive but often times shorter can be be better it's just a good challenge I think I I think the other thing that's important is that and this is not really taught enough I I don't think which is which is um boiling something down and and not losing too much of the essence and then there's a point where you go too far um but I remember in school for example where it's like you're supposed to write a 10-page paper or a five-page paper there's this there's this like minimum that's put out there um and I just think it'd be more useful to write four versions of that paper for for the student primarily not for the teacher grading it but for the student to really go through the process of writing something and writing something shorter and writing something shorter and writing something shorter because it just helps you really figure out how to concentrate this idea which is especially in these this day and age it's it's you know it's a lot I think more important to um to be concise now granted I here I am rambling uh about this answer um which you can see the power of bre I'm not using it right now but anyway that's my general feeling I think that'd be more valuable for people is it true that you write all the like you guys just announced once there was this memo basically of like why you created is that written by you yes I wrote that what's your process for writing this because there was one for hey there's what's your process for writing these like there's I have to be excited to say something first of all um it's very hard for me to write something um that I that I think is good if I don't really care about it which is why I I hated writing in school I I don't like to write about topics that someone tells me to write about you know it's got to be this this nugget there's got to be this this spark of an idea so uh when we launch something new we tend to announce it with a sort of a Manifesto style letter first right just to get the excitement and I've been meaning to record a walkthrough of the once so once.com if people are curious about it to like a walk through about what was going through my head why I structured it the way I structured it so I I will do that I've been meaning to do that for a while I don't have an outline uh I tend to start with with a with a with a thought and then let it unfold let it sort of unwrap from there um and again if it like if it tends to be a struggle I'll just stop and throw it out and start again the once one um felt great to me like I I wrote it in 10 minutes i' I've edited it you know a bunch after that but like the gist of it 95% of it was written in 10 minutes and that's how I know it's going to be good it was it's emotional there's energy behind it I mean every word um I know sometimes I go a bit 10% too far on some of the ideas and I like that and the same thing was true for for the hey letter which is at the bottom of hey.com if you scroll down it's still there I I it's just it's a feeling again I'm trying to I'm trying to express a feeling I'm not trying to Market something I'm not trying to explain something I'm trying to express a Feeling about something and U I think that comes through in the words and I I find that when it's when it veers away from a feeling and it it then it becomes too clinical or too formal and that bores me and when I'm bored I don't write well um so it's got to hold my interest it's got I have to hold my own interest is kind of a good way of putting this too I'm writing something that I want to read that's another way to think about it what's your relationship to feedback like when you when you wrote it you send it over to like dhh and and then he's like N I don't like this sentence like or do you just like this is what it is I don't care what dhh says like uh it depends so like blog posts I don't I don't get feedback on but but that kind of thing David and I I'll write the first draft um I'll I'll send to David for his thoughts um he'll give me some feedback um some of it I'll take some of it I'll leave um I'll send him another draft we'll kind of go back and forth a few times but we don't Bel labor it you know um so that was probably I wrote that in 10 minutes I played around with it some more sent it to him the next day um he gave me a little bit of feedback I played with it for you know I don't know a few more minutes tweaked a sentence or something we do this all in base camp um and uh and then it's done um and then I I just I find that the more you work it the worse it gets at some point so I think it's important to just like eh play with it for a while and get it out there um same thing was true with the hey letter with hey I actually worked with another employee who's not here anymore um a fellow named James kind of gave me some really good feedback along the way on that one um but I don't uh I don't like pass it by six or seven people it's usually one person and then when they say like this sentence I don't like it do you like listen to them or is it just like if it resonates with you then you incorporate it but if you disagree with their criticism it's just you don't um I try to understand where they're coming from it's not like I'll take sometimes they'll suggest a sentence and it's not like I'm going to copy and paste that sentence although sometimes I will will it's like oh that's damn that's great that's exactly what I was trying to say I couldn't say it but it's like oh yeah yeah I see I see your point there or whatever and then sometimes I go H uh not not feeling it so like asking for feedback is not about taking feedback it's asking for feedback um and some of that feedback moves you modifies you some of it does not um but when you ask for it you're going to get something back and and then it's up to you still as the as the chef to decide if the if the dish needs more salt or not you know um or you should use oregano instead of margarum like it's still your dish you've got to figure that out in the end someone might tell you what they think and you might agree but it's still on you at the end because I promise people Greg Larin ask are there any industry which should be bootstrapped and other Industries which should be VC backed yeah certainly and and you know look um I want to be clear about this like when I when I'm railing against VC and like there are plenty of places where Investments make sense I think though for a lot of software businesses which is the world I live in and and and Consulting businesses and and very low Capital intensive businesses more money means more problems it doesn't mean more solutions but if you're going to be building a car or uh an airplane or um you're going to be building homes or you're going to be building physical objects or you're going to open a restaurant or you know and there's real Capital expenditures here or tool and die costs or machine costs or factory costs or raw material costs like of you know if you need if you need you know uh 33 ounces of gold because you need to make something out of gold like you got to come up with the money for that so you whether or not that you need millions of dollars is another question I think some people end up taking far too much money they should kind of rightsize the money they need to get them a little ways versus taking a lot of money which then requires them to do things they don't need to do like hire a bunch of people and spend a bunch of money on marketing that sort of thing um but absolutely there are lots of businesses that require investment but the vast majority of all businesses on this planet do not get a penny from anybody so let's keep that in mind that the most mainstream thing there is is to figure out how to figure it out yourself that is what most people are left with most people have no choice no one's going to pay them a penny for anything they're going to have to figure it out themselves so I'm on the side of that which is almost all businesses if you pay attention to Twitter and Linkedin you think everyone's raising money basically no one's raising money in the world and if they are it's from family that's going to give them a few bucks cuz that's all they've got like most companies are bootstrapped so that is actually the norm yeah and I mean it kind of basti the idea of VC backing I mean it's called a startup because you get money to start up an idea with the goal to get it running and profitable as soon as possible and not to go through the alphabet in terms of funding rounds Drew Corbett ask have you seen growing enthusiasm for data privacy and non-subscription products based on the Inception and warm feedback for hey do you see this as a single Market outlier part of a future Niche or even a sizable future Market with multiple players privacy is a important thing but it's a niche it's not a massive driver I mean there's certain companies like duck duck goo who who've built built a a good business on I use duck Dogo um I think Apple's built a good big I mean Apple's built a great business on a lot of things but privacy is a Cornerstone of their business as well um browsers like Firefox and brave and there's some there's some things like that right but I think most people just either don't know or don't care um about it really um and and and you can see that in just usage patterns and social media specifically and and um and whatnot like they're very comfortable sharing a bunch of stuff about themselves because in the end of the day they feel like it provides a better they're provided a better service when companies know more about them or they don't even realize what they're giving up but they don't really care I think that's just the world we live in so I think it's a it's a small corner of the market I think there's certainly plenty of people who use hay for that reason but I don't think it's a primary reason at all um it's it's it's a it's a reason that resonates with some and some very very strongly so I think those customers are very um they're very much all in on on privacy and some people care a little bit about it but the ones that are all in and there's enough of them again you know the interesting thing about about all this stuff is people always talk about market share and how big the market is Market's plenty big if your costs are really low that that's the thing it's like if your costs are really high you need more market share you know like we were talking about some of our competitors earlier they've got thousands of employees that's a huge monthly nut in salaries and in in benefits and so they've got to get AIG big big big marketer they got to go after the whales to to pay for that we have 80 people you know um our costs are not what their costs are so the size of business we can build on that is is quite big for us it might be very small for them but it's wonderful for us it's incredible for us because our costs are low so a a product line that like hay might be thrown out let's say let's say Google launched hay Hay's business which is multi-million dollar business would be an abject failure if Google launched it or if someone else launched it because it wouldn't cover their costs that they would put hundreds of people on it and you know all the structure they have and the requirements that they have to make something Su successful for them are different than us so so success in market share is not something that's that you need to compare to others the only thing that matters is does it work for you you're does it does it make sense for you I would the most important thing I think people can should stop doing is comparing themselves to others it doesn't matter because other companies have different cost structures different business models different requirements all you need to worry about is does it make sense for you for you and yours that's what matters so that's why a privacy driven business let's say could be successful if you don't need to get 600,000 people to sign up for it you know maybe you need 8,000 people paying a certain amount of money which would be again a huge failure for many companies but for you if you have seven people it could be incredibly lucrative so you got to look at it that way what are your favorite things to read um I I'm a primarily a non-fiction reader um I I I like science stuff um I'm curious about the mind um which books have you read the most times I don't think I've ever read a book more than once I don't finish most books either I get like I don't know three qus of the way through or something and I feel like I've got it or like half the way through I'm like that's probably enough um I do like to listen I find myself finishing more books that I listen to um than than I actually read these days for whatever reason you you mentioned feeling a couple of times the way that you build products is that it needs to have a certain feeling when you write you're looking for a certain feeling it seems like the prerequisite for that needs to be that you need to be in touch with your feelings trust your feelings are there any anything that you do to like get in touch with your feelings trust your feelings first of all I I wouldn't tell other people to to be that way like this is just what works for me right and and I just realized that in order for me to do good work I need to feel up for it I need to feel into it I I I need to feel good about it um I mean I can I can pla through and and you know like go through the SLO and get stuff done if I have to you know sometimes some days are like that but that's not going to sustain me over the long term it needs to feel right um I I think um just just generally building your awareness um and um paying attention to the things that um make you feel a certain way is just a good skill in general um you know I think it'll it'll serve you well in all have you always been good at it or um I I think I've always been driven by by intuition and feel um I I don't think I've always been necessarily aware of that fact perhaps getting older and practicing I meditate and you know some things like that can help me be a bit more aware of of things and sort of detach from detach from the thing them the thing itself and sort of to to notice what it does to me is has been helpful but I've always been driven by intuition I don't like to look at at numbers I'm not a numbers driven person never have been I don't really like them frankly actually at all very much um I tend to try to work backwards like let me let me make something great and figure out how to make it work um versus like how am I going to make this work what do I need to what do I need to build to make this work I'd rather build the thing and then figure out how to make it work I feel like that's where the 40-hour work week comes into because I feel like when I have these super long days and have backtack meetings and emails and this and that like I'm numb afterwards but the days where I have an empty schedule and there's nothing there like that's when you're creative and can feel into what you're doing those are the best days so I love empty schedules I I I don't like to book Things far in advance um I don't really frankly like to book things more than a few days in advance I I like open schedules I like big expansive stretches of space and time I I don't like chunked up days yesterday was kind of a shitty day for me I uh had like four back-to-back things we record our podcast on Tuesday Mornings um and that's usually an hour and then David and I get together with Elaine who's our coo and we get together for an hour and then I had another call after that which was an hour and to be honest at that point my day is wrecked if I have three hours of calls like it's just over my afternoon is going to be terrible it just is um and you know one day a week is typically like that for me the rest of my weeks are very very open um and this again is a feeling when I look at my calendar and I see an open day I feel I'm going to do better work if I go H this day is like chunked up I got this and then that and then a little bit of space and then this and that horrible um so the reason we're able to get so much work done at our company though is because we don't have things that are structural in our calendars that are chunking up our days we don't have required meetings we're not meeting all the time we're not you know it's not back to back to back to back to back there can be a day like that here and there but that's not the norm the norm is you've got 8 hours to yourself figure out how to use it um that's that's most people's days here what are some nonobvious reasons why you and David work seemingly so well together it's hard for me to answer that because I'm so close to it I'm not sure what's obvious what isn't but I I would say a couple things um that we do very different things is very important so David's technical I'm on the design side we both see business pretty much eye to eye for the most part but we're not in each other's business all the time if if we were both programmers I think it'd be harder if we were both designers I think it'd be harder um so it's good that we're both doing different things but we have a Center PATH that's about the same um and uh I I I you know I I won't speak for him but I I have deep admiration for his skills so I you know I would hope he would feel the same way about me but but I'll let him say that or not say that I feel like it's very important to admire uh your partner and really have a deep respect for what they're able to do and I and I sit there sometimes in awe of the amount of things that David's able to do and to do well and how he does it and um I think that's an important thing to to keep a partnership alive for a long time if you don't really admire or respect or think the other person's kind of pulling their weight or doing their thing you can sustain that for a little bit on sheer will but at some point it's going to lead to uh resentment and uh and that's I think a lot of Partnerships fall apart marriages relationships business all that stuff it's when resentment Creeps in you're in deep trouble um and I think so anything you can do to avoid that I think is probably one of the best ways to keep something together how do you avoid it how do you avoid resentment I think part of it is like when you're not in each other's business that helps because if if if you're constantly second-guessing each other there's a point where you're like ah I don't want to ask this person for their thoughts anymore because it's just going to lead to a fight or it's going to devolve into something so I think staying away from each other is a good thing I almost never see David David and I lived in the same city for a long time then for the past few years we lived nine time zones apart and now we're back in the same city again David's been back in in in the same city as me for I don't know like three or four months now I I think I've seen him twice like we don't we don't we're not in each other's business very often you know we talk often during the day in different formats in different ways but we do our own things and then we come together when we need to and then otherwise we're just kind of doing our own thing and I think that that that always helps too do you feel like it's better or worse if co-founders hang out privately personally I don't have a lot of counterfactual experience here uh I think it depends on the people I think David and I both appreciate our space um and and and the ability for us just to go heads down and do our thing without having to check in with each other all the time um but I think other people are different so I don't know um that's that's I think if I had to I think if I had if if I was in the same office with someone all the time for for many many many many years and like had to deal with someone all the time I think it'd be hard uh because you do have to deal with other human beings even if you like them you got to deal with them because we're all difficult and so it's kind of nice to keep sometimes keep the difficulties away um now I know some people who've been in business for a long time who were very friendly and and you know I'm friendly with David but we don't hang out um if if you're hanging out all the time I don't know in some ways it it it creates more moments of collision and I'm not so sure that's always a healthy thing but again I don't know that's just my been my experience we have two minutes left so you need to give a concise answer you guys launched once is the SAS model dying no SAS is not dying but I think there needs to be an alternative um I think what's unfortunate is that um if you want to buy software today basically there's only one way to buy it which is you can't buy it you can rent it in perpetuity I think there needs to be some options are you going to switch Base Cam and hey are those going to be the first products like you buy one's Bas Camp no base camp and hay are remaining SAS tools they make sense as those kinds of things the things that are going to be once products are radically simple products that are um uh well you'll see soon but are are basically what we're essentially looking at are what products have become Commodities that are still priced as luxuries and how can I radically simplif ify those things and deliver them like kind of almost dead simple generic versions of those things um at a vastly reduced price that people only have to pay for once and you'll if you start to think about once you see the first product you'll go oh yeah yeah people are paying a ridiculous amounts of money for that thing um there's no reason for that anymore gosh thank you so much for your time Jason um you scheduled this quite a bit in advance which you hate thank you for your time and uh enjoy the rest of bye bye

Channel: Finn Thormeier

Views: 3,361

Keywords: b2b marketing, b2b content, demand gen, demand generation, content marketing, personal branding, founder branding, video marketing, finn thormeier, project 33, project33, inbound marketing, linkedin, linkedin marketing, content tips, b2b content marketing, b2b video marketing, linkedin content, linkedin tips, b2b video, content for b2b companies, revenue marketing, b2b revenue, smma, founder-led marketing, LinkedIn Agency, LinkedIn Ads Agency, LinkedIn Founder Branding

Id: 2VrrHg3lglQ

Length: 48min 56sec (2936 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 02 2023