Radical Authenticity Over Marketing Tricks

`1:02:59`

— Yeah, yes. — your stuff for 13, 15 years." — Yeah. — I bought HEY, just because I wanted to give you money, because I'd buy your books, but I didn't have a team, and Basecamp's project management, — Right. — and I'm working by myself. — Yeah. — And so I couldn't ever give you money, and then you built up so much goodwill by teaching me so much through your writing that I was like, "Oh, I use email." — Yeah. — "I'm going to buy that product." — I appreciate that. — So, I am a proud subscriber of HEY, just because I was like, "I've got to give this... — Thank you. — I've got to pay you back somehow." — Thank you, I do that with other products too, where I'm not going to use them, but I just love the people behind them, and you want to support them. — It happens so much. — And it's a cool way... — This goes back to we identify with people, not companies. — Yes, and it's a cool way to purchase something. — Yeah. — Sometimes, the use is the support, not the actual use of the product.

`1:03:44`

But anyway, during the development of HEY, we launched this pre-launch page months before HEY was done. And so, I wrote this letter about why email is a beautiful thing, and for the longest time, people have hated email, because they despise it, because email has gone off the rails, and we can bring it back on. Do you remember when you used to get an email from someone you loved, or your grandparent, or an old friend? It's a wonderful thing to get an email from someone who you care about. The problem is that most emails now are spam, and sales and garbage, and meetings and shit. Anyway, we can get into that, but the point, to your question, was I wrote that in the middle. I didn't know what the product was going to be yet. We're going one day at a time. I didn't know what it was going to be. — Was that the why

`1:04:29`

behind the product? How would you describe... — It was the love behind the product. — Love? — Yes. — Say more about that. — Well, I don't want to get silly about it because you can't really love... — It's not silly. — I know, but it's a different version of love. — No, I love podcasts, so I know exactly what you're talking about. — Yeah. Yeah. — No, I love them. — Yes. — And when I make one, — Yes. -and listen to it before anybody else does — Yes. — and I'm like, "I'm happy with this," — Yes. — that is love. — Yes, that. — You're not silly. It's not silly to me. — Yeah, I know, I know. Okay, so there's a certain warmth, and tone that comes through when you make something you're really proud of in that way. We got proud about running the business for 27 years. I'm really proud of the products we make. The business, again, is like the envelope. I'm not proud of the envelope. I'm proud of the things that sustain the business,

`1:05:16`

which are the products. And I love getting them as right as I possibly can. And there is a warmth that comes to you when you're really proud to share something that you're done with, that you've finished, that you want to put out there in the world. And it could be a letter, it could be a line, it could be the right word in the right place, it could be an entire product, and it can also be a company, in a sense. But there is love reserved for that, for sure. — So, this is a love for the decentralized... I remember reading this. You were talking about if the actual creation of email is actually a miracle, we've just kind of f***** that up. — Yeah. It's amazing that anybody in the world can get in touch with anybody else. There's no platforms. Everything else is a platform.

`1:06:02`

You want to write someone on WhatsApp? Well, they have to have WhatsApp. Signal, they have to have Signal. Whatever, right? Email, beautiful thing. It's as beautiful as the web. The web is beautiful because anyone in the world with a web browser made by any company can use HTTP and connect to some other website. Same thing is true with basic email. These are the wonders of the world. And how did they become so despised? I blame Apple, I blame Google, I blame Yahoo, I blame Microsoft for making shit email products that they just don't care about. Now, they've started to care more about them. But they didn't care about them for a long time, and everybody knows that nobody cared, and so we care. I live in email sometimes. We don't use email inside our company, we use Basecamp,