Radical Authenticity Over Marketing Tricks

`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,

`1:06:49`

but for the outside world, we use email. And I want to use tools I love. I want to use tools that matter to me. And if I'm going to spend most of my day in Basecamp, I want to make Basecamp. If I'm going to spend the other part of my day in HEY, in email, I want to make an email tool that I'm proud of, that I want to use, that I have a certain love for, and that's what that is. And that letter, it was a love letter, in fact, it ended, if I remember correctly like, "This is a love letter. HEY is our love letter to email," and I meant it. — Yeah, it's a great thing. It's an amazing thing. — You just used the word tool a few times. — Yeah. — Do you identify with Tobi Lütke? He's like, "I'm just a..." — Toolmaker. — Yeah. "I'm a toolmaker." — That's all I make, too. I make tools. — That's how you think about it? — Yeah, so when people are like, "What do you do?" I go like, "I'm in the software business," so they understand what I do,

`1:07:36`

but I don't like that term. I also don't like, "I'm in the tech industry." I'm not a tech person. I don't like that. I make tools, they just happen to be made of software. That's all I know how to do. I don't know how to make things out of wood. But I know how to make things out of software, and code and design and conceptual ideas. And so, yeah, I make tools. We make tools. We make levers. It's just a lever. It's a lever that lets you do more with it than you could without it. That's all it is. You can move more things. You can organize more people. You can come up with better ideas. You can see those ideas through. You can make progress with the products that we make. That's what a tool is for, is to make progress. — I'm fascinated by a lot of your time spent out of the business, and a lot of the inspiration that you derive in life seem to be from physical things. You just named a bunch. — Yes.

`1:08:22`

— And you have a love of architecture, we just talked about watches, cars, the Concept Rower. When you said, "You could change your mind, David, maybe you're not podcasting in the future." — Yeah. — What I know for sure is if I ever do anything else, — Yeah. — it's going to be physical, because the same phenomenon where, — Yeah. — I barely look at numbers. I know you barely look at numbers, but it's just numbers on a screen. — Right. — And those numbers happen to be big, but you don't understand that. — Yeah. — You just don't feel it. — Yeah. — I remember, Mark Leonard of Constellation Software did this podcast. — Mm-hmm. — He talked about one of his most fulfilling jobs he ever had, was not starting and compounding whatever it was, 50 million to 80 billion or whatever he's done with pure software. — Sure. Yeah. — He was building stone walls. — Mm. — And even to this day, he said he'd go... I think he was a kid or a young man, maybe he was in his 20s, 30s back then.

`1:09:10`

But you can go to where the stone wall that he worked on 30 years ago, and he's pointing at it, he's like, "I did that." — That's badass. — "I made that." — Yeah. — Why do you draw so much inspiration from physical things? I'll take some guesses, because I don't know. Just like I don't know why I like certain flavors. I just do, right? You can't really explain these things, but if I had to guess, again, it comes back to there's something real about them. I like being able to hold things, touch things. I like texture. Something you'll see in a lot of our software products is actually texture, which is not real, it's simulated, but a lot of software these days is very flat. I like gradients and colors and lines and some texture. I just find it to be very fulfilling and real to rub your finger over something and feel it.