Lessons from 25 years in business

`0:24:27`

What if someone else could just step in tomorrow? How would they run it? No one's ever had a chance to run it but me. What would they do differently?" I'd have to be completely detached from it to let them really run with it. But, what would they do? I always have this curious about that, I would say. Not curious enough to find out, but still curious. It's always in the back of my head. What do you think they'd do? I think they'd probably be focused on growth. I think there's opportunities that we miss all the time. I think that we are stuck in a certain... Stuck sounds like a negative term, but I don't mean it that way. But, we're stuck in a certain groove. We do things the way we do things. We change the way we do things here and there, but we're not really jumping into a new groove. I think someone would jump into a new groove and run the company differently, maybe make

`0:25:15`

a lot more products than we're making today. Maybe resurrect a couple of things that we did in the past. Probably spend a lot on advertising, a lot of marketing, probably take our margin way down and try to focus on growth. What if we spent 70% of our margin on growth? What would that look like? I just feel like that's what most people would probably come in with a business like ours and do. They go, "Oh my god, there's so many missed opportunities here. Look at this, and look at this, and look at this. You've got this brand, and people know about you, and you've got 100,000 paying customers. Think about all the things you could do." I'm not really thinking about all the things we could do. I'm thinking about what we're doing. So I think someone else would come in and think about the things we could do. I'm thinking about the things we are doing, with a little bit of a look ahead to things we could also do, but they're still pretty close to what we're doing today. So, that's what I think would happen. It'd be interesting. It'd be neat to live in a reality where there could be a second reality running right alongside

`0:26:05`

you, truly. Not an A/B test, which is hard to do. You can't really A/B test an entire company. I'd seek to A/B test small things. But, it'd be cool if that was something that could happen. Maybe there's some simulation down the road. I was just thinking- It's a possibility. Maybe we're in the simulation variant where you're still running it. It could be. And there's another... This a cool exercise, actually, just to think about it. If I were to bring in any leader, what would they do? Just as a thought exercise. This is a weird way to think about it, but I almost would be embarrassed by what someone would come in and look at, and go, "Oh my God, you guys are missing so many opportunities here." I'd be like, "Yeah, I know. I know we are, but I'm totally fine with it." But, there'd be this moment of judgment and reckoning with, "Do you realize how much you're leaving on the table?" You could have five different pricing tiers, and make a lot more money, and you can maximize

`0:26:50`

this and maximize that, and squeeze this and squeeze that, and address this market, and you could have special versions of Basecamp. Wow, churches are using Basecamp? We could do a special version for churches, and for synagogues, and religious institutions, or education or nonprofits. Think of all the slight different things you could do with these different..." I'm certain that all those opportunities exist on the table. They don't interest me, personally, in terms of making multiple products. But I could see someone else going, "There's a huge opportunity here. We got to pursue this." I'd be really proud if someone did that, and made the business bigger and better. I could never have done that. I'm glad someone else did that. But right now, we're running it our way. Coming back to this as a path people can take with their business versus a traditional venture scale business, this path is essentially build something, sell it, make money, live like