Galápagos Product Design

`0:51:23`

I mean, she loved it, and I'm so glad she went, and the pictures are incredible, and it seems like an amazing experience. But there's something very cool about things that have just evolved on their own that are not influenced by other things, and I try to think of us as the Galapagos. I don't think of us this way, really, but conceptually, I don't use the word the Galapagos Island of the software industry. I don't use that. But I do think of us as, actually, an insular group focused on solving a problem our own way, without paying too much attention to what everyone else is doing. I'm aware of it because I live in it. But I'm not seeking out ideas from other companies in our field. I think that that's actually, a slippery slope. It is because we see so much copying in our industry.

`0:52:10`

Someone has a successful product, and then all future products for the next three years look just like theirs. That says to me that there's danger here. Don't fall into that trap. Our stuff looks different than everybody else's stuff. Our stuff works differently than everybody else's stuff. Nothing works like Basecamp, HEY, Fizzy, it's all different. And some people hate the way our stuff looks and works. Fine. Don't care. We have enough people who love what we do, and it's an expanding pie of people who are into what we do, and we love what we do, and again, that's enough for us. — Even your landing pages look different. They're essentially a letter from you, describing what the product is and why it exists. — Yeah. Yeah, I always try to build things that I would want to see.