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`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…

`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…

`0:27:42`

a chill life. Not super stressed, growth-focused obsessed, need to build a billion-dollar company. Do you think this path is something everyone should do? Is it a specific type of personality, a specific type of product? Do you recommend people that sometimes do go this big shot venture scale route? I'm glad there are…

`0:28:28`

it work. So most people are doing it our way, even though in our industry it seems like we're the outliers, but we're not. We're actually incredibly boring and mainstream, really. If you were to pick any random business owner on the street, they'd run their business like us. I got to make…

`0:29:13`

I don't come off as encouraging everyone to be like me. I'm not saying that at all. What I'm saying is this is a way to be. It's an alternative to what you're often hearing in our industry, which is like go big or go home, raise a bunch of money and…

`0:30:00`

Versus saying there's only one way I'm going to be successful or happy. Those odds aren't really in anyone's favor. Even though of course some people win the lottery. And I'm not saying it's luck. There is luck, a lot of luck, including we're lucky that we've made it…

`0:30:48`

this is an awesome idea. We could just make money every year, every month from it and not raise money and life will be great. I'm probably the wrong person to ask, but I would say there are versions of our... Let's just take Monday for example. Basecamp and Monday are quite a bit different…

`0:31:34`

But you could imagine it could have been swapped. So it's not that Basecamp couldn't be this big venture scale, whatever you want to call it, although look, hey, we have the same number of customers roughly than they do. Are we? I guess we are venture scale in that respect. But again, point is…

`0:32:21`

Same thing with Uber. Uber's another example, and these are easy to pick, but they're great examples really. When Uber was getting started and they had to proliferate all over the country to begin with and all over the world. So it was this reliable thing you could think of just you would think of…

`0:33:08`

I don't know what you need the money for other than marketing. And it's interesting because marketing's losing them a lot of money. So it's an interesting thing. But anyway, you can talk to them about that. I want to start chatting about your ways of working, how you operate at 37signals. There…

`0:33:56`

That whatever we choose to do can take no longer than six weeks. So this is not an estimate of time, it's an appetite, which is a radically different approach. It doesn't sound like that much of a different word, but it really is. An estimate is like how long do we think it's…

`0:34:42`

Some things were like, we have a one week appetite for this. This is not that big of a deal. If we have it, great. If we don't have it, that's fine. We're willing to spend a week on it. Not that it could take a week, because it could also take 12 weeks…

`0:35:32`

They create the work that needs to get done to fulfill the idea that we've written up and designed essentially, and they figure out how to do it. Then we trade. So they might get into something that we've said, we have about six weeks. Well, we're only give it six weeks and two…

`0:36:19`

Because if we say we're going to give it six weeks and we give it seven or eight or nine or 10, then we're not really giving it six weeks, we're giving it 10, then we don't really have a system. There are times though, when there's a couple days left when…

`0:37:04`

So there are some contextual decisions to make at that point, but fundamentally that's how we approach work. And this prevents long running projects that never end, which by the way are the most demoralizing kinds of projects. Things that you're stuck on that you don't want to do that never end, sucks. And…

`0:37:51`

But if it's like this is going to take nine months and you're on week four and you're like, I hate this, bad. So we want to stay away from that sort of thing. You have these quotes along these lines about planning, long-term business planning is a fantasy. I don't plan…

`0:38:38`

Do you see this work in businesses that aren't your business this approach? Well, let me talk about promises for a second. Promises are the downfall of every business. Every time we've made a promise to get something out in a certain period of time and we kind of inevitably seem to miss it, it…

`0:39:26`

There's nothing easier than promising work later. And the further away it is, the easier it is to promise. And so this whole, by the end of the year, oh, red flag. Just remind yourself whenever you say that to yourself, go, oh, wait a second. Wait, wait, what am I doing right now? Because you…

`0:40:14`

almost have to plant a new seed somewhere else, let's just say, and then grow something new because it's very hard to change in flight and change what you have and change what you're used to. So what we often encourage people to do is keep working the way you're working, but some…

`0:40:59`

the criticality out. Because what ends up happening is that when people try to try something new on something really critical and it doesn't work, they'll never try it again. They've destroyed all future opportunities to try this again, because everyone knows how bad it went last time on something that really mattered. And…