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`2:23:14`

quite a bit over the years? — I would say, oh yes. And then also, oh no, in the sense that there are absolutely fundamental things both about human nature, about institutions, about programming, about business that I've changed my mind on. And then I've also had experiences that are almost even more interesting where I…

`2:24:15`

who did engineering management the way you're supposed to do it, the way it's done all over the place. And after that I thought like, no, no, I was right. This was correct. We should not have had managers. Not every programmer needs a therapy session with an engineering manager every week. We don't…

`2:25:18`

I don't agree with some of those things, but in practice I've found that they often create more problems that they solve. And a good example here is can you get feedback from someone who's not better at your job than you are? You get some feedback. You can get feedback on how you…

`2:26:19`

because I know what people sometimes hear. They hear the genius asshole is just fine and that's great and you should excuse all sorts of malicious behavior if someone's just really good at what they do. I'm not saying that at all. What I am saying is that the history of competence is a…

`2:27:20`

Let me program and then I'll come up for error. I'll talk with other programmers who I can spar with that we can learn something with. I can turn the problems over with and we can move forward. If you look back on the history of computer industry, all the great innovation that's happened…

`2:28:23`

I understand that. And then even as I say that, I also don't understand it. Yeah, because if you look at something like Gmail, for example, there was like a side project done by Buchheit at Google at the time. So much of the enduring long-term value of even all these huge companies were created…

`2:29:27`

So if you just have a bunch of programmers running around, you're kind of response like it's work, it's intellectual work to have to deal with the the first principles of every problem that's going on. So managers like you can like relax, oh I'll be taken care of. But they then…

`2:30:30`

at 50, 60 people when none of those individuals or none of those roles. It's never about the individuals. It's about the roles. None of those roles are in your organization fulltime. Occasionally you need a manager. Occasionally you need a lawyer. I can play the role of manager occasionally, fine. And then I can…

`2:31:31`

with your own quirkiness to a degree that isn't actually healthy. And I've certainly done that over time and we should have had someone mount or count the beans a little more diligently, a little earlier. This was part of a blessing of just being wildly profitable and selling software that can have infinite margins…

`2:32:33`

Can we just linger on that advice that you've given that small teams are better? I think that's really less. Less is more. What did you say before? Worse is better. Okay, I'm sorry. — Worse better on adoption with technology a lot of times. And I think actually comes out at the same thing…

`2:33:35`

They have so many more resources. They have so many more programmers. What if they take a liking to your little niche here and they show up and they just throw a thousand programmers at the problem? And my answer perhaps partly because I was like 24 was first of all, no, no care in the world…

`2:34:36`

— Yes. — It's so fascinating and part of it's the manager thing. — Because humans don't scale. Communication between humans certainly don't scale. You basically get the network cost effect every time you add a new node, it goes up exponentially. This is perhaps the key thing of why I get to be so fond…

`2:35:38`

that emerges from the code, from the product, from the thing you're working on in the moment. You know far more about what the great next step is, when you're one step behind rather than if you try 18 months in advance to map out all the steps. How do we get from here to…

`2:36:38`

They're buying something because it's good. And the way you get something good is you don't sit around and have a meeting about it. You try stuff. You build stuff. — It really is kind of incredible what one person, honestly one person can do in 100 hours of deep work of focused work, even…

`2:37:38`

Part of that story is Ruby. Part of that story is Rails. But a lot of it is also just me plus Jason, plus Ryan, plus Matt. That was the entire company at the time. And we could create something of sheer sustaining value with such a tiny team, because we were a tiny team. Not to…

`2:38:39`

— How do you protect the small team. Basecamp has successfully stayed small. Has been the dragon, and you had to fight off. That like basically you make a lot of money. There's a temptation to grow. So how do you not grow? — Don't take venture capital. — Okay, that's step one. — That is point number…

`2:39:41`

is to get to a billion dollars or more. Now the path to that usually does go through running established playbooks and then when it comes to software, the enterprise sales playbook is that playbook. If you're doing B2B software SaaS, you will try to find product market fit. And the second you have it, you…

`2:40:44`

and 100% of the proceeds of that purchase went into my and Jason's bank account, personal bank account. Not a single cent went into the account of the company 'cause we didn't need the money to grow. What we needed or what we certainly enjoyed was to some extent maybe the vote of confidence, but…

`2:41:45`

I wonder from, I'd love to hear Jeff's side of the story of like why, 'cause he doesn't need like the money. So it's really, I think it probably is just believing in people and wanting to have cool stuff be created in the world and make money off of it, but not…

`2:42:48`

And his investment team said like, "Jeff, no way. This makes no economic sense at all. They're asking for way too much money with way too little revenue." And Jeff just went like, "I don't care. I wanna invest in this guy." Because to him at the time it was chump change, right? Like Jason…