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`1:27:40`

And by by relaxing your grip, you get I think that people have too tight a grip on business and think what they need to do is all these other things. And if you just lighten up a little bit and part of that is not paying So, I don't read industry news. I don't…

`1:28:26`

like had to find its own way and um I feel like if if you grew up that way, like we founded our business in Chicago outside of Silicon Valley. Had we been in Silicon Valley, we would have been a very different business and I think we would have been out of business. Right. Because we…

`1:29:13`

place. It nothing's very clear and clean and as it appears. People are making everything up as they go. Nobody knows really what they're doing and but there's this this air of like if you just follow this path it's going to be killer. You're going to be And like I'd…

`1:29:59`

different. Everyone's got their own way. There's one thing that stands out. There's just one sentence from how I write all these episodes is you can do whatever you want but whatever it is that you do choose you got to be really really really good at what you do and the only way…

`1:30:45`

and and and you're going to find yourself there's a there's going to be more ease. I think you want to get to the place where things do feel easy and we can push ourselves into places that feel hard because we think that it's going to be better if it's harder…

`0:00:00`

The reason I think it's great for entrepreneurs to start bootstrapping is because they just have more practice making money, and they get better, and better, and better at the fundamental skill you need to have ultimately to run a successful business, which is to make money. Hopefully, I don't come off as encouraging everyone…

`0:00:47`

Today, my guest is Jason Fried. Jason is the Co-Founder and CEO of 37signals, which makes Basecamp and HEY, and soon a few more products including a competitor to Slack. 37signals is a very different type of company. They have no investors, no board. They have no plans to go public. They never want to sell…

`0:01:33`

But it's also important to know that there is a different option available, and it can be much more fulfilling and fun, and even much more lucrative, by bootstrapping your idea. In my conversation with Jason, we get into why constraints like small teams and less cash often lead to better outcomes. Why gut and instinct…

`0:02:20`

This episode is brought to you by Coda. You've heard me talk about how Coda is the doc that brings it all together, and how can help your team run smoother and be more efficient. I know this firsthand because Coda does that for me. I use Coda every day to wrangle my newsletter content calendar…

`0:03:10`

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`0:03:56`

and just gut check how you're thinking about your work, your career, and your life. This has been a big trajectory changer for me, but it's hard to build this trusted group. With Sidebar, senior leaders are matched with highly vetted, private, supportive peer groups to lean on for unbiased opinions, diverse perspectives, and raw…

`0:04:41`

Why spend a decade finding your people when you can meet them at Sidebar today? Jump the growing waitlist of thousands of leaders from top tech companies by visiting Sidebar.com/Lenny to learn more. That's Sidebar.com/ Lenny. Jason, thank you so much for being here, and welcome to the podcast. Thanks, Lenny. It's…

`0:05:29`

I think people don't quite get the business you've built, and the scale you've built. So whatever you can share in terms of customers, profits, anything you are comfortable sharing, I'd love to give people... Especially things that might surprise people, just a sense of like, "Wow, this business is not what I…

`0:06:17`

base, big profits, and that's how we like to keep it, and that's something that we've always focused on, versus a lot of these other metrics that I hear a lot, and usually there's acronyms attached to them, and of don't even know what they are, and I don't really care…

`0:07:06`

So what's your advice to founders for when raising money makes sense? I actually wrote this article, one's called, Your Startup Is Probably Not Venture-Scale, just trying to convince people, you may have a really good idea, but it doesn't mean it's a venture-scale business. I feel like we're aligned…

`0:07:52`

of people in our industry are like us in that respect. They need a couple laptops and a couple people, and it's pretty cheap. It's really pretty cheap to get going, and the margins are incredibly healthy in software, or they should be. What's interesting is that Silicon Valley has found a way to…

`0:08:45`

something that doesn't cost much to make and then sell it for high prices. But everyone, the corner store, the pizza shop, they wish they could do this, and they can't because they have physical products that they have to sell, and they have to buy goods, and they have to get raw materials and…

`0:09:32`

If you think about all of the space between a small business and a massive, huge unicorn-y business, there's so much room there that you could normally find your own way, and slide into a slot or a place that makes sense for you. But if you're venture-backed, you just don't even…

`0:10:18`

You have, I think you said, 70 something employees? Yep. You have similar numbers of customers, about 100,000 to 150,000, and you make a lot of profit and they generally don't. How is this possible? We run a very different kind of business. We are focused on efficiency, we're not focused on growth…

`0:11:05`

infrastructure required to service customers like that, and customize this and customize that to keep a whale happy who's paying you $300,000 a year. We don't have any of those things. We have one price, basically. Well, we have two prices on Basecamp, one price on HEY. Actually, two prices on HEY. Two, basically…