The Biography of 37signals with Jason Fried

http://mixergy.com/37signals-jason-fried/

by merrick33 • 16 years ago

31 10 16 years ago

I'm still watching this, but before I forget: The statement about launching Basecamp on svn reminds me of Max Klein.

Timothee• 16 years ago

I'm missing the reference here. (and it seems that there are too many Max Klein to get help from Google) Do you mind explaining what that means?

steveklabnik2• 16 years ago

Jason said that it was really easy to launch Basecamp because they'd already built up an audience with their blog. Tons of instant PR from people who already wanted to hear from them.

Max (from here, http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=maxklein) said that he was going to be writing a blog about interesting, random stuff, so that when he announces something of importance, he'll have people listening. Thus Cube of M.

michaelfairley• 16 years ago

Andrew, if you see this, the link to the mp3 is broken. (Same with the Kevin Hartz interview)

AndrewWarner• 16 years ago

Fixed it. Thanks.

For some reason, this doesn't work: <h2>The FULL program</h2> <a name="audio"></a><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-4094" title="Audio Version" src="http://mixergy.com/wp-content/uploads/Audio-Version.png alt="Audio Version" width="26" height="21" /> Prefer audio? Great! <a href="http://mixergy.com/wp-content/audio/Mixergy-REWORK-Jason-Fri... click" here for the MP3 format</a>.

But this does work: <a name="audio"></a><h2>The FULL program</h2> <img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-4094" title="Audio Version" src="http://mixergy.com/wp-content/uploads/Audio-Version.png alt="Audio Version" width="26" height="21" /> Prefer audio? Great! <a href="http://mixergy.com/wp-content/audio/Mixergy-REWORK-Jason-Fri... click" here for the MP3 format</a>.

armandososa• 16 years ago

But the audio RSS feed stopped working :( I've just noticed that I've lost like a week and a half of great interviews.

netcan2• 16 years ago

Andrew is getting really good. I listen to maybe 1/10 shows. It's a lot of fun watching someone get better.

His strategy seemed to have been start with hyperactive bluntness which was great. It was a little hard listening to him say "how much do you make per year" to someone who didn't want to say it, but it meant he got. Now he seems to be getting more subtle and calm. He's getting good at picking the point where pushing needs to stop by intuition: "I'm happy to change my mind about big things but my beliefs are my beliefs." (around 31min).

jasonfried• 16 years ago

To clarify that point...

Believing in something doesn't mean you're closed minded. It means you have an opinion, a point of view. My beliefs come from keeping an open mind, questioning assumptions, experimenting with new ideas. I wouldn't believe what I believe without approaching life this way. My mind remains open, but I haven't found better answers yet so I'm comfortable with what I believe: Avoid organizational complexity, product complexity, and political complexity as best you can. Things are pretty simple and easy until you make them hard and complicated.

My 6th grade science teacher told me: "Never believe yourself to be completely certain of anything." I think that's good advice.

Hope that clarifies things. It was a great question from Andrew.

netcan2• 16 years ago

At the risk of being argumentative, I don't think so.

Usually, and seemingly in the context of that interview, belief usually means something different from 'my current position.' It does usually imply some sort of rigidity and does imply an unwillingness to change. In the context of current political correctness it also amounts to a request that thee not be challenged too much.

Notice how that word ends that line of questioning as if either, (a) you have arrived at the root cause or (b) the issue is no undependable. Belief (or practical synonyms such as conviction) leads to no more questions. 'I became very convinced that these are correct' would have prompted the question 'why/how.'

alanthonyc• 16 years ago

Hi Andrew - thanks for a great interview. Just wanted to comment on your point about "changing the world": though I'm sure you haven't reached your full ambition yet, I think you're definitely helping out the audience that you are reaching.

The Biography of 37signals with Jason Fried

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