Earlier this year I was invited to New York for an interview with Big Think. Big Think interviews opinionated people from the world of business, politics, religion, charity, academia, science, etc.
We talked for close to an hour, but it was a 6-minute segment on why you can’t work at work that really resonated with their audience. In just eight months the interview has been watched over 1,000,000 times (thank you!). Here are some other popular Big Think interviews from 2010.
A couple weeks ago Big Think came to Chicago to film a second interview with me for their HP-backed INPUT|OUTPUT series. Here it is:
We talked about the modern office, VC funding, why to be less ambitious up front, common mistakes new businesses make, the difference between spending money and making money, the importance of hiring late, and how marketing departments get it wrong.
If you don’t want to watch the whole thing, you can jump to a specific segment on the Big Think site.
pbreit
on 04 Aug 10I like the sentiment but are there any additional tools and tips beyond “don’t interrupt”?
JF
on 04 Aug 10I like the sentiment but are there any additional tools and tips beyond “don’t interrupt”?
I wouldn’t make it more complicated. Just don’t bother people when they are busy. Use passive tools like email, Basecamp, Campfire, IM, etc – things people can ignore if they are busy. When they have time to get back to you they will. Let them respond on their schedule on their time.
DR
on 04 Aug 10Great interview. You should post David’s Big Think interview on here too.
Alex Murphy
on 05 Aug 10I like the sentiment but are there any additional tools and tips beyond “don’t interrupt”?
I liked the point of build a sustainable business, not one to just flip …
Extending that thought, great companies buy because of the profit and upside from scaling the business after they buy yours … in order to fit in this model you have to have a great product or service.
Henway
on 05 Aug 10Ditto on the idea of building a sustainable business. Too many tech startups right now are hoping they can get acquired, but the chances are slim to none unless you’re building some innovative tech that requires a lot of capital like Vark.com. So many startups are stuck in this mindset of “Build cool feature, Build sexy feature! Make ppl love us and admire so we can appear in NY Times, Techcrunch, etc, etc.”, when their real goal should be how to find customers, and earn revenue from the get-go..
STEVE WILLIAMS
on 06 Aug 10I love the making money part & growing things slowly.
But I don’t believe that you are not marketing as I have seen your Ads in Google. I think these are the business secrets you never want to share.
On distraction, I believe each one has to decide what is distraction for them & anyone who want to succeed find ways to avoid distractions. For me traveling & attending conferences & giving interviews is a distraction & waste of time. For some people, it’s marketing.
JF
on 06 Aug 10But I don’t believe that you are not marketing as I have seen your Ads in Google. I think these are the business secrets you never want to share.
We’ve explored Google Ads here and there, and a few other forms of advertising at times, but its never paid off for us. We’re big into experimentation so we do try things from time to time.
Quite a few Google ads for Basecamp are for 37signals Affiliates. They make money when someone signs up for Basecamp. These ads aren’t placed by 37signals.
Hannes
on 08 Aug 10Towards the end of the interview on the subject you talk about people straight out of school being a bit behind, and real-world experience being the most important thing. I suppose everyone agrees, and so do I, however being straight out of school, I can’t help but wonder how you pick (or try to, it’s not always easy to get the job you want, for obvious reasons) a job to build your experience and knowledge towards where you need to be to get that one great job?
I’m a sysadmin right now in my first job, about 6 months in, but I really feel that my interest in the web is rising. So let’s say I were to learn RoR or PHP or what not on my own, what kind of job do I look for in order to get that one sweet job in a year or two-three ? I hope you can give me a view or some experiences of your own!
Thanks
James
on 10 Aug 10Great interview. However, marketing wasn’t covered all that much, and I wonder how you got to scale? Somehow you have to get the word out, and how did you manage to do that? Reaching $5K/mo in six weeks is frankly pretty astronomical. How did that many people find you?
My impression is that you (1) had clients from consulting that already knew you and you had buy-in that way, and (2) you released Ruby on Rails, which was probably a big driver. (As a programmer, I think that was the first I’d heard of 37signals.) I’d be curious to know, looking back, what was the biggest driver of people to your Basecamp release?
JF
on 10 Aug 10Great interview. However, marketing wasn’t covered all that much, and I wonder how you got to scale? Somehow you have to get the word out, and how did you manage to do that? Reaching $5K/mo in six weeks is frankly pretty astronomical. How did that many people find you?
We’d been blogging for a couple years prior to releasing Basecamp. We’d been building our audience slowly and consistently. When we released Basecamp we had a couple thousand readers. From that we continued to build our audience slowly and consistently.
Rails wasn’t a big driver for Basecamp – especially not early on. Rails didn’t really catch fire for a while after Basecamp was released.
This discussion is closed.