Founder & CEO at Basecamp. Co-author of Getting Real, Remote, and REWORK.
People are always curious about work-from-home (WFH), remote working setups. So, I posted a Basecamp message asking our employees to share a photo of their home office, desk, table, whatever. Here’s what came in.
First, the ask:
And the answers, in the order they came in:
Keep reading “Remote Working: The home office desks of Basecamp”
Back on June 9, 2018, I cold emailed [email protected]:
Hey there–
Curious… Would you entertain an offer to sell hey.com? I'd like to use it for something I'm working on, and willing to make you a strong offer.
Let me know. Thanks!
-Jason
And that’s where it all began.
For the 25+ years I’ve been emailing, I’d say close to 95% of those email began with some variation of “Hey [Name]”. So when it came time to think about a name for a new email system we’d be building, HEY was a natural.
Further, the “Hey!” menu in Basecamp 3 holds your notifications for new messages, chats, to-do assignments, automatic check-in prompts, boost summaries, and the like. So we already had some prior art on Hey being a place for communication.
But hey.com – that would be an amazing email address, and, we rightly assumed, hard to get. But what the hell – if you don’t ask you don’t get, so I sent the email, crossed my fingers, and waited.
The same day I emailed, June 9, 2018, he replied. Turns out we’d actually talked before on This Week in Tech, way back when. This was his first email back to me:
Hi Jason:
Thanks for reaching out, I've always respected your business accomplishments and your writing. You may not remember but we spoke briefly a couple of times when I was at TWiT.
As you might imagine, I've gotten a number of offers and inquiries about HEY.com over the years. Usually I ignore them, but very happy to chat with you about this or any other topic. I'm on cell at ###-###-####.
Thanks!
Dane
So we set up a call and had a nice chat. Really nice guy. A few days later, I made an offer.
He said no.
So I countered.
He said no.
We were clearly way off. And the momentum went cold. He decided he wasn’t ready to sell. I thanked him for the opportunity and said let’s stay in touch.
Then on August 19, 2019, well over a year after my initial outreach, he wrote me back.
Hi Jason:
Not sure if you're still interested in Hey.com, but I'm in the process of vetting what appears to be a serious inquiry to buy it. The numbers being discussed are notably higher than what you mentioned previously. Given your previous offer I'm thinking you probably won't be interested, but I appreciated your approach and also what you've done for the industry, so I thought I'd let you know as a courtesy.
We caught up via Zoom a few days later, discussed again, and I made another offer. This time significantly higher than our original offer. It was a nervous amount of money.
Things were beginning to heat up, but there was no deal yet. I completely understood – he owned this domain for a long time, and he wasn’t a squatter. Dane used hey.com for his business. It was part of his identity. It was a valuable asset. He needed time to think it through.
We traded a number of other emails, and then I upped the offer a little bit more on September 18, 2019.
A few days later we’d verbally agreed to move forward on an all-cash deal with a number of stipulations, conditions, etc. All were perfectly reasonable, so we asked him to prepare a contract.
There were a few small back and forths, but we essentially accepted his contract and terms as is. We wired the money into escrow, we waited for some Google mail transfer stuff to finish up, and on November 20th, 2019 the domain was officially transferred over into our ownership. Funds were released to escrow, and the deal was done.
This was a long 18 month process, and there was uncertainty at every step. We’d never bought a domain like this, he’d never sold a domain like this. There’s a lot of trust required on all sides. And more than money, hey.com was important to him. And who he sold it to was important to him as well.
But it was truly a pleasure to work with him. Dane was fair, thoughtful, patient, and accommodating. And for that we’re grateful. Business deals like this can get messy, but this one was clean and straightforward. Kudos to him and his lawyer for their diligence and clear communication.
All in we traded 60+ emails over the course of the deal. Toss in a few zoom calls as well.
So that’s the story of how we acquired hey.com. One cold email to kick it off, no domain brokers or middlemen, and a lot of patience and understanding on both sides.
Wait how much was it? I know everyone wants to know, but we can’t say. Both sides are bound by a non-disclosure around the final purchase price. You’ll just have to guess.
As for Dane, he relaunched his brand under a new name. You can check him out at VidiUp.tv.
As for us, this April we’ll be launching our brand new email serviced called HEY at hey.com.
Note: This post was cleared with Dane prior to publishing, so he’s cool with me sharing his name, the story, and the name of his new company.
We just published “The Basecamp Guide to Internal Communication“. It’s a collection of philosophies and day-to-day practices that help guide the way we communicate with each other at Basecamp.
We cover when to write stuff up in detail vs. when to chat about it. Why meetings are a last resort, not a first option. How companies don’t have communication problems, they have miscommunication problems. Why a single central source of truth is better than different versions all over the place. Why writing benefits everyone, but speaking only benefits those who were there.
We hope you find it useful. Check it out.
I’ve heard this one before. I’ve used this one before.
“No one’s complaining” so it fine.
“No one” really means “no one has complained to you“. It doesn’t mean no one is complaining to someone else, somewhere else.
In fact, if the thing you make/sell isn’t meeting someone’s expectations, there’s a good chance you’re the last one who’d hear the complaint.
Contacting the company to complain is pretty far down the list. At the top are friends, family, colleagues. If you aren’t hearing the complaint it’s likely because it’s directed elsewhere. People typically talk truth behind backs, not to faces.
Reputation erodes in the shadows before it comes to light.
It’s not all that different from a manager or CEO eventually discovering something was wrong but “no one told me sooner”. The higher up you are, you’re often the last to know.
Out of everywhere someone will complain, you’re close to nowhere.
“I haven’t heard anyone complain about that to me” is a more accurate statement.
So next time you say “no one’s complaining” you may be right, but you’re probably wrong. Doesn’t mean you need to do anything about it – not all complaints are worth acting on – but it should serve as a reminder that there’s a lot you don’t know.
Since the beginning, Basecamp has been marketed as a project management and collaboration tool for small businesses (or small teams inside larger businesses).
However, over the years we’ve also heard from thousands of people who use Basecamp outside of work. They’ve gone off-label and turned to Basecamp to help them manage all sorts of personal projects too. No surprise there – it really works!
But one complaint we’ve heard is that Basecamp is priced for businesses, not for personal side projects. We felt it was finally time to do something about that.
So today we’re formally introducing Basecamp Personal – a completely free Basecamp plan designed specifically for freelancers, students, families, and personal projects. Why should businesses be the only ones who get to use Basecamp to manage projects? We The People deserve a Basecamp for us, too!
And you want it for free! You got it.
What do I get?
Basecamp Personal includes 3 projects, 20 users, and a gig of storage space. So kick off a couple projects, invite some friends, family, teammates, or volunteers. Stretch your wings a little, and discover the benefits of organizing your personal projects the Basecamp way.
No credit card required. No justification required. No obligation required. No ads. No selling your personal information. It’s Small Tech at its best. It’s The Basecamp Way. Basecamp Personal is on us, for you. Check it out and claim your free account today. We’d love to hear what you end up using it for.
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BTW, if Basecamp Personal sounds familiar, it’s because we used to have a Personal plan way back when. It was $25 per-project. This new one is completely free, so it’s better in every way.
Today I got an email from a fellow who asked:
I’ve been trying to think about my next B2B play but everytime I think of an idea I stop myself due to how saturated the markets are. How do you still win in a packed category? I feel like it’s a lot harder to win now than it was 10 years ago.
-J.B.
Starting something new can definitely be intimidating. Especially when there are already lots of other people/companies with a huge head start. I feel you.
But I’m going to ignore all that and focus on what I think is the bigger concern with the mindset represented in the email: This person asks “How do you still win in a packed category?”
Winning what? Winning who? Winning it all? Taking everything? That’s an insurmountable mountain of intimidation right there. Don’t do that to yourself.
How about just making something that can sustain itself? Why do you need to win it all? Why would you ever want to make it that hard on yourself?
Build something good, keep your costs low, keep your growth in check, hold back your expectations, find some customers, charge them money for your good/services, make more than you spend, and you’ll buy yourself another day, or week, or month, or year in business. Just aim to stay open, don’t aim to win anything from anyone. Staying afloat is a win for yourself.
Just start there. The odds are still against you, but they’re a whole lot better than trying to win it all.
One of the common dings against our books REWORK and It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work (less so with REMOTE), is that we don’t include a lot of actionable advice. It’s a fair swipe.
It seems everyone’s after actionable advice. The advice that tells you exactly what to do. Read this, do exactly that, and here’s the outcome you can expect.
Yeah, no.
Most actionable advice isn’t advice at all, it’s opinion. Sure, you can give someone advice by giving them your opinion, but when you stitch actionable to the front of advice, it masquerades as fact. But it ain’t.
Why don’t we give actionable advice in REWORK and It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work? Because we don’t know how you should act. The action required in any specific situation is highly contextual. If we guessed we’d probably be wrong most of the time.
We can’t tell you what to do. We don’t know what you should do. We barely know what we should do! And most of the time we don’t.
What we can tell you, however, is what we’ve done. In our own unique situation, our own context. From there you can form your own opinion about how it applies to your situation. It’s an input, not the input. Maybe it’s a perfect fit, maybe it’s a partial fit. Maybe it’s not a fit at all. The important part of the equation is you bringing your own mind – and your own situation – to bear. Apply that heavily, not actionable advice lightly.
Seek out unactionable advice. You’ll figure more out.
Since we began including salaries in our job postings, a few people have asked if it affects the leverage we have over candidates.
The suggestion is that if we tell people exactly what we pay for a specific position, and they would have accepted less, but we’re now on the hook to pay them more than we “needed” to, then they have a leg up on us rather than us on them.
I find this line of thinking abhorrent.
I have zero interest in having leverage over anyone in a hiring situation. Of course we get to choose who we hire – so, yes, there’s power inherent in the act of hiring – but other than that necessity, leverage is the last thing I’m looking for.
Remember, I’m looking to to hire someone to work with, not work against. Starting things out with “look what we got away with!” seems like a terrible start to what hopefully develops into a wonderful, long-term working relationship. Leverage need not apply.
Back in 2006, we self-published Getting Real: The smarter, faster, easier way to build a successful web app. It was our first foray into broadly sharing how we work at book-scale. It struck a nerve, turned heads, and changed minds. It offered product people, designers, and developers a way out – an escape hatch. They could finally ditch their way of working that wasn’t working for a new way that would.
Since then we’ve released a number of books, all focused on the business end of things. You could learn how to run a company from REWORK, REMOTE, and our latest mass-market release, It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work.
Today we return to our roots. Nearly 13 years after Getting Real was published, we offer the spiritual follow-up. Today we introduce Shape Up: Stop Running in Circles and Ship Work that Matters. This web-based book explains how we work in replicable detail. It’s comprehensive, yet approachable. A recommended read for anyone involved in software development. And it’s 100% free to read online – we don’t even ask for your email address.
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Why now?
Over the last few years, there’s been a renewed, heightened curiosity about how we work at Basecamp. People often ask us how we get so much done so quickly at such a high level of quality with such a small team. And how we keep our teams together for years and years. We’ve written some blog posts about it, but the topic really demanded a book-length effort.
For one, we’re not into waterfall or agile or scrum. For two, we don’t line walls with Post-it notes. For three, we don’t do daily stand ups, design sprints, development sprints, or anything remotely tied to a metaphor that includes being tired and worn out at the end. No backlogs, no Kanban, no velocity tracking, none of that.
We have an entirely different approach. One developed in isolation over nearly 15 years of constant trial and error, taking note, iterating, honing in, and polishing up. We’ve shaped our own way. This book is for explorers, pioneers, those who don’t care what everyone else is doing. Those who want to work better than the rest.
But ultimately, don’t think of this as a book. Think of it as a flashlight. You and your team have fumbled around in the dark long enough. Now you’ve got something bright and powerful to help you find a new way.
We hope you find it interesting, enlightening, and, most of all, helpful.
For the past 20 years, we’ve been passive marketers with a little m.
We speak at conferences and on podcasts, we write books (REWORK, REMOTE, It Doesn’t Have to be Crazy at Work), we share our point of view on thousands of blog posts, we invented a framework (Ruby on Rails) that changed an industry, and we make products that redefine their categories (Basecamp, Highrise, etc.). And right now we’re working on something new that’s going to surprise people.
We’ve gotten by on strength of product, cult of personality, a unique point of view, running against the wind, and incredibly generous word-of-mouth promotion from our customers. We’re fortunate it’s been working. 20 profitable years in business is the proof. We’re naturally proud of that.
But we feel like we’ve begun to saturate our natural sphere of influence, our current reach. Passive marketing can only get us so far, and we have a desire to go further. Today, if we’re in the mix, it’s by chance, not choice. And because of that, we feel a bit invisible outside of those who know us already.
And it’s no surprise: We haven’t really advertised. Or made it easy for new people to find us online. Lately we haven’t explained our brand particularly well. Or thought much about how we’re perceived in the modern market. We don’t show up in places where potential customers hang out, and we haven’t gone far enough supporting and sponsoring events and like-minded organizations. Basically, we’ve never deliberately focused on actively getting the word out, making sure our brand is positioned properly in the market, or meeting customers where they are.
We lack a Marketing strategy with a capital M. It’s time to change that.
Moving forward, we want to be intentional about creating awareness (how do we introduce Basecamp to people who don’t know us?), prompting consideration (how do we get people who need a product like ours to consider us for purchase?), and driving conversion (how do we get people who are considering Basecamp to sign up, pay us, and start using our products?).
So, for the first time, we’re ready to hire someone to lead that charge and own that responsibility. We’re looking for our first Head of Marketing.
How’s that challenge sound to you?
ABOUT THE JOB AND THE WORK
Fundamentally, this job is about developing and executing a broad strategy to bring more people to the front of the funnel by increasing awareness and interest outside of what we’ve already built. We’re not looking for somebody to spend time on email drip campaigns or improving onboarding. While important, this role is much broader than that. This also isn’t a job for self-described growth hackers.
This is a role for someone who knows how to mix a wild idea with a practical pitch. Someone who’s eager (but not annoyingly so) to pick up the phone and negotiate a major partnership deal. Someone who has an eye for talent, a nose for bullshit, ears close to the ground, and the creative mind of a conductor. Someone who’s previously managed large spends and helped a brand transition through a similar process. Someone who recognizes an opportunity when they see one, but knows how to steer clear of high effort low reward mirages. You see things other people miss, and you know how to put leverage to good use.
And while we’ll support your strategy with a multimillion dollar budget and creative support from the CEO, you’ll start this process without a dedicated internal team. While we have designers, writers, and a data analyst occasionally available to assist, we don’t have a marketing department or spare staff focused on everything you’ll need to get done. This means you’ll initially be expected to identify, vet, choose, and manage external vendors or agencies to help pull off your plan. Building an in-house team is something we’ll discuss down the road.
While some may see this as a disadvantage, we think it’s a big opportunity. You’ll be able to pull in the best agencies, freelancers, shops, and creative specialists to help pull off the plan. You’ll bring us creative ideas we’ve never considered in the past. You’ll challenge our thinking and help us see ourselves in a new light.
In addition to big picture strategy, you’ll focus on practical day-to-day work like fielding sponsorship opportunities that come our way. Keeping an eye on analytics. Reaching out to groups, organizations, movements, events, and other brands we should be partnering with. You’ll also be expected to regularly detail progress, setbacks, and marketing insights for the whole company.
We’re aware that at many companies, this is a multi-person position. Someone focused on the marketing strategy. Someone else focused on brand. Someone else focused on partnerships and sponsorships. And so on. We’re not expecting a herculean marketing turnaround with a single person at the start, but we absolutely believe the right person can point us in the right direction, guide us, come up with campaigns, be resourceful enough to get them produced, manage the process, study the results, course correct, revamp, and try more things. We know someone has to own this, or we’ll end up where we are today.
Bottom-line, this is an impact position. In time, the business should look better with you on board. A clear case of before and after. You’ll help us be noticed, be seen, and be found. We should also feel better about ourselves with you around. This is a big responsibility and we are here to support you, cheer you on, and make it happen. We’ve talked about having someone like you on board for years, and now we’re finally ready.
ABOUT YOU
You’re creative. You’re organized. You’re experienced. You’ve done this before. You want to do it again. You absolutely want to do it for us.
We value people who can take a stand yet commit even when they disagree. We’ll often subject ideas to rigorous debate, so you’ll need to stand up for what you believe, but we remember that we’re here for the same purpose: to do good work together. Charging the trust battery is part of the work.
Yes, you’ll need to learn how we work at Basecamp, but we’re also looking for someone to teach us how to work. And once we’ve figured that out, be able to share that story with the world. We should tell the story of how we changed our approach to marketing.
We’re not looking for a superhero who thinks sheer hours = good work. Excess doesn’t impress us – creativity and efficiency does. You’ll have 8 hours a day to work, and, we hope, at least 8 hours a night to sleep. What you do with the other 8 is up to you, never to us. You’ll report directly to the CEO.
ABOUT OUR PAY AND BENEFITS
The starting salary for this position is $181,000. You can read about how we set salaries here.
Our benefits are all aimed at supporting a life well lived away from work. None are about trapping people at the office or cajoling them into endless overtime. Just the opposite. We’re all about reasonable working hours, ample vacation time, summer hours, fitness, wellness, food, education, and charity. See our full list of benefits here. In fact, if you’d like you can browse the entire employee handbook as well.
Basecamp is a remote-work company so you can be anywhere, but you’ll need at least 4 hours of overlap with Chicago time in your normal work-day routine.
We strongly encourage candidates of all different backgrounds and identities to apply. Each new hire is an opportunity for us to bring in a different perspective, and we are always eager to further diversify our company. Basecamp is committed to building an inclusive, supportive place for you to do the best and most rewarding work of your career.
HOW TO APPLY
We want to get a sense of how you think. To that end, please use your cover letter to share with us your take on the following questions:
We value great writers, so take your time with the application. Keep in mind that we do not equate length with substance, so please keep your cover letter to fewer than 1500 words. Stock cover letters won’t do – tell us why you want this job, not just any job.
Click here to apply. We are accepting applications for this position until June 28th, 2019. We’ll let you know that we’ve received your application. After that, you probably shouldn’t expect to hear back from us until after the application deadline has passed. We want to give everyone a fair chance to apply and be evaluated.
We can’t wait to hear from you!