Every argument clarity score on this site is built from rows on this page. Each
question and answer was assessed with names hidden, the host's own answers included, on
four things from 1 to 5:
directness (does it answer the question asked), coherence (do the ideas follow),
precision (concrete details and clear references), compression (says a lot per word). The weighted
mix (30/30/25/15) is the exchange score. A person's published score averages their exchange
scores on raw tape only, at least 8 of them, shrunk toward the cohort mean.
Full method →
Answered raw tape
D 5 · C 5 · P 5 · Cm 4 4.85
Q rebuilding from scratch. It's the same platform that more than 300 startups who have grown to over a billion dollars in valuation grew their businesses on. And now HubSpot for Startups offers this service at up to a 90% discount exclusively for eligible startups. Visit HubSpot.com forward slash startups to learn more. That is HubSpot.com forward slash startups. Have you had a chance to nerd snipe him back since then?
A Yes, on Linux. So I switched to Linux about two and a half years ago, and first I had this, uh, soft on-ramp as most people switch to Linux. I used Ubuntu. That's the most popular Linux distribution. That's fine. I mean, actually it's great in many ways because Linux has all these different distributions. They have Ubuntu and Fedora and Red Hat and whatever, but it's all the Linux kernel, like the magic of Linux Linux is the Linux kernel and then the ecosystem of all these tools that are around it. And whether you package them in this one way or package them in this other way is not the make or break of it. So just getting into Linux for me was a huge thing. I'd been on the Mac for well over 20 years. I was completely a Mac head as in thinking this is a Mac is computer. Like I don't want to use another computer. Windows certainly is not for me. I don't know. Linux is for people who like pocket protectors and just The kind of nerd that I can relate to, I can respect, but it was not a me thing. Then finally, Apple pissed me off enough that I thought I cannot in good conscience continue to spend money on their products if I have such deep disagreements with how they run the company. So fine, I'm going to try something else. And as I said, I gave Windows two weeks and I realized, man, shit, I can't do it. I'm going to come crawling back to the Mac if there's not something else. But…
AI assessment note: “Yes, on Linux. So I switched to Linux about two and a half years ago”
Answered raw tape
D 5 · C 5 · P 4 · Cm 4 4.60
Q But then you said something last night where you're just like, Well, what if they have, like, feedback for you? Like, what was your thoughts to that?
A I love feedback if it's well grounded in solid observations that can give me new insights. But a lot of feedback you get on the internet does not fall into that category. It's just like, you looked at this for five minutes, I spent 4000 hours, and you have some knee-jerk reaction, and you want to tell me how to do it? You want to tell me what I should do and what I shouldn't do? Well, you can go fuck yourself, right? And I actually get that indignation, um, just stemming up. I've been working on it, but, um, just this sense of like, this is not a reciprocal exchange. I gave you something of tremendous value. Now you can choose to ignore it or say it's not right for you. That's completely fair, right? Like that's a good exchange. Like, okay, thanks for the gift, but no thanks. But if you take my gift of 4000 hours and you go like, well, I'll give you, um, five minutes, and then I'll just dump shit on you. What? You didn't pay me anything. Like, that's a privilege you have to pay for. If you want to tell me ill-considered, uh, feedback on anything I make, you gotta pay me. And you can do that with Basecamp, and you can tell me.
AI assessment note: “I love feedback if it's well grounded in solid observations that can give me new”
Answered raw tape
D 5 · C 5 · P 4 · Cm 4 4.60
Q But then you said something last night where you're just like, Well, what if they have, like, feedback for you? Like, what was your thoughts to that?
A I love feedback if it's well grounded in solid observations that can give me new insights. But a lot of feedback you get on the internet does not fall into that category. It's just like, you looked at this for five minutes, I spent 4000 hours, and you have some knee-jerk reaction, and you want to tell me how to do it? You want to tell me what I should do and what I shouldn't do? Well, you can go fuck yourself, right? And I actually get that indignation, um, just stemming up. I've been working on it, but, um, just this sense of like, this is not a reciprocal exchange. I gave you something of tremendous value. Now you can choose to ignore it or say it's not right for you. That's completely fair, right? Like that's a good exchange. Like, okay, thanks for the gift, but no thanks. But if you take my gift of 4000 hours and you go like, well, I'll give you, um, five minutes, and then I'll just dump shit on you. What? You didn't pay me anything. Like, that's a privilege you have to pay for. If you want to tell me ill-considered, uh, feedback on anything I make, you gotta pay me. And you can do that with Basecamp, and you can tell me.
AI assessment note: “I love feedback if it's well grounded in solid observations that can give me new”
Answered raw tape
D 5 · C 4 · P 5 · Cm 4 4.55
Q And then, like, Be so judicious about what I add back. Like, how do you think about that when you're building products?
A It's even more on our minds now than it used to be, and it was always on our mind. Our initial spiel, our tagline, was less software. When we launched Basecamp back in 2004, it was often contrasted with Microsoft Project and other kind of enterprise-y, heavy tools, and our pitch was always It's really good, but one of the reasons why it's really good is it's just less. There are fewer features, there's less to learn, there's less to teach, there's just less, and we focus on making the few things it does do, do very well. Now, In this new age where using agents and AI has made it so much easier to implement things, it becomes that much harder to stick to those principles because we used to be granted these constraints simply by the fact that it took a long time to build things. And especially in the early days of Basecamp, for example, we built the entire first version on me having 10 hours per week, not per day, per week. To build it. That is an enormous constraint on how you could do anything because you can waste 10 hours really quickly just chasing things around or focusing on the non-essentials if we wanted to get that product out. And we got it out in 380 hours. And the reason I remember this was at the time I was a contractor for Thursday signals. Jason had hired me at 15 dollars an hour. When I was in Copenhagen, Denmark, and he was in Chicago. And by the way, I got paid…
AI assessment note: “Our initial spiel, our tagline, was less software.”
Answered raw tape
D 4 · C 4 · P 5 · Cm 3 4.10
Q And then, like, Be so judicious about what I add back. Like, how do you think about that when you're building products?
A It's even more on our minds now than it used to be, and it was always on our mind. Our initial spiel, our tagline, was less software. When we launched Basecamp back in 2004, it was often contrasted with Microsoft Project and other kind of enterprise-y, heavy tools, and our pitch was always It's really good, but one of the reasons why it's really good is it's just less. There are fewer features, there's less to learn, there's less to teach, there's just less, and we focus on making the few things it does do, do very well. Now, In this new age where using agents and AI has made it so much easier to implement things, it becomes that much harder to stick to those principles because we used to be granted these constraints simply by the fact that it took a long time to build things. And especially in the early days of Basecamp, for example, we built the entire first version on me having 10 hours per week, not per day, per week. To build it. That is an enormous constraint on how you could do anything because you can waste 10 hours really quickly just chasing things around or focusing on the non-essentials if we wanted to get that product out. And we got it out in 380 hours. And the reason I remember this was at the time I was a contractor for Thursday signals. Jason had hired me at 15 dollars an hour. When I was in Copenhagen, Denmark, and he was in Chicago. And by the way, I got paid…
AI assessment note: “our pitch was always It's really good, but one of the reasons... is it's just less.”
Partly raw tape
D 3 · C 4 · P 4 · Cm 3 3.55
Q Right, so you buy the yellow Lambo. But more interesting than the yellow Lambo to me is what you said, where you said that The, what Bezos did, what Jeff Bezos did for you and Jason was gave you the confidence to go for it. Can you explain that?
A So in the early days of Thursday, we had launched Basecamp, it was taking off quite well, and we got a lot of interest and outreach from VCs. We counted 40 some at the time, and this was 2005 ish. I still had very vivid memory of the dotcom boom and bust. I had seen what happened to some of these VC funded companies and the internal mechanics of that, and I didn't like any of it. And I also had all these ideas about efficient businesses and what it takes to run. So we didn't actually want VCs, but Going back to this point about trusting yourself. I didn't fully trust myself not to get tempted by a twenty million dollar check, a fifty million dollar check, whatever the number was at a time where my bank account said, I don't know, 8000 dollars. Funny thing. My bank account did say highly, uh, slightly higher than that. When I came to the US, I think I had like, 50 grand that we had worked up as we started Basecamp. And the first thing I did as soon as I landed was Jason took me to an Audi dealership and I bought an Audi S for my first car cash. And then there was basically all the money I had in my bank account. So I just blew it all on the car and I thought like, we're going to make it back. But, um, This, this notion that we had something that was taking off, but this is all fleeting. I had great humility that like, I'd seen many other businesses, oh, it's popping off, and the…
AI assessment note: “we didn't actually want VCs, but Going back to this point about trusting yourself”
Answered raw tape
D 3 · C 4 · P 4 · Cm 3 3.55
Q rebuilding from scratch. It's the same platform that more than 300 startups who have grown to over a billion dollars in valuation grew their businesses on. And now HubSpot for Startups offers this service at up to a 90% discount exclusively for eligible startups. Visit HubSpot.com forward slash startups to learn more. That is HubSpot.com forward slash startups. Have you had a chance to nerd snipe him back since then?
A Yes, on Linux. So I switched to Linux about two and a half years ago, and first I had this, uh, soft on-ramp as most people switch to Linux. I used Ubuntu. That's the most popular Linux distribution. That's fine. I mean, actually it's great in many ways because Linux has all these different distributions. They have Ubuntu and Fedora and Red Hat and whatever, but it's all the Linux kernel, like the magic of Linux Linux is the Linux kernel and then the ecosystem of all these tools that are around it. And whether you package them in this one way or package them in this other way is not the make or break of it. So just getting into Linux for me was a huge thing. I'd been on the Mac for well over 20 years. I was completely a Mac head as in thinking this is a Mac is computer. Like I don't want to use another computer. Windows certainly is not for me. I don't know. Linux is for people who like pocket protectors and just The kind of nerd that I can relate to, I can respect, but it was not a me thing. Then finally, Apple pissed me off enough that I thought I cannot in good conscience continue to spend money on their products if I have such deep disagreements with how they run the company. So fine, I'm going to try something else. And as I said, I gave Windows two weeks and I realized, man, shit, I can't do it. I'm going to come crawling back to the Mac if there's not something else. But…
AI assessment note: “Yes, on Linux. So I switched to Linux about two and a half years ago”
Partly raw tape
D 2 · C 4 · P 4 · Cm 3 3.25
Q Right, so you buy the yellow Lambo. But more interesting than the yellow Lambo to me is what you said, where you said that The, what Bezos did, what Jeff Bezos did for you and Jason was gave you the confidence to go for it. Can you explain that?
A So in the early days of Thursday, we had launched Basecamp, it was taking off quite well, and we got a lot of interest and outreach from VCs. We counted 40 some at the time, and this was 2005 ish. I still had very vivid memory of the dotcom boom and bust. I had seen what happened to some of these VC funded companies and the internal mechanics of that, and I didn't like any of it. And I also had all these ideas about efficient businesses and what it takes to run. So we didn't actually want VCs, but Going back to this point about trusting yourself. I didn't fully trust myself not to get tempted by a twenty million dollar check, a fifty million dollar check, whatever the number was at a time where my bank account said, I don't know, 8000 dollars. Funny thing. My bank account did say highly, uh, slightly higher than that. When I came to the US, I think I had like, 50 grand that we had worked up as we started Basecamp. And the first thing I did as soon as I landed was Jason took me to an Audi dealership and I bought an Audi S for my first car cash. And then there was basically all the money I had in my bank account. So I just blew it all on the car and I thought like, we're going to make it back. But, um, This, this notion that we had something that was taking off, but this is all fleeting. I had great humility that like, I'd seen many other businesses, oh, it's popping off, and the…
AI assessment note: “So we didn't actually want VCs, but Going back to this point”
