The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 20 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Basecamp bans shared calendars, forcing direct negotiation for colleagues' time
“We don't have, for example, we don't have shared calendars at base camp, so I can't see anyone else's schedule and they can't see mine. So I can't take their time and they can't take mine. If they want some of mine or I want some of theirs, we have to ask each…”
Fried: Basecamp operates without any product roadmap beyond eight weeks
“So we don't have a roadmap. So we don't have a, I don't know what we're going to do. Actually, I have no idea what we're going to do eight weeks from now. I just don't know.”
Fried: Basecamp expects eventual responses rather than immediate communication
“And so like at our company, at Basecamp, we try to think, you know, the expectation is of eventual response, not of immediate response. And if someone doesn't get back to you quickly, it's because they're working. They're doing something more important than wh…”
Calacanis: Asana Has Built a Much Bigger Business Than Basecamp
“I forgot the name of it because it's no longer the biggest player in that space. Like there's other people like Asana who've built like much bigger businesses, but you know, they decided they wanted to build a profitable lifestyle business.”
Fried: Basecamp intends to stay as small as possible
“We're going to keep our business as small as possible. He wants to build the business, biggest business in the world.”
Fried: Basecamp CEO limits himself to a single 13-inch laptop screen
“I don't have an external screen, so I have a 13 inch laptop, and that's my only screen, because I think screen real estate is actually, like, you don't want a lot of it. I think you want a little of it.”
Fried: Basecamp sets no quantitative goals or metrics for success
“We're different in that we don't have any goals or any metrics for success.”
Basecamp uses zero data to guide its product development
“We're not a data driven company in terms of product development.
we use data a lot for improving performance in terms of our infrastructure, making sure that we get back to customers in a reasonable amount of time, which is like currently about 10 minutes.
…”
Jason Fried rejects growth targets and desires to 'change the world'
“So those are the expectations I have for myself, but I don't have expectations or run growth. I don't have personal goals. I don't want to be seen in a certain way. Like I don't need to be in the media. Like I don't have that kind of stuff. I also don't have a…”
Fried: The software industry is not winner-take-all
“It might be true in a specific market where it is really winner take all, but I don't think it is in our industry. I mean, that's why there's hundreds of companies roughly doing kind of similar things that we're doing. And many of them are going to do quite we…”
Fried: Six-week cycles force product teams to define what is important
“Six weeks is enough time to make substantial progress on something that's important, and it also forces us to make sure that we understand exactly what it is that is important. In any feature that we're building, because if you give it three months, it'll take…”
Fried: Long work hours stem from fragmentation, not workload volume
“The reason why a lot of people are working those longer hours is not because there's 12 hours of work to do. It's because they can't find time within those 12 hours to actually get a few contiguous hours of time to actually do the work they need to do. So thei…”
Jason Fried strongly dislikes Facebook and its business practices
“We don't like Facebook. I don't like their company.”
Fried: Publicly sharing internal business methods does not threaten a company's survival
“Chefs, great chefs will write cookbooks and they're putting their recipes in a cookbook and they're not afraid of someone taking that cookbook. Reading other recipes and opening a restaurant next to them and putting them out of business. That's just not how it…”
Fried: Jeff Bezos bought secondary shares in Basecamp in 2006
“He never invested in Basecamp, the company, essentially. Like, his money was never put in the business to run the business. We've always a hundred, for 20 years as we've been, as long as we've been in business, we've always been a hundred percent funded by cus…”
Fried: Profitability is the best way to win in business
“One of the great ways to quote, win in business is to just to stick around. And the best way I've found to stick around is to be profitable because that, if you're profitable, you get to stick around as long as you want.”
Fried: Autonomous Basecamp teams complete six-week projects over 90% of the time
“These teams are autonomous. They're not checking in with anybody automatically. They check in when they Feel like they need to check in, or they have questions, or if I want to look at something, we'll look at something, but they're given the full responsibili…”
Fried: Writing quality is the first thing evaluated when hiring
“When I look at people and consider hiring people, I looking at the writing is the first thing I actually look at.”