Jason Fried Quotes
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When you write like everyone else and sound like everyone else and act like everyone else, you're saying, 'Our products are like everyone else's, too.'
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When you spend time with potential customers, you get to hear about their struggles firsthand. You see their eyes light up with excitement or darken with confusion. You learn things you would never find in a survey, database, or questionnaire. You learn why people buy.
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If yesterday was a good day's work, chances are you'll stay on a roll. And if you can stay on a roll, everything else will probably take care of itself - including not working from the moment you get up in the morning until you nod off to sleep.
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I know plenty of entrepreneurs who are numbers first. They tend to be highly analytical people, and before they pull the trigger, all the numbers have to line up just right.
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Your company is a product. Who are its customers? Your employees, who use it to do their jobs.
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Meetings should be like salt - a spice sprinkled carefully to enhance a dish, not poured recklessly over every forkful. Too much salt destroys a dish. Too many meetings destroy morale and motivation.
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I live in Chicago but own some property up in Wisconsin.
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Entrepreneurs love to view risk as binary. The more you put on the line, the greater the potential for reward.
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The reality is that companies are full of things that are left unspoken. And even when they are out in the open, the CEO is almost always the last to know.
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We like to bully deadlines. Pick on them; make fun of them; even spit on them sometimes. But what a terrible thing to do. Deadlines are actually our best friends.
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It's easy to forget, as a leader, that when employees don't get the wide view, not only does the point of their work escape them, but it can also lead to real frustration. It's hard to feel pride and ownership when you don't understand where things are going.
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I used to think that deadlines should be ignored until the product was ready: that they were a nuisance, a hurdle in front of quality, a forced measure to get something out the door for the good of the schedule, not the customer.
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I'd love to see more businesses take this approach - intentionally rightsizing themselves. Hit a number that feels good and say, 'Let's stick around here.'
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What's bad, boring, and barely read all over? Business writing.
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As the number of people who work at Basecamp has grown, I've noticed places where we could use more features, like management, structure, and guidelines. I've also noticed places where we've overengineered ourselves and should pull back.
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It may be irrational, but if you're local, the client often feels that, if worse comes to worst, they can knock on your door. They 'know where you live.' But when you're remote, they're going to be more suspicious when phone calls go unreturned or emails keep getting 'lost.' Stay on top of communications, and you'll reap the benefits.
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A diverse customer base helps insulate you; a few large accounts can leave you vulnerable to their whims.
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Fix a few things here, improve a few things there, launch a new feature every so often. That's coasting. And I don't want Basecamp to coast.
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Unlike a goldfish, a computer can't really do anything without you telling it exactly what you want it to do.
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I'm generally risk averse, and most great entrepreneurs I know are as well.
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People pulling 16-hour days on a regular basis are exhausted. They're just too tired to notice that their work has suffered because of it.
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Sometimes you get lucky and things are as easy as you had imagined, but that's rarely the case.
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Sustained exhaustion is not a rite of passage. It's a mark of stupidity.
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Nearly every boss has said it. And just about every employee has heard it. Yet it's one of the most meaningless lines ever spoken in the office: 'My door is always open.'