i got four words for you self funded cash cow that is what today's guest jason freed has built he's got this company thirty seven signals he's been around for i don't know twenty five years and they're very hush hash about their numbers but the only thing he's ever said is that they make tens of millions of profit a year and have been doing that for a long time in fact the investor of jason lincoln once said that the two greatest self funded cash out companies he's ever seen are craigslist and thirty seven signals and even better they do this without setting any goals they work only four days a week during the summers and they spend next to nothing on marketing and so i was dying to ask jason three questions that's what we did in this episode i said how did you build this low stress lifestyle company that has no goals and no long term plans how do you do that as a ceo the second thing i asked him was what was it like being faced to face with jeff bezos when he was negotiating his deal with him and lastly i wanna know the step by step process how does he generate massive interest in his product's pre launch he's done this over and over again he has this strategy where he uses a founder letter pre launch and he uses that to generate a lot of interest i wanted to understand how he does it what is the strategy behind that so no more teasing let's do it here's the episode of jason fried i feel like i could rule where i know i could be what i want to put at all in it like a days on on a rolling we were doing a research for this podcast and i've looked into a bunch i i'm inspired by you is it weird that we know that you spent something like thirty million dollars on homes in the past like two years you know you you started like a tech company not looking to get into this and now like your home purchases are on the blogs it's fucking embarrassing and frankly i i tried to hide them they tried to do all the things like double llc and the whole thing i i like architecture i like houses i like land it's just that's like really the thing i really found myself liking a lot and unfortunately it's very hard to just how do they find it how do they know because they're like jays bought this house and mean and sam we're supposed to be prepping for this spot and we spent like twenty minutes clicking through these photos be like this house sick how do they actually find it i don't know my guess is so like technically it's it's it's hidden in a sense but i think that all you're gotta do is probably ask like you know a real estate agent and you know you you kinda have nda but you know someone knows some or like the electrician or the cable company could someone hangs out and finds out or they look in the mailbox and see that you know there's a million ways unfortunately well what's cool about you and what i honestly admire we started off talking about how big the business but the reality is what i admire is some guys are into into beautiful eyes some guys are into butts me and sam i'm on this podcast we're we are into people who play there who define their own game and then play it and that's the one thing i think you do really really well and you've gone viral many times by putting out there some of your philosophies on how you approach business what i wanna do is i wanna kinda read you a quote and i want you to react to it i you explain and unpack a little bit for each one of these and we can go fast so the first one is your anti long term planning you don't you don't do long term plans and here's the quote i like to go long term planning is a fantasy i don't plan long term because i wanna do what i think not what i thought right explain that one yeah long term planning is is is what you thought and like doing figure hours as you go is what you think and i don't like the idea of having a thought six months ago break months ago or twelve months ago and feeling like have to follow that whim because i happen to have it and happened to write it or wrote it down i don't i don't get that i know a lot of people think there's a lot of certainty or comfort in like setting on a plan and like you know but really it's that plan is then just based on a moment in time and and then people are like well you can adjust well if you're can adjust just adjust just just don't even do the first plan so my feeling is just make it up as you go frankly we we think about things six months or sorry six weeks at a time and and go from there and adjust all the time and that's fine and we've always on it that way and i feel most comfortable frankly just paying attention to reality in the moment and making calls along along the way you also wrote that you've never had a goal so you said you had this whole blog post so that you don't like goals i i think you might be you may be were quoting another person but said the reason why most of us aren't hap or the reason that most of us aren't happy most of the time is that we set goals not for the person we're going to be when we reach them but we set our goals for the person we are when we set them and i don't think you explicitly said that the company doesn't set goals but you sorta of implied it is that the case yeah by the way quote is from a fellow named jim k who is a good friend of ours and runs field notes which a lot of people know you know our goal our only goal is to be profitable on a given year we've been profitable every year for twenty five years that's the only thing we look at is wanna make sure that we make more more than we spent otherwise we don't really set goals or have expectations other than just to do our best work i'm not a fan of thinking that you're gonna do better work if you set a goal i think you should do your best work all the time as best you can and again let the chips for where they may you know the way i think about this that i think helps people understand this more is if you wanna go off for a run and run a six minute mile and you guide run a six minute mile and you burning a six zero four you're you like didn't hit the goal and you're maybe upset like i almost got it whatever now some people might say you're gonna work harder next time but what if the goal was six zero five instead like it's five seconds difference and you would have beat it and you would have felt differently it's like five seconds does that matter like to me the right question is like was it worth it that i enjoy the run that have a good time do i feel good now don't wanna do that again am i injured no great did i get some fresh air yes like if you ask different questions then you're not so obsessed with like this this point this this goal line that you set up that is really arbitrary and made up to begin with so i've never believed in goals i just kinda do the best i can and and see where it goes so i like i i i want to agree with you because i i prefer i think i would be happier if that were the case but there is like some logistical pushback of like well you guys launched tate dot com a few years ago and you you have to plan like how much to allocate towards that project otherwise potentially you could be unprofitable so how do you justify like looking at like well this needs so this needs to hit this metric or let's let's ask the questions slightly differently i come to work you're the ceo you're like no plans no goals i'm like alright so then and what are we doing here how do we do it what what is the answer will this is gonna sound strange but we don't think that way we look at the big pile and go like at the end of the year do we have more money than we spent and is it because of this product or that product or this endeavor or that endeavor or this cost savings or that's expense like i don't really care frankly like to me it's just one big pile it's a range it's a feeling like we feel we actually it's of an aesthetic for us david and i talked about as the aesthetic of running a high margin business it feels right to do it that way i don't wanna run a business where i'm nervous all the time and you're nervous when you're looking at one or two points here and there and you're like shit we're barely breaking even like i don't wanna be in that kind of company right so we keep our cost low we have a huge customer base over a hundred thousand people pay us on a monthly basis for a variety of different products and given the fact that our costs are low and our revenue is high and we have a very diverse customer base things are things can be sloppy in a good way i feel like it's a comforting way it's not like a reckless way we are careful about costs we think about costs a lot actually but we don't worry too much about points you know that's just not how we how we look at things and so this approach where you're like we i let me do let me give you what i see from the outside you tell me which parts of this or are beef fan versus reality so the way i view you guys is you kinda think about what needs to exist in the world so for example you're like there needs to be email that doesn't stress you out or software that you pay for once and not every single month for the rest of your life that you and every additional employee you have it cost more and right like it's sort like first there's a point of view on what needs to change in the world or the way you want things to be or what what you wish existed then you're like probably some second check which is like can we build it are we the right team to build this do we have an approach that we think might work and then you budget this like six weeks sprint where you're like let's try to make a version of that that we like and then we'll iterate from there and we're willing to tolerate like six weeks of an an attempt at this to get to the next milestone of belief like we'll give it you know leap a faith to six weeks and then we after that we reevaluate and and decide what what you do from there is that correct what parts of that are incorrect partially we will spend a lot more time than six weeks on exploring an initial idea so for example when we're gonna make a brand new product we might spend six months wandering around an idea and see where ends up and at some point where again i don't know it's just a feeling like we spend enough time on this we're feeling good about this this is feeling better and better and better as we go let's do this and then you commit to doing it then you do it six weeks at a time or you get into something in these wander for a while and you go i'm just bored or like i don't know where else to go or this isn't really this doesn't seem interesting and you stop and you just give up frankly you just give up which is something i think more people ought to do hey do you do this wandering thing too like i i've seen your process i feel like it's kinda similar yeah i it's you know i don't wanna sound like i'm sniffing in my own farts but it's a little bit of an art where like it's i i feel like an artist a little bit where i i'm exploring a concept and then i it'll takes six months for some inspiration like i i i feel inspiration and then i have to wander to like like kinda hone in on the painting and the concept a little bit and it's sort of like one of those things where you take a lot of showers and like you get different ideas or you for a a walk and you get a different idea for like six months until it's like alright i think i've honed in this concept let's move forward is that what you do yeah yeah that's that's really a big part it it does feel like an art and not to again not to get stuffy about it like i'm not an artist not but like we just we we we explore and we leave room to explore and the margins allow us to explore and being profitable allows us to explore not having investors allows us to explore and not having a board allows us to like all these things allow us this independence allows us to do the things we wanna do the way we wanna do them but at some point you know you you you also don't wanna be you know reckless with with money and time and people at some point though this is just isn't going anywhere let's stop or so so we really do take our internal sort of motivation temperature a lot of it is a wrap wrapped on motivation like are we like pumped about this does this feel good if so let's keep doing this and then and then you finally kinda come into something so for example with hey briefly hey didn't start out as an email service it start out actually as a rethink of high rise which is our crm product which we stopped developing years ago we still offer to existing customers but we don't sell it anymore but we had this thought like what if we explore that again so we began to explore that and through that exploration we realized what we were doing was building this sort of email system that we wanted for all of our emails not just like business communication emails but like all of them and so we go a you know that's interesting this is actually like an email thing i bring this idea today but i had been exploring with one of my designers for a while and he's like yeah that that is interesting like let's see where this goes and so we started kind of hooking it up so we we did the ui first that's what we always do and churn a bunch of ui and we started making it work like there's there's something here and you feel this pull of something here there's a certain gravity to these ideas and it pulls you towards it and you keep going for a while and then at some point though you gotta get serious and that's when you begin to you know break this into six week chunks essentially of work or monthly chunks depending on it but you gotta have some end of these things so you can get onto to the next feature in the next feature in the next feature otherwise you'll spend too much time trying to perfect just one thing yet a product has to do a lot more than just that so you kinda have to you you gotta a time box these things in a sense well you said two things that i liked one you said one of your superpower is focused i'm sorry i was saying this about you and what what you said was no is just saying no to one thing yes is saying no to a lot of things as and i really love that no is just saying no to one thing but yes it's saying no to like kind of the the whole future set of things because you've now taken up your mind share in your talent in your hands with with the thing you said yes to yeah and no is a very precise you know precision instrument because you get to evaluate a thing and say no to it and they have the whole spectrum of everything else that's possible available to you at that point so i i think no is a great tool it's very specific yes is a blunt force instrument that kind of damages a lot of things essentially now it might be worth it because that thing you choose to do might be the thing that you needed to do but it does force you to say no to a bunch of other opportunities and the longer you spend on that yes the more knows you are throwing off and you don't even realize it so i do think it's very important to figure out what you're doing and then you know why you're doing it and then commit to doing it and then get it done in a reasonable period of time partially because you don't know if it's gonna be any good or not i mean you might have a feeling but the market's is gonna tell you for sure you wanna get out of the market as soon as you can ultimately and then you'll find out and then you can iterate from there so that's kind of our general approach to so we don't make new products that often like we used to make them a lot like when we first launched we had base camp in two thousand four backpack two thousand five camp fire two thousand six high rise two thousand we're making a new product every year and then we did a bunch of other things job boards and whole bunch of other things now we you know we'll make a new product once every handful years but yeah in general we don't say yes at often and when we do we we try to get it right so you went to the job board this an interesting story here so andrew wilkinson bought the job board do you guys created we work remotely because you guys were really far ahead of trend on remote work and we work remotely as a remote work job board you sold it to andrew wi in friend of the pod is probably the most frequent guest on our podcast and that wanna i ask you about this because for him it's like he loves this story because it's a great buy he bought it for really cheap and then now i don't know what that thing does unless i think it's something like five million year profit comes off the job board i i think it's four it's in as a nor report you can kinda dial it down so let's say four let's say four million of a year profit and i wanted to ask you like for you guys is that a we wish we had kept it bad sale because it's now a lot more profitable or is it no that was the right thing to do because it cleared us up to do other things how do you think about that that transaction well it's easy to look back on it and make a different decision now the reason we sold that at the time was because we were selling off a bunch of stuff or consolidating to kind go all in on on one thing on base camp essentially it's kind of around that time we've since decided to make more things than just base camp so we're kind of in a multi product world again i think they got a very good deal let's just say and the thing that i will say bugs me about our decision about that is that that was the easiest month not the sale but the the product was the easiest money we built the job board in two weeks and it was generating at the time for us something like thirty grand a month something like that with no work like literally quote next to nothing to do it was all you know self serve automated maybe there's was a customer service question here and there but like essentially nothing and i wish we still had that we could still launch another one like nothing says we couldn't do it again work remotely dot com we're still work remotely i think we do something different out some ideas on that we might do something like that at some point i don't really know but i would say it was very goodbye but now now i'm an investor in his company so i own a little tiny piece of that anyway on the other side you jason was what i think is cool is if i remember correctly you guys i think you started almost as an agency and then kinda like became a software company because you saw recurring problems and and you built that and i think it's been something like twenty five years and you've i don't think that there's any great resource out there that says your guys revenue but it it we it definitely tens of millions who knows if it's even north of a hundred million but it's a very big business you do marketing in the sense of you have these really cool books rework is awesome and you're a public figure and you blog a lot but if i'm listening to this from the outside i would think well it works because jason and david were early and they kept that it for twenty five years and that's the reason why they have such fat margins not just because they're smart but it's because they were early in in the game what would you say to that i think you're right by the way as far as numbers is we we the only thing we've ever shared is that we generate tens of millions in annual profits because i don't really care about revenue numbers you can go broke generating as much revenues as you can imagine do you measure profit on a gaap basis or do you do like non gaap where you just look at cash flow no it's gap okay like net profit legit after everything right so we're we're we we real we're proud of that you know we're really proud of that and we work hard at that but i do think timing and luck i have a lot to do with it and market conditions like could we launch this again today no we couldn't that's fine too like who cares it doesn't really matter right people ask that attempt could you do it again no probably not who cares why why would i need don't have that don't have to like you you know you this is why this is one of the reasons why we've kept this business going for so long i don't think lightning strikes that often we've got a couple really really big hits we've done it the way we wanted to do it we've got a lot of momentum we're well known we've we've built this business our own way i would hate to give this up like selling this would be sad like i'd i'd lose something you could say well look at all the money i'd lose more than i'd make now that's not to say that that couldn't happen at some point down the road of course like a business is either going to die or be handed off or sold like second last forever and ever and that could change next year i don't even know right who knows but this is the whole we don't plan i don't really know what's gonna happen but right now would feel like a loss to sell the company so that's why i'm actually frankly nervous about that i'm afraid of what i would i'm afraid of having nothing to do that i'd be good at i know i'm good at this i like doing this why would i wanna stop you know it's sort of how i look at but yeah to your point i i don't i don't take credit for being able to do this again and i think a lot of i mean you guys speak with a lot of entrepreneurs sometimes people hit it big twice sometimes sometimes though those are more like sales you know we're like they're in they're in a a world where you can keep selling companies that don't work as far as actually finding people who've started multiple businesses that have been profitable businesses and really successful businesses it's not that common it's really hard to do by the way that was my big fear so i sold my a company and i had a guy sit down and talk to me and he said how many people do you know who have started two successful business and in my head i was like fuck you man like how to do it you know like i was angry right right i was i was angry and i was angry because i was afraid in reality and after i sold i dabble in real estate and i fucking failed and i was like shit i'm human i'm not like i'm not the man i did get you know there was some skills there was also a whole lot of luck involved in my exit and i i will i also had that fear and then after about six months i was like i gotta do something i can't just do nothing i i feel like a bum but it was a lot of starting things was rooted in fear and rooted in i don't wanna be lonely so i need to create something where i can hire people and be around them i hear that i also think you know like i'm turning fifteen in a few weeks like i don't have the stamina to start another business like in wait twenty years you know like i i just don't i don't have that like you know when i was twenty five i could do it thirty five i could do it i don't wanna do it anymore i wanna keep this thing going until i don't all in i think that we really like doing this we have got some new ideas the one stuff is really kind of inject us with some new ideas we're about to start on another product which will be a saas products so we're gonna do saas and and non saas products again and we'll see what happens again we'll see what happens then it could be this is the thing it could be a year from now where i changed my mind i i don't know we really don't know but i think david and i both like i think if we one of us decide to go we would have to sell the business because i don't think that what the either one of us would stick around one of my favorite stories is the story where mark zuckerberg early on i think he's like twenty one years old or something and he gets an offer to sell face with for a billion dollars and the story goes he goes into the board meeting and he's like yeah like you know we have to we technically have to discuss this got offer from i think yahoo to sell for a billion dollars obviously we're not gonna take it onto the next matter and then peter t and others were like hey mark well hey y you know you're gonna have like whatever five hundred million dollars if you did that maybe we should just chat about this for a second and they were like well let's talk to there and one of the things he said was like he's like i but i like this business he's like if i had the money what what i go do i would just wanna build a social network i think that's the coolest thing i could do right now and like the one i've got why would i wanna go start over and try to build it a new one so i loved that i don't know how much of the story is true because you know there's a lot of like lore but that's okay it's still cool story have you guys did you guys ever have a moment where somebody comes to and it's it's offer you have to discuss and like what what went down in that conversation we've never been we've never allowed that to happen no one like i i get i still get a handful of emails every week from vcs or ppe pe firms like and i just say no like i've a i have a default just know we don't even have conversations we did take some money from jeff bezos though back in two thousand six six or seven of six i think it was like a secondary thing so he said he bought some shares from me and from david so that money went into our pocket never went into the business no money has ever gone to the business except customer revenues and we did that to take a little bit of risk off the table because in two thousand six base camp was two years old the product and we're like this could be a fluke i don't know what the hell is gonna happen in this industry who knows we could get wiped out tomorrow you know could we put a few million bucks in the bank each and just like take some of that risk off the table and and also give us some confidence to just go forward it at that point because if it all went to hell we have something to show for it personally so we did that jeff jeff found us because a couple of his companies that he was invested in had to used base camp he saw me speak at a conference in san diego in two thousand five called et tech i don't know if that conference is still around anymore he was speaking i was speaking i think he liked what i had to say the way i was we were very different as we still are now but way back then way different in terms of like our point of view and the things we were saying and he likes those kind of come that mean you're more were you were more harsh or or what i was a year punk we'll call it punk rock you were more punk rock more punk rock the dance answer to this question is kind of actually that jeff was a fan jeff was a fan so he reached out that's he was i mean jeff was a fan like let's just you know it's anyway he was a fan he's a fan of of of of you know people think differently about how to run a business as he thinks differently about how to run a business so so we just kinda chatted you know we we we went adam met him i didn't really i knew this was like an investment opportunity for him because he wouldn't just come you wouldn't say that come on and say hello but i didn't go into it wanting to do that but after a couple meetings we really liked him he's very likable and and we had a lot of admiration for him obviously for what he's done and what he built at the time and who he was and how he did it and his whole story and the whole thing obviously i mean bezos is amazon an amazing thing right so eventually we worked out some deal which was ridiculous there's a ridiculous ridiculous deal and i can't go into the specifics but we barely had revenue at the time the valuation was stupid he knew it was stupid he's like put together something i need we're like we don't know he's like put together something i need something so we put together something we share with them and we all had a laugh about it because it was ridiculous but like it had to be something where we could make something happen and we're like look we don't want you to have any control we don't wanna a board of directors they had one provision which said something like in five or seven years they had some right to do something like encourage us to do something that we might not have wanted to do like sell or go public or something but they didn't have the power to i think push it through anyway it was just a suggestions clog maybe that's what they call i don't know it was very weak that was a week he didn't want like he's like i want you guys to do what you wanna do he's like i like long term thinkers i'm like we're in this forever we're not in the sell the business the whole thing he liked that so what what's he light you go there to seattle take us into the meeting when none of us will ever get to do that right especially bezos back then by the way have you guys heard the story really quick it was the founder of root or it's w o o t there's this famous article sean oh woo yes where they go out to eat jeff jeff bezos wants to buy this guy's company and they go out to eat and jeff bezos they're putting there right they go to breakfast and jeff bezos orders potatoes with bacon and octopus oc octopus and he and the guy's like why do you order that that's like a weird breakfast order and he goes you're the octopus that i'm having for breakfast bezos said when i look at the menu you're the thing i don't understand the thing i've never had and i must have breakfast octopus and it was like the article tries to pay him as a weirdo but it doesn't exactly give full context and so at at least now we have someone here who's also been in that in that situation that seems very jeff jeff is probably the most optimistic person i've ever met and that was very clear from the start and i'd never been around someone who had that much optimism that was i mean clearly intelligent very intelligent but so but that made it with optimism is really powerful optimism about what about you about the world about his company what what was the what do you comes in it's it's an aura of like can do this just positivity you know you've seen him he smiles a lot he laughs big you know he's just he has a he has a an enthusiasm about him that is i would say like formed into an optimism that is un unmistakable and un is it like a like why not like for example i've met people i think what you're describing and i went around them they like explain their new idea and they're like it's gonna be this this and this and a lot of people default too like well you can't do that but all these people default to well why not this all makes sense like i'm gonna do this and then i think this will happen in this what why won't that happen i think if you post something really unusual to jeff he would just start laughing in a way like wow that is interesting like it's all interesting to him that was my take and i remember we were showing him camp fire which is our first chat group chat tool this is way way you know back before slack and there wasn't really something out there like this was irc but there was nothing really simple and we put up on the screen and i start talking him about it because it wasn't out yet and like fifteen seconds in he just got the whole damn thing he just got it like he got it a way where he got it more than we got it and he for of people are always was curious like well you're not gonna sell the business how does he make any money on the investment well we're at llc so he's a member he has units and every year he gets distributions and he's made his money back many times over and he still owns you know his shares and we haven't had to sell the business it's been a great investment for him not at like a massive exit but like it pays for a lot of things i'm sure it's real cash jeff good news your net worth has gone up by point zero zero zero one percent this year you thank us that what's cool is like we don't matter but when you talk to him them it's not that way yeah of course he is genuinely curious and interested in what you have to say and i i've always respected that about him i love that description and by the i've heard almost the same verbatim thing because amazon bought twitch and i've asked emma you the ceo of twitch i was like what's jeff because that was his for while it was andy ja and then it was he would go meet with jeff once a year when they would present the plan and he said the same things he was like when you're in the room with him it's like there's nothing else that exists in the world like he's fully engaged fully paying attention present and he's like he's having a good time he's not like super super serious about everything he's laughing and he's curious and he asked questions and he mostly listens but then when he asked a question he almost always like has had like struck the heart of the issue and you're like how did you he's like dude i've worked on the i run this business and it's like i founded this business for fifteen years ago i run it every single day do you think about this for like one hour a year but in that hour you kind of put your finger on the right thing that fast that is impressive sean i wanna ask him you you have on here about this this elon quote so you talked about reading bezos book bezos book you actually had an interesting take on reading elon biography that i thought was intriguing i i just think it's i admire you jason so it's cool to see like who you admire and what your opinions is on different people who i am me and by the way i think it's not like this person but maybe an aspect of that person or a one way that that person does something not like this person is good and other people are bad and all things they do are good or whatever right we're all a lot of different things we are all a lot of different things you i you the quote you had tweeted this out thought this was pretty fascinating you said i'm inspired by the business side of elon biography there is one word that's overused and i think in aggregate in the book reckless what what seems like risky actually to me strikes me as risk reduction and then he said the following said compared to traditional corporate america corporate america takes the risk route it's fear marginal decision making complexity and i love this line to go mediocrity sla in marketing and then he said mistake come in all shapes and sizes but the ones for the but the ones that come from slow decisions committees that dilute responsibility sloppy cost controls and requiring pseudo certainty before making and move those are the worst ones and elon doesn't make those but his critics often do his mistakes are real and he and they have consequences but they're rooted in forward motion i'm glad there's someone who is out there unidentified of making those kinds of mistakes and showing us all what hap what is possible when you pierce the membrane that holds most things back that's that's pretty good what made you feel that way i would say reading the book made me they feel that way now of course it's a story of was you know biography but like story there's a perspective on it point of view a lot of the examples in the book are about simplifying are about cutting out waste getting to the root of things figuring out like what really matters not getting caught up in what other people think it should be and also not being caught up in things you can't do and it was that impression and there's a there's a multitude of examples there's one one of my favorite examples i might be mis recording this slightly but there's this example of of a there's a rocket you know spacex rocket ready to go launch and they find like a crack in the in the skirt that surrounds one of the engines and i think again i'm gonna get this some of the details wrong but like if nasa had found that there's like a three month launch a scrapped multi month delay rebuild the whole engine kinda that sort of thing so so there's there's crack and in the skirt and and elon hears about it and they they stop the launch or something in elon hears about it and he goes what's the problem he goes there's a crack in the skirt he goes let's get rid of the crack can we get rid of the crack and i well if you get where the cracker you're gonna lose some propulsion it goes okay how much propulsion are we going to lose they're like this much because we can lose that there's enough margin here so let's cut the crack out and go and that's what they did and the launch was successful and it's like the kind of question that nobody else would even think to ask like well what is the problem it's a crack it's not the engine it's a crack let's get rid of the crack can we get of the crack yes but how this way well that's gonna do this okay well what does that mean okay sure let's do it so that might seem reckless and i think was positioned or pitched almost as reckless in the book to me that's like common sense fundamental smart problem solving and you think about all the other risks it saves and all the other things it prevents and the time that goes by and all the other things that can happen during that time they can go wrong i just see that as brilliance not as as as as reckless so that's my take on it so i know that you guys are on your website you're you have a landing page for this product that i believe you i i forget how you described it but it's something like it's a non recurring software product because it's like you wanna take back users need to take back control of like their their wallets and not pay a company every single month they just could pay one time so that seems like that excites you and i wanna hear more about that and you also alluded to you have like a few more products you wanna launch what ideas and businesses are exciting to you at the moment sure so what you're talking about is a thing called once which is more of an umbrella brand so ones dot com o n c dot com and it's a one pager and people can read it the the fundamental idea behind once is that we think that people should be able to buy products again right now pretty much all software is a service it's a rental your renting serve your renting software in perpetuity and if you stop paying you lose it all like okay some services make sense that are services but they're also i think a large question of products old school products so you'd buy and you'd own and it's yours and you don't have to keep paying for it we wanna bring that back that's how it used to be we think there's some real advantages to that in certain areas in certain product categories and we think companies should have the option to spend money once and not a lot a few hundred bucks and own the thing and i only own the thing but get the code too so you can modify it and screw around with it as much as you want this is not something that has been happening for many many many many years we think it's time to bring it back so we will launch the first park which is campfire fire bringing back our old chat tool that sort of died on the vine to some degree although there's still some customers using the original version but we don't sell it anymore and campfire fire is install software we built a whole new tech stack around this to allow people to we we you buy it on shopify store it's two hundred nine nine bucks you buy it we send you an email with a single line that you paste into a terminal of a server so it's there's a little bit of technical knowledge required but like barely any i'm not technical i can do it i've done it on digital ocean i bought it a shared server and ran this one command and now you have a chat server running that you own it's two hundred nine bucks once unlimited users and it's basically ninety percent of what like slack would do it's the core stuff chatting dms ad mentions sharing files it doesn't have threads it doesn't have video chat doesn't melt it but it has the fundamentals of what this nugget of this idea at it is and the principle around this is that in any industry generic eventually come in for for example there's a lot of chat tools that exist in software today in in in in the industry so there basically commodities but there's still price like lux it's it's companies are running are spending tens of thousands of dollars a month on slack it's our teams it's obscene absolutely i spent i spent that it's obscene you're okay you you get it right it's a lot of money a lot of money for basically chatting with your coworkers for the most part right and it it's just like there should be a generic option essentially this is what happens in in all industries when there's a lot commodity or there's a lot of product commodities something becomes to commodity that becomes a generic at a much lower price we're doing something at a high quality and a low price and changing the model around so anyway campfire fire is the first one working on a second one right now i can't talk about yet but it's related to writing and maybe we'll do another one or two and then see how the model looks in a year from now like are we early how's is it working so far it's been working really really well with campfire fire we've sold hundreds of thousands of of dollars worth of campfire fire in in a few months so we're very happy with the start but we have to see if it sustain and how it goes and we're gonna add more products to that category and see how that goes can we talk about this strategy you have where before you launch something you put up a page a big blue page with the founder letter yes and the founder letter is basically saying kinda what you just did which is things used to be a certain way they've changed it's kind of obscene you know i get why they changed but now it's gotten a little ridiculous don't you think we're gonna change that we're gonna bring it back we think it we think life should be this way common sense logic don't you agree and yeah we're gonna do it if you wanna if you wanna be a part of that do this and actually this morning i saw something on twitter those kind of somebody guy announced his venture round it was like we raised sixteen million dollars i'm like oh that's interesting what is this and it's this something called quilt and i gotta click this thing quilt and i'm like go to the website and it's it says some like blah blah blah ai jargon with the email sign it with a sign up form no just no no tell me don't tell me what it is don't tell me why i should want don't tell me what i could do for don't tell me why you built this and what was your motivation just we raised a bunch of money give us your email and you're on the list and we need to grow this list basically and i thought i can't believe more people don't copy what you do it's so like this is that's how that's how this podcast get to be sean by the way we were talking about copywriting and we're like man jason's the best at this yeah and you did this for hay and i used to teach this thing called power writing and i would teach them i would say one of the landing page variants that nobody's touched nobody's is doing is founder letter was actually a company called runway that did an amazing job of this i don't know you ever saw runway dot com but sky who's a serial founder was like the landing page was a long scrolling thing but it was basically just a dialogue and he's like biggest ceo is hard for a bunch of different reasons but one of the annoying reasons that feels like should have been hard was that i kinda had no no grasp of the numbers of my business and that felt i felt stupid and i felt insecure about that and it was important but i just frankly didn't know how to do it i didn't know how to use tools i wasn't really ever taught it why don't i know how many weeks of runway i have left why don't i know this why don't i know that and so i decided like i'm gonna build a tool that's a finance tool but it's for founders and he did it as a letter and it was awesome he got a bunch of people to sign up for it i think more people should be using this tactic and the reason why i think they don't to be honest is because there is no reason to be building their product there is no intrinsic why there is no strong point of view that would get people behind it their product is either derivative or sort of mediocre growers just trend following and so if they tried to write the letter there wouldn't be much to say it's not the writing that's the hard part it's the having a point of view that resonates with people that's the hard part it's the point of view so this is my favorite thing to do in the business period and unfortunately i don't get to do it that often because we don't launch new things but i love writing a brief letter and i i sweat every word and i just love it this is my like bezos moment where i just smile and laugh while while i'm doing this thing i just love finding the right rhythm in the right rhyme and the right pattern and the right message the right way to say it it's super fun i don't know why more people don't do it but it's your point i think there is something about like you have to have a point of view first of all and the thing is that you can do with any product like i mean a novel product a a a a a commodity product you just have to like understand the angle that you're taking although i don't even i don't like the term angles because it seems like it's almost manipulative but what stick you need a stick and yeah it yeah you don't like that i don't know you need a flavor what do what you wanna call i'm not gonna like stick i understand i a pre you're right like that's the category s also has these like negative connotation like it's sort of like this game and manipulative thing you're maybe you don't mean it that way and you probably don't just like a flavor you just flavor style i like the style i like flavor i like style about it i like i like the the point of view i to me it it cuts it it has a it has an edge that's the kind of thing and i think of all it's very hard to do this not i'm not giving myself like credit like i can do a hard thing but it is hard to do this well i've always been inspired by people at you know buffett and bezos who writes these amazing shareholder letters who are able to communicate very clearly and and can do it in long form writing now this isn't that long form it's a it's a page but i wanna get excited about that i i wanna read something and i wanna be pulled through it and by the end i feel like it wasn't too long and just it said exactly what i needed need to say and i'm left with some mystery so one of the things i like to do is you'll see the first sentence on once is something like something happened to business software now that is planting a question in people's heads but it's not a question i'm not asking a question i'm making a statement and now they're like what what do you mean right and now they're bought in because they ask themselves the question like oh yeah what did what do you mean something happened now they wanna find out what happened and then i kind of go through it and and all the way i'm thinking about how do i find resonance like are are they nodding their heads when i'm nodding my head when i'm writing this thing like how do we get to that place we're like yeah yeah yeah and you build up this yeah of course yeah you're yeah u yeah and they're like yeah why am i spending this fucking much money on this thing like i should own this by now i think there's a line like you should own this ship by now like bet i'm sam you've spent i don't know how much you've spent on like you should own it by now come on right and and and it's you know nothing against you right it's like everyone who does this it's like wow i mean how much money i spend on this thing and i'm still spending the old the old the metaphor that the saas companies used initially was like just pay a couple bucks a month no big deal right pay as you go to only pay for what you need but the price is it's it's the renter prime and you reframe it as renter right yes oh yes but you can get evicted yes but you don't even own this thing yes but they can raise them hike up the rents anytime they want right and so ref framing it as cool yeah but you're you're a renter and they're the landlord and all your data's is owned by them not you right he calls it the church the church of recurring revenue church of recurring revenue so it's done very well for a lot of followers and and if people who attend the church of recurring but the thing is like some things make sense like this there's like a magazine or newspaper like this is kind old school right but you pay subscription but you get something new literally every week weekday month whatever it was software i know it's improving but it's improving around the marginal edges you already have ninety percent of it on day one when you bought the damn thing and so you're paying over and over and over and over for essentially the same thing and at some point if you're paying a lot you should be like well i should own this by now this is crazy tony i wanna kinda make that point and get people excited it and the lead people with some mystery so there's it's not like the stealth thing where there's like we're doing an i think you answer enter your email like here's a story it's all legit but i'm still not gonna tell you exactly what it is and then we kind of you know eventually deliver the product the the simple test by the way is let's say you did buy slack or whatever insert what your favorite product for one year and then they did all these over the air updates and they they you know they added this added that they tweaked it fixes this bug if they had just charged you for it one year and then you could buy v two you know slack two point o or the the the twenty twenty four version would you buy the upgrade like you know we used to buy windows ninety five and then you would be would hear you you're like oh man i heard whatever the next one this or whatever it is it's got all this new stuff okay maybe it's worth upgrading but like the reality is almost none of us would buy those up by the next edition because the upgrades are so marginal right they're not like game changing but you're charged for it as you go as if those are such game changing up yeah and look again some products like we have a few products like this hey saas tool based camp saas tool so we're in that world too i totally get it that said we don't charge any of our customers more than two hundred ninety nine dollars a month period flat so with base cam you can have six thousand users it's just two ninety nine flat unlimited users at that point so we don't offer the same thing where people could be spending fifty sixty grand or ten grand or five grand or three grand a month with us like you can only spend two ninety nine a month max with base camp so i don't feel as guilty frankly selling something like that you know compared to company asking companies to spend tens of thousands i get it's good for revenue i get all that but man i wouldn't feel comfortable or confident i i would feel like i'm ripping people off frankly so so how how do you deal with the count argument which is you guys were first with if campfire fire before slack slack comes out kicks your butt becomes a twenty something billion dollar company exits and blah blah blah sure how do you deal with that well first off slack because it was an excellent product it still is an excellent product but at the time it was way better than campfire fire so we sort of let campfire fire kinda with we we you know kind of didn't pioneer the idea i irc was before us and there was chatting but like we kind pioneered this version of it to some degree and we sort of let it sit and didn't really make it much better slack came around and made a much better version of that idea so full credit to them for that i think another problem we had was that we were really early with camp fire i remember when we launched campfire in two thousand six i don't know when slack launched i think it was like six years later or something like that i couldn't get anyone to buy campfire fire people are like why the fuck would you use a chat tool like what like we're on the same office like just talk to people or whatever like i don't even get it well that we we we used to use like gmail chat and then for a while hip hip chat which i hate hip chat yeah that was another one yep yeah but if it this gmail you were on the edge though because a lot of people didn't even like cha was like now everyone can't imagine working with without it but like it was not a thing that companies used individuals use it a lot but companies it's just this persistent chat was just not a thing so because we were early on it we kind of didn't think there was a future in it because it was selling okay but not that well and so we just didn't pour more energy into it than along came slack i remember actually interesting stuart butter field send me an email before they launch slack uber were friends and he said hey just wanna to let you know we're launching this thing it's competitive with campfire fire to some degree where buddies i just wanna like let you know you know like that's cool and remember looking out at the first time and like my stomach dropped and like oh shit we're dead or this thing is dead because it's fucking good and the thing that impressed me the most about it was the onboarding experience i think that in my opinion there's two things of course the the bot integration stuff was really innovative but the onboarding experience was so good where you basically talk to the chat and create your user account and stuff those it just took in my opinion those two things the chat itself isn't better or worse chat is chat essentially onboarding and and and bots were the thing and we didn't have them and they crushed us so yeah that's how i'd answer that question did your you're cool to me because you're like alright so if you're listen go to base camp dot com go to hay dot com and one's dot com your landing pages like we're internet do all three of us like we're we're talking about like crm shit like we're talking about like something that's not inherently like a punk rock thing but you have like a punk rock vibe about you like if you look at your landing pages they're all like kinda cool and they're fun to read and you make non cool things kind of cool it's it's yeah for me there's a degree of like mining for novelty and recognizing like what's interesting and what isn't how people can look at something go man i never thought of that but of course like that's what i'm always looking for i wrote this this post recently about towel bars and hooks don't know if either of you saw it but riveting riveting concept you're ready this okay i'm not ready but i'm sure it's great what is it so we're doing a bathroom renovation and and the designer or give the architects like do you guys want hooks in your bathroom or towel bars and for me the choice was like is so obvious is like hooks hooks hooks team hooks too in my house right and it's like why well for i'll give you a bunch of reasons first of all you can't screw up a hook you can't mount it wrong first of all you can't use it wrong you can put other things besides towels on it it doesn't take up any space if you need to add a second one there's room for that and sometimes it's nice to have like a two hooks a few inches apart and you can kinda spread a towel so it dries a little bit better there's just all these reasons and for me i'm always looking for the hooks in product design like what are the little things that just are are so simple and straightforward and everyone knows how to use them and you can't get it wrong you can't use them wrong and actually you can use them in a bunch of different ways that weren't intended and it still works compared to a towel bar it's like the only thing you can use a towel bar for is to hang a towel or your nine year old will do a pull up on it and tear it off the wall that's the other thing you can do with it with the towel bar and and takes a lot of space and like if you don't put the towel and just right it slides off like you can use it wrong so easily it's easier to use it wrong than it is to use it right so that's why i like hooks and so i'm always looking for these analog in other areas i don't look at other software other software doesn't really inspire me like a hook will inspire me piece of architecture a space land tree furniture design print design i don't know objects that's the kind of stuff that i i look for motivation and inspiration in i think there's a lot of really good ideas in there so that's that's where this stuff comes from and i'm like oh this is a hook and this is a hook and this is a hook and and anyway that's kinda how i think about it one of my favorite things i did in my in the research for this i'm because i'm almost looking for in the research it's like what one of the big ideas were the important ideas but they're not necessarily new to me and then what are the new ideas and one of the new ideas i thought you put out there was really great super nerd but we're that's where we are right now we're in the nerd zone which is really the place we should be all the time but you said when prototyping always try the w here quirk your stuff first the deeper you go into project the more conservative it tends to get stranger ideas are more at home earlier in the process i love this this is so true i anybody say this it's something that if you embrace it you can actually you know sam's old company i think their only company culture thing was let your free flag fly yeah it's like that's what you wanna do in products on there's also kinda good life advice too which is the weirder or quirk things are actually it's easier to get away with them and do them when you're your early twenties versus when you're thirty seven right like you tend to book get more conservative it's product development it's life advice i thought that was brilliant thank you i i we really take this to heart and the reason why is like for example i'll take the calendar example again if you're building a calendar and you think that there's all these table stakes features that you you like you need to be on par first with google calendar like if you're like the only people are gonna buy this like if they're gonna use google calendar they're gonna expect google calendar fidelity and functionality and then maybe we add a couple other things like no one's gonna buy your thing because google calendars google account like why just make that other thing with a couple other things so we always start with the novel the things that don't exist anywhere else that's what makes your product differentiated that's what makes it worth considering like to say like we made google calendar us a little bit better like not worth it but we made something totally different that is not just different because it's different but it's we actually think there's some novel here that matter that makes sense that are radically different in good ways that's what we pile on early and to the other point of that quote is that if you just wait till the end to try to add those novel you'll never have enough time you're always running out of time at the end and you're never gonna try new things you're not gonna have the tolerance or the the the the patience to to wander so then you end up leaving those things out and then you never get around to them because once you launch to the public the public then demands even more normal stuff now what the public doesn't demand unusual things the public demand normal stuff it's on you to find the unusual things the things they didn't consider but once they see they go of course where's this been my whole life that's the kind of stuff base camp is packed with these things and hey is packed with these things and hey counters packed with these things and those who use those tools understand that those who don't don't know but they are packed with things you're like oh my god where has this been my whole life that's amazing but the way what do you do you guys pull out profits over yours out of the llc i like that you don't reinvest it you basically get the benefit are you like a boring kind of like index funds and bonds guy like say sam is more on the conservative kind of side i'm more like that eighty twenty index bonds life baby yeah my i'm like the two sexist words and things language are like exotic instrument i we got an exotic instrument for you i'm like tell me more and then i regret later what do you what do that sexy t own what the what's an exotic game what's an exotic it it's the thing that you're you know you'll lose money your adviser gives you to lose money it's called the exotic instrument it's good i mean our exotic instrument is our own business that's where most of our risk is tied up so so i'm more on on sam's tip here which is to be very conservative with with investments outside my business so primarily index funds i do invest in a few individual companies that i really know and really like and i've liked for a long time i might even know the ceo i might have a good sense of who this company isn't and what they do i'm not jumping on the meme stocks that kind of thing right i've an adviser i i've done some like other kinds of investing around like some some pe deals and some stuff like that but primarily i'm pretty much straightforward index funds like play the the us economy long term essentially and some maybe some other companies or countries economies but primarily us that's my main thing i i also like so i do that and then i also like to spend money on things that i i enjoy and then my family enjoys and but i'm on a i'm not i don't what i don't like to do is ever put myself at risk i don't like to put my business and i'll take risks but i don't take risks that put me at risk that is not an interesting risk for me it seems like you value being able to sleep well at night like i just wanna be able to to sleep easy and not do anything that's gonna jeopardize that right the people asking in business all you you know what what keeps you up at night and and typically the answer for most people is like some the competition and my make payroll for me like what keeps me up at night when i am up at night because of work it's excitement like i can't wait to start working tomorrow on this thing that we're working on it's it's not it's not like because our our march it's not like our margins are razor thin and might not be able to make payroll or i'm focused on the competition hyper focus so like they launched something new and now oh my god what are we gonna do like that one slack moment i did have was was one of those moments that was years ago i'm i just wanna sleep well i don't i stopped working at five i don't talk about work with my family at all and we just don't it's just not the thing it's a separate thing that i do during the day and i get excited about sometimes at night because i'm just excited about ideas but it's also recognition david and i both practice this idea of like negative visualization basically look look we've been at this twenty five years we've done exceptionally well we've been incredibly fortunate if this thing all flames out in two years because of something we we did wrong a major market shift competitive shift whatever it is you know what like that's okay too it's will be painful to some degree but like it's okay if we if we have a twenty seven year run jeez i mean what more can you asked for now people lose their jobs and it would suck i'm very certain many almost everyone who works here can get other job somewhere else very quickly we would help people all those things i mean i don't want this to happen but if it did we'd be okay this is not my identity this is not my life this is not something that needs to exist forever i don't wanna feel that level obligation to it as much as i have a lot of responsibility and feel obligated to our customers and do employees and to the ideas that we have it's not the whole world that's just an important thing for me sean and i are in similar positions we're we have profitable businesses and a question that i'm trying to figure out is what percentage of the profit profits to pull out versus reinvest do you have a framework for deciding like that percentage especially earlier on right maybe in your twenty seven the answer is different than a year three or two yeah so i can only tell you what we've done which is again a little bit unusual we pull out everything at the end of the year now first of all we're in llc so we're taxed on everything at a personal level so if i leave money in the business i'm still paying personal income tax on that money it doesn't really make sense to do that so we have a recurring you know recurring revenue model with have very predictable revenue so we basically have a little bit of overlap you know we take some money out in quarterly distributions and there's somebody money left over in january and we kinda wait till april take it all out so there's some overlap and you of operating cash right when we were when i first started the business in nineteen ninety nine we were an agency and we our first client this feels was four of us three partners one certain employee we each put ten grand in so we have thirty grand to start the business and then our first customer was was hp hp was like giving everyone business way back that hp was like the hot company to get a gig with because they paid a lot and i think the gig was a few hundred grand to do some website design for them this is ninety nine where people were paying numbers like that and from that point on we were profitable because we only had a few people we didn't take big salaries and that was that we were able to pull out all the money every year because actually we started out as a c corp for like a couple years and then we switched to llc but regardless we put out all the money at the end of the year essentially and because we had ongoing client work that would sort of span the gap of the calendar year so we just always had money coming in and our costs were so low that we weren't ever starving you know so it just it just was a situation where we always had high margins and that's how i've always run the business so i i know it's unusual setup but i do think it doesn't have to be quite as unusual i think what ends up happening is companies hired too many people their payroll are if too many people on payroll they spend too much money in customer acquisition and their costs are really high so their margins are very low if there's margins at all and then it's very hard it's much it just becomes a much harder business to run now again like there's a lot of luck involved with this we happen to find a way somehow to very very healthy margins over two decades part of that though is again the cost side of it which is just not considered enough do you run any pay ads no not right now we we have explored that we've we played with it so here's the thing like last year we're like we're just spend five million bucks for the first time ever on like ads we start getting into it in a few months we spend a bunch of money and we're like this is just it's just it's vanity money because like this isn't doing anything for us now someone might say who's listening goal you gotta give it more than three months in six months and eight months you gotta do this for five years before you show returns and you gotta try a bunch of campaigns we just don't have the tolerance to spend that kind of money on something that isn't very clearly going to return for us also our price points are so low our customer acquisition costs are tricky because a lot of our competitors they're selling things for thousands and thousands a month we're selling things for base campus fifteen bucks per user per month or two ninety nine unlimited like there's not a lot of play here to really invest a lot and spend a lot to to acquire customers so it just doesn't work for us so we don't do anything not even branded keywords we occasionally do that if someone's like using our our brand we kinda wanna knock them out but essentially we just don't it's all through our own channels you know that we've developed over the years and there's no question my mind that there is a formula that we don't know that we could figure out at some point perhaps to grow the company in a big way somehow through marketing advertising targeted whatever we just don't have the the tape the tolerance for it frankly i just don't think that we're interested enough in that kind of growth and the answer is always like why grow that much like if you're trying to sell the company at some point like growth rates really matter but like for us sustainability matters profits matter margins matter i don't wanna eat into those for some future whatever it doesn't really matter again like if we were to sell the business in a couple years we got a ten x multiple or five x multiple but could it i had a fifteen x but i don't don't it doesn't matter to me it doesn't matter to me to spend all that money trying to search for that i'd rather just take the money out and put it into investments that i can basically get not guarantee but like have a really good sense of return on and and just do our thing our own way did you're the man i think that if i had to make like a mount rushmore amount or or mount rushmore of this podcast like you know i think sean opened it up by was saying we love people who carve their own path and i don't care if that person is an entrepreneur or an artist or a mother like just somebody who like says this is the way i want the world to be and i'm gonna live that way i admire that greatly and the way that you write the way you think you're you're kinda on my mount rushmore i really admire you and i'm incredibly i know where both are incredibly thankful that you spent some time with this you're the man it's very kind i i i love the show by the way i listen to it it's great and i i really appreciate shipping here thanks for the time and the questions and happy to do it again anytime i can go for hours with you guys if you ever want to you have you have a an open invitation whenever you wanna whenever you want well i'm not gonna buy myself on i did this time actually kinda sort up so i will not do that again if you ever wanna talk again i'm available let me know thanks for doing jason we appreciate you that's a pod thank you i feel like i could rule word i know i could be what i want to from at all in it like a day's off on a road travel never looking back