Jason Fried
@jasonfried • 1,821,546 subscribers
Started & runs 37signals (makers of Basecamp, HEY, and ONCE). Non-serial entrepreneur, serial author. DM or email me at [email protected].
Shorts
Videos
Here's a ~20-min one-take video walking through some of the major (and minor) improvements to the project page in Basecamp 5. The project page is the heart of Basecamp. I actively flip back and forth between 4 and 5 so you can really see the contrast. Sorry 4, you lose, but you put up a good fight for years! In the video I go through significant quality-of-life/work improvements in to-dos, documents, page structure, readability, card tables, inviting people, etc. Check it out.
Jason Fried139,401 views • 7 days ago
Here's a little sneak peek of something we're aiming to ship this week in Basecamp 5. Zoom the center column on home to go full screen with project cards. Better optimized for people with larger screens, and similar to a view we had in BC4 for those who are used to that. Coming soon!
Jason Fried22,128 views • 2 days ago
INTRODUCING FIZZY Have you noticed that every issue and idea tracking tool you loved slowly morphed into boring, sluggish, corporate bloatware? Trello put on 40 pounds of cruft. Jira started charging by the migraine. Asana tried to become everything to everyone. GitHub Issues slipped into a steady state of decline. The whole category is a 20 car pileup of complexity. Time to route around that mess. Today we’re introducing Fizzy. Kanban as it should be, not as it has been. Fizzy is a fresh take on cards and columns, with a few twists, human-nature inspired defaults, and a vibrant interface that’s the opposite of the bland and boring software the industry has been flinging at you for years. Kanban has been around since the 1940s, and Trello brought it into the mainstream in 2011. Since then, some version of column-based kanban-style organization has found its way into any collaboration tool worth its salt. But most have over salted the dish. What was simple is now complicated. What was clear is now cluttered. What just worked now takes work. Fizzy presses reset, reconsiders what really matters, and presents a refreshing way to kanban that just feels right. It’s friendly, colorful, straightforward, and fast as hell. We still use Basecamp for our big, intensive projects, but lately we’ve been reaching for Fizzy to run the smaller ones. It’s perfect for tracking bugs, issues, and ideas, and it shines for lighter, self-contained workflows like podcasts or video production. We didn’t expect it, but Fizzy’s so good it might even cannibalize Basecamp on the lighter side of project management. We’d be thrilled. How much is it? It’s not much for so much. Everyone gets 1000 cards for free. Beyond that, we’ll host your account for just $20/month for unlimited cards and unlimited users. One price for all and everything. No tiers, no “contact us.” No pricing chart at all — just a price tag, like on a pair of jeans. And here’s a surprise... Fizzy is open source! If you’d prefer not to pay us, or you want to customize Fizzy for your own use, you can run it yourself for free forever. Have a great idea? Submit a PR to contribute to the code base and improve the product for everyone. It’s the best of all worlds. No excuses. Every idea comes back around. It’s time for take two on kanban. Fizzy’s our hat in the ring. Let’s make this platform insanely great, together. Come on in! Visit
Jason Fried560,812 views • 6 months ago
Jeremy, a 19-year veteran of 37signals, calmly walks through the process moving 5+ petabytes of data and billions of individual files off AWS and onto our own on-prem storage setup without a second of downtime. The how, the time, and the tooling, it's all in here. Watch:
Jason Fried192,086 views • 4 months ago
The worst feature of most products is one of our best features: customer support. It's incredible how much better a product becomes when you have an incredibly helpful, friendly, experienced, and deeply knowledgeable team on-call, for you, whenever you need them. Huge bonus. We don't outsource support. We don't see it as a cost center. Outstanding support is an asset, not a liability. A number of our support folks have been with us for over a decade! That's longer than most tech companies have even been in business! And the same team that works on Basecamp works on HEY. It's all the same A-team. We WANT you to contact us. We WANT to talk to you. Get in touch. You'll see the difference.
Jason Fried301,653 views • 1 year ago
Just recorded a casual walkthrough tour of our first ONCE product. It's called Campfire and it's a very simple, straightforward group chat tool for teams and businesses. Just the essentials without any of the bloat that's infected so many SaaS tools today. You'll pay Campfire once, download it, and run it on your own company server. No subscription. Installation will be pasting a single line in a terminal, and it'll do the rest. And you'll get all the code, too. The price? We'll be launching with an introductory price of just $299. Once. It's already in the hands of a few customers, and we'll be releasing it to a bunch more in the coming days. And soon it'll be available for anyone who wants it. We can't wait to get it out there for everyone! So, here's the walkthrough showing you how it works. Happy to answer any questions you might have below. Thanks for watching.
Jason Fried512,908 views • 2 years ago
Lots of great things to say about AI, but man, watching North Korean Traffic Ladies going through the motions, precisely directing non-existing traffic, feels like watching people using AI workflows & agents to automate work that didn’t need doing in the first place.
Jason Fried135,714 views • 9 months ago
Jeff, an 18-year veteran at 37signals, and one of the clearest explainers of technical topics I've ever known, sits down and explains the recordables pattern. The recordables pattern has been the single-most important architectural pattern we've used on both Basecamp and HEY. It's a key reason both code bases are still a joy to work on. Deep, practical insights in this one. Interesting for non-technical folks, too.
Jason Fried85,498 views • 5 months ago
Here's the first preview of a brand new product we're working on called Fizzy. It's our take on an idea/issue/bug tracker. Aiming to ship later this year. I plan on doing videos every week or two showing progress, changes, stuff we're stuck on, new ideas we're trying out, etc. A true look at a product in active development with plenty of unknowns ahead of it. This first video highlights the Collection view — the heart of the product. Cards + two simple columns. Straightforward to the core, approachable for any kind of work, not just software development. Remember, this is all work in progress! In fact, I ran into an issue during the filming, logged it, and then it resolved itself. It's all in here. Happy to take any questions below. Thanks for watching.
Jason Fried174,645 views • 1 year ago
I've never liked roadmaps. Even though they're for new things later, they've always feel like looking backwards in time. Essentially, it's a list that says "here's what we thought then". I prefer working from a "here's what we think now" position. So every few weeks we decide, from scratch, what's worth working on next. Old ideas are fair game if they're as good as the new ones today. But writing them down before doesn't give them any priority over ones we come up with on the spot today. Here's more about why I don't like roadmaps:
Jason Fried99,064 views • 8 months ago
EVERYONE’S GOT ISSUES has been a guiding light for Fizzy. Nearly all bug/issue trackers are targeted to software developers. For good reason! Software has a lot of bugs. And since most trackers are built for developers, they tend to be overly technical. Their UIs are dark and menacing. Their hooks tie into other technical tools. They speak the language of the software industry, intimidating anyone who isn’t part of it. But, it’s not like software has a monopoly on bugs, issues, and stuff going wrong. Software is just a tiny slice of the problem pie. Manage a rental? You know all about locks that stick, drains that run slow, and tenants who find new “features” weekly. Run a classroom? You know all about things that go missing, that projector that won’t turn on, flicking fluorescents that need to be changed. Run a retail shop? You know all about busted displays, stocking issues, the cracked front door glass that needs swapping. Run a restaurant? You know all about juggling burnt-out light bulbs over table 6, a walk-in cooler that randomly decides to thaw, wobbly tables that need leveling. Run a place of worship? You know all about the deafening mic feedback, the thermostat on the fritz in the basement, the folding chairs that squeak. Run an animal shelter or food bank? You know all about the cracked kennel latches, flickering freezer light, or the donation bin that’s overflowing again. Parent of school-age kids? You know all about being a full-time project manager for broken recorders, missing left shoes, the device that won’t take a charge anymore (if you can find the charger at all). And don’t get me started about home ownership! The list never ends because life never stops breaking in small, annoying, hilarious ways. So yeah, can you imagine any of these people opening Jira, Linear, or GitHub Issues and thinking, “Perfect, this is exactly what I need to fix the squeaky folding chairs at church”? Of course not. Which is why they’ve turned to WhatsApp groups that scroll into oblivion, frantic texts, sticky notes that slip away, and a whole lot of “Oh I’ll remember... crap, I didn’t.” Fizzy isn’t trying to turn the world into developers. But developers have known about the benefits of this kind of tooling for years. And Fizzy’s a great fit for technical work — we’re using it at 37signals for exactly that. But tracking stuff visually like this is useful for just about anyone. Basic kanban is really a breakthrough. We can all benefit from an organized, systematized, vibrant, visual approach to seeing things through from frustration to done! And while tooling exclusively for developers says “go away” to anyone who’s not in that club, Fizzy says “come on in”. WE’VE ALL GOT ISSUES. Now get them done. Like this property manager...
Jason Fried75,031 views • 6 months ago
For background, this video rant below is about a feature in Basecamp called Automatic Check-ins that simply polls everyone daily to write up what they worked on today. In their own words, on their own time, in their own way. Saved back to a simple text log so everyone can read it. Couldn't be simpler. We're not pulling in all sorts of automated data that may or may not actually represent work they did. We aren't AI summarizing what someone can simply say better themselves. We aren't assuming all work can be tracked by a system since lots of work happens between humans off said systems. But at a deeper level, it's about how so much software has completely spiraled out of control towards over-sophistication. Systems upon systems upon systems. Software squared then squared again. The amount of shit people feel like they need to set up just to do the simplest things just baffles me. Integrations up the wazoo, thick procedures, hooks, loops, and dependencies everywhere. The next time you encounter a system that feels heavy and tedious, step back and ask yourself "why do I have to do all this, just to get that?" LESS SOFTWARE.
Jason Fried82,756 views • 8 months ago
Everyone loves a look behind the scenes. We've got a new one for you. Here's a recording of a live design review between three people from a couple days ago. Jason (bottom) runs the company and oversees product, Brian (top right) is Basecamp's product manager, and Andy (top left) is the designer who's been working on this specific feature. In this session we review a design that's about to ship to customers, but that we're not completely internally satisfied with. All designs are tradeoffs, and we're not entirely sure that we've made the right ones in this case. We work through a few different options, compare them to what we're about to ship, and ultimately decide to go in a simpler direction with fewer tradeoffs. We think it works best all things considered, while the original design may have worked best nothing else considered. The feature is now live in everyone's Basecamp account. Hope you find this interesting. Got questions? Drop 'em below and we'll do our best to answer.
Jason Fried170,823 views • 2 years ago