36 korrents from this recording
Every claim below is a statement made in this recording, quoted word for word and linked to the second it was said, so you can hear it rather than take our word for it. The wording comes from the transcript published alongside the recording; the sentence above each quote is our reading of the claim, not their wording.
0:03:24 · watch on youtube.com↗
Their wordsSo if you're making more than you spend, then your competition is your cost. And that's what you're really in business against is how much it costs you to stay in business. It's not all the other alternatives that are on the market.
0:05:50 · watch on youtube.com↗
Their wordsI think that small teams work better, are better. There's fewer— there's less room for miscommunication. Because I don't think companies really have communication problems. They have miscommunication problems.
0:06:29 · watch on youtube.com↗
Their wordsAnd it also keeps us honest. It prevents us from making things that we can't make with 2 people. So it just keeps everything tight and simple and clear.
0:07:07 · watch on youtube.com↗
Their wordsA lot of enterprise companies sell software to a buyer who then makes other people use the product, and everyone hates those products. But people who use our products buy our products, and it's the same person.
0:08:58 · watch on youtube.com↗
Their wordsSo the question we ask after the first year with any new employee is, knowing what I know now, would I hire them again? And that answers pretty much every question, answers every question about performance, about attitude, culture fit, all the stuff.
0:10:43 · watch on youtube.com↗
Their wordsIn software, you don't get that. Software can be anything. It's infinitely malleable. And what ends up happening is because there's nothing pushing back, it just expands forever and gets worse. Software slides downhill.
0:10:55 · watch on youtube.com↗
Their wordsSo I'm conscious of that and I'm always trying to make sure that every new version we make of something is a little bit simpler in the fundamental ways than the previous version. It might have more features, but the experience hopefully is simpler.
0:19:04 · watch on youtube.com↗
Their wordsI think playing entrepreneur is like spinning up businesses all the time and making all sorts of stuff and giving it a name and giving it a logo and trying to raise money and coming up with valuations and talking about all this stuff. And there's like nothing of substance inside that yet.
0:20:30 · watch on youtube.com↗
Their wordsI think the thing that matters should be big and the rest of it should be as thin as possible. And so that's what we've tried to build at 37signals. It's a very thin business with a thick set of products.
0:23:28 · watch on youtube.com↗
Their wordsI think people fuck it up all the time. They— you get to the right size and for whatever reason you can't be content there and you push a little bit too much, too hard, and you lost what was great about what you were doing.
0:24:18 · watch on youtube.com↗
Their wordsI don't care about the XYZ to make $5.1, but I am interested in optimizing a product to make it better. That to me is a worthwhile optimization.
0:26:16 · watch on youtube.com↗
Their wordsYesterday I answered like 200 emails from my customers. Is that like, some people would say that's irresponsible for a CEO to spend their time emailing customers. Like, I think it's the best thing you can do.
0:38:35 · watch on youtube.com↗
Our reading
The way to be around for the long term is to work day by day, not to make long-term plans.
Their wordsI don't believe in long-term planning. I believe in being around for the long term, but I think the best way to do that is day by day, not like quarter by quarter or year by year.
0:40:57 · watch on youtube.com↗
Their wordsAnd I find that that is the most honest, real way to get somewhere good because in general, you know more about things the closer they are to you.
0:41:36 · watch on youtube.com↗
Their wordsLike, just make small decisions all the time and don't put yourself in a place where you're making huge ones you're afraid of.
0:48:53 · watch on youtube.com↗
Their wordsEveryone follows everybody else because when you're paying so much attention to what everyone else is doing, you tend to just— that's the way you think it has to be done or can be done. You're not open to like alternatives because you don't see them anywhere.
0:53:59 · watch on youtube.com↗
Their wordsIf I screw up 2 minutes in, I'm not going to go, let's start over. I'm just going to keep going. And so that's how I want these to feel. I want to like connect with people in a real way.
0:58:46 · watch on youtube.com↗
Their wordsEveryone's afraid of everything, of saying something wrong, doing something wrong, being wrong in some way. That is not endearing. I think people want to do business with people and they have to do business with companies because companies provide a lot of product. But I think they really want to do business with people.
1:05:52 · watch on youtube.com↗
Their wordsIt's amazing that anybody in the world can, can get in touch with anybody else. There's no like platforms, like everything else is a platform.
1:11:47 · watch on youtube.com↗
Their wordsLike the best designs ever are right there. That leaf is the best it's ever been. Obviously it's like survived and evolved. This is a great thing. And so I like, if you wanna find great colors, look at a bird. Don't look at a book.
1:16:30 · watch on youtube.com↗
Their wordsIt's good to figure out what you like eventually. Like, a lot of people don't know what they like. They like what other people like. They like what they're supposed to like. They live up to other people's expectations.
1:29:44 · watch on youtube.com↗
Their wordsI don't want to run a very tight margin business where I can't make mistakes or I'm afraid of them. So I believe in cushy margins so we can screw up and it won't matter that much.
1:30:03 · watch on youtube.com↗
Our reading
A company should take risks without putting itself at risk, and not bet the farm unless it has to.
Their wordsWe take risks. We don't put ourselves at risk is kind of how I like to think about this. So I'm willing to take plenty of risks, but I'm not going to do something that's going to bet the farm unless we like had to.
1:33:57 · watch on youtube.com↗
Their wordsIt's real money. It's real cash. No options, no RSUs, no stock, no like any of that BS. I find almost all of that to be pretty much BS unless you're like a really well-established public company.
1:37:23 · watch on youtube.com↗
Their wordsAnd my general sense is you'll have no effing idea why it did what it did. You're going to find some reasons that you're going to believe, but had you done that again, It may have turned out differently.
1:37:52 · watch on youtube.com↗
Their wordsI'm not sure what you can learn from them, frankly. I think you learn from moving forward and doing something. You learn by doing.
1:40:32 · watch on youtube.com↗
Their wordsLike, a target shouldn't make me do better work. I should do better work because of the pride I take in the work that I do.
1:45:07 · watch on youtube.com↗
Their wordsIt's just like belief, like, oh, I can do that again. And some people can. Most people cannot. Or if they can, they don't reach the same height.
1:51:26 · watch on youtube.com↗
Their wordsLike, would I want to do this, whatever I just did, again? If so, it's successful. And I think that that's enough of a definition for me. It's not about money.
1:54:45 · watch on youtube.com↗
Their wordsAnd the moment they go raise money, they've cut off almost every option. They think they've expanded their experience and their opportunities, but they've cut off almost every possible off-ramp outcome because now they have to be a big business or they fail.
1:57:29 · watch on youtube.com↗
Their wordsit's better in my opinion, aesthetically, because it's the purest form of the concept of the idea. Everything else from there has been layered on because they need to sell more and they need to come up with a new version, a new model.
2:02:30 · watch on youtube.com↗
Their wordsSoftware's hard and a big piece of glass. There's no tactile feedback. I can't do it and I have to look at it. There's no muscle memory because I'm not sure I'm confirming what I'm doing.
2:13:16 · watch on youtube.com↗
Their wordsSo you can be hot for a while, but the hardest thing is just to stay around, to stick around. So people are like, how do you compete? Well, we just stay around longer than everybody else.
2:16:32 · watch on youtube.com↗
Their wordsIf you could pick out 100 random customers and lose them and be okay, you have a good business. What you don't want are a bunch of outlier companies that you cannot afford to lose.
2:18:51 · watch on youtube.com↗
Their wordsAnd so, I'm very careful not to put too much weight into something that purports to be more valuable than some other feeling I have just because it has numbers on it.
2:19:42 · watch on youtube.com↗
Their wordsyou don't like actively refine it. It's not like you're— you don't practice intuition. You just make decisions. And the more you make, the more you make, the more it sharpens everything up.