141: Jason Fried - Running the Tailwind Business on Basecamp

Topics include:

• How did Basecamp evolve from being a team/client communication tool to focusing on keeping your whole company organized, and is it really even that different?
• How exactly should we set up Basecamp on day one to support a small 3-5 person remote software team? What tools should we use and which ones should we ignore for now?
• Finding the balance between being organized enough and splitting things up too much
• How big should projects be? Is "HEY v1" a project, or is a project something more like "HEY File Attachments"?
• What tools do you normally enable for regular projects, and how do you use them?
• How are you normally using chat at the individual project level?
• Why todo lists should be created by the individuals doing the work, and not the people assigning the work
• How should we use the company HQ project? What are some less obvious ideas we can apply there that can make a big difference?
• Using a "what we're working on" project to keep everyone on the team in the loop and feeling connected
• Using "heartbeats" to summarize the work a team has been doing over a period of time for the rest of the company
• Advice on bringing on new employees and how to assign them their first project
• When you're such a writing-driven company, how do you make sure decisions get written down when they are made in real-time instead of naturally occurring within Basecamp?

Screenshots:

• Example of a "what did I work on?" check-in
• Example of a heartbeat
• Example of the "What Works" project
• Example of an announcement in the HQ project
• Example of a conversation on a todo

Links:

• Basecamp
• Shape Up, Basecamp's recent book on how they work
• Going Remote: Basecamp Walkthrough, a livestream where Jason and DHH go over their real Basecamp account

Supporting the show:

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