REWORK

In this anxious era of bullying, teen depression, and school shootings, tech companies are selling software to schools and parents that make big promises about keeping kids secure by monitoring what they say and write online. But these apps demand disturbing trade-offs in the name of safety...

Get out your Bunsen burner! It's time to do some experiments. In this episode, we talk to two businesses that aren't afraid to try new things. First, the three founders of The Mad Optimist, a soap company in Indiana, talk about letting customers choose what they pay for their products...

Dave Teare is the co-founder and official "heart and soul" of 1Password, which recently raised $200 million in its first round of venture capital. Basecamp is a longtime happy customer of 1Password and also a longtime critic of venture capital, so the funding announcement led to some back-and-forth on Twitter between Basecamp co-founder David Heinemeier Hansson and Dave Teare...

Workplace cultures in politics and tech share many similarities: Overwork is glorified; long hours are the norm; employees are expected to respond to communication instantly, no matter the day or time; and those that opt out are seen as lacking hustle or ceding ground to competitors. Marty Santalucia, a political consultant in Pennsylvania, wanted to do things differently...

Basecamp has a long history of experimenting with "freemium" models and recently launched its most generous free plan yet: Basecamp Personal. Co-founders Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson talk about the debate and data analysis that went into the launch, what makes this a little scary, and why it's healthy for a business to experiment.

Show Notes

"Launch: Basecamp Gets Personal" (Signal v...

Basecamp has cut back its reliance on Amazon and Google, but there's one area where it's tough to find alternatives to Big Tech: cloud services. Even so, there are ways to cut spending on this $3 million annual expense while keeping the company's apps running smoothly. In this episode, Blake Stoddard on Basecamp's Ops team talks about how he volunteered to look for savings on cloud services and really delivered—to the tune of over a half-million dollars...

Basecamp co-founder David Heinemeier Hansson sparked a national controversy this week when he posted a series of livid tweets about how his wife received a much lower credit limit than he did on their Apple Cards, despite applying with the same financial information. What began as a rant against opaque algorithms turned into a regulatory investigation and more. In this episode, Dr...

Jason Meller - 00:25

"What is SSL?" - 1:13

This is Outback Steakhouse's page for the Bloomin' Onion, which is categorized as an "Aussie-tizer." Yes, that's what Outback calls appetizers. I cannot un-know this fact and now I pass it to you...

Simulacra and Simulation by Jean Baudrillard - 2:57

Max Temkin is a Chicagoan and a co-creator of Cards Against Humanity - 4:01

Little Free Library - 4:04

Maverick by Ricardo Semler - 4:48

Berkshire Hathaway shareholder letters by Warren Buffett - 5:27

Amazon's 2018 shareholder letter by Jeff Bezos - 5:38

Listen to our previous episodes about hiring a director of marketing, "In the Market for a Marketer" and "Meet Andy" -...

Art19 - 1:02

The Distance - 1:09

Tweet from Kevin Finn to DHH / "Heal the Internet" - 1:15

Buzzsprout - 1:21

Video about Art19's new ad technology - 1:28

DHH's tweet about leaving Art19 ASAP - 3:23

Transistor - 3:52

Lex Friedman - 4:16

"Breaking: Two Top Stitcher Executives leave for Art19" (Hot Pod) - 10:58

California Consumer Privacy Act (Wikipedia) - 23:20

Justin Jackson - 40:24

Jon...