#90 - Enjoying Building Simple Products with Jason Fried

We are truly honored to host Jason Fried, co-founder of 37Signals and the mastermind behind Basecamp, and Hey for one of our deepest episodes.

A leading critical voice in startup culture and product design, Jason delves into challenging conventional business approaches with a focus on simplicity, enjoyment, and nimbleness.

In the second part of the conversation, Jason also hints into what he calls a Post-SaaS era that he intends to kickstart with a new suite of products called Once.

This is a landmark episode for us, as we're joined by Jason Fried, co-founder of 37Signals and the creative force behind Basecamp and Hey. 

A true critical thought leader in startup culture, product design, and organizational development, Jason shares his deep insights into the transformative power that comes from challenging traditional business norms - be it bootstrapping, subtracting, restraining, or creating shorter cycles - in a world where increasingly, “more” is considered better. 

As an acclaimed author of International Bestsellers -  like “Rework”, “Remote” and “It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work” - Jason offers unique perspectives on customer and product strategies, intuition in decision-making, and the importance of human touch in technology.

He also shares insights on 37Signal's multi-product strategies and touches on their upcoming product "Once", which promises to be the first post-SaaS product. 

This episode has got it all, and speaks on untouched conversations like never before. Don’t miss out.   Key Highlights

👉 A deep dive into approaches that challenge traditional startup culture and product design principles - bootstrapping, subtraction, simplified metrics etc.

👉 Restraints as powerful enablers organizational strategy.

👉 A centralized product editor vs. a decentralized structure approach in an organization.

👉 Understanding the dynamics and strategies behind managing and growing a multi-product company.

👉 Short term vs. long term goals and getting buy-in from the organization.

👉 Why AI isn’t a magical duct tape, and how do you tackle leveraging AI's capabilities and preserving a product's unique identity.

👉 Understanding how friction can be either incorporated or overcome in the creative and development process.

👉 The Next in SaaS and what is “Once” building

Topics /chapters

(00:00) Intro - Enjoying Building Simple Products

(03:17) Navigating constraints and restraints

(10:39) Getting buy-in from your team 

(16:04) Being empathetic with customers 

(21:16) Building purpose in an organization

(28:04) Modularity, Composability, and Integration

(33:32) AI is a universal duct tape 

(38:45) Path to Multi Product

(43:01) What “Once” was (and will be)

(49:53) Breadcrumbs and Suggestions

Remember that you can always find transcripts and key highlights of the episode on our website: https://boundaryless.io/podcast/jason-fried 

Episode recorded on November 16, 2023   Get in touch with Boundaryless:

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Music

Music from Liosound / Walter Mobilio. Find his portfolio here: ⁠https://blss.io/Podcast-Music