Jason Fried

37signals

Started & runs 37signals

Co-founder & CEO

Edmund Hillary Fellowship (EHF)

Fellow

Inc. Magazine

I write a monthly column for Inc. Magazine called "Getting Real". You can read my columns here: http://www.inc.com/author/jason-fried

Columnist

Founder & CEO at 37signals (makers of Basecamp and HEY). Non-serial entrepreneur, serial author (Getting Real, REWORK, REMOTE, It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work). Email me at jason@hey.com.

Lots of people ask how much our twice-a-year, week long, full-company meetups cost to run. Or better phrased, how much we spend on them.

So here are the costs for our last 8 meetups going back to spring of 2022, in different cities around the world.

Hope it's helpful. Here for any questions you might have.

Spikeball: Find your circle. Founder/CEO of Spikeball Inc.

This is my Mom. She took her 10 yr old The North Face  jacket into their Michigan Ave store to get the zipper fixed. They said it couldn’t be repaired and said they’d send her a $50 gift card to use towards a new one. She was ecstatic.  Shortly later the gift card arrived and it was for $250.  She’s very happy in her new jacket. Well done, North Face. Thank you for keeping my Mom warm all of these years.

Started and runs 37signals

Lots of products that added AI would have been better off just removing the stupid.

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 fizzy.do.

There are plenty of opportunities to invite people to your product ahead of the formal launch. Alpha, beta, etc.

My preference is only right at the end. Typically a week or two before we go live. When the product is in the very last throws of beta, barely beta. Essentially v0.99. Never, ever invite people too early.

At this stage we’re not really looking for deep fundamental feedback, although we’ll get some. We’re going with the version we’re launching, so it doesn’t really help to soak in second guessing.

The main advantage to letting people in a bit ahead of launch is mostly for basic hygiene. It forces you to clean up, tie up loose ends, get some lingering stuff right you’ve been sitting on until now.

It’s like inviting guests to your house for dinner. Hopefully you keep a fairly tidy house, but if you know guests are coming by, there’s just another level of cleaning and tidying and prep you tend to do. All those little messes you could live with become things you just don’t want other people to see, experience, or notice. So you take care of them.

Guests are forcing functions. They help you do those last few things you know you need to do, but didn’t until now.

It’s now.

Communication training for leaders who need to align teams & amplify vision. Through story-led speaking, coaching & ROI-driven strategy. Intentional Communication. Designed for Impact.

This is why I switched from Gmail to Hey.

If the email is from some new you get to choose if it’s allowed in.

So my inbox doesn’t feel like the morning after a house party.

Full of random strangers asking for stuff.



Hey is well designed:

Hey email allows me to keep my custom domain.

It’s easy to move from other email services. 

I can “power through” messages and communicate with intent 

I can put newsletters in a feed.

I can put tickets ans receipts in one place.

I was using Mail the other day and felt me wishing it was more like Hey.

I got to use it for a month before paying less than Gmail.

I LOVE it.

And it’s got a sense of humor - see below. 

This is a screenshot the Screener page. I get to “thumbs up” a new email or thumbs down. Today - maybe becuase it’s Friday I get to give unwanted emails the midddle finger.

Thanks Jason Fried David Heinemeier Hansson and the 37signals team.

youtube.com

Cadbury's Bournville advert | Talking Retail

Do the work, save the money, make the money.

Co-owner & CTO of 37signals (Makers of Basecamp + HEY)

Our cloud spend at 37signals peaked at $3.7m in 2021. Now, after our exit, our all-in costs (5-year hardware depreciation + power/bandwidth/hosting) are going to be a bit over a million dollars per year. While we get more performance and greater team agency. Without having to change the team at all.

I'll admit it stings a bit to see it all tallied up like this. You can see exactly how we went hard on cloud in 2018. Back when we still believed the marketing that it was going to be easier and cheaper to do.

As a result, we squandered well over ten million dollars between then and when we pulled the big plug in 2023. And a few millions more while we waited for the 4-year commit on S3 to expire. Painful!

So I'm very much looking forward to looking at our infrastructure spend in 2026. It'll be the first year where there's none of this cloud nonsense. All of it essentially zeroed out.

Expensive lesson! Don't just believe the cloud hype. Do your own math. Consider owning your gear once the business is solid enough and the cost is significant.

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