#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: Find out more about the show and the research at Boundaryless at ⁠https://boundaryless.io/resources/podcast⁠ Twitter: ⁠https://twitter.com/boundaryless_⁠ Website: ⁠https://boundaryless.io/contacts⁠ LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/company/boundaryless-pdt-3eo⁠ Music Music from Liosound / Walter Mobilio. Find his portfolio here: ⁠https://blss.io/Podcast-Music