Jason Fried Quotes

When something is working well, it becomes too easy to let things run themselves.

It’s incredibly hard to get meaningful work done when your workday has been shredded into work moments.

I’ve run into a lot of companies that invent positions for great people just so they don’t get away. But hiring people when you don’t have real work for them is insulting to them and hurtful to you.

Statistics rarely drive me. Feelings, intuition, and gut instinct do.

When meetings are the norm – the first resort, the go-to tool to discuss, debate, and solve every problem – they no longer work.

Your employees have lots of opinions about everything – your strategy and vision; the state of the competition; the quality of your products; the vibe in the workplace. There are tons of things you can learn from them.

Who you work with is even more important than who you hang out with because you spend a lot more time with your workmates than your friends.

Since your company is the product that makes all of your other products, it should be the best product of all. When you begin to think of your company this way, you evaluate it differently. You ask different questions about it. You look at improving it constantly, rather than just accepting what it’s become.

The reality is that companies are full of things that are left unspoken. And even when they are out in the open, the CEO is almost always the last to know.

Most work is not coming up with The Next Big Thing. Rather, it’s improving the thing you already thought of six months – or six years – ago. It’s the work of work.

If you tell your story well, it can help attract customers; it can help people understand your business better, and you are more approachable as a business and a company.

When it’s all about the work, it’s clear who in the company is pulling their weight and who isn’t.

Your company is a product. Who are its customers? Your employees, who use it to do their jobs.

A computer doesn’t have a mind of its own – it needs someone else’s to function.

Sometimes you get lucky and things are as easy as you had imagined, but that’s rarely the case.

When you write like everyone else and sound like everyone else and act like everyone else, you’re saying, ‘Our products are like everyone else’s, too.’

A large user base helps shield us from things we can’t control. You can spend years catering to a major corporation, for example, only to see your contact there move on.

Success isn’t about being the biggest. It’s about letting the right size find you.

Whenever I speak at a conference, I try to catch a few of the other presentations. I tend to stand in the back and listen, observe, and get a general sense of the room.

These two staples of work life – meetings and managers – are actually the greatest causes of work not getting done at the office. In fact, the further away you are from both meetings and managers, the more work gets done.

When you’re short on sleep, you’re short on patience. You’re ruder to people, less tolerant, less understanding. It’s harder to relate and to pay attention for sustained periods of time.

I believe if you start a business with the intent of making it huge, you’re already prioritizing the wrong thing. Size is important, but it’s a byproduct of a whole bunch of other things that are worth way more of your mental energy – customers, service, quality.

When time, money, and results are on the line, it’s easy for tension to build.

Lots of business owners spend their lives trying to land the whale – the single, massive, brand-name account that will fatten the top line and bestow instant credibility. But big customers make me nervous.

To say that the grocery business is cutthroat would be a major understatement.

Remind yourself that other people’s jobs aren’t so simple.

I’ve found that nurturing untapped potential is far more exhilarating than finding someone who has already peaked.

A diverse customer base helps insulate you; a few large accounts can leave you vulnerable to their whims.

When we launched the first version of Basecamp in 2004, we decided to build software for small companies just like us.

I live in Chicago but own some property up in Wisconsin.

Practice quality, and you get better at quality. But quality takes time, so by working solely on quality, you end up losing something else that’s important – speed.

I’m a designer, but I rely on programmers to bring my ideas to life. By learning to code myself, I think I can make things easier for all of us. Similarly, I want to be able to build things on my own without having to bother a programmer.

Deadlines are great for customers because having one means they get a product, not just a promise that someday they’ll get a product.

The reality is, risk is variable. Those in the financial world know it.

I’ve seen small businesses turn into terrible midsize or big ones because they let their desire to achieve some arbitrary metric get the best of them. Whatever is compromised as a result doesn’t matter anymore, as long as the company is growing.

You have to live with your decisions every day. Why live with one you’re uneasy with? ‘Because it’ll make you money’ is a common reply. But I don’t think that’s good enough.

I’m not sure a lot of companies know their story, or can explain why they exist and who they are, without just spewing just corporate speech.

Many of the things we do at Basecamp would be considered unusual at most companies: paying for employees’ hobbies, allowing our team to work from anywhere, even footing the bill for fresh fruits and veggies in our staff members‘ homes.

Bottom line: If you can’t spare some time to give your employees the chance to wow you, you’ll never get the best from them.

When you can’t see someone all day long, the only thing you have to evaluate is the work. A lot of the petty evaluation stats just melt away.

Fix a few things here, improve a few things there, launch a new feature every so often. That’s coasting. And I don’t want Basecamp to coast.

Entrepreneurs love to view risk as binary. The more you put on the line, the greater the potential for reward.

I think the story is important in every business. Why do you exist, why are you here, why is your product different, why should I pay attention, why should I care?

A lot of people relate leadership to formalities. They believe that leadership is about being professional and strong and always right and being a booming voice. I just don’t buy that. I think that leadership is a soft skill; it’s a people skill.

One of the secret benefits of using remote workers is that the work itself becomes the yardstick to judge someone’s performance.