Ryan Singer: evaluation

Transcript context

…We're going to get into the nitty gritty of how this actually works and the key elements, but can you just give a very short overarching summary of how Shape Up is different from how other product approaches are? I think the way it's different starts with how the way we were working was a little bit different. So, I started working with Jason and David on the first version of Basecamp, which was the flagship product of 37signals back in 2003. We were a team of three. And, I mean, I think, it's for any really small team, when you're just starting out, you don't need a process. You don't need a way of working. It just happens organically because you're together. You don't have to explain it to other people, it just happens on its own, right? But there was always this really intense urgency from both Jason and David, "We've got to get to something we can ship. We have to finish this and move on. We have to get to something that's done." There was just no tolerance for big things that got fuzzy and started to drag. There was always this sharpening to get to what is this thing really and when are we going to get to the end soon? And on top of that, even when we were building V1, David wasn't actually full-time as our only technical person. He was programming 10 hours a week. So, we had this really intense pressure of how can we really use David's time well? We don't want to ever give something that this is the thing we want to build, and then it turns out not to be what we want and we have to throw it away and then come back again or you know what I mean? Those bad cycles of waste. Let me actually ask about this because this is really interesting. So this is DHH. He was working part-time when he started 37signal.…

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