
The Biography of 37signals with Jason Fried - merrick33
http://mixergy.com/37signals-jason-fried/
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netcan
Andrew is getting really good. I listen to maybe 1/10 shows. It's a lot of fun
watching someone get better.

His strategy seemed to have been start with hyperactive bluntness which was
great. It was a little hard listening to him say "how much do you make per
year" to someone who didn't want to say it, but it meant he got. Now he seems
to be getting more subtle and calm. He's getting good at picking the point
where pushing needs to stop by intuition: " _I'm happy to change my mind about
big things but my beliefs are my beliefs._ " (around 31min).

~~~
jasonfried
To clarify that point...

Believing in something doesn't mean you're closed minded. It means you have an
opinion, a point of view. My beliefs come from keeping an open mind,
questioning assumptions, experimenting with new ideas. I wouldn't believe what
I believe without approaching life this way. My mind remains open, but I
haven't found better answers yet so I'm comfortable with what I believe: Avoid
organizational complexity, product complexity, and political complexity as
best you can. Things are pretty simple and easy until you make them hard and
complicated.

My 6th grade science teacher told me: "Never believe yourself to be completely
certain of anything." I think that's good advice.

Hope that clarifies things. It was a great question from Andrew.

~~~
netcan
At the risk of being argumentative, I don't think so.

Usually, and seemingly in the context of that interview, _belief_ usually
means something different from ' _my current position._ ' It does usually
imply some sort of rigidity and does imply an unwillingness to change. In the
context of current political correctness it also amounts to a request that
thee not be challenged too much.

Notice how that word ends that line of questioning as if either, (a) you have
arrived at the root cause or (b) the issue is no undependable. Belief (or
practical synonyms such as conviction) leads to no more questions. _'I became
very convinced that these are correct'_ would have prompted the question
'why/how.'

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alanthonyc
Hi Andrew - thanks for a great interview. Just wanted to comment on your point
about "changing the world": though I'm sure you haven't reached your full
ambition yet, I think you're definitely helping out the audience that you are
reaching.

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steveklabnik
I'm still watching this, but before I forget: The statement about launching
Basecamp on svn reminds me of Max Klein.

~~~
Timothee
I'm missing the reference here. (and it seems that there are too many Max
Klein to get help from Google) Do you mind explaining what that means?

~~~
steveklabnik
Jason said that it was really easy to launch Basecamp because they'd already
built up an audience with their blog. Tons of instant PR from people who
already wanted to hear from them.

Max (from here, <http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=maxklein>) said that
he was going to be writing a blog about interesting, random stuff, so that
when he announces something of importance, he'll have people listening. Thus
Cube of M.

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michaelfairley
Andrew, if you see this, the link to the mp3 is broken. (Same with the Kevin
Hartz interview)

~~~
AndrewWarner
Fixed it. Thanks.

For some reason, this doesn't work: <h2>The FULL program</h2> <a
name="audio"></a><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-4094" title="Audio
Version" src="<http://mixergy.com/wp-content/uploads/Audio-Version.png>
alt="Audio Version" width="26" height="21" /> Prefer audio? Great! <a
href="[http://mixergy.com/wp-content/audio/Mixergy-REWORK-Jason-
Fri...](http://mixergy.com/wp-content/audio/Mixergy-REWORK-Jason-
Fried.mp3>Right) click" here for the MP3 format</a>.

But this does work: <a name="audio"></a><h2>The FULL program</h2> <img
class="alignnone size-full wp-image-4094" title="Audio Version"
src="<http://mixergy.com/wp-content/uploads/Audio-Version.png> alt="Audio
Version" width="26" height="21" /> Prefer audio? Great! <a
href="[http://mixergy.com/wp-content/audio/Mixergy-REWORK-Jason-
Fri...](http://mixergy.com/wp-content/audio/Mixergy-REWORK-Jason-
Fried.mp3>Right) click" here for the MP3 format</a>.

~~~
armandososa
But the audio RSS feed stopped working :( I've just noticed that I've lost
like a week and a half of great interviews.

