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Hi, I'm Kara Swisher editor-at-large of recode. You may know me as someone who hasn't checked her email since 2007. Hope I didn't miss anything. But in my spare time, I'm just a reporter and you're listening to recode Eco to podcast about power change. And the people you need to know were part of the VOX media podcast Network today in the red chair is Jason free the CEO and co-founder of base camp. He's back on Rico decode today because base camp has just launched a new product called. Hey, which it describes as a fresh start.
Email as want to talk about the tools like base camp that are helping people work from home more than ever Jason. Welcome to Rico decode great to see Kara. So you've been here a lot and I want to talk about a lot of things including hey because I'm thrilled to be able to try to use that but let's talk a little bit about coronavirus right now because one of the things that your company you have sort of put out a lot of structure on your company that were already here in these in these what a lot of people are doing. So I love you to assess the landscape right now.
Yeah, you mean remote work.
Yeah, yeah, you know first of all, I'm thrilled that people are getting the chance to go remote and that a myth has been busted anytime a myth has been busted. That's great. So the myth is that the office is a special place that only great work happens in the office at the office is required for people to get together and collaborate and there's some advantages to being in person occasionally. There's also a lot of disadvantages. So I love the fact that people are getting a chance to do this even though it's a Scramble for some and hard a hard adjustment that sometimes but the biggest thing I'm seeing that's going wrong Frank.
Is that people are trying to our companies are trying to basically Port the office environment remotely and if you think about like porting anything, you know back back when the web first hit like in 95 96 to graphical web people try to kind of Port CD-ROM and DVD style interfaces on to the web because that's all they knew. There's this new platform called the web. They didn't know how to design for it. So they took it a previous design from another platform CD-ROM DVD and moved it over. So all the buttons were very graphical textured and 3D.
And then you know that doesn't really work and then platform needs time to find its place and I think the web finally did that and you can also see it in software like someone writes a tool for Windows and then ports it to the Mac. You can tell it's not quite right and I think that's what's happening. Today is people are trying to Pork the office environment online and that's not the right way to work remotely. So right I understand it take some time to adjust but but I'm a bit disillusioned by the just like let's just have the same number of meetings. Let's just have them online. Let's
Do the same things we did before but let's just do it online. That's not really the best way to approach this.
I agree. So let's talk about what they are. Is it talk about some of the things that you think have worked before for you all and what you think needs to happen given what we're doing. We are kind of like running crazy into the wall doing this. Like now we're going to do this now we're going to do that. So let's talk about some of those sort of start with sort of the higher levels of what is the
what's the high level things we want to keep in mind and then let's get down into the details.
Well, I think the first thing is from a leadership perspective actually start really high up, which is a lot of people simply can't work full time right now. They have kids at home. They've got other obligations at home and I think leadership needs to recognize that, you know, like I'm only able to put in about 6 hours a day right now because I got to help my my family with with the we have two kids two young kids and it's just you know,
it's a same thing. Yeah.
Same thing
it's hard. So I think it's important for leadership to first set the stage and let everybody know at the company that we know everyone can't put in. Well not everyone but most people can't put in full-time work right now half of our company has kids so we don't expect that. We expect people to find the right balance right now and do the best that you can and that's good enough for
us. And and what what
what press on that because I have that issue a lot of people have that issue and I've got to say some of the now I have I'm in a unique situation I can do whatever I want but you know, my partner has so like like really struggle with work and people listening to it and whose work who has kids and who doesn't or not the lack of knowledge about having kids and everyone's been hit here because eat kids are either in daycare or their babysitter's or school or something else like that.
Yeah, it's hard. I think just part of it helps I guess when they be leadership of a company has young kids because then they feel
Appreciate what's going on and understand that this is a different. This is not you know, here's the thing. This is not actually just remote work. This is remote work during a pandemic when childcare is unavailable essentially, which is a different kind of remote work. So it's hard sometimes to evaluate remote work right now because people like I'm crushed for time. I have no time things are chaotic. Well, that's because of external circumstances. It's not because of remote work. So I think first of all, I think just leadership has to be very accommodating and understanding and let their employees know,
No that people have to figure things out right now. And I don't know when it's going to get back to normal and it may not be for months and months and months or a year. Who knows what it's going to be but part of that means the company has to slightly dial back. Its Ambitions. Perhaps has to dial back expectations and give people time to adjust and just do the best they can that's there's nothing else you can do. You can't fight reality,
right? Exactly. But and yet they aren't doing that. I think that's one another
one. Yeah, so that's one thing the other thing that's I think hard for people right now is the communication styles are used to sew
In an office most communication is real time. People are pulling people into meetings. People are just yelling across the hall or the office people are going walking over to someone's desk and have any conversation that's all real time communication. And of course even in person people use chat tools and whatnot. The real advantage to remote communication is asynchronous communication. It's slowing things down and writing things up in a deliberate long-form format and giving people time to absorb it and respond in kind on their own time. We don't need to turn
A thing into a real time conversation and that's why I think a lot of people are feeling the chaos right now is because real-time conversations remotely are actually way more exhausting than they are in person. Yeah, right sitting on Zoom calls sucks. It sucks. It does I think meeting suck in general for the most part. But which you talked about? Yes, but Zoom meetings while Zoom is a good product. But like it sucks to sit on one. Right? Right all of them all the video Whatever It Is sucks, so we got to stop doing that.
We got to write things up instead and give people more time to themselves back. So people need longer stretches of uninterrupted time. And then you can really take advantage of remote work, especially because people's days or maybe scattered a bit. Like I take a break from 11 to noon to help with the kids. I take another break from two to three and I'll put in an hour or two at night to make up for that. So I can't be involved in real-time conversations during the day because my schedule is different and someone else's schedule might be different. So asynchronous is nice because I can get back to people when they when I have time they can get
Back to me when they have time and there's no rush. There's no sense of always having to pay attention to every single conversation as it's happening for fear of missing out if you don't jump in immediately, so that needs to
happen. Now, what is the benefit of them at the same time? You know, I was some friends they're not doing any meetings and they don't feel linked with anybody. What is there a benefit to doing some of these and how should they be done?
There are I would say though that you know, a lot of the
benefits that you do. How many does your company?
We don't we don't really have any scheduled meetings. So what?
Do is if one or two or three people not one, but two or three people need to get together to talk about something. They'll just spin up a zoom or Skype or whatever people want to use to do that. There's not like a standing nine o'clock on this. Yay. We just don't do that kind of stuff here. We mostly right things up and share things that way but I think there's is definitely value in having face-to-face social time here. And so we've done some things like we have a Fridays. We have like a game our where people can get together and
play a game together visual or virtually we have something we do call the 5 by 12, which is five people randomly once a month get together on zoom and talk about things for an hour that have nothing to do with work. So we have like a social hour that way and it's a random so you don't know who's going to be there and we just kind of do some stuff like that. And yeah, we do sometimes talk about work this way, but it's ad hoc. The idea being that face-to-face real time should be the last resort. Not the first Resort. It should be used when you
Level up, for example, if you're having a conversation if you're writing something up and people are commenting back and forth and you find you're not getting anywhere or like my you're just running in the mud right then it's time to go. Okay, let's like let's let's jump to a different medium. Okay. Well, we can have a higher bandwidth sort of Engagement here. And also let's not have seven people on that. What's have two or three? So our rules basic two or three Max on any video call. You can't have a bunch of Talking
Heads like the whole the whole bunch of life.
Grid the grid
family or was it a what does that was? I can't I'm blanking that show for seven pretty much. There we go can't have that. I mean, yeah that is mind-numbing and soul-crushing and you're just sitting there and looking at everyone's faces. It's just like so uncomfortable and unnecessary. So I think in general meetings are better when they're small teams. Most things are better discussed openly by writing things up and giving people time to chime in and think about their response because here's the thing when someone shares
That they want feedback on the person sharing it probably had a lot of time to think it through before they shared it, but then they put it in front of people and they ask for people to react to it that's unfair to the receiver to just have to react to things while the other person had days to think about it. Yeah. So in our in our parliament's what we do is we write it up. We put it out there and people spend, you know, might sleep on it might get back to you the next day that seems commensurate with the ask right if you want my feedback. Let me think about it. Give me as much time as I gave you to write it
up.
Right, right. And so using those tools, which is what you're talking more about. It was written communication. Where is video Community?
Yeah, it's more like writing articles. I mean it base camp. We write tons of long-form things and most of our write ups are a thousand words, you know, they're long-form detailed complete thoughts. They're not one line at a time barrages in a chat room where you just can't get any traction on something cuz everyone jumps in and just like you can't get your it's like if you said one sentence and I said one sentence and you said one sentence and I said once it's just like you can't have a conversation that way you got to give people time.
Just spill it all out, but chat rooms. Don't really give you that.
Do you imagine once we get back to work? What we should have banded. I mean, there's a talk about the work from home movement the site Facebook announced different things. I'm not really clear with on everything they're doing but it seems kind of all over the place but I kind of get it Twitter is that you can work from anywhere, you know tech companies are kind of leading the way in this what do you imagine is going to happen to this work from home movement because it's been something that's sort of been nascent forever that I've worked from home most of my career but not
Buddy has for
sure. Yeah, it's been it's been sitting back there. I think I I think ultimately we're going to see a hybrid situation where maybe people are going to go to work at home a few days a week or have at least the opportunity to do so when maybe six months ago, if you would have asked your boss if you could do it, they'd be like hell no now it's like yeah sure maybe not all the time. But yeah sure and I think we're going to see you know, when leases are up offices downsize or perhaps go away. We've had an office for 10 years or at least up July 31st. We're not renewing we're
Let's completely.
Wow. I talked about that. Why is that because of this or just because we're headed that direction you
need that decision before primarily because we had about 10,000 square feet and like three people there a day. It doesn't make any sense, you know, so right for us even the people in Chicago, which is where most of our well not most were the biggest group of people work. We mostly work at home every day. Anyway, so we just decided before this that we weren't going to do it. However, we were beginning to shop for a new place. That was much smaller.
And now we've decided just to call that off. So I think you're going to see commercial rents and real estate change. I think you're going to see Office Buildings change. I think you're going to see a hybrid situation and I think people are going to Crave the office again as well because when you're away from something for a while you remember some of the fun memories of it, then you get back to them go. It wasn't as good as I thought and then like, well, I want to find a balance. So if I can get to work from home two or three days a week beautiful and I'll come
in 2 or 3 days a week not have yourself an office. Why not your you decided not to do
that.
Well, that's primarily because we have 56 people base camp and only 13 basically are in Chicago. So the majority of our company is fully remote anyway, right? Like what I'm talking about is a company let's say they had 500 employees in New York City. Everyone is in New York before and they have an office and everyone's in the same city. I think you're going to see more hybrid situations for us who pretty much always been remote anyway, so it's kind of a let's just go all in on the remote thing for a while and look if we feel like we still need a headquarters of some sort or get another one. It'll be there.
R what are you worried about it going into something like that. What do you mean? What do you think you need to add in? If you're going to go fully distribute
it fully remote. I think it's a Minds. I mean we're comfortable with it. But like I think it's a mindset shift again. It's a recognition of the fact that there's nothing special about an office. You've got to come out of that way first. Look, we're not losing anything by going fully remote in terms of we're not losing. Okay, you do lose some things but you gained some things it's a series of trade-offs so you can't just look at the
Get edge of the positive this trade-offs and you get away at all. I think the hardest thing for a lot of people is going to be battling a little bit of a sense of isolation as they get used to this and also maybe the other thing I've heard is like it depends if some people are in the office more than others. Someone might feel like they're being left out of certain decisions. So the company has to work as if everybody's remote even if some people are local what you can't have our two cultures the local culture and the remote culture because the local culture will pretty much always be favored.
Right, you've got to work as if everyone's remote and then if some people are local a few days a week, it's a little bit of a cherry on top kind of situation perhaps but it's not like decisions aren't made in favor of that. They're made in favor of the majority which are remote. So that's I think really important because if you if you Splinter and you have to two cultures,
right that's a really good point not going to
work for the people who are remote. They're going to feel passed over anything that happens where they're not Advantage they're going to say it was because of this and then you end up with this office
politics.
Right, so a different kind of out of his politics. So when you're thinking about the coat the issue of cohesion, what are the critical things to do to maintain cohesion? Yeah. It's physicality does do just by
proximity kind of here's the thing. If you have a company of a thousand people, you don't see a thousand people every day at the office. You see your team. You see a few other people. Maybe you don't know whatever it is. So like this is to me really about teams working well together and then occasionally seeing other people from other teams. So as I mentioned what we
We do this monthly thing. We do this one hour call with five people randomly and they talk about things that aren't about work. These are pulled people from different departments in the organization and side base camp and we have a conversation and these are people who don't work together very often so they get to know a little bit more about each other in a way that you wouldn't even know each other if you were in person because humans are like we hang out and clicks you hang out with the five or six or ten people that you know, you don't know that other person across the hall or on the other floor. Anyway, even though you work for the same company this method helps you.
See other people and meet other people across the company. The other thing we do is every Monday morning base camp the product asks everybody. What'd you do this weekend and it's completely optional. It's up to everyone to share whatever they want. And right now it's kind of awkward because before it was like, well, here's what I did. I visited the grandparents. I brought the kids out to the petting zoo, like now nothing like that's happening. But you get to see other people's lives in a way that you might discuss over lunch or over a drink or whatever. It might be. So we kind of encourage
Courage that which is really interesting we have people all over the world. So you see all sorts of different cultures and all sorts of different experiences and it's really kind of interesting. We also asked once a month what books have you read recently and people write a book reports and share them with everybody and you go. Oh you're into any Dillard. So am II didn't know you liked her. She's a greater author and I never talked to you but now we have something in common. So there's plenty of things you can do without having to stare someone in the eye to get to know them
is that helpful on things like Basecamp. It's black and things like that. Do you think they take the place or is it you know, what would be the biggest
Plate you would have these
things. It's kind of what you're used to if you're used to sitting around a lunch table and or you know, whatever table and eating a meal with someone and talking like you can't replicate that. So I think the most important thing is not to try to replicate things Isis is getting back to the earlier thing about porting right? You can't you can't see you got to come up with other things that actually work better. So with base camp automatically asking people questions on a regular schedule like we just turn that on and set it and forget it and it happens that works really well. That would be all
Awkward to do in person like to sit around and like recite book reports. So like that would be weird but it works. Well this way because it's a synchronous and it's on an automated schedule on the system. Does it linkable and comment below and you can discuss these things and so you got to play to the strengths and you can't just Pine for the past and go it was so much better when we consider on a table. Well, yeah, it was better in some ways and other things you couldn't do that you can do now so we just have to break from that and recognize whatever situation we're in.
Of a context wherein we have to take advantage of that context and there are advantages in every
context and lastly do you?
That's now and then we'll start talking about the email stuff second. But do you think the technology is used because my kids doing Zoom spool is terrible just terrible to it's not
and basically dropped out. I mean to be honest
we've yeah. Yeah, it's like what this is so stupid and it's hard to like say that and there are there are no Solutions except, you know school maybe something that should be analog. Maybe that's just the way it is
especially for young kids. I totally think so.
Yeah, but what could be done to improve because it looks like this
Be for the Long Haul for a while these
I don't know we're going through the same thing my my five and a half year olds in a Montessori School in Montessori is really about touching and feeling and yes, I guess that's just like if you can't really see I mean we can have some stuff at home. Yeah, but you can't really teach remotely that it just doesn't. Yeah, it's hard. So like you're some clay kid. Yeah. Here's some like we've watched some stuff on YouTube. We watched some fun things and like we've done some audible projects and there's all that kind of
Stuff but that that like the teaching moments are I think more with the parents and less with the teachers and that's just going to be I think the reality for a while and I don't by the way I don't blame schools or teachers like no one knows how to do this. This is New
Territory. Would you would you don't have an idea you don't have an imagine of what it should be?
I think frankly. I think it'd be it'd be great if it was more social because kids can't really hang out right now. If each other, you know, like they might at school a little bit or recessed or just goofing around during snack time or whatever.
I'd lean more into that and less into like trying to really teach lessons remotely. I just I would give people more excuses to hang out with their friends online and a sense and just let them be yeah, I really think that's that's actually what's more of what's missing. I think right now because there's lots of different ways to learn. Hmm. But there aren't as many ways to see her friends right now the four young kids who don't know how to use this technology necessary by themselves yet. So I think it'd be kind of interesting to do that. But I don't know. I really don't know. It's kind of a mess.
It's a mess. It's a
mess. Anyway, we're here talking with Jason freed. He's one of my favorite people to talk to you. He's the CEO base camp. We're gonna take a quick break now and we'll talk about a fresh start for email when we get back. This is Advertiser content.
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We're here with Jason freed the CEO of base camp. We've been talking about how to cope with coronavirus because Jason's a company has some really interesting ways to manage but let's talk about this new product called. Hey, which you are describing as a fresh start for email. I hate email, you know, I don't respond to email. I just got myself a new Macbook Air and I all the email came flooding back and I just didn't I was sort of like, oh couldn't it have just gone away in the migration assistant somehow so talk a little bit about this and tell me where I can get this in.
Sure. So first of all, it's a hey.com, which is H ey.com. So hey is a probably the most ambitious thing we've ever done and probably the stupidest thing we've ever done. I mean that in a in the most positive way and that we are establishing a new email service or service provider meaning. We're not a client that sits on top of Gmail it sits on top of Outlook or nothing like that. We're actually a email provider. So if you sign up for hey, you get an at a.com email address now we're looking at email.
Male in a new way because if you think about email the last time you were probably excited about it was 16 years ago when Gmail launched 16 years ago. Yes. Exactly. Yes. I remember the mad rush to get your Gmail email address and like there was invites going around and you were begging your friends for an invite if they had one that was 16 years ago and very little has changed since then. In fact, I feel like emails been abandoned. There's been some improvements here and there but for the most part you just describe what's wrong with it things come flooding in you have no control over it.
Even have control over who can email you. I mean, that's a fundamental problem. I think there should be consent with email and hey requires you to opt people in so if someone emails me for the first time, they don't get my inbox I get to see them and go do I want to hear from them? Yes or no? No, I'll never hear from them again. Yes, then they're in so I now have control over the spigot versus today. I mean your email address everyone's email address anyone who's an email address for 10 years is everywhere. It's been bought sold traded posted so you don't have
control over more. I spend a lot of time.
It's crazy. Yeah, but three. Yes. Here's the thing. You can sort
of unsubscribe from mailing list because you get thrown on them, but you can't kind of can't but also knowing that like you can't unsubscribe from people, but you can with hey, so the fundamental premise of hey is you control who gets through to you number one second. Not every email is the same so I don't want to see a newsletter that I did subscribe to showing up next to an email from my doctor. That's urgent. Yes my urgent doctors email and this newsletter I signed up for like
Newsletter is completely optional I care about it, but I don't I shouldn't have to fight through that to see my email from my doctor. So with hey, we put email in these different places that you decide again getting back to control. There's no a I hear there's no one deciding where your email should go you decide this goes in my inbox or this goes into a place called the feed the fetus for all my newsletters marketing emails and I can browse it like a Newsfeed like I don't have to click into each one to open it and close it and open the next one and close it. They're all open and I just
scroll through them and I just browse through them because they're not that important anyway, and then we have a place called The Paper Trail and the paper trail is where your receipts go and your transactions go and and your order confirmations go and so all the stuff is out of your inbox. The only thing that's in your inbox is stuff from people you really care about and people you've let through and you've let in that's the first fix you have to fix that. If you don't fix that you're flooded just like you said, I'm flooded with this stuff and it's like people given up on email because it's out of
Troll, in fact, it's basically anyone can reach you anyone can throw something in your face. Anyone can steal a piece of your attention. That's broken its broken. We don't allow it on LinkedIn. We don't allow it in all these other places. Why do we allow an email
now you talked about this when you're talking about are Gmail when it when it came out and obviously lots of will use that and there is a lot of searching stuff like that, but it is still why hasn't it been innovate on there have been a lot of attempts like I keep keep I look at the litter of my apps.
There was always an email app that was going to promise and I can't remember all their names. I bet you do know
them. They've all gone away. Well, not all there's
some good ones thought some of them got bought some of them got you know, different things happen to them. So talk about sort of the evolution of the email. Why hasn't this happen is it because Gmail has a lock on it. And if Gmail doesn't you know, my best you know right now is Comcast I hate to say yes. Here's the
thing. Right? So Gmail is free. It dominates 50% of the market and
Us and if you add in Outlook and I think Verizon owns, AOL and something else. I forget the other one. It's like they like the big three or four Hotmail they owned 80% of the market and they're pretty much all free. So who wants to wait into that like who wants to compete with those guys those those companies like right. Most people don't now part of the problem is that you things you've been describing is that there's all these email apps that have come and gone right those apps live on top of these existing.
Of platforms actually, so you can't really innovate. You can't the only thing you can improve as the margins because you don't own the platform. So you your you can only do what they let you do and that's why there's not that much Innovation happening. But when you launch a new platform, which is what hey is it's a new service provider new email service provider. We can redefine how all sorts of things happen how delivery happens how putting things in the right place happens. How saying no to someone happens. There's all these things we can do that you can't do
If you're living on someone else's platform now, hey is not free. Hey costs money. It's for personal account. There's two versions is personal and business businesses coming later. This year personals was launched now June 15th, which is when this is happening 99 bucks a year spotty eight bucks a month eight and a quarter month and you know, this is not going to be for everybody. We're not out there to try to take Gmail down we can't and why should we and we're also not out there to go out of business, which is what
Happens if you offer free email like emails expensive to run. You can't offer free email. You can do it. If your Google you can do it if your Microsoft you can do it if your Apple you can do it, if you're Verizon you can do it, you know, you can do it that way, but we're not that so we're looking for people really care who live in email who really care who are fed up with it and completely disgusted by it and want a better way. They want to be in control of it and they're okay with spending a little money because here's the thing. There's no such thing as free email free email you're paying for with your privacy with your personal data ads are being served up against
You that's not free that's valuable. And we think that you know, we can offer something that's fully protecting your privacy that in fact blocks all tracking. So this is something we're also doing that. No one else has done before it's really remarkable people don't realize this but when you open an email the sender can find out depending on what they're using to send if you opened it how often you opened it what your IP address is so they can kind of find out your physical location. What brand phone you might have how long you've spent on it?
And just someone sending you an email shouldn't have any right to any of that stuff. It's happening with against your will and so we block all of that from happening. You still get to read the email but the sender doesn't get to find out anything about you that is a really strong stance that we can take because we're charging for email first of all, and we're not in the Privacy Invasion business like all the big companies are with the exception of apple and maybe Microsoft's not
really so empirical doesn't really have apple does have email but not hasn't been as robust a
my cloud, you know? Yeah. Yeah, I thought
Now mostly what they have as an app the mail app, which you can use to check gmail, which is pretty much what people what people
used to do you bring it in that that's that begs the question I can you just repeat that again for people to understand they track you in your emails. Oh my God, thank you.
There's there's about 40 or 50 Services out there that literally track whether or not you get an email. There's no indication that you're being tracked you get an email and you open it. It sends a ping essentially back to their server because once an
image is loaded and the images are usually transparent and visible. It's like a one pixel image since back to the server sends back all this information. Now, they know all these things about you. It's why sometimes you get an email for like a cold email from a salesperson. They write you an email you open it and you get a phone call now or later saying hey, here's to have any questions about the information. I just sent you. So how do you know that right? What and it's like well they know it because you open the email and they found out it's not their fucking business if I open that email what
Email apps don't protect you from that we do hey does and I think this is a really strong stance and it's a Line in the Sand and I hope it moves the industry because we all know that in the sense that we're sort of unfortunately being tracked on the web. We understand there's a sense of analytics and that's just but people don't know this is happening in email and it is that's terrible
the problem that you do have when I think about doing something with this is like my email.
As for 10 years either I have giant work Gmail two counts one. I have one of the New York Times one at Vox, which uses Gmail is the base right there as many many people do I've got a Comcast email I've had forever. I have a Gmail account in my name. I actually have one of the earliest ones because my ex-wife was really involved in the early days of Gmail. So I just have Swisher, you know, it's kind of warning on the yeah, and so I know now that it's going to write me but that's okay. I don't look at it. So there we go. So, how do
Manage all this is sort of like having all these closets full of crap that I just keep shoving stuff into and and there is valuable email people of written me. You know, I have a bunch of emails for David Carr who died. I want to save them. I have a bunch of you know friends and then loved ones and you know angry emails all kinds of things. I want to say that I can't separate from the shitty one ya like so that's how do you you just stuff to start fresh. You have to go new house time to like forget.
Nothing part of your life. That's
what we're doing and it's going to be controversial yet. Here's our take on it. First of all your Gmail accounts free. It's not going away. You can always go back there if you suppose you can also export all that into what's called an m box file and have it on your local computer. If you want an important like you can keep these things. Okay, if you really want to but the thing is
You've described a handful of emails probably in your life. Maybe there's a hundred maybe there's a thousand things about see ya but the Okay thousands but think about how many emails you don't want to bring with you hundreds of thousands. Probably there's so much shit in the closet from using all these email services for a decade or more. I mean my Gmail account has I don't know hundreds of thousands of things. I never want to see again. I don't want to Lug that stuff with me. I want a clean break. And in fact to be honest, I think having things for 10-15 years is a lie.
Bility like yeah, I don't want the my entire communication history stuck somewhere. Like in fact most companies these days have a data retention or deletion policy where they're saying like email should be deleted after your automatically because there's there's Discovery issues. There's all sorts of things. Like there's no reason to keep stuff around forever. So in fact, hey is drawing a Line in the Sand there too. We're automatically deleting all emails after 2 years. Wow, unless you can opt out of that, but we're opting everyone in it by default, but we're also
Going to say you can selectively decide to take this email off that like conveyor belt to the
incinerator. So you do want to what why not tell them at the end of two years. We're going to delete it all. Do you want to save it into your local file
could do that? There's a whole bunch of things we can do and we up. The other thing is like we're going to be able to have this exceptions list. You can say like any email you put in a folder means you want to keep it. So those aren't delete that, you know any email from you know, your wife your husband your business partner your account your lawyer. Whoever you designate is important in your life those don't get deleted but the river
Crap that flows by you. Yes,
which of course delete it? You can't delete it. It's really it's fascinating. I use the Apple program which is useless as far as
yeah, and here's the thing though again just to get back to the first point, which is that with hey, one of the fundamental concepts is you will get less email because you control the front door. You only let people in that you want. So while you've had to deal with 10 years of shit from Gmail people getting your email address and is landing in your inbox or whatever with
Hey, that'll never happen when they email you you'll go. I don't want to hear from this person know and you'll never have to deal with their junk
what happens to the emails. They send you just go into the other.
Basically. What happens is we hate we keep them around for 90 days in case you change your mind, but you don't get to see them unless you change your mind. So there there you can decide like two weeks later. You know, what I should have let that person in we're calling this feature of the screener. I should have screen them
in. Yeah, I get that someone I mean what happens when their?
Telling you there and there's no response. They just don't think it's just no response.
No response. There's no autoresponder like this is as if I don't want to hear from you. I'm just ignoring you which is the way it should be because you blast someone back with it with an autoresponder. Now, they know here's what happens with spammers right now. They know that that's a living email address and that email just gets passed around by the way. I should also mention we have spam protection to spam is a problem that is sort of it's a real problem which is like, you know, Viagra ads and like, you know the the edge
During prince trying to steal a million bucks from you. Whatever it is or give you a million bucks in that case
right give yeah, right but real bar. It's a real bargain.
It really is but here's the thing spam is Spam but most of the email you don't want to get is not spam its from individuals. It's from people as from services that maybe you signed up for that you forgot about it's from a friend of a friend who got your email address from another friend. It's a salesperson. It's stuff that would never be considered spam because it's not
Defined as junk but it's things and people you don't want to hear from and so you get control over that right from the beginning so over the next 10 years. Hey can guarantee you will get less email than you did when you use Gmail for 10 years and that's a fundamental shift and it makes all the difference in the world,
right? All right, so but get it again getting people back to the idea that they they have to let go of email that they had is really important
is going to be hard. It's going to be hard and it's not going to be for everybody and there's going to be a lot of
Push
back, who are you aiming at? What kind of people you
Amy aim at People Like Us which is what we've always done which is we built the tool that we want to use that we want to exist in the world and then we find other people like us and it's not going to be everybody but I think that people are going to find what we're offering to be very intriguing and they're going to give it a try and what we've seen with people who've been early beta testers is once you use this thing for a couple weeks because it's radically different and a bunch of other ways to but
once you use it for good not used to it you're used to the system they foisted upon
You it's sort of like this is It's feels like it feels like Soviet Russia like, oh, okay. That's how it works.
That's part of the problem actually is that today email apps don't come with a philosophy. They just throw a bunch of features at you and go here you fend for yourself you figure it out. We actually have a point of view about how email should work and we have specific workflows built to let me give you a quick example. Let's see you again use Gmail 50% of the US market. So massive adoption with Gmail, right?
You get an email from somebody, you know, do you want to get back to them but you don't have time. Well, what do you do? Here's what you do. All right star it or you mark it on red again. Like that's that's just a dance. It's like unread doesn't mean reply later. It means on red starring could mean one of 50 things like in hey, there's a distinct flow. There's a button called reply later and you hit reply later. It goes into a little pile at the bottom of the screen with all the other emails. You said you'd get back to people later you click that pile and you go into it's called reply Focus mode when you go into that it opens up every
Email in your queue that you said I need to get back to people later
on my God my box next to each one of you
put the reply box next to each one and lets you knock them out one after the other without being distracted by
anything else. I have them on my desktop. That's where they are on my freaking desktop and then then the computer glitches out. What a hassle deliberately. There's so many workarounds in email and it's it becomes plaguing rather than pleasure. Well, you know what? I mean? I should be our spokesperson and in terms of
I will be because I really tries me because I have like have you got my email? Like now? I did not I did not get your email again a thousand of them. I don't have and I know there's important stuff II the stuff I found like all of these communications things are really interesting. I found a text that I got from Mark Zuckerberg. I didn't know I got because it was just like, oh I should really get back to him. You know what I mean? Like it was yeah. It was well, here's to I just here's another was what it was I didn't have it was like I can't deal with the flow of this
crap. Here's another here's another thing though that will help you with that.
At with hey, for example, so here's another default stands for taking with. Hey all push notifications are off by default. Okay, no needs to be told when to check their email. Like I don't need my phone buzzing my wrist buzzing
whatever buzzing those off. Right but you have to
turn them off with other apps by default. They just Crush you with them. So what's cool is hey turns them all off by default which gives you certain Leverage The Leverage it gives you is this you can then selectively turn them on for individuals. You care about or threads that you care about so
For example, if you want to hear from Mark Zuckerberg if Mark Zuckerberg every emails you you turn on notifications for Mark Zuckerberg right when Mark Zuckerberg emails you you'll get a notification on your phone. So anytime you get a notification from hey, you know us from somebody you've opted in to be notified about and submit Now notifications actually are meaningful because they're notify me about things I care about not notify me about every inconsequential email that I've chosen to receive, but I don't need to know about so it's lips those things. We're flipping things all over the place with hey because like you
You said email is just turned into this sort of just mess that people don't have control over. There's no workflows or ways to email. No one's been taught how to email properly yet. We do it every day. We all struggle with it. It's just a total mess and there's one work around after another after another after another and it needs to stop it's unfair to people and I just probably billions of hours wasted every year on
its last leg, especially the section will come Apple has done this. How come I mean they have an email product, but it's not
Good, they're not devoting any time to it that I can tell same thing with their music software, but that's another iTunes but come on.
It's not only focus on so many things at a time and I don't think they see that emails a good business. Like it's not a
good business. They're not going to make money off of it I'm going to do is
think about companies like apple and what they what has to happen with the things they focus on like they have to be Mega billion-dollar hits in order for them to be worth any of their energy and emails is not that and it's we're not going to be generating billions of dollars in revenue on this, but we don't need to
We don't need to we don't need to do that. We can generate tens of millions of dollars and have a wonderful business. So like where did different scale that helps us be able to do these kinds of things and allows us to focus on things that big companies just are basically going to neglect because there's nothing in it for
them. All right? Well, that is fantastic. I think I love you all
set up a I want to show you so I'll show you sometime soon. I'm
so excited. I can't even believe I just bought a new Macbook Air. I'm going to start a new life with hey, I think I'm gonna have to I feel like I'm doing an ad for you, but it's really a an enormously.
Frustrating problem for me.
So yeah hey.com heyy.com. People can check it
out. Okay. All right. We're going to take another break now. We'll be back after this with Jason freed CEO Basecamp talking about some other Tech trends that are going on. I'm here to tell you this possible to stay home. Stay safe and still get all the incredible groceries. You need to make healthy mouth-watering meals step up your quarantine cooking with son basket son basket delivers healthy delicious meals every single week with options to fit any dietary preferences.
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We're talking with Jason freed. A CEO of base camp is one of my favorite people to have on so talk a little bit about sort of Trends obviously in the news this week, which I'm been part of of this this Twitter stuff going on regulation. There's the pandemic where people are like two companies are trying to redeem themselves. What do you think the most important things people should be thinking about tech are right
now? Well, what's you know, what's happening is that the big players are getting bigger and bigger and bigger and I think this is a was a bad trend.
Hornets it's a worst Trend today and I think we need to pay very close attention to it because it's only going to get more and worse and worse and the small players are can get edged out and it's a bad. It's a bad Trend. I'm talking about Trends. It's a bad Trend. I'm not a big fan of it at all. So that's happening. You know, there's there's some good there too. I suppose like like when you can't go to the grocery store, but you can order online from a bunch of different firms that and that's that's handy obviously. So there's some advantages to that but what's going to happen is they're getting market share in mind share and land share and all sorts of
Shares, and then when this is sort of over there going to still have those and I think it's going to be harder and harder for smaller businesses to compete and get in there. So that's that's
nasty. Now, you've talked about the joys of not being big like about small talking business talk about why that's important
what to me is more important in small actually Independence and you know, if you're not out there swinging for the fences in terms of wanting to be a unicorn and raising a hundred million bucks and whatever like you can actually do a lot of things differently.
Um, and you can do them on your own schedule and you can do them for customers versus for investors there for the public markets or for a hedge fund or for PE or whatever. It is. Like Independence to me is the most valuable thing there is and we've chosen to stay small because we're independent if we were not independent. We are backed by big money. We couldn't stay small. So it's hard to stay small and do the right thing when you raise money and you're beholden to other peoples outsized expectations. We don't have expectations of ourselves.
And let's be profitable. Let's do a great job. Let's be content with the work. We do let's take care of our customers and our employees like those are our expectations outside of that. Like we don't have Revenue targets. We don't have any Targets or any numbers or acquisition percentages. We need to hit. We just don't have those things because we don't need to report that to someone else. The reason a lot of people have those things is because they have to do a deck every quarter to report to their boards report to the investors and to grow grow grow on someone else's Pace. We don't have that. I don't want that. I'd be miserable. You couldn't I would not take
Any public CEOs job, you couldn't give him give me a billion dollars to do that work. I don't want that work. That's miserable work. It's horrible.
All right. Yeah, you're let's just be clear. You're very different than other people. Like how is there a movement towards that idea? I mean everyone's now been stopped. I just did a great interview with Brian chesky. Like they've been stopped like and now have to sort of rethink. What matters do you think there's going to that's going to happen around
Tech. I think it has to and I think I think the air B&B example is interesting because what they're basically doing is
I know they had to lay people off and everything which is always a tough thing to do and terrible for the people who got laid off. But what part of that message was that I'm saying we meaning if I was writing if I was Airbnb we are going to refocus on our base on the basics, which is what is Airbnb really about it's not about high end luxury house renting. You know, that was not the idea behind Airbnb. So I think refocusing is always a healthy thing and calling and cutting back and editing is healthy in any Endeavor and I think what's happened over the past.
Decade or so since there's been so much money poured into Tech has been no editing. They're just been adding. Let's do this and do this and do this and take this market and do this too and do that too and raise more money to do more things and there's been no culling and with it when there's no calling you end up with a lot of stuff. You probably shouldn't be doing but then you end up with structure that you have to continue to support because you've hired people to do these things and it just you end up with these behemoths that are slow and you know, they're not necessary doing a great job in a lot of different areas. So I think I do.
I do think that there's going to be an editing happening. It's going to be painful in a lot of respects is people are going to lose work and lose jobs, but there has also been an undercurrent I think of of companies looking to build sustainable businesses and I think that is a wonderful thing all the time and there's been some things like the zebra movement you maybe you've heard of versus the Unicorn movement. There's a bunch of
math that
zebra zebra zebra movement is kind of this idea.
That you don't need to be unicorn. You should build profitable businesses build sustainable businesses. And that's fundamentally what that's about. It's kind of the opposite of the Unicorn thing, which is the Unicorn is like, you know, you go to these. Yeah, it doesn't exist and it's ep the billion-dollar, you know, or the mega billion-dollar one-hit-wonder or not. I shouldn't say one-hit-wonder. But Dominator of an industry there can be many zebra zebras are real and they exist in the world and they're about to being sustainable and that that's what that whole movements about but there's also things like
raising money which you know, it's not something I typically advocate for but there's a whole new set of companies or investors funding companies at different level. Now, you've got in D VC. You've got Ernest Capital you've got Tiny Seed. There's these different investment firms. Now that are not about growing unicorns there about growing sustainable businesses and their about building profitable businesses. And this is a wonderful New Movement that's happening and it's giving on
Snores another option because before the only option was flat-out bootstrap, which is hard or go all in which is harder in fact and try to because then they weren't if you didn't get the VC to give you the big money, then you were basically not validated and you couldn't do anything. No terrible two options. So now there's something in the middle which I think is
wonderful. Do you think you can change Silicon Valley mindset? Because it is that sort of go-go growth get to the top be as big as this idea. It's kind of a mom and pop shop kind of thing. Like it's a very different conceptual idea.
Than has been in town. I
don't think it can be changed. I think it is. It is a mindset and that's fine. Like there is a mindset. The problem is it's fine that happens in Silicon Valley physically. The problem is is when every other City wants to be the next Silicon Valley and every other employee or company wants to be the next, you know, Google or whatever when that infection spreads to the entire entrepreneurial world. That's a problem. I don't have a problem
posed out the infection. There we go. There we
go.
mind that there is a mindset or a play group a group of physical location a an option to go big we need some of those companies sure those those should exist in those will always exist, but there needs to be Alternatives and there really hasn't been for quite a while and now there are more of those and so I think that's a wonderful thing more competition not only for you know dollars and whatever but also more philosophical competition about how
You should build a business is a wonderful and healthy thing.
Well, can you do that and then really impact like you're trying to change email you kind of want to do it on a big basis, don't you or you know or not or just this is our little
I'm not into changing the world that to me is like yeah, I'm not into that. Like first of all, there's no such thing. There's many many worlds and you know, if we can find a hundred thousand people like us who want to have a much better email experience, right? That's a good careers worth of
work. So you're
Isn't this a look Gmail sucks. I'm going to give the world a better experience because some of the things do have to be affected by the world. I mean right now we're caught up in this whole thing around speech which is is it's a ridiculous thing given let me just reiterate a hundred thousand Americans are dead now of coronavirus, that's really why this arguments going on in Washington because they don't want to talk about the actual problem. Right? But nonetheless there's these big debates going on about very large issues and these companies are enormous. So how does a an
Preneur have an impact that is significant. How can you do that without being big?
Well, I think you know at the end of the day it's a little bit about igniting a bunch of different fires. So for example with this spy tracking stuff that's happening in. Hey, we're going to be the first to do it. I fully expect others to do it. And here's why we're going to open source this part of our important to listen. So we're we've put together a list of 40 or 50 services that track.
We're making that available. It's actually going to be up on GitHub and other people can use that list and add to it and like we want to see if this if this feature ends up in 12 other products wonderful, like we don't have to dominate the world to have this spread same thing with ideas. You know, I think we've had I mean, I'll be a bit boastful here. I think as a small company, we've had a very big impact on the industry and we're small company, but we have ideas and a point of view and that spreads in other people that pick up that point of view and maybe some adopt it may be some
Change it, maybe some reject it but it gets spread and it gets spread into other areas. And then those things happen. It's like seeds blowing in the wind, you know you it's not about one seed you got a seed ideas and then the world will go with what it feels is better but you have to provide an alternative out there. And if our impact is a hundred thousand customers who are paying us for hay or 50,000 businesses to pay us for hey, but it shines a spotlight on the ideas that we have and the concepts we have and the point of view that we have and
things Sprout up because of that that's how you really change things versus just going out and trying to dominate the world I just don't think that's a really effective way to make
change very good point Jason Appleseed fuck but but when you do I want to finish up talking about what you think you've said and done that it has worked and something that you're rethinking like what do you think really has worked of all the various messaging about management of companies as you're talking about managing people you're talking about managing companies and in a different way than is typical
yeah what do you think is the most the thing you've done do you think has the most impact if I'm going to say you have in fact as I do think people do listen to your ideas and what do you think you're like I just really thought that you know I just was like I'm just thinking I was arguing someone on Twitter they're like you wanted to ban trailing Trump by said that's probably the cleanest thing because it doesn't get them into as much trouble but I rethought that and I was like okay this is what I'd like to see and it's an all part of an ongoing so what do you what do you let's start with the thing that you think has had the most impact in a good way
And what's something you have rethought?
So I think the thing that's you know, we've been able to contribute to the world is this sense that profitability and sustainability for small businesses and hopefully large businesses is a big deal and is important and I think that it's funny because now you're finally starting to cvc's talk about sustainability and profitability one before it was like profits is a mistake. Why not poor every penny every single penny into your business and lose money forever and you know will gain market share and eventually make
Make money later. That's just not it doesn't work that way and that think that's kind of proven out at this point. I mean Uber continues to lose what billions beardy it's Bert. That's a shitty business the corner the the dry cleaner in the corners A Better Business than it will bear. You know, the pizza shop in the corner is a Better Business than Uber. So, you know, I think sustainability profitability and Longevity are
important things. They are hoping this is the new thing it really
yes. We've been talking about this forever and I think I'm not taking credit for that but like we've been voted
Cool about it. I think that's important. The other thing is of course remote work, which is remote work as is super viable. It's wonderful. It's not for everybody. It's not for every business but it's for a hell of a lot more than people thought right for I'm very very pleased that people are now getting the opportunity to have more options and where they live and where they work. I am a little bit concerned long-term about downward pressure on salaries and some of that but I think the optionality is wonderful thing. So I'm very pleased to see that I think
Speaking to that for something. We've sort of changed our mind on is, you know having an office we've had an office. We've had an HQ for pretty much our entire existence for 20 years different ones. Yeah, and now we're going off this list and for a while I was kind of arguing that we really need a place. It's really good to have a place and you know, what like even though we're almost always remote. Anyway, this whole thing showed us that we really truly don't need a place. And so I think we've changed our mind on that. We're all in on fully remote for a while and see how that shakes
out to have people meet together once a year or twice a year.
So we used to fly everybody into Chicago twice a year to meet and right now, of course, we're not doing that until there's a vaccine were no one is getting together in our company and who knows how long that'll be when that happens. We will do that because I do think it's important. I really do think it's important for people occasionally to
get together and saved you can have a big poke take them somewhere
cool. Tell me about it. Yeah, but also there's this thing it's not only for the people who know each other. It's for new employees, right? It's for people getting to feel like they're part of something again, and we can do it virtually as best we can but there's nothing
Like sitting down for a meal with people occasionally a few times a year for sure. So we want to get back to that when we can once there's a
vaccine. All right. No office with Jason free. It is a pleasure to talk to you. It's
such a always fun always. Thank you. Thank you
anyway, and I'm sure we'll see each other. We want to bring you to code when we have that again and again who have some more than some point it is anyway, you can follow me on Twitter at Kara Swisher my executive producer Eric Anderson is an Eric America. My producer Eric Johnson is a hey, hey esj Jason where can people find you and Basecamp online and hey,
And hey, so on Twitter, I'm at at Jason freed FR IE D base camp is base camp.com. And hey the new email app new email Services if H
ey.com. That's a good URL. You got there.
Oh, yeah as a long story behind that
one. Oh, come on quickly very quickly.
Sure. I wrote something up about it. But a couple years ago. I started working on this product actually stepping back real quick for forever. I've always basically started my emails out with hey first name. Yeah, Shannon the email and so when we think about making
Annie Mae laughing like we should hey would be an amazing name for an email. And so I wrote I want to hey.com to see you owned it a fellow owned it. I owned it and I wrote him out of the blue. I said you'd be willing to sell this. This is about two years ago, and he said not really but maybe let's talk and it took about a year and a half to negotiate the thing there's times when he's like no and there's times when he's like maybe and we kind of went back and forth and at the end of the day like we stuck to it and he came out really well and
Very content with what would happened and how we paid and everything. We can't share the number because it was under NDA for that. Yeah, but what was cool is this guy owned the URL since 1995, right? So he was kind of the original owner of the URL of the name and he used it. He wasn't a domain squatter. He was a small business owner and I wrote this whole thing up. If you if you Google how we acquired hey.com. You can read the whole story. All right shared some of the e-mails back and
forth to Great. Okay. Thank you so much. That's a
great that you know, I'll tell you sometimes a story about food.com some other time. I had the guy who sold that he did. Well the cut the site did not do as well. Anyway, if you like this episode of really appreciate if you share it with a friend and make sure to check out our other podcasts pivot recent recode media and Land of the Giants just search for them in your podcasting app of choice or tap a link in the show notes. Thanks. Also to our editor Joel rob a special thanks to Squad cast dot f m-- Thanks for listening to this episode of Rico decode. I'll be back here on Wednesday tune in then.
