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Beans and vibes in even measure

2025-03-06 22:17:06

Bean counters have a bad rep for a reason. And it’s not because paying attention to the numbers is inherently unreasonable. It’s because weighing everything exclusively by its quantifiable properties is an impoverished way to view business (and the world!).

Nobody presents this caricature better than the MBA types who think you can manage a business entirely in the abstract realm of "products," "markets," "resources," and "deliverables." To hell with that. The death of all that makes for a breakout product or service happens when the generic lingo of management theory takes over.

This is why founder-led operations often keep an edge. Because when there’s someone at the top who actually gives a damn about cars, watches, bags, software, or whatever the hell the company makes, it shows up in a million value judgments that can’t be quantified neatly on a spreadsheet.

Now, I love a beautiful spreadsheet that shows expanding margins, healthy profits, and customer growth as much as any business owner. But much of the time, those figures are derivatives of doing all the stuff that you can’t compute and that won’t quantify.

But this isn’t just about running a better business by betting on unquantifiable elements that you can’t prove but still believe matter. It’s also about the fact that doing so is simply more fun! It’s more congruent. It’s vibe management.

And no business owner should ever apologize for having fun, following their instincts, or trusting that the numbers will eventually show that doing the right thing, the beautiful thing, the poetic thing is going to pay off somehow. In this life or the next.

Of course, you’ve got to get the basics right. Make more than you spend. Don’t get out over your skis. But once there’s a bit of margin, you owe it to yourself to lean on that cushion and lead the business primarily on the basis of good vibes and a long vision.

Air purifiers are a simple answer to allergies

2025-03-05 18:38:11

I developed seasonal allergies relatively late in life. From my late twenties onward, I spent many miserable days in the throes of sneezing, headache, and runny eyes. I tried everything the doctors recommended for relief. About a million different types of medicine, several bouts of allergy vaccinations, and endless testing. But never once did an allergy doctor ask the basic question: What kind of air are you breathing?

Turns out that's everything when you're allergic to pollen, grass, and dust mites! The air. That's what's carrying all this particulate matter, so if your idea of proper ventilation is merely to open a window, you're inviting in your nasal assailants. No wonder my symptoms kept escalating.

For me, the answer was simply to stop breathing air full of everything I'm allergic to while working, sleeping, and generally just being inside. And the way to do that was to clean the air of all those allergens with air purifiers running HEPA-grade filters.

That's it. That was the answer!

After learning this, I outfitted everywhere we live with these machines of purifying wonder: One in the home office, one in the living area, one in the bedroom. All monitored for efficiency using Awair air sensors. Aiming to have the PM2.5 measure read a fat zero whenever possible.

In America, I've used the Alen BreatheSmart series. They're great. And in Europe, I've used the Philips ones. Also good.

It's been over a decade like this now. It's exceptionally rare that I have one of those bad allergy days now. It can still happen, of course — if I spend an entire day outside, breathing in allergens in vast quantities. But as with almost everything, the dose makes the poison. The difference between breathing in some allergens, some of the time, is entirely different from breathing all of it, all of the time.

I think about this often when I see a doctor for something. Here was this entire profession of allergy specialists, and I saw at least a handful of them while I was trying to find a medical solution. None of them even thought about dealing with the environment. The cause of the allergy. Their entire field of view was restricted to dealing with mitigation rather than prevention.

Not every problem, medical or otherwise, has a simple solution. But many problems do, and you have to be careful not to be so smart that you can't see it.

Human service is luxury

2025-03-03 16:05:08

Maybe one day AI will answer every customer question flawlessly, but we're nowhere near that reality right now. I can't tell you how often I've been stuck in some god-forsaken AI loop or phone tree WHEN ALL I WANT IS A HUMAN. So I end up either just yelling "operator", "operator", "operator" (the modern-day mayday!) or smashing zero over and over. It's a unworthy interaction for any premium service.

Don't get me wrong. I'm pretty excited about AI. I've seen it do some incredible things. And of course it's just going to keep getting better. But in our excitement about the technical promise, I think we're forgetting that humans need more than correct answers. Customer service at its best also offers understanding and reassurance. It offers a human connection.

Especially as AI eats the low-end, commodity-style customer support. The sort that was always done poorly, by disinterested people, rapidly churning through a perceived dead-end job, inside companies that only ever saw support as a cost center. Yeah, nobody is going to cry a tear for losing that.

But you know that isn't all there is to customer service. Hopefully you've had a chance to experience what it feels like when a cheerful, engaged human is interested in helping you figure out what's wrong or how to do something right. Because they know exactly what they're talking about. Because they've helped thousands of others through exactly the same situation. That stuff is gold.

Partly because it feels bespoke. A customer service agent who's good at their job knows how to tailor the interaction not just to your problem, but to your temperament. Because they've seen all the shapes. They can spot an angry-but-actually-just-frustrated fit a thousand miles away. They can tell a timid-but-curious type too. And then deliver exactly what either needs in that moment. That's luxury.

That's our thesis for Basecamp, anyway. That by treating customer service as a career, we'll end up with the kind of agents that embody this luxury, and our customers will feel the difference.

AMD in everything

2025-02-27 17:02:00

Back in the mid 90s, I had a friend who was really into raytracing, but needed to nurture his hobby on a budget. So instead of getting a top-of-the-line Intel Pentium machine, he bought two AMD K5 boxes, and got a faster rendering flow for less money. All I cared about in the 90s was gaming, though, and for that, Intel was king, so to me, AMD wasn't even a consideration.

And that's how it stayed for the better part of the next three decades. AMD would put out budget parts that might make economic sense in narrow niches, but Intel kept taking all the big trophies in gaming, in productivity, and on the server.

As late as the end of the 2010s, we were still buying Intel for our servers at 37signals. Even though AMD was getting more competitive, and the price-watt-performance equation was beginning to tilt in their favor.

By the early 2020s, though, AMD had caught up on the server, and we haven't bought Intel since. The AMD EPYC line of chips are simply superior to anything Intel offers in our price/performance window. Today, the bulk of our new fleet run on dual EPYC 9454s for a total of 96 cores(!) per machine. They're awesome.

It's been the same story on the desktop and laptop for me. After switching to Linux last year, I've been all in on AMD. My beloved Framework 13 is rocking an AMD 7640U, and my desktop machine runs on an AMD 7950X. Oh, and my oldest son just got a new gaming PC with an AMD 9900X, and my middle son has a AMD 8945HS in his gaming laptop. It's all AMD in everything!

So why is this? Well, clearly the clever crew at AMD is putting out some great CPU designs lately with Lisa Su in charge. I'm particularly jazzed about the upcoming Framework desktop, which runs the latest Max 395+ chip, and can apportion up to 110GB of memory as VRAM (great for local AI!). This beast punches a multi-core score that's on par with that of an M4 Pro, and it's no longer that far behind in single-core either. But all the glory doesn't just go to AMD, it's just as much a triumph of TSMC.

TSMC stands for Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. They're the world leader in advanced chip making, and key to the story of how Apple was able to leapfrog the industry with the M-series chips back in 2020. Apple has long been the top customer for TSMC, so they've been able to reserve capacity on the latest manufacturing processes (called "nodes"), and as a result had a solid lead over everyone else for a while.

But that lead is evaporating fast. That new Max+ 395 is showing that AMD has nearly caught up in terms of raw grunt, and the efficiency is no longer a million miles away either. This is again largely because AMD has been able to benefit from the same TSMC-powered progress that's also propelling Apple.

But you know who it's not propelling? Intel. They're still trying to get their own chip-making processes to perform competitively, but so far it looks like they're just falling further and further behind. The latest Intel boards are more expensive and run slower than the competition from Apple, AMD, and Qualcomm. And there appears to be no easy fix to sort it all out around the corner.

TSMC really is lifting all the boats behind its innovation locks. Qualcomm, just like AMD, have nearly caught up to Apple with their latest chips. The 8 Elite unit in my new Samsung S25 is faster than the A18 Pro in the iPhone 16 Pro in multi-core tests, and very close in single-core. It's also just as efficient now.

This is obviously great for Android users, who for a long time had to suffer the indignity of truly atrocious CPU performance compared to the iPhone. It was so bad for a while that we had to program our web apps differently for Android, because they simply didn't have the power to run JavaScript fast enough! But that's all history now.

But as much as I now cheer for Qualcomm's chips, I'm even more chuffed about the fact that AMD is on a roll. I spend far more time in front of my desktop than I do any other computer, and after dumping Apple, it's a delight to see that the M-series advantage is shrinking to irrelevance fast. There's of course still the software reason for why someone would pick Apple, and they continue to make solid hardware, but the CPU playing field is now being leveled.

This is obviously a good thing if you're a fan of Linux, like me. Framework in particular has invigorated a credible alternative to the sleek, unibody but ultimately disposable nature of the reigning MacBook laptops. By focusing on repairability, upgradeability, and superior keyboards, we finally have an alternative for developer laptops that doesn't just feel like a cheap copy of a MacBook. And thanks to AMD pushing the envelope, these machines are rapidly closing the remaining gaps in performance and efficiency.

And oh how satisfying it must be to sit as CEO of AMD now. The company was founded just one year after Intel, back in 1969, but for its entire existence, it's lived in the shadow of its older brother. Now, thanks to TSMC, great leadership from Lisa Su, and a crack team of chip designers, they're finally reaping the rewards. That is one hell of a journey to victory!

So three cheers for AMD! A tip of the hat to TSMC. And what a gift to developers and computer enthusiasts everywhere that Apple once more has some stiff competition in the chip space.

The New York Times gives liberals The Danish Permission to pivot on mass immigration

2025-02-26 19:35:03

One of the key roles The New York Times plays in American society is as guardians of the liberal Overton window. Its editorial line sets the terms for what's permissible to discuss in polite circles on the center left. Whether it's covid mask efficiency, trans kids, or, now, mass immigration. When The New York Times allows the counter argument to liberal orthodoxy to be published, it signals to its readers that it's time to pivot.

On mass immigration, the center-left liberal orthodoxy has for the last decade in particular been that this is an unreserved good. It's cultural enrichment! It's much-needed workers! It's a humanitarian imperative! Any opposition was treated as de-facto racism, and the idea that a country would enforce its own borders as evidence of early fascism. But that era is coming to a close, and The New York Times is using The Danish Permission to prepare its readers for the end.

As I've often argued, Denmark is an incredibly effective case study in such arguments, because it's commonly thought of as the holy land of progressivism. Free college, free health care, amazing public transit, obsessive about bikes, and a solid social safety net. It's basically everything people on the center left ever thought they wanted from government. In theory, at least.

In practice, all these government-funded benefits come with a host of trade-offs that many upper middle-class Americans (the primary demographic for The New York Times) would find difficult to swallow. But I've covered that in detail in The reality of the Danish fairytale, so I won't repeat that here.

Instead, let's focus on the fact that The New York Times is now begrudgingly admitting that the main reason Europe has turned to the right, in election after election recently, is due to the problems stemming from mass immigration across the continent and the channel.

For example, here's a bit about immigrant crime being higher:

Crime and welfare were also flashpoints: Crime rates were substantially higher among immigrants than among native Danes, and employment rates were much lower, government data showed.

It wasn't long ago that recognizing higher crime rates among MENAPT immigrants to Europe was seen as a racist dog whistle. And every excuse imaginable was leveled at the undeniable statistics showing that immigrants from countries like Tunisia, Lebanon, and Somalia are committing violent crime at rates 7-9 times higher than ethnic Danes (and that these statistics are essentially the same in Norway and Finland too).

Or how about this one: Recognizing that many immigrants from certain regions were loafing on the welfare state in ways that really irked the natives:

One source of frustration was the fact that unemployed immigrants sometimes received resettlement payments that made their welfare benefits larger than those of unemployed Danes.

Or the explicit acceptance that a strong social welfare state requires a homogeneous culture in order to sustain the trust needed for its support:

Academic research has documented that societies with more immigration tend to have lower levels of social trust and less generous government benefits. Many social scientists believe this relationship is one reason that the United States, which accepted large numbers of immigrants long before Europe did, has a weaker safety net. A 2006 headline in the British publication The Economist tartly summarized the conclusion from this research as, “Diversity or the welfare state: Choose one.”

Diversity or welfare! That again would have been an absolutely explosive claim to make not all that long ago.

Finally, there's the acceptance that cultural incompatibility, such as on the role of women in society, is indeed a problem:

Gender dynamics became a flash point: Danes see themselves as pioneers for equality, while many new arrivals came from traditional Muslim societies where women often did not work outside the home and girls could not always decide when and whom to marry.

It took a while, but The New York Times is now recognizing that immigrants from some regions really do commit vastly more violent crime, are net-negative contributors to the state budgets (by drawing benefits at higher rates and being unemployed more often), and that together with the cultural incompatibilities, end up undermining public trust in the shared social safety net.

The consequence of this admission is dawning not only on The New York Times, but also on other liberal entities around Europe:

Tellingly, the response in Sweden and Germany has also shifted... Today many Swedes look enviously at their neighbor. The foreign-born population in Sweden has soared, and the country is struggling to integrate recent arrivals into society. Sweden now has the highest rate of gun homicides in the European Union, with immigrants committing a disproportionate share of gun violence. After an outburst of gang violence in 2023, Ulf Kristersson, the center-right prime minister, gave a televised address in which he blamed “irresponsible immigration policy” and “political naïveté.” Sweden’s center-left party has likewise turned more restrictionist.

All these arguments are in service of the article's primary thesis: To win back power, the left, in Europe and America, must pivot on mass immigration, like the Danes did. Because only by doing so are they able to counter the threat of "the far right".

The piece does a reasonable job accounting for the history of this evolution in Danish politics, except for the fact that it leaves out the main protagonist. The entire account is written from the self-serving perspective of the Danish Social Democrats, and it shows. It tells a tale of how it was actually Social Democrat mayors who first spotted the problems, and well, it just took a while for the top of the party to correct. Bullshit.

The real reason the Danes took this turn is that "the far right" won in Denmark, and The Danish People's Party deserve the lion's share of the credit. They started in 1995, quickly set the agenda on mass immigration, and by 2015, they were the second largest party in the Danish parliament.

Does that story ring familiar? It should. Because it's basically what's been happening in Sweden, France, Germany, and the UK lately. The mainstream parties have ignored the grave concerns about mass immigration from its electorate, and only when "the far right" surged as a result, did the center left and right parties grow interested in changing course.

Now on some level, this is just democracy at work. But it's also hilarious that this process, where voters choose parties that champion the causes they care about, has been labeled The Grave Threat to Democracy in recent years. Whether it's Trump, Le Pen, Weidel, or Kjærsgaard, they've all been met with contempt or worse for channeling legitimate voter concerns about immigration.

I think this is the point that's sinking in at The New York Times. Opposition to mass immigration and multi-culturalism in Europe isn't likely to go away. The mayhem that's swallowing Sweden is a reality too obvious to ignore. And as long as the center left keeps refusing to engage with the topic honestly, and instead hides behind some anti-democratic firewall, they're going to continue to lose terrain.

Again, this is how democracies are supposed to work! If your political class is out of step with the mood of the populace, they're supposed to lose. And this is what's broadly happening now. And I think that's why we're getting this New York Times pivot. Because losing sucks, and if you're on the center left, you'd like to see that end.

Stick with the customer

2025-02-21 16:05:16

One of the biggest mistakes that new startup founders make is trying to get away from the customer-facing roles too early. Whether it's customer support or it's sales, it's an incredible advantage to have the founders doing that work directly, and for much longer than they find comfortable.

The absolute worst thing you can do is hire a sales person or a customer service agent too early. You'll miss all the golden nuggets that customers throw at you for free when they're rejecting your pitch or complaining about the product. Seeing these reasons paraphrased or summarized destroy all the nutrients in their insights. You want that whole-grain feedback straight from the customers' mouth!

When we launched Basecamp in 2004, Jason was doing all the customer service himself. And he kept doing it like that for three years!! By the time we hired our first customer service agent, Jason was doing 150 emails/day. The business was doing millions of dollars in ARR. And Basecamp got infinitely, better both as a market proposition and as a product, because Jason could funnel all that feedback into decisions and positioning.

For a long time after that, we did "Everyone on Support". Frequently rotating programmers, designers, and founders through a day of answering emails directly to customers. The dividends of doing this were almost as high as having Jason run it all in the early years. We fixed an incredible number of minor niggles and annoying bugs because programmers found it easier to solve the problem than to apologize for why it was there.

It's not easy doing this! Customers often offer their valuable insights wrapped in rude language, unreasonable demands, and bad suggestions. That's why many founders quit the business of dealing with them at the first opportunity. That's why few companies ever do "Everyone On Support". That's why there's such eagerness to reduce support to an AI-only interaction.

But quitting dealing with customers early, not just in support but also in sales, is an incredible handicap for any startup. You don't have to do everything that every customer demands of you, but you should certainly listen to them. And you can't listen well if the sound is being muffled by early layers of indirection.

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