Have you noticed that every issue and idea tracking tool you loved slowly morphed into boring, sluggish, corporate bloatware?
Trello put on 40 pounds of cruft. Jira started charging by the migraine. Asana tried to become everything to everyone. GitHub Issues slipped into a steady state of decline. The whole category is a 20 car pileup of complexity.
Time to route around that mess.
Today we’re introducing Fizzy. Kanban as it should be, not as it has been.
Fizzy is a fresh take on cards and columns, with a few twists, human-nature inspired defaults, and a vibrant interface that’s the opposite of the bland and boring software the industry has been flinging at you for years.
Kanban has been around since the 1940s, and Trello brought it into the mainstream in 2011. Since then, some version of column-based kanban-style organization has found its way into any collaboration tool worth its salt.
But most have over salted the dish.
What was simple is now complicated. What was clear is now cluttered. What just worked now takes work.
Fizzy presses reset, reconsiders what really matters, and presents a refreshing way to kanban that just feels right. It’s friendly, colorful, straightforward, and fast as hell.
We still use Basecamp for our big, intensive projects, but lately we’ve been reaching for Fizzy to run the smaller ones. It’s perfect for tracking bugs, issues, and ideas, and it shines for lighter, self-contained workflows like podcasts or video production.
We didn’t expect it, but Fizzy’s so good it might even cannibalize Basecamp on the lighter side of project management. We’d be thrilled.
How much is it? It’s not much for so much.
Everyone gets 1000 cards for free. Beyond that, we’ll host your account for just $20/month for unlimited cards and unlimited users. One price for all and everything. No tiers, no “contact us.” No pricing chart at all — just a price tag, like on a pair of jeans.
And here’s a surprise... Fizzy is open source! If you’d prefer not to pay us, or you want to customize Fizzy for your own use, you can run it yourself for free forever. Have a great idea? Submit a PR to contribute to the code base and improve the product for everyone. It’s the best of all worlds. No excuses.
Every idea comes back around. It’s time for take two on kanban. Fizzy’s our hat in the ring.
Let’s make this platform insanely great, together. Come on in!
Visit fizzy.do to check it out and sign up for free!
There are plenty of opportunities to invite people to your product ahead of the formal launch. Alpha, beta, etc.
My preference is only right at the end. Typically a week or two before we go live. When the product is in the very last throes of beta, barely beta. Essentially v0.99.
At this stage we’re not really looking for deep fundamental feedback, although we’ll get some. We’re going with the version we’re launching, so it doesn’t really help to soak in second guessing.
The main advantage to letting people in a bit ahead of launch is mostly for basic hygiene. It forces you to clean up, tie up loose ends, get some lingering stuff right you’ve been sitting on until now.
It’s like inviting guests to your house for dinner. Hopefully you keep a fairly tidy house, but if you know guests are coming by, there’s just another level of cleaning and tidying and prep you tend to do. All those little messes you could live with become things you just don’t want other people to see, experience, or notice. So you take care of them.
Guests are forcing functions. They help you do those last few things you know you need to do, but didn’t until now.
The Concept2 RowErg is one of the highest quality products I've ever used.
Had one for years now, feels like it'll last another 100.
Simple construction, durable materials, low maintenance. Comically easy to assemble. Tips up for storage, leaving a tiny footprint.
The PM5 display is simple B&W, no touchscreen, just a few easy-to-use-when-sweaty rubberized buttons. Just two D batteries that seem to last forever. No plugs, no charging, no cables needed.
Roll it around on wheels, steady once flat. Perfectly grips the ground, no wobble, no rattle, no movement.
The whole thing is just right. I've rarely encountered a product so well considered. They knew where to stop.
To me, this is a pinnacle product. The model to build towards. No matter what you make, aim to make it as well as the Concept 2 RowErg.
And all that for under $1000. One of the few products I've paid this much for that feels like a steal.
New products don’t need to be revolutionary, life-changing, or disruptive breakthroughs to succeed.
Entire categories can roll downhill, gathering complexity as they go. Each product one-upping the next until more becomes too much. The cycle feeds itself, never satiated. Competitors locked in a loop of mutual destruction through perpetual over-improvement.
When that happens, the door cracks open for something new.
The newcomer doesn’t have to meet the others where they are. It just has to feel right — like someone opened the curtains and let the sun back in. The type of product that lets people exhale and say, “finally!”
Not groundbreaking. Just grounded. Standing where everyone else forgot to.
In some cases, design is what something looks like.
In other cases, design is how something works.
But the most interesting designs to me are when design changes your behavior. Even the smallest details can change how someone interacts with something.
Take the power reserve indicator on the A. Lange & Söhne Lange 1 watch. The power reserve indicator indicates how much "power" (wind) is left. It's pictured below on the right side of the dial. It starts with AUF ("up") and ends with AB ("down"). A fully wound Lange 1 (indicator up at AUF) will give you about 72 hours before the watch fully runs out of power, stops, and must be wound again. It moves down as the watch runs until you're out of power. Wind it again to fill it back up.
Simple enough, right? An indicator and a scale for fully wound through unwound. Just like a car's fuel gauge. You have full through empty, with a few ticks in between to indicate 3/4 or 1/4 tank left, and typically a red zone at the end saying you really need to fill this thing up soon or you're going to be stranded.
However, all is not as it seems on the Lange 1. There's something very clever going on here to change your behavior.
First you'll notice five triangles between AUF and AUB. They aren't equally spaced. At first you might think it looks like each is about a quarter of the scale, and then the last two at the bottom would be like the red zone on your fuel gage.
But no. The indicator follows a non-linear progression downwards. It doesn't sweep from top to bottom evenly over time. It's actually accelerated early.
When fully wound, It takes just a day for the indicator to drop down two markers to the halfway point. From there, it takes a day each to hit the lower two markers. This makes it look like it's unwinding faster than it is because the indicator covers more distance in that first 24 hours. If the spacing were uniform, and the indicator was linear, the owner might not feel the need to wind it until the power reserve was nearly fully depleted. Then you might have a dead watch when you pick it up the next morning. So what's the net effect of this tiny little design detail that the owner may not even understand? Well, it looks like the watch is already half-way out of power after the first day, so it encourages the owner to wind the watch more frequently. To keep it closer to topped off, even when it's not necessary. This helps prevents the watch from running out of power, losing time, and, ultimately, stopping. A stopped watch may be right twice a day, but it's rarely at the times you want.
Small detail, material behavior change. Well considered, well executed, well done.
A young entrepreneur in his mid-20s just emailed me asking for some advice.
He just sold a business and ended up with a couple million in liquid cash. He wanted to know if he should invest it, use it to build a new company, or do something else with it.
My advice wasn't what he was expecting.
I just said don't lose it. Do nothing with it. Put it in the bank. Something safe, earning a little, but not too much that it's at risk.
Money doesn't need to work. It can rest. Leave it be. You're 26 — you can get back to work.
A couple million liquid cash is a huge haul. Maintain! Don't lose. Always have that. And add more to that safe pile as you go. That's yours now. Keep it that way.
