4.4 • 637 Ratings
🗓️ 14 April 2020
⏱️ 49 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
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David “DHH” Heinemeier Hansson (@dhh) is the creator of Ruby on Rails, founder and CTO at Basecamp (formerly 37Signals), and the best-selling co-author of Rework and Remote: Office Not Required. If that was not enough, fun fact, he went from not having a driver’s license at 25 to winning, at 34, the 24 Hours of Le Mans race, one of the most prestigious automobile races in the world. It is often called the “Grand Prix of endurance and efficiency.”
In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How David made his way into the world of tech and startups from his childhood living in Copenhagen and how a cold email led to the founding of Basecamp with Jason Fried?
2.) What have been some of David’s core observations as people move to remote work over the last few weeks? What is the #1 mistake that 90% of teams make? How does David advise founders to approach loneliness and depression in their team? What strategies have Basecamp used to unite the team and inspire collaboration and teamwork?
3.) Why have David and Jason always tried to keep the Basecamp team as small as possible? Why does David believe one of the biggest problems is that execs have too much time? How does that manifest itself? What does David’s week look like? How does he approach meetings?
4.) Why does David hate the majority of “mission statements” today? What are the best composed of? What are the worst? What feelings does David believe your mission statement should inspire in the reader? What does David believe one needs to do to build a challenger brand today?
5.) Why has David and Basecamp always resisted the conventional path of raising VC funds? Why does David believe needs VC money is total BS? Why does David believe it is BS to chase being a unicorn? Why have founders got this so wrong today and what can they do to change?
6.) How would David describe his relationship to money? How has that relationship changed over time? What are the core challenges as one moves from a monetary to a deeper appreciation of what makes one happy? How did the transition occur for David? How does David advise others in terms of finding their moment for the transition?
Items Mentioned In Today’s Show:
David’s Fave Book: Erich Fromm: To Have Or To Be
As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and David and on Twitter here!
Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.
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0:21.4 | Welcome back to the 20 minute VC with me, Harry Stebbings. And if you'd like to see more from me behind the scenes, you can on Instagram at H. Stebbings, 1996 with 2Bs, and I always love to see you there. Now, I'm going to put myself out there with this one and say this is the best founder episode we have ever done. It's honest, it's really quite raw. And both the guests and I open up emotionally a lot more than definitely as usual for me and as usual for the show. And so with that I'm thrilled to welcome David Heinemah Hansen. For those that do not know, |
0:25.8 | David wears three incredible hats. He's the creator of Ruby on Rails. He's also the founder and |
0:30.5 | CTO at Basecamp, the all-in-one toolkit for remote companies, formerly named 37 Signals. And he's |
0:36.0 | also the best-selling co-author of rework and |
0:38.4 | remote, office not required. Finally, if that was not enough, fun fact, David went from not having a |
0:43.6 | driver's license at 25 to winning at 34, the 24 hour of LeMont race, one of the most prestigious |
0:49.6 | automobile races in the world. But before we move into the show today, I want to take a moment to |
0:54.0 | mention Hello Sign, a great example of a company that found success in building a product |
0:58.5 | focused on user experience. HelloSign is an effortless e-signature solution used by millions to |
1:04.0 | securely send and request legally valid digital signatures and agreements. They raised a total of |
1:09.2 | $16 million in funding and recently got acquired |
1:11.8 | by Dropbox for an impressive $230 million. Check out HelloSign.com forward slash 20VC to join the |
1:18.9 | thousands of companies and founders who value fast, secure and simple e-signatures. And speaking of |
1:24.3 | signatures and getting deals done there, and so I want to talk about Cooley, the global law firm built around startups and venture capital. Since forming the first venture fund in Silicon Valley, Cooley has formed more venture capital funds than any other law firm in the world, with 50 plus years working with VCs. They help VCs form and manage funds, make investments and handle the myriad of issues that arise through a fund's lifetime. |
1:46.0 | So to learn more about the number one most active law firm representing VC-backed companies going public, |
1:51.4 | head over to coolly.com and also check out coolly go.com. |
1:55.3 | However, that's quite enough from me, so now I'm very, very excited to hand over to David Heinemah Hansen, founder and CTO at Basecamp. |
2:02.1 | Three, two, one, zero. |
2:07.4 | You have now arrived at your destination. |
2:10.7 | David, my word, it is such a pleasure to have you on the show today. |
2:13.3 | I've been an admirer of yours for a long time from afar on Twitter, so thank you so much for joining me. Sure. It's my pleasure to be here. I would they love to kick off today, David, with a little bit |
2:21.1 | on you. So tell me, how did you make your way into the world of tech and startups? And what was that |
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