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My First Million

DHH: $100M+ Advice That'll Piss Off Every Business Guru

My First Million

Hubspot

Investing, Entrepreneurship, Business

4.72.9K Ratings

🗓️ 17 March 2026

⏱️ 78 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Get Sam's guide to run your life like a $100M biz: https://clickhubspot.com/kdmv Episode 806: Sam Parr ( https://x.com/theSamParr ) and Shaan Puri ( https://x.com/ShaanVP ) talk to David Heinemeier Hansson ( https://x.com/dhh ) about AI,  being wrong in public, and taking on Apple.  — Show Notes:  (0:00) How to stand out (7:48) not giving a damn (9:57) liquid vs crystalized intelligence (12:03) constraints breed creativity (18:18) being publicly wrong (24:27) taste vs data (33:25) Being in awe of Shopify  (41:05) how David uses AI (47:49) What won't work today (51:23) who David admires (1:00:13) Longevity decisions (1:07:09) Taking on the App Store and Google — Check Out Shaan's Stuff: • Shaan's weekly email - https://www.shaanpuri.com  • Visit https://www.somewhere.com/mfm to hire worldwide talent like Shaan and get $500 off for being an MFM listener. Hire developers, assistants, marketing pros, sales teams and more for 80% less than US equivalents. • Mercury - Need a bank for your company? Go check out Mercury (mercury.com). Shaan uses it for all of his companies! Mercury is a financial technology company, not an FDIC-insured bank. Banking services provided by Choice Financial Group, Column, N.A., and Evolve Bank & Trust, Members FDIC • I run all my newsletters on Beehiiv and you should too + we're giving away $10k to our favorite newsletter, check it out: beehiiv.com/mfm-challenge — Check Out Sam's Stuff: • Hampton - https://www.joinhampton.com/ • Ideation Bootcamp - https://www.ideationbootcamp.co/ • Copy That - https://copythat.com • Hampton Wealth Survey - https://joinhampton.com/wealth • Sam’s List - http://samslist.co/ My First Million is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by HubSpot Media // Production by Arie Desormeaux // Editing by Ezra Bakker Trupiano /

Transcript

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0:00.0

Are you able to give any ballpark for previous numbers?

0:02.7

Let's just say ridiculous. I think that's a good ballpark, right? I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off. On the road, let's try. When you are introducing yourselves, what do you even say? Because you've done so many different things that I don't even know, like, what you take credit for most, you like hang your hat on?

0:23.0

Well, it all depends on the audience. If I'm talking to a bunch of car nerds, I talk about winning Lamont. If I talk to a bunch of programmers, it's all about Ruby and Rails. And if it's a bunch of entrepreneurs, it's usually about building Basecamp and 37 signals. So, have you ever said Basecamp's revenue?

0:39.3

No, we've never disclosed to full revenues nor full profits.

0:43.3

I think we've said tens of millions or something. I don't even know.

0:48.3

That's one of the great privileges of being a private company. It certainly served as well for many, many years when we had the entire project

0:54.7

management space in SaaS to ourselves. And we were laughing all the way to the bank because

1:00.3

clearly someone else must have realized this was a highly profitable, not even niche, but category

1:06.5

of software. And it just took a decade until anyone else woke up to the idea that this

1:13.8

could be a good business, and then we had competition.

1:16.9

So very much enjoyed the privilege of being a U.S. private company and not having to disclose

1:24.3

that goddamn thing.

1:29.9

Sam, have you ever been to – so if you go to 37 Signal's website, Sam, have you ever clicked at the bottom? There's this little tab that just says

1:34.6

1999. Have you ever seen this? No, I'm going to it now. What's insane? It's amazing. So,

1:39.9

so in general, I feel like you guys have done an amazing job of like planting your flag in the

1:44.1

ground. Like, yeah, this is what we believe. And rework was a fantastic book. Your website right now is

1:49.1

basically kind of like rework. It's just a 30 chapters of shit we believe rather than trying to sell

1:55.3

you on our software. Like, let me tell you our philosophy as founders and entrepreneurs. But if you

1:59.7

click 1999, Sam, what do you see?

2:01.7

I see a website, a page that looks sort of like it's from the year 1999, and it's all white,

2:07.4

and it says 37 signals manifesto, and it's a 37 chapter book in plain text.

2:13.4

And there's chapters like chapter 24, my cousin's buddy, and it says, my cousin's buddy is a web

...

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