It’s Simple Until It’s Not

Several weeks ago, one of Silicon Valley’s most influential companies imploded in a controversy that can teach us a lot about changes (aka revolutions) that are coming to all of our companies and workplaces, and how (not) to handle them.

Ok, who is Basecamp and what the hell happened?

Basecamp is a 20 year old software company with a customer base of over 16 million, a valuation of somewhere around 100 billion dollars (as of 2019) and a small but productive team of 57, as of last week that is. Their small number of employees might trigger many a business owner to question their legitimacy, but this is precisely what has made them so special. They build productivity software and as such have built their brand, including several hugely acclaimed business books (one of which is a NYT Bestseller), on a solid foundation of keeping things simple, keeping things small and still being wildly profitable. “It’s simple until you make it complicated” is one of their catchphrases. In the books by the two founders and in their prolific socially liberal and ostensibly progressive social media posts, they advocate for radical things like quality over innovation, sustainable growth over quick exits and agile, and remote teams over shiny big offices. Much of what they stand for has resonated strongly with the more progressive wing of the startup and business world, who believe that a more equitable startup and business world is possible, who believe in stakeholder capitalism over shareholder capitalism and who are pushing for widespread transformation to create a more people-centric work culture. 

And so it came as a jaw-dropping great shock to read the public statement that one of the founders, Jason Fried, posted on his blog last month. Fried refers at the beginning of the article to the complications inherent in building a company in which human beings work: “We all want different somethings. Some slightly different, some substantially.” So far, so obvious. The conclusion that he draws, however, is not so obvious: “Companies, however, must settle the collective difference, pick a point, and navigate towards somewhere, lest they get stuck circling nowhere.” He goes on to describe the point, or points, towards which basecamp will now be navigating, including the following radical measures: “No more societal and political discussions on our company Basecamp account”,“No more committees”, “No more lingering or dwelling on past decisions”, “No more 360 reviews”.

Read the rest here.