Basecamp's Multi-Product Risk

Jason Fried shares how Basecamp is taking on new risks by developing multiple products simultaneously for the first time in their 25-year history.

"My job as a founder is to inject risk into the business. Most people at your company's job is to manage risk, to keep their job, to not push too hard. But you can get away with certain things that other people simply can't because you own the damn place.

This year we're going to do 4 products. We're about to start working on 2 products simultaneously which we've never done before. We've never built 2 things at the same time. We've got different models - we've got SaaS, we've got all these things we're going to do. We're really off balance in a really healthy way because we're doing a bunch of new stuff.

It makes some people internally nervous, understandably so. They're like 'well this is different now, we're kind of off balance.' But that's how I have to run the business, otherwise I will become bored. And at that point, it won't serve me or the business well if I'm in charge and I'm bored."