Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
No is easier to do. Yes is easier to say.
It's simple until you make it complicated.
The design is done when the problem goes away.
A company gets better at the things it practices.
You don't need to win every medal to be successful.
Projections are just bullshit. They're just guesses.
I live in Chicago but own some property up in Wisconsin.
Remind yourself that other people's jobs aren't so simple.
"Easy" is a word that's used to describe other people's jobs.
What's bad, boring, and barely read all over? Business writing.
What you do is what matters, not what you think or say or plan.
A fixed deadline and a flexible scope are the crucial combination.
The best feature of a product should really be the customer service.
Statistics rarely drive me. Feelings, intuition, and gut instinct do.
Every time something slips through the cracks, the cracks get bigger.
We also get thousands of suggestions. The default answer is always no.
The reality is, risk is variable. Those in the financial world know it.
Sustained exhaustion is not a rite of passage. It's a mark of stupidity.
When it comes to making decisions, I'm not what you'd call a numbers guy.
Unless you are a fortune-teller, long-term business planning is a fantasy.
I'm generally risk averse, and most great entrepreneurs I know are as well.
In almost every case, cutting things back is a way of favoring what is left.
To say that the grocery business is cutthroat would be a major understatement.
When time, money, and results are on the line, it's easy for tension to build.
A computer doesn't have a mind of its own - it needs someone else's to function.
Success isn't about being the biggest. It's about letting the right size find you.
We think of computers as smart and powerful machines. But your goldfish is smarter.
How can you expect someone to get a good day's work if they are interrupted all day?
Very, very few people actually have long stretches of uninterrupted time at an office.
If you care about your product, you should care just as much about how you describe it.
Your company is a product. Who are its customers? Your employees, who use it to do their jobs.
Sometimes you get lucky and things are as easy as you had imagined, but that's rarely the case.
It's incredibly hard to get meaningful work done when your workday has been shredded into work moments.
A diverse customer base helps insulate you; a few large accounts can leave you vulnerable to their whims.
Unlike a goldfish, a computer can't really do anything without you telling it exactly what you want it to do.
Entrepreneurs love to view risk as binary. The more you put on the line, the greater the potential for reward.
I've found that nurturing untapped potential is far more exhilarating than finding someone who has already peaked.
When we launched the first version of Basecamp in 2004, we decided to build software for small companies just like us.
I like to think of myself as a leader whose door is always open. But I recently learned that an open door isn't enough.
Before you dismiss a beginner's work, remember how much you sucked when you started. You probably sucked worse, actually.
Bottom line: If you can't spare some time to give your employees the chance to wow you, you'll never get the best from them.
When meetings are the norm - the first resort, the go-to tool to discuss, debate, and solve every problem - they no longer work.
One of the secret benefits of using remote workers is that the work itself becomes the yardstick to judge someone's performance.
Hiring people is like making friends. Pick good ones, and they'll enrich your life. Make bad choices, and they'll bring you down.
Selling to small businesses and selling to enterprises take two very different approaches with two very different kinds of people.
Deadlines are great for customers because having one means they get a product, not just a promise that someday they'll get a product.
The only two people who can give you real feedback about your product are people who just purchased it and people who have just canceled.
People pulling 16-hour days on a regular basis are exhausted. They're just too tired to notice that their work has suffered because of it.
By rationing in-person meetings, their stature is elevated to that of a rare treat. They become something to be savored, something special.
Great people want to work on things that matter. Inevitably, a great person working on imaginary work will turn into an unsatisfied person.