What Jason Fried Learned from 26 Years of Building Great Products

37signals makes tens of millions in profit every year but ⁠Jason Fried⁠ isn’t all that interested in running a business. Instead, he cares most about making great products—like ⁠Basecamp⁠, ⁠HEY⁠, and ⁠Ruby on Rails⁠—products that are centered around a single, coherent idea. These products are complete wholes, where each piece matters—like a Frank Lloyd Wright house or a vintage car. But how do you create products like that? In this conversation, we talk to Jason about what two decades of building 37signals has been like—and how to build products that have soul. If you found this episode interesting, please like, subscribe, comment, and share! Want even more? Sign up for Every to unlock our ultimate guide to prompting ChatGPT here: ⁠https://every.ck.page/ultimate-guide-to-prompting-chatgpt⁠. It’s usually only for paying subscribers, but you can get it here for free. To hear more from Dan Shipper: Subscribe to Every: ⁠https://every.to/subscribe⁠ Follow him on X: ⁠https://twitter.com/danshipper⁠ Listen to Working Smarter wherever you get your podcasts, or visit ⁠workingsmarter.ai⁠. Timestamps: 00:00:00 - Start 00:00:32 - Introduction 00:02:06 - What architecture, watches, and cars teach us about software 00:10:54 - How Jason thinks AI plays into product-building 00:20:58 - How developers at 37signals use AI 00:25:47 - Jason’s biggest realization after 26 years of running 37signals 00:29:58 - Where Jason thinks luck shaped his career 00:32:41 - What Jason would do if he were graduated into the AI boom 00:37:22 - Dan asks for advice on running a non-traditional company like Every 00:46:39 - Why staying true to yourself is the only way to build something lasting 00:49:38 - Wholeness as the north star for building products—and companies Links to resources mentioned in the episode: Jason Fried: ⁠Jason Fried (@jasonfried)⁠, ⁠Jason Fried⁠ More about 37Signals: ⁠37signals⁠ The book about architecture by Christopher Alexander: ⁠The Timeless Way of Building⁠

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Running a business is not that interesting to me. I really fancy myself more as someone who makes products. It's like you just get a feel for things that are a whole, a single piece, a single idea, a single concept executed so beautifully. You get a feel for that. When you're running stuff like that, it is a spiritual experience.

• 0:32Dan Shipper?

  Jason, welcome to the show.

• 0:34Speaker 00

  Good to be here, Dan.

• 0:35Dan Shipper?

  So I have a very important question to start with. What watch are you wearing?

• 0:41Speaker 00

  Today, are you a watch guy?

• 0:43Dan Shipper?

  I am a watch guy.

• 0:44Speaker 00

  All right. So today I'm wearing, I'm embarrassed because I don't know the reference number. I don't remember exactly. It's a vintage Hoyer.

• 0:52Dan Shipper?

  Wow.

• 0:53Speaker 00

  I think it's called a 1163 or something like that from 1974. And I dig it because it just, I like, I just like the color. I like the case. It's kind of that 70s style, like tannin case. And then just the really bright orange. It's kind of a neat, neat piece. It's nothing like remarkable, but really kind of cool. I've been enjoying it for a while, so.

• 1:14Dan Shipper?

  It's beautiful. And.

• 1:17Speaker 00

  What about you?

• 1:18Dan Shipper?

  Well, I'm, I'm wearing a Sub, which I bought for my every five year anniversary.

• 1:26Speaker 00

  You buy a new watch?

• 1:27Dan Shipper?

  Just, yeah, just for like, you know, I've been doing it for five years.

• 1:31Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:31Dan Shipper?

  I'm going to mark the occasion.

• 1:33Speaker 00

  Nice. Nice job. Did you get it from an AD or did you have to get it pre-owned or?

• 1:37Dan Shipper?

  I got it pre-owned.

• 1:38Speaker 00

  Okay, yeah, they're hard to find, unfortunately.

• 1:40Dan Shipper?

  Yeah. So, but there's something here, which is like, I think you have this interesting aesthetic appreciation for things like watches and cars and stuff like that, that I think also you can see in the products that you make. And the products you make are so like well crafted on every level. Curious like what the, what the relationship is or what the overlaps are.

• 2:04Speaker 00

  The overlaps, I would say I'm inspired by a lot of things that are not software. So we can start there. I'm inspired by watches. One of the things I like about watches is that. They're basically all the exact same thing for the most part, yet there's like a thousand different designs, you know, and I think that's interesting. I mean, there's of course different versions, but really it's like, you know, there's a few hands pointing at a few numbers and some that can do a few other things, but for the most part, it's like a round base on your wrist to some degree and like, wow, there's all different ways to do that. And I think that's always been interesting to me. Cars are full of details, materials, how things come together, how things feel tactically, you know, the

• 2:49Speaker 00

  tactileness of something, the ergonomics of it, where is it, is everything within reach? I'm just fascinated when I sit in a car that has really good ergonomics and you could tell someone really thought about it versus someone sort of drew it. Like there's this sense of like, oh, someone drew this out, there's a blueprint here and then they put it together versus like someone kind of probably, I'm guessing, I don't know, but like sat in the seat and thought about what it would be like to drive this. Same thing is true for great architecture. So I love, architecture is probably my, my really true, I've realized like my real true love in the arts, let's say. And being in a great space, in a great room, in a great building of any, of any sort, is just kind of almost

• 3:32Speaker 00

  like a spiritual experience for me. Just the way the proportions are and the light comes in and the colors and the textures and the way materials meet and the scale, it's just all those things. I just, I love the feeling that it gives me, I would say. Same thing is true for being in a, in a, in a car like inside or outside and then also like a watch. And I try to want to build products that give me a similar feeling, understanding that there's huge limitations. I mean, we're talking about like a flat screen and pixels. So I can't bring different materials to the table, you know, but you can bring a sense of scale and you can think about it in terms of what if it was a physical

• 4:12Speaker 00

  object to some degree. And I just, I don't know, I try to find that place where I'm, I feel a deep satisfaction with, with what I'm looking at and using in the same way I would if I was to stand in a nice building or be in a nice car or, or something like that. Trying to find that feeling. There's not really an equivalency here, but there's a sense of, yeah, that feels right. And that's what we try to do with the products.

• 4:39Dan Shipper?

  What's the last building you were in that made you feel that way and why?

• 4:42Speaker 00

  I was in a building in Big Sur, California.

• 4:53Speaker 00

  It was, do you know what Esselin is? Yeah, so I was at Esselin. I'd never been, first time I was ever there. And there's this really beautiful meditation, circular around meditation hut building, which is down by this river. And I've been in many, many buildings that I've really appreciated. And this is just maybe the last one I could think of that was like that, where I just walked into it and I said, ah, this just feels good. There's something about the scale, the space, the materiality, the radius of things. I don't know what it was, a lot of things and the location just made me feel good. Like this is the right building for right here.

• 5:38Speaker 00

  Things I tend to like, just like buildings made with very honest materials. So that I actually also enjoy looking at modern architecture and some, being in some modern architecture, but I find most of it to be, oftentimes it looks good in pictures and not as good in person. Meanwhile, a lot of older buildings or buildings made of more natural materials feel better in person than they look like, than they look in pictures. And so I like the in-person feeling. That's what I kind of judge something by.

• 6:10Dan Shipper?

  That is, that is really interesting. One of the things that you said just now about enjoying being in a car, for example, that someone had obviously sat in as they designed it.

• 6:25Speaker 00

  At least I think they did. I don't know.

• 6:28Dan Shipper?

  I think that, you know, you can kind of tell in a certain way, did it come from a blueprint or did it come from experience? And the, the thing that it makes me think of is I know you're a big Christopher Alexander guy. And he has this book that I read in college when I first met you called The Timeless Way of Building.

• 6:46Speaker 00

  Mm hmm. Yeah, great book.

• 6:48Dan Shipper?

  It's a great book, and I I literally have not read this in fifteen years, so I'm probably gonna butcher it. But I do remember he makes this distinction between, I think what he calls self-conscious and unself-conscious design. And unself-conscious design is like where design starts and it's and he makes this analogy to the way that people in primitive societies might build their house. Like, they're literally just building a hut as they live in it, and they're patching holes as they come up. And there there's a very direct feedback loop between the person living in a space and feeling the like tensions in the space and then resolving them versus, you know,

• 7:29Dan Shipper?

  now we have specialized specialized people, architects, who are like making plans for a thing they're they're not gonna really be inside of and don't necessarily understand the people who are in the buildings. And in many cases, is that where the where some of this comes from?

• 7:44Speaker 00

  Yeah, you know, I'm just trying to think. Ah, I do. So I have been on this like book kick for finding books. This isn't, these are not the only two, but these are two that I bought recently, which are exactly what we're kind of talking about. This is like a book of of handmade handmade buildings, non-architects-designed buildings, just spaces that people made themselves.

• 8:13Speaker 00

  You know, weird neat things, you know, just like. And and and some of these things, like, look at like, look at the inside of this crazy ass thing. And this is like a geodesic dome kind of thing, but you know, you can imagine like,

• 8:28Speaker 00

  it would you'd love to be in a space like this. It was just, there's something about the feeling of these spaces. And so now this is one of the books. This is another great book called Handmade Houses. And it's it's similar style, wonderful pictures of like.

• 8:46Speaker 00

  Like this is a crazy ass like kitchen sink setup here. You know, just like, but look at the, look at the, the panels are like diagonal in the back and there's just like kind of stuff everywhere. And this is not about it being a mess, but like this is, you know, someone probably had, was able to find like windows from other buildings and, you know, pieces of glass and they just made it all work, right? And I've been in a number of buildings like this, not like these, not these specific buildings, but there is a real soul and character that comes through in a space when someone who wasn't an architect designed it just for living, for themselves. That's not to say there aren't great architects and there are, and there are amazing buildings

• 9:29Speaker 00

  built by amazing architects and I love many, many buildings built by many great architects. John Lautner is a great example of someone who I just love, love his houses. Number of great architects. Anyway, but there's still for me a charm and a soul, stepping into a space that was just put together by someone with like a crafty, creative vision. And even if they don't even have that, but just kind of sewed it together essentially. And I don't know what it is, but it's, it's similar to the Christopher Alexander point. I think, you know, his whole point is like the best architects are the people essentially who need the spaces. And, and, you know, again, there of course were incredibly important buildings built

• 10:14Speaker 00

  by great architects too. But I don't know, I think there's something to it and I know it's an acquired taste. Like I've been through some of these spaces with people who don't share my point of view and they're like, what is this place to fucking dump? Like, yeah, I mean, it is in a way, but it's a good one. And there's, I don't know, they, they really, and I don't know what it is, but I really like them and I don't know how to make things like this, but, but I really like them and I, I pay more, I pay more and more attention to things that are built that way. Than the things that you might, uh, someone that the average person might look at and go, that's amazing.

• 10:54Dan Shipper?

  So we've made it 10 minutes into this podcast without talking about AI, which I think is probably but I, but I'm going to bring up AI because um, there's something about this that reminds me of some, some of the things that I've been noticing. So inside of every we um, incubate products and uh, we have four that we run internally now in addition to the, the newsletter that we run. And um, there's something different about building products in AI. One, because um, the game board has been reset in a lot of ways. And so everything is, everything is new. So it's this uh,

• 11:34Dan Shipper?

  it's this really, I think, unique time to build for yourself because anything that you want probably hasn't been done.

• 11:43Dan Shipper?

  And then you also have all these tools that make it easy for anybody to build a thing. Um, like it's way easier to just build a prototype than it, than it ever used to be. And so, you know, all of our products are built by one person. And they're uh, and, and they're building for themselves and first, and then building for everybody inside of every next. And then building for the audience after that. And um, there's something about that. I mean, I, I think we aspire to have our products be a little bit more polished than um, than, than some of the houses, house examples.

• 12:21Dan Shipper?

  And but, and there is something about that where it's like, it, it's a uniquely good time to be building things that you live inside of and, and can give to other people.

• 12:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, I think one of the differences, of course, like with these house parallels, like these people built these houses for themselves to live in, in their own lives. A product you usually, usually would build for, I mean, you could build for yourself, to your point. And that's what's really wonderful about AI building right now. I think most, most tools that are going to come out of this are actually very personal tools.

• 12:53Speaker 00

  But generally a product, if you want, if you're a product company and you make products to make a living, you make them for other people. And so when you make things for other people, it's a little bit different than like hobbling together something for yourself. And this is, I think, one of the really interesting things about, that I don't really see actually frankly discussed enough. There's a lot of bragging about how fast people can make things these days. Um, and then I go, make things for who? And that's where I think there's a breakdown because I think you can make really, you can make things quickly for yourself. And I think that's incredibly valuable. And this is how I got started in software. I used to make FileMaker Pro databases. For those who don't know what that is, this used to be, I mean, maybe FileMaker Pro still exists,

• 13:36Speaker 00

  but it's like a graphical user interface to basically make a database. And you could layer your own graphics on it to build an interface. And it's essentially a product that you make for yourself to store things and look things up, which is essentially what most products are anyway. All the backend stuff was provided by FileMaker. You could drag in these tools and put your UI around it. And these are just tools I made for myself. And FileMaker was kind of, I didn't know how to program, but I could figure out how to make FileMaker and do some scripting and stuff and kind of pull things together, which is essentially what people can do with AI now, even faster and better in a lot of ways. So I think that's incredibly good and wonderful. I am still currently skeptical, but optimistic,

• 14:17Speaker 00

  but skeptical at the moment that people are going to be building really great tools for others purely with AI. While you can basically build a great tool for yourself purely with AI. But once you have multiple people involved and all the edge cases that come with multiple users and people who don't know how a system works like you do, or have different approaches, it can break down pretty quickly. And that's really the art of product development is like edge cases and conditions and all these little small things that you need to, all these little different pieces of fabric you need to sew together so you can't see the seams. And it's easy to do when it's just for you because you can kind of live with things

• 15:01Speaker 00

  that don't work so well, but it's hard to do for others.

• 15:03Dan Shipper?

  I mean, I definitely agree in one sense that.

• 15:08Dan Shipper?

  You know, I've seen everyone on our team, technical or non-technical, build things. And if you're non-technical, you can definitely build something and like get it working. But getting it to be something that we would launch or something that people, even people internally would use is very hard. And usually, at least at this point, unless it's something like self-contained, so like something in a cloud artifact or something like that, it's not going to be something that other people are going to use.

• 15:36Dan Shipper?

  However, I definitely don't agree in the, if you are a professional developer

• 15:44Dan Shipper?

  and you're building with these tools, like no one inside of every is code, is looking at the code, is hand coding anything. Everybody is using these tools to, to build and, you know, deploy and like basically, you know, the entire product development lifecycle.

• 16:03Dan Shipper?

  And I think it helps with all those specific things, like all the, all the little edge cases and all the little seams. If you're using, like you have to obviously use it in a way that is conducive to that, but

• 16:17Dan Shipper?

  I just sort of see it as, in the same way that, you know, when I was, when I was growing up, people were sort of pretty suspicious of scripting languages and Ruby and JavaScript. See, that's the same kind of thing with English. And it changes the like substrate of what you're programming on, you're programming in English. But you're, you're writing in English about all of the different implementation details, almost like pseudocode. And that's where the programming happens, which I think is a total change. So I don't know how much, you know, how much AI adoption inside of 37 signals you have for this kind of thing, but it's, it's been really crazy to watch.

• 16:53Speaker 00

  It is crazy to watch. I mean, let me ask you this.

• 16:58Speaker 00

  Wouldn't you think there'd be a massive proliferation of new products that are like making real waves?

• 17:10Speaker 00

  Given the proposed or the the the the the tooling that we have, the AI tooling that we have now, where it's always like, well, you know, I can make things super fast. I can just tell it what I want it to do. Like, where are the breakthrough products, aside from the the AI tools themselves, right? Where are the where are the tools that are one order down, was the second order, the ones that are being made that are breakthrough products? Given the fact that technically you can imagine launching hundreds of, a company could launch hundreds of products as as as as the concept's being pitched, as the technology's being pitched. You can have an unlimited number of agents coding and making and building and the whole thing.

• 17:54Speaker 00

  I just, I would imagine at this point that you would see some breakthrough standalone products that are not the AI tools themselves, but are the result of them. Maybe I haven't seen, maybe I'm just, I'm unaware. I'm genuinely curious, like, where are they? What are they? And if they're not out yet, why, given the promise of the technology?

• 18:16Dan Shipper?

  I think I think that's a, I think that's really a good question. You know, I don't have the numbers on like the number of AI, you know, products that have to build and all that kind of stuff, but I can tell you just from my own personal experience. So we have 15 full-time people and we run four software. We've run four apps inside of every, each of them is run by a single person. And each of them has between thousands and tens of thousands of users. And, you know, all together, like, the whole thing is doing, you know, in the millions of ARR. And that would be total, like, what we do would be totally impossible without AI at this scale.

• 18:56Dan Shipper?

  Right? Like, I could see if we had one gigantic product and that, like, one big cash cow product, and then we could, like, invest a lot of the money into building other things. Like, we could probably do that. So I think, you know, that's a, that's a model that you guys have done really well. For us, we are, have been able to do that at a much smaller scale, at a much lower revenue number, and it seems to actually work, which is kind of crazy.

• 19:21Speaker 00

  It's great. I'm glad to hear that. Yeah, yeah.

• 19:24Dan Shipper?

  And I think um so but I like I don't I wouldn't necessarily call any of our products yet breakout products. But like we'll see, hopefully.

• 19:33Speaker 00

  I hope they do. Yeah, I hope they become that.

• 19:35Dan Shipper?

  But they're certainly they're certainly growing really fast and signs seem to be like exciting. I also think that um there's something there's something other than just technology that it like is a bottleneck here, which is, you know, think about the Internet and like, you know, the late nineties. It's like, where are the breakthrough companies? They actually existed. They were just much. They were pretty small. Um, like Amazon was around. It's just like I just hadn't hit it yet. Um, and I think uh I think there's also something going on where there is at least in my view, programming has changed fundamentally in the last like three months.

• 20:20Dan Shipper?

  And it and it it makes a big difference if your whole engineering organization is attuned to that and is coding in that way. And if you have one person or two senior people who are like, nah, like maybe like halfway or whatever, it's it's still you still don't get the same kind of benefit. It takes a long time for small companies that can just start from the ground up doing it this way to actually get big. It's it's we're still in the way early innings is is is the is my response.

• 20:50Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah, I mean, because yeah, I I can see that in our own company. We we're not, you know,

• 20:58Speaker 00

  I would say that our our um, you know, uh, our programmers like the craft of writing code by hand, and they will probably all be that way through their career. Like, that's sort of how they grew up, what they like. They're they would, you know, i- if you're a poet, you want to write poetry. And so that that's the kind of programmers there. So we're not a very AI-heavy organization in terms of writing code.

• 21:25Speaker 00

  Our programmers use it to look things up all the time, to learn new things, to look up API calls. There's a bunch of ways we use it around the edges, but we don't really use it to write code very often. There's some boilerplate stuff and some stuff that can be sped up even on the on the front end side. It's easier to do some of those things or have the system do some of those things. But we've also found that it does sort of atrophy the skills that you had. If you have the skills that you like to use and you don't use them, just like anything else, you begin to lose those skills. And so if you like those skills, it's a delicate, tricky thing to balance. Every organization's different, whatever, obviously. And to your point, like if everyone comes up in a certain

• 22:09Speaker 00

  way, where everyone is sort of dictated to do certain things in a certain way, you're going to have a different type of organization. So I'm there's all sorts of different ways to do things. And I'm curious to see how this whole thing happens over time. I just the thing that I get, I this is just my, I don't know, my general pushback about anything where I hear a lot of hype around around it. I'm fully on board with with with a lot of the incredible promise of AI and I use it for my own personal like education essentially in learning things and whatever. But this idea that like I'm hearing from people like, well, I can spin up, you know, 100 agents or whatever they want to do. And I want

• 22:53Speaker 00

  to do this, and I can do this, and all the things and everything's changing. And then I look at the market, I look at the the product market, and I don't see the result of all the promises being delivered at the public layer, essentially. So like at the where the where the products hit the market, I'm not seeing an enormous upswell of options in a category or something like that. So I'm just curious about the buffer there. I think to your point, making things internally, making things for individuals, learning all these things, also speeding up all sorts of other development for existing products,

• 23:32Speaker 00

  great. But I'm just wondering where the the rubber is going to hit the road here, really? And given the hype train, you're like, when is it going to get to the station? Because you'd think at this point, there would just be a thousandfold more things being launched all the time. Given that this is working 24/7 and it's you don't you don't need humans to do a lot of this stuff anymore. So I don't maybe I'm just late to the game and are not paying attention, but I've just there's something in it that doesn't feel right to me yet. And I would love to see the opposite of what I'm saying is true currently. I'd love to see a thousand more options for everything.

• 24:11Dan Shipper?

  This episode is brought to you by Working Smarter, a podcast about AI and modern work brought to you by Dropbox. We're all trying to make sense of how AI will change our lives and our relationships and of course, how we work. That's where Working Smarter comes in. Each episode features real people who are actually using these tools and talking about what it really looks like to work and live with AI. One guest is a chef who uses AI to make his prep work less of a grind, so he can be more creative in the kitchen. Another episode features a group of scientists who are using AI to find long lost shipwrecks in the Great Lakes, so that we can better understand our past. Then there's people like Wayne, who's the head of marketing at a small batch whiskey distillery. Wayne has a small team and they're competing against

• 24:54Dan Shipper?

  big brands with big budgets, but AI is helping them punch way above their weight. Working Smarter goes beyond the headlines to show you how you can use AI to do more of what you do best, and so you can work smarter, too. Listen to Working Smarter wherever you get your podcasts, or visit workingsmarter.ai. And now, back to the episode. You should come hang out with us. Open invite, come hang out online, or come to the office. I'd love to show you some of this stuff, because I think it would be interesting to you.

• 25:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure.

• 25:24Dan Shipper?

  But something that I'm curious about is you've been you've been running the company for like 20 years.

• 25:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, 26, yeah.

• 25:32Dan Shipper?

  Six, that's a long time.

• 25:33Speaker 00

  It is. It's a long time.

• 25:36Dan Shipper?

  What have you, I guess, I don't, I, you know, the longest I've run a business is this one. So I'm like, almost six years in. Many, many years to go, but I'm curious, like, how has your experience changed over the last, you know, 26 years? And how are you different now than when you started?

• 25:55Speaker 00

  I think, I mean, probably in all sorts of different ways. I think one of the more fundamental things I've real I've come to realize is that

• 26:07Speaker 00

  Running a business is not that interesting to me. Like, the business side of things, like, I'm fascinated by it to some degree, you know, like, oh, we have an organization, and we have people here, and hiring, and all the things you do to run a business, and pricing models, and all this. It's interesting, but really, to me, a business is just necessary to build products, and to have an organization that can survive. And so, I find myself less interested in business than I think I was 15 years ago, where I think I was more pumped about business, and product. But now, I just like to make products. And like, the business sort of is not, it's not something I think that much about.

• 26:52Speaker 00

  So I think that's a fundamental thing, and maybe, maybe that's a problem. I don't know. I mean, you could say, like, well, someone else should be in that role, who's like, just all about growing businesses and building businesses, and maybe, maybe that's correct. But I just don't really care that much for that side of the effort equation. I just like to make things. And luckily, we have a Basecamp, which is a very, very popular product that generates a lot of cash, that gives us a lot of flexibility, and allows us to make a lot of other things also, and take a few more swings at the plate, or the ball, I should say, and see if we can hit some more.

• 27:33Speaker 00

  But, I don't know, I just like to make stuff. And I think, like, I, you know, I, yeah, I'm an entrepreneur, obviously, because I run a business, and I start a business, and I'm in charge of the business. But like, I really fancy myself more as someone who makes products. And the entrepreneurship piece of it is like, part of what's required to do that also, you know? Which is why, like, if I, if I wasn't doing this, I would not start another business. Like, starting a business is not exciting or interesting to me at all, actually. Making things is.

• 28:05Dan Shipper?

  Kind of reminds me that John Mayer has this quote that's like, I just write lyrics because like guitar would sound weird without them, you know, like I really just want to play guitar.

• 28:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, I dig that. That's, yeah, that's a great way of putting it. He's really skilled with words. That's a great way of putting it, actually. And that's how I actually feel about it. And that's a really wonderful way to think about it, which is like, I have to have a business. We have to take in revenue. I have to have employees. We have to provide health insurance. We have to provide an organization for them, you know, all the things like, it's not that I don't like it. I just like, it doesn't drive me. I just want to make the music. I just want to make the products, you know. So that's one thing I would say. I think there's just also, you know, a shift in, you know, when you're younger, you're cockier and way more sure of yourself, like in some ways.

• 28:59Speaker 00

  And of course, as you get older, you're more sure of yourself in other ways that are, I think, better ways. So I think, I remember there's something that horrified me once when I was, I wrote about this recently somewhere. It was at startup school. I don't know when this was, the Paul Graham thing or the Y Combinator thing. And someone asked me, I remember I was on stage, I was one of the speakers and had some Q and A. And someone asked me like, what do you think about luck? I'm like, I don't believe in luck, like, I don't believe in luck. And I'm just like, like, what an asshole I was to say that. I could come to realize that it's almost all luck. I mean, you've got to do the work and you've got to be good and all those things. But there's a lot of people who do the work and there's a lot of people who are good.

• 29:44Speaker 00

  Luck, timing, all sorts of things come into play here that you don't control. And I kind of give those things a lot more credit today than I probably used to.

• 29:51Dan Shipper?

  What do you think is like the biggest luck factor in your career?

• 29:56Speaker 00

  Timing. I'd say a few things. So, timing. I just happened to be born at a certain time and got out of college in 96 and got to do a little bit of internet stuff. You know, my junior and senior in college, 95, 96, when Netscape was just hitting. And before that, I did BBS stuff and did a lot of tech-based telecommunications stuff. But then the graphical browser came and that was sort of in the right place at the right time. I'd learned HTML and I was hungry, I was young, I was interested in computers, and this internet thing came around. And I got a degree in finance. I didn't want

• 30:38Speaker 00

  to go work at a bank. So I'm like, man, I can do this internet thing, I think. No one else knows how to do it either. It's brand new. Starting from scratch, like, how often does something so new happen where no one knows anything? And then you're like, even playing, everyone's on even ground. So it's just really, I got lucky there. And then, I mean, there's so much luck along the way. I was thinking about this recently, just people I've met. And of course, meeting David, my business partner now. That was just a chance encounter online. And then getting a chance to do meetup.com, the first version of Meetup. Scott Hyferman, this guy from New York who I didn't know, he reached

• 31:21Speaker 00

  out to me and gave us an opportunity to design meetup.com. And that introduced me to a guy named Andrew Mason, who did Groupon. And I got on the board of Groupon and got some really interesting insights into a whole bunch of different kinds of businesses at different scales and met some interesting people there. There's all these things. There's so many different dots to connect. So I think it's all one big ball of luck. But there's certainly moments that I had absolutely nothing to do with, which is just like, being born in 1974 meant that I graduated college in 96, which is when the internet happened, the public internet happened.

• 31:56Dan Shipper?

  What do you think?

• 31:59Speaker 00

  Actually, and the other thing I would say, before that, when I was like 13 or something, my neighbor got a Mac. And he's like, come on over, check this thick computer out I got. I'm like, sure. And I went over to his house and it blew me away. He had like Microsoft Flight Simulator, it was like a Mac SE, black and white.

• 32:19Speaker 00

  Floored me and like that's how I got interested in computers, basically at that point and that that was just a lucky chance that I lived next to this guy who got this computer and who knows, right? All these things are that. So it's a bunch of things. Obviously, some moments are spikier than others in terms of their importance, perhaps. But you know, if the early ones didn't happen, the later ones wouldn't happen. So it's all related.

• 32:40Dan Shipper?

  Yeah. What do you think like 22, 23 year old Jason would have thought if instead of graduating into the dot com boom, you graduated into the into into AI right now? Like, what would you have been into it? How would you have felt?

• 32:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'm sure I would. And I am interested interested in it and curious, but I'm not like of it, you know, I'd have to admit that I'm not of it, you know?

• 33:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think that I was, you know, I was just a curious kid who likes to like to make things. And so, you know, the things I learned to make were like, you know, websites from, you know, writing HTML from scratch and then CSS from scratch and some of that stuff, right? Those are the tools of the day. Had AI been around then, that would have been the tool of the day, most certainly. And I'd probably be doing that instead. And and then, you know, I think that's all. And if I was born 100 years prior to that, I'd be, I don't know what the heck I'd be doing with with whatever I could find. But I needed I needed to make something. I clearly needed to make something and I was just going to use what I could. Now, I don't know how to like work with wood or or metal or ceramic

• 33:47Speaker 00

  or any of those things, but I could have had I grown up in an environment where those were the things. So I just kind of fell into this, you know? And I think back then also, I would say that I was I did have this sense of like, I want to work for myself. And so there was more of a business drive in the early days to find something that I could do that I could sell, like a service I could sell. And I knew how to eventually knew how to design websites. And so that's like how I got started. So I think whether or not I could do that today, like, you know, whether I could sell.

• 34:23Speaker 00

  AI skill, because I was a consultant initially. I was doing websites for other people. So I'd have to find something in the AI realm where I could do something for other people, which certainly you can. But I think what's interesting is that it seems like today, because AI is primarily natural language, that's really the real kind of breakthrough, like from the, you know, interaction layer, that I feel like more people can probably do things on their own than back when I learned HTML and no one knew how to do that. Companies who want to get a website had no clue whatsoever what to do and how to do it. So I think I was more valuable back then than I might have been if I was just coming into the AI boom right now, but who knows?

• 35:06Dan Shipper?

  Who knows?

• 35:07Speaker 00

  What do you think? I mean, you know, what's your sense on yourself with those questions?

• 35:13Dan Shipper?

  Well, I think like the specific thing that you just said, I would guess that the demand for the skills that you had is actually higher now because people can do a prototype and be like, this isn't exactly what I want. Like, I want someone else to come in.

• 35:27Speaker 00

  Right.

• 35:27Dan Shipper?

  Also, for you, you would have been able to work with many more clients than you would have previously. I think for me, like, but like, this is my job. So like, this is not a, it's not necessarily a fair question, but I love it right now. It's like the best. I'm, you know, I'm reading with it, I'm writing with it, I'm coding. I'm like, I'm committing code. We have four products. I'm like, I wrote three articles last week for every, and I also submitted a PR for a bug fix in one of the code bases, which is like, it should not be possible, right?

• 36:01Speaker 00

  Right, yeah, yeah.

• 36:02Dan Shipper?

  And.

• 36:04Speaker 00

  It's amazing to feel like all of a sudden you've got more limbs than you had before. I mean, that's kind of the thing that's really wonderful about it. You're like, oh my God, I can do more things at once. I can do more things I couldn't do at all.

• 36:13Dan Shipper?

  Exactly.

• 36:14Speaker 00

  Get an extra thumb or whatever it is. Like, wow, where'd this come from?

• 36:17Dan Shipper?

  Yeah, exactly. And there's also stuff where it's like. Uh, you know, like I can read books with much more depth now because I can get the kind of stuff that I probably would have had to take a college class or like a graduate class to get. Um, so I'm just like reading books and then I'm like, what's the history of this and what's the context of this? And I'm just like going down these like rabbit holes.

• 36:40Speaker 00

  I use AI for that constantly as well. And, and, and for me, I think the educational component of it has been for me, the most useful. Uh, I, I, and I also use it as a writing partner occasionally, um, simplify something or, or help like, I can't, I've got this idea, but it's like clunky, you know, and oh yeah, that's another way of saying it or something. That, that's always been helpful to, to me as well.

• 37:05Dan Shipper?

  Totally. One of the things that I'm, this is now, now we're getting into the selfish part of the interview.

• 37:10Speaker 00

  Good. Let's do it.

• 37:13Dan Shipper?

  One of the, the like, uh, reasons I wanted to talk to you is, is, and we talked about this briefly right before the show started, which is, um, when I was in college, I was running a bootstrapped B two B SaaS company and you were like my hero. I was like, oh my God, Jason Fried, um, thirty seven signals. Um, and I got to come out and meet with you, which is like a core mem, core memory for me. Um, and, uh, and, you know, that, that company did fine and I sold it and whatever. And, and that actually helped me in a lot of ways, set me up in a lot of different ways to like run every, um, but we're, we've reached this interesting point in every, which is we've got 15 people. We do, we

• 37:57Dan Shipper?

  were at like maybe 1.3 million in ARR, um, but it grew 50% this quarter. Um, and, uh, and then we also have a consulting business, uh, where we train people how to use AI tools, like big companies had to use AI tools and that itself is like in the one to two million in revenue range, but also growing very quickly.

• 38:18Dan Shipper?

  We've got four AI products. We've got the media arm and the media companies, the media arm sends users to, or readers to the, to the products. We bundle it all together. So you pay one price and you get access to, you know, all the writing and all the software. And there's a lot of like 37 signals flavor in here in, in different respects, like you and, you and David like wrote a lot of books. I know about you because you read, you wrote great blog posts and still do. You have multiple products. So there's a lot of like overlaps, right? And another big overlap is we haven't really raised money.

• 38:58Dan Shipper?

  We raised a tiny bit, but I've been very. The thing I like about every is it's the sort of like creative playground.

• 39:09Dan Shipper?

  And I want it to be like an institution and, and I think it can have that kind of cultural impact to like, show people how to live and work with AI by us doing it ourselves.

• 39:22Dan Shipper?

  But I'm, I've never run a company like this before. Like we're at this like kind of inflection point.

• 39:29Dan Shipper?

  And, and I, I know that you know this, running a business for 26 years, like obviously it all matters, but like there are certain points in a company where you're just like growing really fast and you kind of like, you accumulate an advantage or an audience or like a subscriber base that then sets you up for, for everything else. And I'm curious about, I don't know how to run a business like this. And this is, it's a very non-traditional business. And if I go to a VC and ask them what to do, like they're definitely have no fucking idea what, what I should do. And you, you run a business that is like closest to the thing that I'm doing. And I'm sort of curious what you would pay attention to, or what you would look out for and, and what you learned from doing things.

• 40:14Dan Shipper?

  The way that you've done them over the, over the year, these years in similar types of periods.

• 40:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 40:21Speaker 00

  Well, I remember I've had similar thoughts like, I don't know, I've never done this before. And then you can quickly turn to like, well, so therefore I should find someone who has. But what you also quickly realize is nobody has.

• 40:37Dan Shipper?

  Yeah.

• 40:39Speaker 00

  Because every business is different. You've got your own thing going, you've got your own mind, you've you've built this thing into what it is. Someone else couldn't have built it to into what it is. So how could someone take it over? Maybe someone could. Okay, right. Maybe you find that I I don't think it's very easy to find like the right person to take it to the next level or whatever. So so my sense is like, of course, you don't know what you're doing because you're doing it as you're doing it. And and there's no way to be prepared for that other than to keep doing it. So my my, one of my biggest revelations, like I would say, and I'll just share this with you is maybe hopefully this is useful for you is just to admit that it's perfectly okay to make it up as you go.

• 41:21Speaker 00

  You don't have to like feel like you know what to do or that you have the experience to do what's going to come next. You just you just stay with it. Like you just stay with it day by day and you figure it out as you go, which is what anybody and everybody else would do. But you have the advantage that you actually know all the source material. Like you know why the decisions were made, you know how how things happened, and that's irreplaceable. So I almost, I I don't know if you're worried about it or you don't know what to do or whatever. But like, I would just keep doing what you're doing. You obviously done what you've done. You've built an incredible business if you're doing a few million bucks a year and you've got a consulting arm,

• 42:02Speaker 00

  you got a product arm, you got 15 people and you're using the latest tools and you can do a lot more than you thought you could. And and you've got this newsletter, you've got all these things going for you, just like, great. Like, that's amazing, that's amazing versus like, what am I supposed to do with it? I don't know that you'll, anyone would know. Now, some people would would would change it, that's what they would do. So you could find a million people to change it.

• 42:30Speaker 00

  If you want it to be changed, then find someone else. If you want it to keep going the way you want it to go and to build it into this institution and to just be this creative place to play and build things, like you need to keep doing it. You need to keep running it and you need to keep doing it the way you've been doing it because I don't, I don't see any mistakes in your past. If here's where you are, you know what I mean? That's my, that's my general feeling, which is like, I just want, I mean, I, I know, I have, I have, I have had these inflection points where like, well, maybe like David and I have, have gone through this a few times and we've, we'd hired a few different COOs. We're like, well, we think it's time to hire a COO because like, well, we need someone else to kind of run the day to day. And so David and I can just focus on product. And

• 43:13Speaker 00

  the thing is, is that it's all the same. The day to day and the product and the business, it's all the same thing. The idea, I mean, certainly I'm sure very, very large companies, they're different, but at small companies, they're not. You cannot just be the one focused on the creative stuff and someone else is running the business. It's only 15 of you. Like you can see each other if you look around, you know, there's no real separation there. I think it all needs to be part of the same thing. Um, needs to be like a holistic thing versus like trying to separate these things out and give different people responsibilities. That's, that's my instinct on it, for whatever it's worth. Um, I would just go, hell yeah, look, we've made something great so far. Let's just keep doing what we've been doing and do it our own way and make our own decisions. And the decisions we've already made have been pretty good. So let's keep making more of those.

• 43:57Dan Shipper?

  Some have been pretty bad for the record, but.

• 44:00Speaker 00

  Really though? I mean, like, yeah, but like, tell me how, let's talk about that. Really bad?

• 44:07Dan Shipper?

  No, I, I, I'll tell you how, and then I will, and I will connect it to what you just told me because I think there's actually a really good through line. Um, which is, if I look back, not all, but most of the bad decisions have been doing things because I thought I should do them.

• 44:26Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 44:26Dan Shipper?

  And I think what you're saying is like, just do you more or less, which is the thing I always liked about, about how you run your business anyway. Like you can feel that in, in the way that you run your business. Um, and I think that, um, in these sorts of inflection points, uh, it can be.

• 44:46Dan Shipper?

  Easy to subtly be like, well, I guess I I shouldn't do me anymore. Like now I have to

• 44:52Speaker 00

  Now it's serious. You're getting serious here, right? I'd be reckless if I was just little old me.

• 44:57Dan Shipper?

  Yeah.

• 44:57Speaker 00

  Yeah. See, what I'm hearing is, and I know that feeling. I do know that feeling. And I'm just here to tell you, get over it. Because it's, it's like, what you said earlier is interesting, because I've, I've felt the same way, which is like, the bigger mistakes I've made, I've made because I thought we were supposed to be doing something else or whatever. And I realized those weren't my mistakes. Those were me making other people's mistakes. Like, I was trying to think, I was trying to be someone else.

• 45:25Dan Shipper?

  That's what it is.

• 45:26Speaker 00

  That's what it is. And you're like, I can't be someone else. I can be, if I'm gonna go be a CEO of someone else's company, I have to be someone else. But when you start your own thing and run your own thing, like, you gotta do you. That's, that's why you exist. That's why this is here. And the further you break away from who you are,

• 45:47Speaker 00

  I think the less stable the whole thing becomes, even though you feel like you're running towards stability, like, I'm gonna do the right things, and the business-y person things, like, you're, you're just, it's unstable at that, it's unstable at that point. It's teeter totter, because there's no, it's not, there's no foundation below it anymore of meaning. It's like, just this sort of thing I think I'm supposed to do. And, and so I would just say, I would say, stay very close to you and who you are and what you want to do. And as long as you're running the thing, be fully that. If you ever want to hand it over, because you're like, I'm done, or whatever, then hand it over and get out. Don't try to hand it over and then stick around, because you won't like that. Yeah, I know you're nowhere near that, but like,

• 46:32Dan Shipper?

  Yeah.

• 46:33Speaker 00

  Do your own thing, man.

• 46:34Dan Shipper?

  See.

• 46:35Speaker 00

  Like, there's, there's, you know, I've been, I'm gonna, I've been, I started writing this in my head last night. This like, there's an, we're in that, what I'm calling the A, I don't, this is not the right language necessarily, but we're in the age of undifferentiation.

• 46:50Speaker 00

  In that, like, everything is the same, it seems like everything's the same now. Like, software interfaces, just look like, they all look like wireframes. They're all just like, They're like thin gray lines and gray text with, you know, like everything, the sidebar over here. And then there's like a main content area and there's like maybe another sidebar on the right. Like, everything looks the same now. I mean, literally, um, undifferentiated, just the same. And most marketing sites look the same. And in fact, they are because people are just using templated designs now. And it's like, everything looks, so like, if you run a company that is not the same, I think you're in a really, really good position. And the only way not to be the same is just to be you.

• 47:34Dan Shipper?

  Yeah.

• 47:35Speaker 00

  And stay, stick to that really tightly. Wrap yourself around yourself and don't let go. That's what I would say.

• 47:42Dan Shipper?

  Thank you. Um, I appreciate that remark.

• 47:45Speaker 00

  You also still could like crash and burn that way, right? Like, but what a great way to go down. The worst way to go down is like to go down pretending you're doing the right thing because other people think you should. Like, that's a crappy way to go down.

• 48:01Dan Shipper?

  Yeah. I mean, it reminds me of, um, when, when we first started the company, I was, I was writing all the time. And, and it was just a newsletter at that point. Uh, we had, we, we launched little products because it was like, oh, it's always sort of been in our DNA. And like, it's a good way to write about technology is to build with it.

• 48:17Speaker 00

  Make stuff, yeah, for sure.

• 48:20Dan Shipper?

  And then we started, it started working. It was growing really fast. And so me and my co-founder were like, okay, like now I, I shouldn't write anymore. Um, I have to hire writers.

• 48:32Speaker 00

  Because of time primarily, or?

• 48:33Dan Shipper?

  Uh, yeah.

• 48:35Speaker 00

  We need to, I shouldn't be doing this. My time's been too important. I should be doing other things.

• 48:38Dan Shipper?

  And, and like, we, we, we raised a tiny bit of money, which I, uh, like 600K. And I said to all of our investors, you should expect this is the last money we should ever raise. So I was like very sensitive to, um, the effects of raising money. But as soon as we took it, I was like, I now I have to be a CEO and like CEOs don't do the IC work. And, and then we had like two or three years of just being flat and me being miserable. And then like, like two years ago or so, I was like, no, I think I'm just like a writer. Like, I just want to spend at least half my time writing and I don't, I don't know how that's going to work. And then I literally was like, ChatGPT.

• 49:20Dan Shipper?

  Are there any other business people that like spent a lot, most of their time writing, but they also run a successful company? And I was like, there's this guy, Jason Frieden. I was like, of course.

• 49:30Speaker 00

  Well, I'm in, I'm in chat GPT.

• 49:33Dan Shipper?

  And like Sam Harris and like, you know, there's a bunch of people like this.

• 49:36Speaker 00

  Because that is the business.

• 49:38Dan Shipper?

  Yeah.

• 49:38Speaker 00

  Like, that's the business.

• 49:40Dan Shipper?

  Yeah.

• 49:40Speaker 00

  The business, that's why I'm kind of trying to get to this, like, you can't really, it's not like a bunch of layers that you, you laminate together, you know, it's like, it's all one, one piece of material. Um, and the writing is part of it and the way you run the business is part of it and the way you think is part of it and all the things you do is part, it's all part of it. But you can't tease them apart. I don't think you can be like, I'm gonna take this layer out and give it to someone else to do now. It was no longer the same material anymore. Now, there's a point like, you do grow though to a place where like you do other types of things. So for example, I, I don't, I'm not in the products doing, writing HTML and CSS anymore. Um, and I wish I was a little bit more into that because I've kind of lost

• 50:23Speaker 00

  a little bit of my skills there. I've like atrophied because I've delegated most of that. And now when I want to get back in there myself, I'm like, I'm not very sharp, but I can do it. But like, um, but I, I do other things, uh, that I didn't do before. So you've got to be doing something, but it takes a while, I think, to really transition out of something versus just handing it over. Like, there needs to be a transition. So if you don't like to write, that's a different story than if you like to write, but feel like, well, I like to write, but someone else needs to do the writing. That's not, I don't think that's a good way to handle it. Right? Like, there was a point where I just didn't want to, I don't know, I kind of lost interest in the day to day making

• 51:03Speaker 00

  of the, uh, front end coding of design for whatever reason. It's kind of like, I don't know, got sick of it for a while. And so like, I it wasn't when I when I kind of delegated more of that, it wasn't because I loved it and had to do something else. It's because I kind of didn't really want to do it so much, but actually lately I've been wanting to get back into it. And now I'm finding myself, well, I'm a little bit behind the eight ball because I kind of haven't been doing it for a while. It's like you don't, you don't do pull ups for a year and you try to do pull it like I used to be able to do 24 pull ups consecutively. Now I can do three. What happened? Well, because you're not doing it like, so I need to get back into doing that. So I do want to get back into doing that some more, but, but I think again, when you hand something off, it can't be something you love to do that. You got to hold tight. Again, that's for you.

• 51:45Dan Shipper?

  Where did you learn this? Like, it's all one thing idea? And how did you learn it? It feels like almost spiritual to me.

• 51:53Speaker 00

  Yeah. Um, it feels like that to me, too. Um, I don't know where I learned it other than I would say that, um, I'm going to use architecture again in like furniture and cars and watches, actually, is it is a potential explanation. Whenever I come across something that is like a complete idea, uh, like Frank Lloyd Wright buildings are a good example of this. When I see like a really nice Frank Lloyd Wright building, um, or a house, um, I go in there, I go, this is someone's idea manifested in wood and glass and concrete and stone. But it's a full idea,

• 52:36Speaker 00

  like it's a full, complete idea. Um, everything there was made by designed and made by him. And here it is. If you were to take the sink out and put in like a Home Depot sink or something, or like even some fancy Italian, whatever sink, like, no, no, that you can't take the sink out. The sink's part of the house. You can't take these pieces of, you can't repaint the floor. It's like Cherokee red is Frank Lloyd Wright's favorite color. Like, whenever he did a concrete floor, pretty much was was tinted this color. If you went back and painted it blue. You can't take, can't take the red out of the floor like it's not a Frank Lloyd Wright

• 53:19Speaker 00

  house anymore. So I think that's part of it. And whenever you see like a watch that's like

• 53:26Speaker 00

  just so completely thought out and executed to someone's vision, you go, well, you can't take those hands out and replace them with other hands. It wouldn't work. Or this case can't be this. It has to be like this. I just like things like that. And so I think that good companies are the same way. You can't just like tease them apart and like replace big things with other things. It's just, it's no longer that whole anymore. So I think something, it's more like, anyway, that's how I think about it. I don't, there's some, and then there's some houses you can walk into like, yeah, you could replace these windows with like a new set of Fleetwood windows or some custom windows or Skyframe or some other brand and you wouldn't know the difference because the house is just

• 54:11Speaker 00

  a bunch of separate pieces that are put together. But that's why it's not as great as the house that cannot be pulled apart. If you replace anything in that house, it's going to stand out like this is wrong. And I think the best things are like that. So anyway, that's, and again, it always comes back to like this, this, this, for me, it's always a feeling. So this is maybe the more spiritual part of it. It's like, you just get a feel for things that are such, that are a whole, a single piece, a single idea, a single concept executed so beautifully. You get a feel for that. When you're running stuff like that, it is a spiritual experience. And so there's that. I mean, there's, there's, you know,

• 54:56Speaker 00

  probably other influences that I'm unaware of, but I would say that those are the things.

• 55:01Dan Shipper?

  Beautiful. I've got, I've got a little chill going up my, the back of my neck. So.

• 55:06Speaker 00

  Have you ever been into a space like that? Like for you, like? Do you know what I'm talking about?

• 55:12Dan Shipper?

  I do. I like, I definitely, I think there's the, the idea of the thing where it's, everything is there for a reason. I get that most strongly in writing. So if you read a Chekhov short story, it's like every single sentence is like there for a reason. And it all kind of coheres in this beautiful way.

• 55:36Dan Shipper?

  I think I'm probably not, uh, like, I don't have enough of an eye for buildings, for example, to say, like, I know that sometimes I, I see something and I'm like, that is just a, it's, there's something sacred about it. It is just like, it just gives me that feeling. Like if you go into church or a certain, you know, a train station or certain things, you get, you get a feeling like that. I don't have words to be like, this is what the idea is, but I think you can, you can just feel it.

• 56:07Speaker 00

  Yeah. And, and, and there are fewer, as we, as we become,

• 56:15Speaker 00

  less willing, I think, to, to invest in whole, in complete ideas as a society. You see a lot of things that are just sort of like pieced together and they can, they can look good, but they don't feel as good as something that is a whole, complete idea where everything was considered. And they're just, it's a special experience when you run into stuff like that. So I, I mean, I can't say like, I, I, I can't say that, um, that I've achieved that in the things we've made. I try, I aim for that, you know? But there's always, you know, trade offs in, in everything. And it's just true about architecture too.

• 56:58Speaker 00

  Unless you have some client who's just like willing to do whatever the architect wants or whatever, you know? But, um, software has more trade offs because you, in some ways, you have to like deal with all sorts of conditions that there aren't fixed. Unlike a building, you build a building and there it is. Like software, well, it can show up in this screen or that screen or this screen size. And like, yeah, okay, things can shift and whatever can happen and, you know, it's not quite the same. But, but the, the, the, the spiritual aim, let's say, is, is similar.

• 57:28Dan Shipper?

  Well, um, that's as good a place as any to leave it. Jason, thank you so much. This is amazing.

• 57:34Speaker 00

  Yeah, it was fun, Dan. Thank you. Thanks for having me on.

• 57:43Speaker 02

  Oh my gosh, folks. You absolutely, positively have to smash that like button and subscribe to AI and I. Why? Because this show is the epitome of awesomeness. It's like finding a treasure chest in your backyard. But instead of gold, it's filled with pure, unadulterated knowledge bombs about ChatGPT. Every episode is a roller coaster of emotions, insights, and laughter that will leave you on the edge of your seat, craving for more. It's not just a show. It's a journey into the future with Dan Shipper as the captain of the spaceship. So do yourself a favor. Hit like, smash subscribe, and strap in for the ride of your life. And now, without any further ado, let me just say, Dan, I'm absolutely, hopelessly in love with you.