I think a lot of craziness in the industry is caused by a rush to get rich. That doesn't seem to be on the table for Basecamp employees, who get fixed salaries by grade, no real stake, etc, and apparently no plan to go public.
Yes, this is a good point. DHH had some rants recently on Twitter about Brian Acton selling out his company to Facebook. I found it interesting that the lifetime financial security for all WhatsApp employees wasn't mentioned.
It's not clear to me how DHH gets the money for his auto racing hobby. Perhaps it has to be crazy at work for others to have a shot at hobbies like this, especially if you aren't the founders.
> It's not clear to me how DHH gets the money for his auto racing hobby.
That unclarity can be solved pretty easily. David is one of the two partners of Basecamp (formerly 37signals). That company delivers a service in the project management space, basecamp.com, and some other web applications. They charge customers a fair amount, and they have thousands and thousands of customers, mainly in the SME segment. With around 50 well-paid employees, a nice office and significant (leased/owned) infrastructure, their costs are still way less than their revenue, so they make a healthy profit. I guess that profit is paid out as dividends to the stakeholders of the company: at last David, Jason and Jeff Bezos (for a minority share). Those dividends are sufficient to buy a nice house, own some sports cars, and enjoy a racing hobby.
Additionally, Jason and David have written some popular books. The author's share of those sales could pay for some other interests (photography, watches) as well.
According to the bottom of the web page, they have over 2.8 million accounts. That is especially remarkable since an account is usually a company. Basecamp does not charge per user. The price is $99 per month --- although for nonprofits it's 10% off, and for teachers and students it's free.
They don't say how many of the 2,838,046 accounts are discounted or free, but I doubt it's a sizable percentage. For the sake of argument, let us suppose that it brings it all the way down to the equivalent of only 2.5 million full-priced accounts. That's about $3 billion a year.
https://basecamp.com/customers mentions "100,000+ companies rely on Basecamp to run their business." Since it does not mention "1,000,000+ companies", I think that "2.8 million accounts" refers to users, not companies.
Although current pricing for Basecamp 3 is $99/month (for unlimited amount of projects), previous Basecamp versions (Classic and 2) had other pricing models. Significantly cheaper when you were managing less projects, a bit more expensive for more than 100 projects, IIRC.
Basecamp / 37signals also has paying users for some other applications, e.g., Highrise (CRM, 10,000+ organizations, but closed for new signups), Campfire (instant messaging, closed for new signups), Backpack (intranet for businesses, closed for new signups). They continue to provide those services though, "until the end of the internet" :-)
So, in short... it's not as simple as 2.5 million times 99 USD.
Ignoring paid accounts for the other products, and severely underestimating the number of accounts at the 99 dollar level as 75,000, the monthly revenue could be 7.5 million dollar per month minimally, or 90 million per year. I would guess the actual number is twice that. Either way, it's impressive by any comparison.
It probably is a fairly sizeable percentage. Basecamp changed pricing quite a few times, and as far as I recall this iteration is one of the highest it has ever been.
> It's not clear to me how DHH gets the money for his auto racing hobby.
He's a partner, the company makes a lot of $ so he makes a lot of $, go and look at his instagram feed :)
The company is well enough off that the regular workers who work there can work normal hours without stuff being crazy (for the most part) but for David to still get paid enough and take the time out to go racing/create bespoke financial philosophies about Facebook. Remmeber, the company is still (last I heard) only about 50-odd people with one relatively small office in Chicago. The expenses aren't going to be withering, and there's no VC, so there's no frantic push to get huge before an IPO. (source: used to work there)
> It's not clear to me how DHH gets the money for his auto racing hobby. Perhaps it has to be crazy at work for others to have a shot at hobbies like this, especially if you aren't the founders.
Me either, and I'm not saying this is the case for DHH at all, but I am aware of one company in the UK where it is/was: one of the founders paid himself a metric ####ton of cash to fund expensive hobbies such as auto-racing. I am way past the point where I'm willing to work my tail off so somebody else can have a lot of fun off the back of it: I'm afraid I want a piece of that pie too. Call it entitlement if you will, but I make no apology.
> It's not clear to me how DHH gets the money for his auto racing hobby.
Judging by his clothes, the answer seems to be "sponsors." And, looking at the things like race tracks and racing schools, it seems like entering auto racing isn't exactly cheap, but for _well paid_ folk - as Basecamp seems to be — it's far from unachievable. No surprise really, I know people working things like support for generic companies getting into airplanes.
And, thanks to the attitude of work/life balance, vacation and health coverage (I mean, obviously I'm not talking about the US), they have the time and security to actually pursue the hobbies.
I think the following is also relevant, since work stress/craziness is about much more than workload: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/pressure-proof/20130...