David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH)

So I'll tell you this.

I tracked exactly the number of hours I spend on the first version of Basecamp.

And I was doing this because at the time I was working on a contract basis for Jason.

He was paying me, I was going to say $15 an hour.

That's what I got paid when we first got started.

I think he had bumped my pay to a glorious $25.

But I was billing him.

And I know that the invoice for the first version of Basecamp was $400.

That's what it took for one sole individual in 2004 to create an entire system that has then gone on to gross hundreds of millions of dollars and continues to do extremely well.

One person, just me, setting up everything.

Part of that story is Ruby.

Part of that story is Rails.

But a lot of it is also just me plus Jason plus Ryan plus Matt.

That was the entire company at the time.

And we could create something...

of sheer sustaining value with such a tiny team, because we were a tiny team, not despite of.

Small is not a stepping stone.

This is the other thing that people get into their head.

This is one of the big topics of rework, that it gave entrepreneurs the permission to embrace being a small team, not as a waypoint, not as like, I'm trying to become a thousand people.

No, I actually like being a small team.