Basecamp

Basecamp is a project management and team communication tool that takes a deliberately simple, opinionated approach to organizing work. While most competitors in the space keep adding more features, views, and customization options, Basecamp has consistently chosen to do less, but do it exceptionally well. Each project in Basecamp gets a clean page with a fixed set of tools: a message board for discussions, a to-do list for tasks, a schedule for deadlines, a docs and files section, and a group chat (called Campfire). That is it. There are no custom fields, no Gantt charts, no sprint planning features, and no kanban boards. For custom web application development, Basecamp is particularly well-suited for client-facing project management, where you need stakeholders, designers, and developers all communicating in one place without anyone needing to learn a complex tool. Its simplicity means you spend almost zero time configuring the tool and almost all your time doing actual work.

The Problem It Solved

Basecamp was created by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson (commonly known as DHH) and launched in 2004. The origin story is legendary in the tech world. Fried ran a small web design consultancy called 37signals in Chicago. The company was struggling to manage multiple client projects simultaneously, emails were getting lost, deadlines were being missed, and there was no central place for project communication. Fried hired DHH, a Danish programmer living in Copenhagen, as a contractor to build an internal project management tool. That tool became Basecamp. What happened next changed web development forever: while building Basecamp, DHH created Ruby on Rails, the web application framework that would go on to power early versions of Twitter, Shopify, GitHub, Airbnb, and thousands of other applications. Rails was literally extracted from the Basecamp codebase and open-sourced in 2004. The tool that was built to manage client projects at a small design firm accidentally produced one of the most influential web frameworks in history. 37signals eventually renamed the entire company to Basecamp in 2014 to reflect that the product had become far bigger than the consulting business.

What Sets It Apart

Basecamp (the company) has been profitable every single year since its founding and has never taken venture capital funding, a position that Fried and DHH are vocal and sometimes confrontational about. They have written multiple bestselling books arguing against the startup growth-at-all-costs mentality, including "Rework" and "It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work." The company operates with fewer than 80 employees and generates tens of millions in annual revenue, which they consider proof that you do not need hundreds of engineers and billions in funding to build a successful software company. Basecamp also pioneered several workplace policies that were considered radical at the time but have since become mainstream: the company pays above market rate regardless of employee location (no cost-of-living adjustments), provides a 4-day work week during summer months, gives every employee a $5,000 annual vacation stipend, and does not track hours or vacation days. Perhaps the most surprising fact about Basecamp is that Ruby on Rails, the framework DHH built while creating it, generates far more economic value than Basecamp itself. Rails powers applications worth hundreds of billions of dollars combined, making it one of the most impactful side projects in the history of software.