A biography for Jason Friedhasn’t been written yet.
“By rationing in-person meetings, their stature is elevated to that of a rare treat. They become something to be savored, something special.”
“When something is working well, it becomes too easy to let things run themselves.”
“A large user base helps shield us from things we can't control. You can spend years catering to a major corporation, for example, only to see your contact there move on.”
“I think what really people want is just a few things done really, really well. And if you think about ever day of your life, the things you really appreciate aren't the complicated things. They're the simple things that work just the way you expect them to.”
“The owner of a company with supertight margins - say, a restaurant, retailer, or producer of commodity goods - would be a fool not to keep a close eye on the numbers. But when I make big decisions, numbers are seldom, if ever, the tiebreaker.”
“I've seen small businesses turn into terrible midsize or big ones because they let their desire to achieve some arbitrary metric get the best of them. Whatever is compromised as a result doesn't matter anymore, as long as the company is growing.”
“If you care about your product, you should care just as much about how you describe it.”
“We've never much liked the idea of charging a participation tax, a phrase we coined to represent what it feels like when a software company charges you more money for each additional user. Participation taxes discourage usage across a company.”
“The risk of relying on a handful of customers is not just financial. Your product also is at risk when you're at the mercy of a few big spenders. When any one customer pays you significantly more than the others, your product inevitably ends up catering mostly to that customer's specific needs.”
“Selling to small businesses and selling to enterprises take two very different approaches with two very different kinds of people.”
“I know plenty of entrepreneurs who are numbers first. They tend to be highly analytical people, and before they pull the trigger, all the numbers have to line up just right.”
“A fixed deadline and a flexible scope are the crucial combination.”
“What's bad, boring, and barely read all over? Business writing.”
“Hiring people is like making friends. Pick good ones, and they'll enrich your life. Make bad choices, and they'll bring you down.”
“I used to think that deadlines should be ignored until the product was ready: that they were a nuisance, a hurdle in front of quality, a forced measure to get something out the door for the good of the schedule, not the customer.”
“If you ask people where they go when they really need to get work done, very few will respond 'the office.' If they do say the office, they'll include a qualifier such as 'super-early in the morning before anyone gets in,' or 'I stay late at night after everyone's left,' or 'I sneak in on the weekend.'”
“Remind yourself that other people's jobs aren't so simple.”
“You have to live with your decisions every day. Why live with one you're uneasy with? 'Because it'll make you money' is a common reply. But I don't think that's good enough.”
“A lot of people relate leadership to formalities. They believe that leadership is about being professional and strong and always right and being a booming voice. I just don't buy that. I think that leadership is a soft skill; it's a people skill.”
“If an employee can demonstrate results produced in a way that the company didn't think possible, then a new way forward can begin to take shape.”