519: The HEY launch: Pick a fight to get attention

What It Covers

Basecamp launches Hey email service with aggressive public battle against Apple's App Store policies, doubling their waitlist through strategic controversy while building a ground-up email alternative to Gmail and Outlook.

Key Questions Answered

• •Strategic Enemy Selection: Basecamp follows their documented principle of picking a fight to launch products, previously targeting Gantt charts with Basecamp, now positioning Hey against email privacy violations and Apple's 30% fee structure to generate momentum.
• •Public Battle Tactics: Basecamp leveraged their wealth, independence, and reputation to publicly challenge Apple when most companies handle App Store disputes privately, potentially doubling their waitlist during the controversy before reaching a compromise solution that avoided the fee.
• •Product Differentiation: Hey builds a complete email service from infrastructure up, not just a client layer on Gmail or Outlook like Superhuman, making it the first serious alternative to Google, Microsoft, and Apple's email ecosystems for business users.
• •Built-in Privacy Marketing: Hey automatically identifies and displays email tracking pixels in every message, eliminating the need for separate privacy campaigns post-launch since the product itself demonstrates the problem with each tracked email users receive daily.