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

Everybody. This is Steli Efti. And this is Heat and Shop. And today on the Solid Chat, we're gonna talk about something that we usually never do, which is a recent product launch, Hey. Hey. We like talking about more than just sales and marketing. We just wanna bullshit and chat about business and life. And hopefully while we're doing that, provide a lot of value to people. The world's best business podcast. Oh. Oh, shit. We got it. For people trying to get shit and done. Yeah. We don't wanna give you feedback that's bullshit. Yeah. We want you to do your best. Maybe the concept of beef as marketing? I don't know. We'll see. But during the last couple of weeks, there have not been many really impactful business product launches, I think, or at least if there were any We don't we don't really talk about news on here. That's really We never do that. Right? We don't do that. But we're gonna talk about news today. We are. We are. Sort of fun, to me, at least. It was fun to it's been fun to observe. The Basecamp folks launch a new email product. It's called Hey. They, teased it for a long time. They had a waiting list, and then they launched it. And even before they launched it, actually, they spent a good amount of time critiquing privacy in email, which was kinda curious, interesting. They always like to fight battles, especially when they have products in the battle in some way, but they always wanna stand for some some bigger idea, go after some big evil thing that needs killing, and make it a cause. And so, at the beginning, I thought it would be privacy. Like, all the they would, like, just shoot at all these, you know, all these email providers that don't respect your privacy. I thought that would be the big battle, but it turns out the big battle is with Apple, which is even more fun. So here's what's interesting. So these folks at Basecamp, you know, launched hey.com, and part of their marketing campaign prelaunch was privacy. Mhmm. Post launch, it's not even that it's a battle with Apple because I don't I really don't think they expected it, frankly speaking. Mhmm. I think a lot of people think they're that smart or strategic, but they've even come out and said, we didn't expect this. I I think one thing about this company that people don't realize is they're very straightforward and not as strategic as you might think because they just have principles that have worked for them for twenty plus years and they follow those principles. And they've written all those principles. In their getting real book, they have a section called pick a fight or choose an enemy. Yep. I mean, back in the day, their enemy was Gantt charts. I don't know if you recall at all, but with base camp, original base …