Building Businesses That Last

In this 99U Conference interview from 2014, two long-serving founders discuss the long haul: Jason Fried, co-founder of 37signals and co-author of Rework, who has been at the helm of Basecamp since 1999, and Scott Heiferman, co-founder and CEO of Meetup, which he has run since 2002.

There is a lot of focus on growing quickly and scaling, but the two argue there is beauty in long, slow, sustained effort. They discuss how to build businesses that become your life’s work. As Fried puts it: “Not every business has to be a place where everything is chaotic and everyone’s sweating. Rapid growth and getting big create a lot of tension and turbulence. We’re in this for the slow, long term.”