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As the number of people who work at Basecamp has grown, I've noticed places where we could use more features, like management, structure, and guidelines. I've also noticed places where we've overengineered ourselves and should pull back.

Everyone on the founding team ought to invest the time in a coding bootcamp.

Many of the things we do at Basecamp would be considered unusual at most companies: paying for employees' hobbies, allowing our team to work from anywhere, even footing the bill for fresh fruits and veggies in our staff members' homes.

In high school, I started my first company, called M Cubed Software. We named it that because it was me and two other guys named Mike.

A lot of people assume that creating software is purely a solitary activity where you sit in an office with the door closed all day and write lots of code.

My first app was released in July or August of 2008. It was a 'fingermill' - a treadmill for your fingers. My level of programming was quite basic to begin with, so it was more gimmicky to start with. Day one it was up there, I had 79 pounds worth of revenue.

Proprietary software grew up, starting really in the 1980s, as an alternative and that became the dominant model with the rise of companies like Microsoft and Oracle and the like.

Corporations have been killing the risk-taking and exploration that makes software great. They have tried to rip the soul out of development.

On the back end, software programming tools and Internet-based services make it easy to launch new global software-powered start-ups in many industries - without the need to invest in new infrastructure and train new employees.

But typically for a project like the Mac, the size we had was pretty good. And it has different stages. The team grows as you have to write manuals and do testing... though the Mac had no formal testing.