David Heinemeier Hansson

Founder & CTO

Creator of Ruby on Rails, co-founder of 37signals and Basecamp, board member at Shopify, and Le Mans class winner. Has been building profitable software and writing about business contrarianism for over 25 years.

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Episodes

Books Recommended

Big Mistake(1)Founder Psychology(3)Framework(3)Growth & Distribution(1)Money Advice(1)Tactic(1)Wild Story(2)

Insights

Big Mistake

DHH's Famous Bad Call: 'Facebook Is Not Worth $33 Billion'

He pattern-matched Facebook's traffic to worthless e-card sites. He missed the invention of surveillance capitalism.

Ep 806·David Heinemeier Hansson

Founder Psychology

How DHH Went from AI Skeptic to 'Fully Pilled' in Three Months

The last three months changed his relationship with computers more than the previous 30 years combined.

Ep 806·David Heinemeier Hansson

Founder Psychology

The Longevity Secret: Build a Company You Never Want to Leave

Too many founders build companies they hate and then spend years grinding toward an exit.

Ep 806·David Heinemeier Hansson

Founder Psychology

Why Ignorant 20-Year-Olds Change the World and Experienced Founders Get Stuck

Ignorance is a benefit for a huge class of problems. You are cursed when you know too much.

Ep 806·David Heinemeier Hansson

Framework

Constraints Breed Creativity: How Having Nothing Forces You to Invent Everything

Deprivation is the mother of invention. When you can't buy the solution, you build a better one.

Ep 806·David Heinemeier Hansson

Framework

Resulting: Why You Should Judge Decisions by the Process, Not the Outcome

If you go all in on an 87% hand and lose, you still made the right call.

Ep 806·David Heinemeier Hansson

Framework

Why DHH Stopped Listening to the Numbers and Trusted His Gut Instead

They had a data scientist for a decade. They never once did what the numbers told them to do.

Ep 806·David Heinemeier Hansson

Growth & Distribution

The Right Hook Doesn't Travel Anymore: Why Content-to-Conversion Is Broken

Your interesting posts go viral. Your product launch post gets suppressed by the algorithm.

Ep 806·David Heinemeier Hansson

Money Advice

Ridiculous Margins: How Profit Buys You the Freedom to Ignore Best Practices

When DHH told other founders his margins, they said: 'You mean gross, right?' He meant net.

Ep 806·David Heinemeier Hansson

Tactic

Out-Teach Instead of Outspend: The Original 37signals Growth Playbook

If you can't buy awareness, you have to earn it by being ruthlessly honest about what you've learned.

Ep 806·David Heinemeier Hansson

Wild Story

How DHH Went to War with Apple Over a 30% Shakedown and Won

Apple assumed they'd fold like every other software company. They assumed wrong.

Ep 806·David Heinemeier Hansson

Wild Story

Shopify's 30% Growth in Year 22: A Glitch in the Matrix Nobody Can Explain

Even at the board level, even Toby himself, nobody actually knows why it's working this well.

Ep 806·David Heinemeier Hansson

Episodes

#8062026-03-17· 1h 18m

DHH: $100M+ Advice That'll Piss Off Every Business Guru

David Heinemeier Hansson, creator of Ruby on Rails and co-founder of Basecamp, shares 25 years of lessons from building a wildly profitable company without VC money, grinding culture, or AB tests. He breaks down why constraints breed creativity, why taste beats data, how he fought Apple over the App Store and won, and why his biggest public prediction failures taught him more than his wins. Plus, his rapid evolution on AI from skeptic to fully pilled in just three months.

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