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Basecamp: Best All-In-One Project Management Tool
118 Plays2 years ago
Zencastr sits down with Rolando Rojas, Acquisition Marketing Manager at Basecamp. Basecamp was built with meaning. Every feature was designed with purpose, with the thought to help users simplify their workflow. Keeping things simple is harder than it looks, and the team at 37signals makes these hard decisions so our customers can enjoy a tool that’s simple and effective.
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Transcript
Introduction to Brand Voices and Guest
00:00:03
Speaker
Hey Podcasters, it's Sunny with Zencaster. This series, Brand Voices, is all about introducing you to advertisers who might be a good fit for your podcast. You get a chance to hear from them first hand to see if you'd like to work with them.
Basecamp's Goals and Podcasting Experience
00:00:22
Speaker
Today you'll meet Rolando Rojas from Basecamp, a popular online project management and team communication app that helps smaller teams stay organized. Rolando is on the marketing team at Basecamp, and he also helps coordinate their advertising opportunities. Basecamp is trying to raise more awareness around their product, and that's how you can help.
00:00:48
Speaker
Also, can I just say, Rolando had a really great external microphone, which made this podcaster very happy. Basecamp's parent company, 37 Signals, also has their own podcast. Perhaps that's why they know a little bit about audio quality. It's called The Rework Podcast. More on that in just a bit.
00:01:12
Speaker
Hey, Rolando, thanks so much for being with us
Addressing Email Overload with Basecamp
00:01:15
Speaker
today. Let's get started by having you tell everyone what Basecamp is and what you guys do. So Basecamp is a project management and team communication app. I think the best way to explain it is to give you an example of one of the problems we try to solve. Okay. So imagine the following. You're working with your team on a project and you're doing everything over email.
00:01:41
Speaker
So at the beginning, everything goes pretty well. But once you start adding more people into the project or you're working with more than a couple of files, you've noticed that things start to become a little bit of a mess. So you get like these streams of emails filling your inbox. There's people asking like, what's the latest version of a file? There's people replying about all emails. It becomes a mess.
00:02:07
Speaker
Suddenly things get so confusing that the only thing you can do is to jump on a quick call or
Simplifying Project Management
00:02:15
Speaker
schedule a meeting. So when you hear people say that they're stuck on a meeting, like they're usually stuck on a meeting all day or answering emails, this is usually how it happens. It's just this organizational work. What Basecamp tries to solve is this.
00:02:31
Speaker
We designed Basecamp to make managing projects easy. So you create a project in Basecamp, you post a description in a message board that we have, and then everyone can catch up with what you wrote on their own time. If someone has a comment, they just post it on the message board. If someone has a question, they leave it on the chat. If someone is super-profiled, they just upload it in Basecamp, and then everyone has access to the latest version.
00:02:57
Speaker
So Basecamp is an app that gives you all the tools that you need for you and your team to work together. So message boards, chat, files, storage, documents, calendar, you name it. Basecamp makes possible collaborating without having to waste a lot of time. Teams that use Basecamp usually send less email and have fewer meetings. This means that they have more time to work on their work.
00:03:23
Speaker
Now, I feel like you guys have been around a while. Do you have a feel for how long the company has been around for?
Development and Market Launch of Basecamp
00:03:30
Speaker
Yeah. So our company, it's called 37signals, and it's actually been around since 2003. We started as a web design firm doing work with clients. Business was great, but as we became busier, we noticed that things started to get really disorganized. So we started to have the same issues that I just mentioned with email. Right.
00:03:50
Speaker
Back then we tried to look for a project management tool, but we found that most of the tools in the market were pretty complicated and hard to use. They didn't fit our use case. So we decided to build our own tool and we started using it with clients.
00:04:07
Speaker
What we noticed is that immediately, projects started running better, we became faster, we became more efficient, and this app started working so well that our clients started asking if they could use it for themselves.
00:04:23
Speaker
So basically we saw this and we work on it for a few months and a little bit later we launched Basecamp into the market as a standalone app and we have pretty much focused on it ever since. So we're not doing a web design anymore.
00:04:41
Speaker
No need, right? But I love that story because you guys saw a need that you guys were experiencing personally. And you're like, hey, you know, we don't see anything else out there on the market that's similar to what we need. So let's just create it. And then clients started to want it as well. And then it just kind of grew from there.
Target Audience: SMBs and Nonprofits
00:04:59
Speaker
Who do you specifically help? Like, is there a specific demographic or group of people that you guys typically try to bring on as clients or customers?
00:05:09
Speaker
Yeah, so we help businesses and teams that are growing and they're trying to figure out how to work better as a team. So most of our customers are small and medium sized businesses. We also work with nonprofits. So basically any organization that is growing has been using email or another tool for project management so far, but they're starting to realize that that's not gonna work on the long term.
00:05:39
Speaker
And why would you say that your brand is specifically needed right now, right? I mean, there's a lot of different project management tools out there. Why choose Basecamp and why now?
Basecamp's Unique Selling Proposition
00:05:51
Speaker
You're correct. There are many project management apps out there. What makes us different is that Basecamp is designed to get out of your way. Think about it. The best tool is the one that you can just pick up and get to work.
00:06:05
Speaker
You're not supposed to spend a lot of time working on your tools. You're supposed to use your tools to get work done. So this is how we think of Basecamp. When you set up a project in Basecamp, out of the box everything is ready to go. You open your account, you create a project, you write your project description, and you're ready for your teammates to start working on it.
00:06:27
Speaker
Now I'm wondering for people who haven't used Basecamp before, what is the process like? Does each person have to have a Basecamp account?
Setup Process and Free Trial
00:06:35
Speaker
Can you kind of explain the structure? Like if I'm, again, brand new to Basecamp, never heard of Basecamp before, would I get my own plan and then invite people or what is the setup?
00:06:45
Speaker
The person managing the account is usually the team leader or the business owner. That person will open a Basecamp account. We offer a free trial. The trial lasts for 30 days. It includes everything that you will get on the paid version. There's absolutely no difference. You can invite as many users as you want, as many clients.
00:07:07
Speaker
So usually we recommend picking a project you're working on and moving it to Basecamp. So let's imagine you're working on a new podcast episode that's going to take a fair amount of collaboration. The first thing you want to do after creating the project in Basecamp is posting an initial write-up on the message board.
00:07:27
Speaker
Here you wanna write what the project is about, what you wanna accomplish and what's gonna take to get there. The idea for the post write up is that anyone can go in the project at any time, read this post and be fully caught up on what the project is about. The next thing you will want to do is organize the work.
00:07:45
Speaker
We have to record some interviews, we have to edit the episode, we have to promote it, and so on and so forth. Each project in Basecamp has a tool called Todos. You can create a Todo for each of these tasks that I just mentioned. Each Todo has its own comment section, so we can discuss each task individually if we need to. As we work on our portions of the project, you may have a quick question for the team. Something like, does anyone remember the name for that background music track that we wanted to try?
00:08:15
Speaker
For this you can use campfire. Campfires are taken chat and it's great to have this type of quick conversations. As you continue working on the project you can use our files tool to upload audio clips and share them with the team. You can use the calendar tool to schedule interviews with guests.
00:08:34
Speaker
You can use our email forward tool to share any email with the team. Basically, you can manage your entire project within Basecamp. And that project, we can choose to archive it, but you can always refer back to it in the future. So if you ever have to work on a similar episode, again, on a similar project, you can go back, see all the comments that everyone made, see all the tools, see all the files, and you can use that to help you on a new project.
Streamlining Processes with Project Templates
00:09:03
Speaker
And then for those projects, can you also create a template? Because I know for a lot of podcasters, for each episode they do, it's kind of the same process, right? You're interviewing different guests, and that part changes. But the process of getting a podcast episode from an idea to completion is usually the same. So can you save those as templates?
00:09:25
Speaker
Yes, you can create a project template and it's just as you explained, so you can set up the tools, you can give them names, and then every time you just want to spin up a new episode or a new project, you create one from that template and half the work is done. Fantastic.
Value of Podcast Advertising for Basecamp
00:09:44
Speaker
So, Rolando, why advertise on podcasts? Like, what was it? Obviously, you've got a lot of different choices out there, and we're so glad that you're working with the podcast that runs Ncaster. But why, you know, is this the first time you've done that? Or tell me a little bit more about the appeal for you guys in podcasting. So this is not the first time we advertise on podcasts, but we love podcasts. We even have one of our own. It's called WeWork. All right.
00:10:11
Speaker
So I think audio is different than everything else. So audio, to me, it's a really immersive medium. You can tell listeners a story and they can imagine how everything happens. This is hard to do with video or with images or with any other medium because you live very little to the imagination.
00:10:35
Speaker
Podcasts are great at connecting with audience. You tell a story and
00:10:42
Speaker
You hope that people will connect with what they feel and what they hear. And we are hoping that when we tell these stories, like all I do is answer emails and hoping meetings every day. We hope that some of those ideas will resonate with customers and they're going to want to try out Basecamp. And what are your expectations for these ads, right? So the podcasters that are listening to this, let's say they're part of the ad campaign and they put these spots in their podcast.
00:11:12
Speaker
What are you hoping to accomplish with this?
Future Aspirations for Basecamp
00:11:15
Speaker
So on a broader scope, we want to make Basecamp a household name when you think about project management and team communication. We want to connect with listeners. So we want for people to hear our ad and say, yeah, I struggle with email too. Maybe I should try Basecamp. And we want those people to keep that in mind. And eventually when that need arises, think about Basecamp and then go to our website.
00:11:41
Speaker
We really don't do a lot to convince people to become customers. As long as they visit our site and they sign up for a trial, many of them end up becoming customers for life. So as long as we can reach those customers and have that little spot on their minds, that's enough for us. Well, thank you so much for being with us today. We appreciate your time. Thank you.