The HEY launch: Pick a fight to get attention

Episode details

In today’s episode of The Startup Chat, Steli and Hiten talk about The HEY launch.

Basecamp launched their new product, HEY, recently and have succeeded in creating a lot of buzz and a huge waiting list in the process.

In this episode, Steli and Hiten talk about how HEY was marketed before it launched, how the launch of HEY was a campaign, the unique position of Basecamp as a company and much more.

Time Stamped Show Notes:

00:00 About the topic of today’s episode

00:41 Why this topic was chosen.

02:04 One thing about Basecamp that a lot of people don’t realise.

02:48 About HEY.

03:47 How the launch of HEY was a campaign.

05:00 Another interesting thing about the HEY launch.

05:53 The unique position of Basecamp.

07:38 How Apple is a very principled company.

08:30 How Basecamp has found a middle ground.

10:03 About Basecamp’s marketing strategy.

3 Key Points:

The team about basecamp is that they’re not as strategic as you might think. They just have principles that have worked for them for over 20 years.They don’t need to make privacy the enemy when they launch.Who starts a battle with Apple?

[0:00:01]
Steli Efti: Hey everybody, this is Steli Efti.
[0:00:02]
Hiten Shah: And this is Hiten Shah.
[0:00:04]
Steli Efti: And today on The Startup Chat we're going to talk about something that we usually never do, which is a recent product launch, HEY, and maybe the concept of beef as marketing. I don't know. We'll see. But during the last couple of weeks, there've not been many really impactful business product launches, I think, or at least if there were any-
[0:00:26]
Hiten Shah: I mean we don't really talk about news on here. That's really what you're going after, right?
[0:00:29]
Steli Efti: We never do that. Yes.
[0:00:30]
Hiten Shah: We don't do that, but we're going to talk about news today.
[0:00:33]
Steli Efti: Yeah, we are, because it's sort of fun. To me, at least, it's been fun to observe the Basecamp folks launched 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 kind of curious, interesting. They always like to fight battles, especially when they have products in the battle in some way, but they always want to stand for 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. They would just shoot at 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's with Apple, which is even more fun.
[0:01:28]
Hiten Shah: So here's what's interesting. So these folks at Basecamp launched hey.com, and part of their marketing campaign prelaunch was privacy. Post-launch, it's not even that it's a battle with Apple, because I really don't think they expected it, frankly speaking. 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 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 20 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. I mean back in the day their enemy was Gantt charts. I don't know if you recall at all, but with Basecamp, original Basecamp, it was Gantt charts. And they're like, "The enemy's Gantt charts." I mean now, with HEY, here's what I'm thinking. They don't need to make privacy the enemy when they launch because it is identif...