The Zero to $10M Newsletter

Most founders want to go big, fast.

Jason Fried went small and slow. On purpose.

In a world chasing blitzscale, Basecamp did the opposite:

No funding. No growth hacks. No 10x team.

Today, that small and slow approach is a $100M+ business; profitable, focused, 20 years strong, with fewer than 100 employees.

Here's what I learned from Jason:

The SaaS playbook says “go bigger.”

Jason’s path says “cut deeper.”

Smaller team. Fewer features. Sharper focus.

Build something people (a select group of people) want. That they care deeply about. Build for them and no one else.

No chasing market share.

No serving everyone.

Just get good at one thing and stay there.

In 2025, that strategy feels more relevant than ever...

AI is shrinking the gap between idea and execution.

• You don’t need a big team to ship fast.
• You don’t need 15 tools to serve your customers.
• You don’t need 100 features to be valuable.

The "edge" now isn’t about being the biggest, or about being everywhere.

It’s about being precise. Hyper relevant. Explicitly specific.

We just sat down with Jason for the Zero to $10M podcast, and here's what he told us:

1. Why they never chased investors
2. How Basecamp builds for clarity, not complexity
3. What “enough” looks like when everyone else wants more
4. Why staying small is a superpower, not a constraint
5. When to say yes to VC money (and when to say "hell no")

If you're building for profit, you'll want to listen to this one.

​👉 Watch the full Jason Fried interview​

(More interviews like this coming soon...We’re just getting started)

Until next time,

Alex Turnbull

Founder of OptimizeCX, the company behind

Helply, InstantDocs, Groove, and Zero to $10M

P.S. Our next guest on the Zero to $10M Podcast turned $1,000 USD into $30M and shows us a clever merger and acquisition strategy to buy and grow a company (and use the profit to pay for it...it's brilliant).

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