Figuring out who to bring a particular issue or question to shouldn’t be a guessing game. Most concerns fall pretty clearly within the responsibility of a specific team at Basecamp, and the head of that team should be the first point of contact. At the same time, every single person who works at Basecamp is approachable and friendly, more than willing to point you in the right direction. If you have a question, you're probably not the first, so speak up!
Jason Fried is our CEO and runs design. He’s principally responsible for setting the overall direction of the company. That means deciding when to embark on a new version of Basecamp or experiment with a side project (Basecamp-spinoff Know Your Company is one example). Jason also spends a lot of time writing and speaking about what we’ve learned about business, design, and organizations. He was one of the original four people who started 37signals, the design firm that led to Basecamp, back in 1999.
David Heinemeier Hansson is our CTO and runs technology. He’s responsible for setting the technical direction of our products. He originally created Ruby on Rails, the web framework that we’ve built all our products on top. David also spends a lot of time sharing what we’ve learned to the world. He has been working with Jason since 2001 and became a partner at the company when 37signals, the design company, transitioned to do products instead of working for clients in 2004.
Andrea LaRowe is Basecamp's administrative assistant and works under Jason and David. Andrea assists with day-to-day operations of the company, human resources, benefits & payroll administration, and event planning. Andrea is often the best person to tap first, when you don't know who to talk to about a problem.
Ryan Singer is our resident deep thinker on design. He’s an expert in applying the Jobs-To-Be-Done framework to understanding customers and what they’re looking for. He pushes us to challenge the conceptual model behind what Basecamp is and what it should be. Ryan has been working at Basecamp since 2004 and was part of the original group of four people at the company when Basecamp-the-product was first launched.
Our product design team consists of mobile app designers and designers who work on the Basecamp web app. On the mobile side, Jason Zimdars leads design for the native iOS apps and works with Tara Mann, while Jamie Dihiansan is the design lead for the Android team. On product design, we have: Jonas Downey, Conor Muirhead, Kris Niles, and Scott Upton. Adam Stoddard rounds out our design team as our marketing designer.
The programming department consists of four teams:
GP works on new features for Basecamp together with the product designers. They're also responsible for the user-facing backend systems such as Queenbee, 37id, and the API. Jeff Hardy is the team lead and works with Pratik Naik, Tom Ward, and Flora Saramago.
SIP is our instant-response team whenever something goes wrong, is about to go wrong, or is expected soon to go wrong! Our galaxy defenders, if you will. They are the primary programming team working together with Operations to ensure that our applications are always safe, secure, and fast. Jeremy Daer is the team lead and works with Rosa Gutiérrez, George Claghorn, and Jim Mackenzie.
Our rich text editor Trix and our front-end framework Turbolinks were both born from RF. They work on deep research projects like those two, but also on all manners of UI fidelity in general. That means a lot of JavaScript, but also integrating that with our Ruby and native code. Sam Stephenson is team lead and works with Javan Makhmali.
Basecamp 3 was the first version of Basecamp that launched with two complete, awesome native applications for Android and iOS on day one. That was only possible because we dedicated stable teams to both efforts. Dan Kim and Jay Ohms work on Basecamp's native Android app. Zach Waugh and Dylan Ginsburg develop our Basecamp iOS app.
Basecamp operates across three physical data centers and a smattering of cloud. Keeping the lights on with great reliability is the foremost mission of the Operations team, and they’re op-fully amazing at doing it. Taylor Weibley is team lead and works with Nathan Anderson, Matthew Kent, Eron Nicholson, and John Williams. Blake Stoddard works part-time.
Team Data consists of team lead Noah Lorang and Justin White. They test and analyze all sorts of Basecamp data -- conversion rates, pricing models, back-end operational performance, user experience, and oh-so-much more. If you have questions about Basecamp metrics (or woodworking), Noah is the guy to tap.
Kristin Aardsma is the head of the customer support team. She's responsible for the entire customer support team which uses Help Scout to respond to customer tickets. Her team consists of Ashley Bowe (US), Sylvia Chong (Hong Kong), Chase Clemons (US), Merissa Dawson (US), Tony Giang (Australia), Elizabeth Gramm (US), Chris Joyce (United Kingdom), James Glazebrook (Germany), Jayne Ogilvie (United Kingdom), Janice Burch (US), Joan Stewart (US), and Shanae Dykes (US).
When Basecampers want to ship a new feature, Michael Berger and Ann Goliak are our resident bug squashers. They run rolling tests on all web and mobile versions of Basecamp for quality control.
The Distance is a Basecamp-sponsored publication that showcases small businesses that have been in business for over 25 years. Wailin Wong is team lead and the reporter for The Distance, and Shaun Hildner is the producer. Shaun is also our resident filmmaker and makes marketing videos for basecamp.com.