REWORK

When Robin Petravic and Cathy Bailey bought Heath Ceramics from the company's founders in 2003, they promised to keep the dinnerware maker and its manufacturing workforce in its home base of Sausalito, California. The pandemic provided an opportunity for Heath to recommit to this pledge and create a Living Wage Initiative, which in turn prompted a radical overhaul of the company's 401(k) program. Robin Petravic comes on Rework to talk about walking the walk on equity, resilience, and equipping Heath for the next 200 years.

Robin and Cathy wrote about the Living Wage Initiative in Heath's January newsletter.

Show Notes

Heath Ceramics website | Instagram - 1:02

"Edith Heath: A Rebellion in Clay" (KCET, 2019) - 1:14
"A New Year, 166 New Owners" - 6:30

"Marin County's intensive effort drove down a COVID surge among Latino residents" (San Jose Mercury News) - 10:46

MIT Living Wage Calculator - 15:46

Eau de Space - 25:16

Last episode of the year and we're talking about startups. The new dry cleaner down the street doesn't call itself a startup. The pizza place on the corner doesn't call itself a startup. They're new businesses, that's all! So, what's so special about your tech company that you need a fancy word for it? Startups make you think of unlimited growth, huge investments, no expenses to worry about. This mindset can be unhealthy and detrimental to your new business.

Show Notes

• 02:57 - Request for Proposal (Investopedia)
• 10:02 - Greater fool theory (Wikipedia)
• 15:57 - R.I.P. Good Times (Sequoia Capital)
• 23:00 - Hotwire

This week Jason and David discuss the essay titled "Start Making Something." It's only when you start building something the real insights come. Until then, all you have is just an idea. We also talk about Stanley Kubrick films and Jason introduces groundbreaking concepts like perforated pizza and "The Mysterious Cat."

Show Notes

• 06:04 - Getting Real
• 17:22 - Collections
• 20:44 - Stanley Kubrick (IMDb)
• 20:57 - 2001: A Space Odyssey (IMDb)
• 21:10 - Music Box Theater
• 22:10 - The Shining (IMDb)
• 22:24 - The reason why Stephen King hated Stanley Kubrick film 'The Shining' (Far Out)

Basecamp was originally designed as a way to manage 37signals' client work and its success can be credited to the fact that it was designed to scratch a very specific itch by the people with that were itching. Now, we're not saying that building something for others is necessarily a bad way to go about things, but building for your own needs has huge advantages.

Show Notes

• 06:15 - "The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste. They have absolutely no taste. And I don't mean that in a small way, I mean that in a big way, in the sense that they don't think of original ideas, and they don't bring much culture into their products." - Steve Jobs in Triumph of the Nerds (PBS)
• 12:53 - Hotwire
• 13:57 - Not invented here (Wikipedia)
• 14:26 - Mary Kay Ash (Wikipedia)
• 18:12 - Second-system effect (Wikipedia)
• 21:35 - Minimum viable product (Wikipedia)
• 21:42 - Making sense of MVP - Henrik Kniberg
• 23:55 - The Homer (Simpsons Wiki)

In this episode we dive deep into the introduction and chapter 1 of Rework, The New Reality.

Show Notes

• 02:09 - It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work
• 02:14 - Remote: Office Not Required
• 05:15 - Zoom
• 05:35 - [email protected]
• 07:52 - JavaScript
• 11:18 - HEY
• 11:53 - Ruby on Rails
• 12:37 - Shopify
• 13:07 - GitHub
• 13:07 - Airbnb
• 13:08 - Twitch
• 18:05 - Stripe Atlas
• 18:37 - Squarespace
• 20:50 - Upwork
• 28:11 - FAANG
• 30:50 - Bookshop.org