Angel Grablev (@AngelGrablev) is the CEO and Co-Founder of Freedcamp, an online project management and collaboration application. Angel began Freedcamp as a side project, but has since built a global distributed team, and now works full-time to improve project management for thousands of customers.
Our conversation covers Angel’s previous work as a web developer, Freedcamp’s origins and intents, as well as the trouble faced in conventional project management. We also discuss management style and company culture more generally, as it relates to measured results and keeping your co-workers informed.
Sign up for Freedcamp, for free, at Freedcamp.com
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Show Notes & Links
- Freedcamp is a collaboration system which helps any team work together on any sort of project.
- Prescott learned about Freedcamp from Bryan Orr, when he appeared on Episode 31 – Project Management Tools & Collaboration Software
- FTP, the best way to share files not that long ago
- Jack Johnson
- Lenny Kravitz
- Angel’s former employer introduced him to Basecamp
- UCSB – University of California at Santa Barbara
“No team is alike.”
—Angel Grablev
- Angel got the idea for Freedcamp after attempting to organize a camping trip on email
- “Underdo The Competition” — Basecamp’s tagline
- iPhone 1, started with basic apps, but the App Store added tons of functionality
“No one is interested in paying money to organize a camping trip.”
—Angel Grablev
- Freedcamp boasted 30,000 users in its first year
- Some use cases include hurricane clean-up efforts, parent-teacher associations, university students
- ADHD & Dyslexia led Angel to becoming a web developer with design skills
- Angel built the first HTML5/CSS3 framework, 52 Framework
- Santa Barbara City College
- Freedcamp’s team lives in California, Australia, Ukraine, and Netherlands
- Eating your own dog food
- GitHub
- Agile Development
- Scrum
- Waterfall
- AMC, users of Freedcamp
- A gaming studio used Freedcamp’s Wiki application to plan an entire game
- The Wall, a social, less formal place to have conversations within Freedcamp
- Animated GIFs & Emoji — adding flavour to group chatter
“The biggest gift I have is the people I work with.”
—Angel Grablev
- The One Thing by Gary Keller & Jay Papasan on Amazon and on Audible
- Angel broke the daily habit of drinking a Monster Energy Drink each morning
- bacn, the newsletters and other stuff in your inbox that isn’t quite spam
- Ramit Sethi‘s example of Flossing One Tooth
“Take one step, everything else will take care of itself.”
—Angel Grablev
- Angel Grablev on GitHub
- Angel Grablev on Twitter
- Angel Grablev on Facebook
- Angel Grablev on Instagram
- Freedcamp on Twitter
- Freedcamp on Facebook
- Freedcamp on YouTube
Tools
- Freedcamp
- Gmail
- Google Docs
- Basecamp
- Jira from Atlassian
- Trello or Asana, competitors to Freedcamp
- Adobe Photoshop
- PNGHat & CSSHat, plugins for Photoshop
- XAMPP, to run local servers
- JQuery & Angular.js frameworks
- Skitch, for screenshots
- Sketch, for interface design
- Fireworks, InDesign, for vector-based design
Techniques
- Reduce email; get everyone on a project mgmt. app as soon as possible
- Don’t build a huge feature list; go for simple and easy to use
- Think about where your product can grow
- Find a technical co-founder; don’t suffer alone with skills you lack.
- Go for 80% functionality and create a workaround for the final 20%
- Be flexible with how you use any tool
- Use [brackets] or #hashtags as a DIY way to have tags/categories
- Create a catch-all “bucket” of to-dos for your company. It deters meetings & email.
- Discover what works best for your team
- Write down decisions made in [daily] meetings
- Skim, don’t read, email. Just look for critical things.
- Pause and look for the “most important thing”
- Break down a project into two-week increments
Habits
- Track time to get an accurate picture of your week, and to send invoices
- Be social with your co-workers on the Wall
- Establish a daily standup meeting to discuss what you’re working on
- Follow-up and share results for projects or tasks
- Continually gather ideas from your team
- Use three monitors for Photoshop, Code, and Browsers
- Quit Caffeine (be prepared for headaches)
- Avoid email first thing; instead do your most important work first
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