How Basecamp's PR Strategy Generates Millions in Free Press

David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH) published a blog post in October 2022. It wasn't a press release. It was an open letter about why Basecamp (formerly 37signals) was leaving the cloud.

This open letter was a masterclass in Basecamp's PR strategy.

The post had specific numbers, a clear enemy, and a controversial stance. The tech press picked it up immediately. Within 48 hours, major outlets were linking to the post as a primary source.

Most corporate blogs are graveyards. They publish safe updates about "synergy" and "optimizing workflows" that nobody reads.

Jason Fried and DHH do the exact opposite. They use their blog to pick fights. They draw lines in the sand. By framing business decisions as moral battles, they make the media pay attention.

This isn't luck. It's a calculated approach that turns a blog post into millions of dollars in free advertising.

How to force reporters to quote you

Reporters are busy. They're also lazy. They have to cover 10 articles a day.

When you send a press release, you ask them to do work. You ask them to parse corporate jargon, find the story, and verify the facts. Most press releases go straight to the trash.

Basecamp flips this dynamic. They write the story for the reporter.

An open letter acts as a "primary source." When DHH writes a post, he provides the conflict, the quotes, and the data in one package. A journalist at The Verge doesn't need to interview him. They can quote the post, add 2 sentences of context, and publish.

The blog post becomes the news event.

This forces outlets to link back to Basecamp. If TechCrunch writes about the cloud exit, they link to the original post to prove their sources.

Basecamp gets the traffic. They get the domain authority. They get the narrative control.

Deconstructing the contrarian blog post

The 2022 cloud exit post is a textbook example of this strategy.

It didn't say "We are changing hosting providers." That's boring.

Instead, DHH framed it as a rebellion against "Big Tech" extortion. He included a specific, headline-grabbing number: leaving AWS and Google Cloud would save the company $7 million over 5 years.

That specific number acted as a hook.

Ars Technica analyzed the math immediately. The Register covered the savings in detail. Both outlets linked back to Basecamp.

Later, the company updated the projection to $10 million in savings. The press cycle restarted.

If they had quietly switched servers, nobody would have cared. By shouting about the cost, they turned a backend infrastructure change into a global debate about server costs.

How narrative tension forces major media coverage

Basecamp's strategy relies on one thing: narrative tension.

A product update has zero tension. A fight has stakes.

Basecamp creates tension by taking a contrarian stance and accepting the consequences.

In April 2021, Jason Fried published a post announcing a ban on political discussions at work. The backlash was immediate. One-third of the company resigned.

Most CEOs would hide. Fried and DHH kept posting.

The post, "Changes at Basecamp", became a cultural flashpoint. It generated thousands of backlinks from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and every tech blog.

The stakes were real. People quit. That made the story impossible to ignore. Reporters can smell performative controversy, but they respect actual blood on the floor because it gets clicks.

4 times Basecamp manipulated the news cycle

Basecamp has run this playbook for a decade. The pattern is always the same: pick a fight, show the receipts, wait for the links.

The fight against Apple (2020)

When Apple threatened to remove the HEY email app over fees, Basecamp didn't negotiate privately.

They took the fight public. Fried published a series of emails and updates framing Apple as a monopoly bullying a small developer.

The Verge covered the saga daily, linking to Basecamp's posts as the canonical record.

Radical focus (2014)

Most SaaS companies add more products to grow revenue. Basecamp subtracted instead.

They dropped all other products to focus solely on their project management tool.

Forbes covered the rebrand because the move seemed crazy.

The "craziness" was the hook.

Leaving the cloud (2022)

DHH attacked the sacred cow of modern tech infrastructure: Amazon Web Services (AWS).

He argued that renting servers is a financial racket for mature companies. The post validated what many CTOs secretly thought but were afraid to say.

Internal policy as public news (2021)

The political discussion ban proved that internal memos can be external marketing assets.

Even negative press builds domain authority.

How to run this playbook yourself

You don't need DHH's X following to use this approach. You need courage.

Most founders are afraid to have an opinion. They want to be liked by everyone. That's a recipe for obscurity.

Here's how to turn your blog into a press magnet:

• Pick a contrarian stance. What does your industry believe that you know is wrong?

• Find the numbers. Don't just complain. Bring data. "$7 million savings" travels further than "$5 million savings".

• Create a villain. It could be a competitor, a monopoly (Apple), or a concept (rental costs).

• Publish on your own domain. Never give this content to Medium or LinkedIn. You want the backlinks.

• Accept the heat. Sharp edges cut. Some people will hate you. That means the strategy is working.

Basecamp proves that you don't need a PR agency for journalists to write about you. You just need a bold point of view.

Top Tweets of the day

1/

The one who knows their niche well can use AI to 10x themselves.

AI is pretty good at following specific instructions.

Experts know one thing better than any beginner and that is to knowing which questions to ask?

One of my best friends literally told me that if you talk to AI like an expert and give it as much in-depth instructions as possible, it will think longer and harder plus use the most available GPU resources and come up with the most brilliant solution you have ever seen.

I could only think upto 10-20 minutes (sometimes 30 minutes) but she goes upto 60 minutes every single time. The output difference was massive.

“If I had an hour to solve a problem I'd spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions.” ~ Albert Einstein

Every programmer knows that thinking more about the problem leads to a solution eventually. You have to let the problem marinate in your subconcious for a long time and it'll come up with an answer in the shower or while you were sleeping.

2/

Love this!

3/

2026 is the year of marketers.

Rabbit Holes

1. David R. Bell | Effectively Market To Millennials and Gen-Z

2. How to cut your AI costs by 90% while improving performance (according to Databricks)

3. The Google landscape is changing, here's what you need to know.

What'd ya think of today's newsletter? Hit 'reply' and let me know.

Do me a favor and share it in your company's Slack #marketing channel.

First time? Subscribe.

Follow me on X.

More Startup Spells 🪄

1. How Gamifying Failure Increased Chess.com Subscriptions by 20% (LINK)

2. How Prayer Lock automates UGC marketing using Gemini 3 & Python (LINK)

3. Interest Graph vs Follower Graph Algorithm (LINK)

4. How Higgsfield AI used 9-hour credit giveaways to slash SaaS CAC (LINK)

5. Discord's Checkpoint 2025: Designing a Viral Year-In-Review (LINK)