Fried: Companies Should Settle Into Orbit Rather Than Pursuing Endless Growth
Jason Fried · Jason Fried: Your Only Competition Is Your Costs · Feb 15, 2026 · at 21:37
Jason Fried, co-founder of 37signals, discusses growth philosophy and why companies should prioritize sustainable stability over endless corporate scaling.
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“You gotta get off the ground, and you gotta break free of gravity, but then there's a point where you actually just want to sit in orbit and sort of maintain. You want to be within a certain range and fluctuate a little bit up, a little bit down, but be in this comfortable place where you're just orbiting. You're not breaking a force anymore. You're not pushing super hard. You're maintaining and maintaining a level of quality, maintaining a level of enjoyment, and just orbiting now. And I think that that's a really wonderful place for businesses to be, but I wouldn't encourage you to be trying to get to orbit year two. You gotta be, like, on the ride up to break free of all the forces that are holding you back, but then you should also find a place where you can settle in and orbit, versus people who I think are just busy constantly trying to grow, grow, grow, and get as big as they possibly can”
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