Disclosure certainty 4/5 debate potential 2/5

Fried: 37signals Distributes 10% of Annual Profits as Cash

Jason Fried · Musings of a Legendary Entrepreneur · Jan 5, 2024 · at 22:31

Jason Fried, co-founder of 37signals, explains the company's compensation philosophy of cash profit sharing instead of granting startup equity.

0:00 / 0:13exact quote · 13.8s
720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“We have a 10% profit share plan. So we hold aside 10% of our annual profits and distribute them to our employees as real money, not equity, not options, not based on what the fluctuations of the market is, but like cash you can spend tomorrow on a mortgage or whatever, right?”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

More from Jason Fried

Insight
Fried: Never dismiss a good idea because prior founders executed poorly
“Never dismiss a good idea because of poor execution. And five people could have gotten it wrong in a row. It doesn't mean it's bad. They just may have gotten it wrong.”
Jason Fried Jan 5, 2024 ▶ 16:22 Musings of a Legendary Entrepreneur
Insight
Fried: Gathering too many early opinions wrecks product development
“One of the ways to wreck new product development is to get too many opinions too early. Everyone's got an opinion, and especially when something's new, they're gonna tell you what they think, and then you end up having to sort of field and explain your reasons…”
Jason Fried Jan 5, 2024 ▶ 31:29 Musings of a Legendary Entrepreneur
Disclosure
Fried: 37signals does not offer equity compensation to its employees
“We don't offer equity to employees.”
Jason Fried Dec 20, 2023 ▶ 2:35 Bootstrapping vs. Venture Capital
Insight
Fried: Ambition should mean sustaining a business, not destroying competition
“The ambition typically, or ambition is typically a word used to talk about, like, amassing, and collecting, and growing. You know, it can also mean, in my opinion, like, it should mean existing, sustaining. I'm ambitious at that level, but I don't need to go d…”
Jason Fried Dec 20, 2023 ▶ 10:46 Bootstrapping vs. Venture Capital
Disclosure
Fried: Midwest location helped 37signals reject VC money and peer pressure
“It was easier for us to reject VC money because we didn't live in that world. We lived in the Midwest and that's not how people do things over there, you know? And we also didn't go to the parties and didn't go to the events and didn't like get influenced by t…”
Jason Fried Jan 5, 2024 ▶ 11:31 Musings of a Legendary Entrepreneur
Insight
Fried: Approaching projects with zero domain knowledge yields more original work
“One of the reasons why I don't go looking at other people's work is because once I have their work in my head, it's hard to have original ideas. I actually prefer the newbie approach. Like, I don't know what the hell I'm doing. I think people who go into somet…”
Jason Fried Jan 5, 2024 ▶ 12:12 Musings of a Legendary Entrepreneur
Made with StarZero

Turn any episode into a week of clips.

This entire site, over 200 episodes transcribed, diarized, checked and made playable, runs on the StarZero media pipeline. Drop in your own episode and the podcast clipper finds the moments worth sharing, cuts them, captions them, and reframes them for every feed.