The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 17 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
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…”
Fried: 37signals does not offer equity compensation to its employees
“We don't offer equity to employees.”
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…”
Fried: 37signals does not run public betas or broad pre-launch testing
“So we don't do public betas. We don't pull people in, you know, we launch something. Sometimes we have a few people look at it first right before we launch to make sure we didn't miss anything really material. But like we finished the thing and launched the th…”
Fried: Predicting a software company's three-year trajectory offers no real advantage
“I think businesses really, truly just unfold. And I'm here for that. I'm not here to predict where we're going to be in three years. I don't know, don't care, frankly. There's no real advantage to me predicting that.”
Pujji: Claiming employees must have equity to act like owners is manipulative
“I don't think you have to own part of the company. And I think that's like a faux narrative oftentimes that founder, you know, founders will somewhat be manipulative around, oh, everyone's an owner here.”
Company culture is a 50-day moving average of actions, not slogans
“His definition of culture is that a company's culture
Is a fifty-day moving average of your actions and your company's actions, and I love that because it is all based on behaviors and not some words that are written on a wall.”
Fried: 37signals usually gives new employees one year to find their way
“So at 37 signals, we basically give people a year to find their way. Sometimes not a year, but usually a year to find their way.”
Fried: 37signals Generates Tens of Millions in Annual Profit
“And since we've been a profitable business for a long time, we generate tens of millions currently in annual profits.”
Fried: Micromanaging founders create passive employees rather than independent thinkers
“When you're that involved in every decision, and this, by the way, is very common for founders, right? You're like, this is my baby, this is my thing, I want it done this way. What you end up doing is you just create a bunch of people who are waiting to hear w…”
Fried: 37signals Distributes 10% of Annual Profits as Cash
“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 …”
Fried: 37signals gives teams autonomy to decide scope cuts during cycles
“Our six-week cycle process is very much like this. We kind of, you know, orient people in a certain direction around an idea and go, here, you figure it out. You make the decisions about what work needs to happen, and you make the decisions about if we're not …”
Fried: 37signals has approximately 100,000 paying customers across its software products
“So we've got a 100,000 or so paying customers across base camp and hay, and also high rise.”
Fried: Tens of thousands of paying customers subscribe to HEY email
“Hey is super weird when it comes to email. Hey.com. It's just an unusual way to use email. But it resonates with tens of thousands of people who are paying for it.”
Fried: 37signals ran its agency and Basecamp in parallel for a year
“And we ran them in parallel for about a year. And the idea wasn't that Basecamp was going to replace that. It just happened to do that. It happened to become so popular so quickly that we're like, you know, what do we rather do? We have limited time. We'd rath…”
Fried: 37signals launched with just $30,000 pooled from its three founders
“Like when we started our business, There was three founders initially, and we each put in 10 grand. So we had 30 grand, you know, just to kind of make us, make our way for a few months before we picked up some clients to pay our way after that.”