37signals
also referred to as: 37 signals
34 statements across 3 episodes · 8 bullish · 8 bearish · 3 people on the record · first statement Dec 17, 2023 by Jason Fried · said 60 times in 11 episodes since 2022 · across every show →
Mentions by year
brought up most by Lenny Rachitsky (34), Jason Fried (15), Ryan Singer (6), Phyl Terry (1), Patrick Campbell (1), Noah Weiss (1), Jason Cohen (1), Ian McAllister (1)
tap a year for its mentions
2026 1 mention in 1 episode
2025 17 mentions in 4 episodes 4 per episode
- A better way to plan, build, and ship products | Ryan Singer (creator of “Shape Up")
- $46B of hard truths: Why founders fail and why you need to run toward fear | Ben Horowitz (a16z)
- Why ChatGPT will be the next big growth channel (and how to capitalize on it) | Brian Balfour
- He saved OpenAI, invented the “Like” button, and built Google Maps: Bret Taylor (Sierra)
- every mention in 2025, scene by scene →
2024 1 mention in 1 episode
2023 40 mentions in 4 episodes 10 per episode
- Jason Fried challenges your thinking on fundraising, goals, growth, and more
- The ultimate guide to JTBD | Bob Moesta (co-creator of the framework)
- The 10 traits of great PMs, AI, and Slack’s approach to product | Noah Weiss (Slack, Google)
- 10 lessons on bootstrapping a $200m business | Patrick Campbell (ProfitWell)
- every mention in 2023, scene by scene →
2022 1 mention in 1 episode
Everything said about 37signals, oldest first
Dec 17, 2023
Fried: Bootstrappers must stay small because costs are their only controllable variable
“Stay as small as you can for as long as you can. Like the only thing you can really control are your costs. You can't control the alternatives in the market, the competition. You can't control them. You can't determine the market itself. You can't control the …”
Dec 17, 2023 positive
Dec 17, 2023
Dec 17, 2023
Dec 17, 2023
Dec 17, 2023
Dec 17, 2023
Dec 17, 2023 negative
Dec 17, 2023 negative
Dec 17, 2023 negative
Fried: Raising outside capital turns entrepreneurs into employees for others
“The moment you go out and take money, or have these big obligations, you end up working for someone else, and I don't really understand, I do understand why some companies do it, but I don't understand why a lot of people do it who probably shouldn't do it.”
Dec 17, 2023 negative
Fried: Long-running, never-ending projects cause employees to quit
“This prevents long-running projects that never end, which, by the way, are the most demoralizing kinds of projects. Things that you're stuck on, that you don't want to do, that never end. Sucks. And if people get stuck on a couple of those, they want to leave …”
Dec 17, 2023
Fried: 37signals tracks no OKRs, KPIs, revenue, or customer growth targets
“We don't have financial goals. We don't have OKRs or KPIs. I don't have revenue targets. I don't have growth targets in terms of the number of customers we need to pick up this year versus last year. I don't look at any of those things.”
Dec 17, 2023 neutral
Dec 17, 2023
Dec 17, 2023 negative
Dec 17, 2023 positive
Dec 17, 2023 negative
Fried: Continuous back-to-back sprints do not work at work
“And that's why I don't like the word because you can't layer that back to back to back to back. You cannot sprint back to back to back to back in life. And you can't do it at work. I mean, people do it at work, but like, I don't think it actually works.”
Dec 17, 2023 negative
Dec 17, 2023
Fried: 37signals pays top five design finalists for one-week trial projects
“One of the things that we do during the interview process for designers specifically and product people, which is the same thing in my mind, is they do a project for us at the end. So the last, like, five finalists will do a project for them, for us. We'll pay…”
Dec 17, 2023
Fried: Most businesses globally are bootstrapped, not venture-backed outliers
“The majority of companies on this planet run like ours. They're bootstrapped. They don't have any money. No one's willing to give them a penny. And they open up a shop somewhere, they do something, they put their shingle out, and they, you know, launch a websi…”
Dec 17, 2023
Fried: 37signals builds every feature with two people within six weeks
“We build products with two people at a time. So every feature we work on in Basecamp or Hay or whatever we're building is two people, one programmer, one designer, and they have a maximum of six weeks to deliver the feature that they're working on. Most of the…”
Dec 17, 2023 positive
Fried: ONCE software includes full source code for buyers to modify
“The other thing we're doing with once products is that you get the code... So you'll get all the code and you can look at it and you can modify it and you can play with it and you can tweak it. You can't resell it. There's a certain licensing, but it's yours.”
Dec 17, 2023
Fried: 37signals builds ONCE products in 3 months with 2 people
“We can build these in typically three months each with two people. And the maintenance cost is zero to us. Essentially it's, there's no marginal cost here because we make the software and we sell it and we don't have to maintain it in terms of hosting and the …”
Dec 17, 2023 neutral
Dec 17, 2023
Dec 17, 2023 bullish
Fried: 37signals launches ONCE, a line of self-hosted, buy-once business software
“We were going to launch this thing called once, which is essentially a brand, an umbrella, a line, a product line of non-SaaS products, of products, not services. Things people will download, software, business software products, people will download, pay for …”
Dec 17, 2023
Fried: 37signals operates exclusively on six-week planning cycles without long-term plans
“Like we don't have a multi-year plan. I don't even have a one-year plan. I don't even have a six month plan or a court. Like we think about everything we're going to do every six weeks, we rethink what we're going to do next.”
Dec 17, 2023 negative
Dec 17, 2023 neutral
Mar 30, 2025 positive
Singer: Basecamp had no sales or marketing orgs competing for engineering time
“Imagine you have no sales org. You have no marketing. That all of sales, sales, selling and marketing is happening by the unicorn founders. So it means that there isn't contention for engineering time, that there isn't kind of like all these different sources …”
Mar 30, 2025 positive
Mar 30, 2025 positive
Singer: Every designer at Basecamp writes code and runs the app locally
“Every designer codes. Imagine if every designer codes and not, and I don't just mean HTML. I mean, like running the app locally, going into the place where that view is rendered to make that thing look the way that they want it to look or whatever. Right. I me…”
Mar 30, 2025 neutral
Jan 25, 2026 positive
Cohen: Stalled companies can maximize profits instead of forcing revenue growth
“If we define you as this product in this market, in this company, the answer might be no. What we need to do is have a different product or in a different market or a different thing. Or you could change the word revenue. If you say, do you need to grow revenu…”