Fried: 37signals assigns no specs or tickets to product teams
Jason Fried · Jason Fried challenges your thinking on fundraising, goals, growth, and more · Dec 17, 2023 · at 35:25
Jason Fried, co-founder and CEO of 37signals, discusses team autonomy under the Shape Up product framework.
0:00 / 0:14exact quote · 14.5s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“We don't have, like, a spec. We don't create to-dos or tasks or tickets for people. They create the work that needs to get done to fulfill the idea that we've written up and designed, essentially, and they figure out how to do it.”
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
Fried: Silicon Valley turned high-margin software into an unprofitable business model
“What's interesting is that Silicon Valley has found a way to make the most profitable style of business the least profitable. Like, software has, there's like, No physical costs. It should, the margin should be close to 80 or 90%, and it turns out that they're…”
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.”
Fried: Making delivery promises is the downfall of businesses
“Promises are the downfall of every business. Like every time we've made a promise to get something out in a certain period of time, like, and we kind of inevitably seem to miss, miss it.”
Fried: Analyzing past business failures is largely futile in complex work
“I don't like to look back on, on things. I'm not much of a fan of looking back on failures and trying to figure out what went wrong so we don't do it again, because I don't think we know what went wrong.”
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.”
Fried: Venture backing destroys viable mid-sized software business opportunities
“There really is only kind of one outcome for venture backed companies, which is go huge. And if you think about all of the space between Kind of a small business and a massive, huge unicorn business. There's so much room there that you could normally find your…”