Jason Fried / 37signals
I finally watched an interview with Jason Fried, which was waiting in my bookmarks for around a month. Jason Fried, in case you don’t know him, is the founder of 37signals, a company that started as a mere web design service firm and turned into one of the most well-known providers of web-based collaboration software: Basecamp, Highrise, Backpack and Campfire. The company is also behind the famous Ruby on Rails framework. They are not only known for their products, though, they are also known for the way they look at business and the future of work, a topic about which Jason talks a lot, maintains a blog and even released two books. For an entrepreneur or anyone who wants to look at how things in their company can be improved, Jason and his company can be an inspiration. That’s why I wanted to see the interview. In case you won’t find the time to watch the one-hour video, I have compiled the main takeaways here:
- About the company: 37signals has 20 employees (number is from 2010), of which 10 are local and 10 remote employees. 40% of those are college dropouts or never went to college in the first place. They are bootstrapped and never needed VC money.
- Product Design Philosophy: Make products that do less than the competition, but to this really well.
- Making simple products is something small teams are better at.
- “If you have a great idea, cut it in half first.”
- Workplace: Face to face time is important, that’s why even remote hires are brought in the office to meet their colleagues at least once, but typically workers get more done when separated.
- “If you meet less, this time becomes more valuable. If you meet more, you collaborate less.”
- People work best where they are comfortable.
- In a physical office, avoid interruptions. Have an open office but separate rooms for conversations so nobody is disturbed.
- Startups: Don’t take VC funding upfront! “If you need to make money early, you get better at making money. If you have VC money, you get better at spending money.”
- VC-funding often causes companies to grow too fast too soon. Growing slowly and/or staying small is more natural.
- Don’t sell your company and then figure out what to do next. Maybe this business was the best idea you ever had?!
- Sharing: Freemium works as the “Drug Dealer Model”; give away something for free and make people pay for more.
- If you use and depend on open source, give something back. 37signals thinks of itself as a product company, not an infrastructure company, so Rails is not seen as a core business. As it is free, it can become better through external contributions.
- Sharing more gets the word out about your company (he compared it to chefs cooking on TV shows and sharing their recipes to drive people to their restaurants), so share!
- Hiring: Hire as late as possible when it already hurts! A lot of startups (especially VC-backed) scale up their team to early.
- Hire people for a test project for one week. It says so much more about them compared to a resume.
- Recruiters should look for people who want this job, not just a job. Cover letters are important.
- When hiring developers, look for their contributions to open source.
Talking about 37signals, I have one more gem to share; a video from their blog demonstrates the history of the their homepage. Interesting to see how small and big changes are coming after another.
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