Co-founder of 37signals. Four long interviews, 2023–2026: a small company, profit instead of growth.
724 passages · 108 texts · updated 2026-10-08
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`0:00:02`
— I want to start with what you told me last night, that you feel the best way to make a product or the best way to make a product for you is by you are the actual customer. You are making the products that you want to use. — Yeah, I don't know how to do it…
`0:00:49`
that I'll put a little text file in this archive of the software that said, "If you like this, send me 20 bucks." And I put it up on AOL, so this is pre-internet, right? Put it up on AOL, and I got this envelope, actually an airmail envelope, one of those with the red…
`0:01:34`
plenty of people who don't, and there's plenty of products for them, too. But there's enough that like what you like, and so that's where I got started. — Yeah, you have this interesting idea where if you're just making what you want, right? Doesn't matter. You just have to go and…
`0:02:20`
And so, it's easy. I only had to find a few thousand people to pay me that money, 20 bucks to get that eventually. But if I had had a big business and had a lot of people, a lot of overhead, I'd have to find a lot of people like me, and that's…
`0:03:07`
— You put it in a very interesting way. You said your real competition is your costs. — Yeah. — Is that the line that you have? — Yeah. It's your only competition. — Explain that. — Well, a business is very simple. You've got to make more than you spend. That's a business, basically. I mean, you can keep…