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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…

`0:03:53`

how much I sell my product for, and as long as I make more than I spend, I get to stay in business. And isn't that what this is all about, staying in business? Like, that's what it's all about, because I like this. We like this. I want to keep doing this. I…

`0:04:39`

It's one of the reasons why my main partner is Ramp, because they want to help companies control their costs. — For sure. — It was like the perfect alignment for the audience and what these history's greatest entrepreneurs are saying. But we were talking the other day, where it seems very fascinating how you can have…

`0:05:24`

— No fat. — Yeah. — All product. — That's something you talk about a lot. — Yeah. Yeah. — Can you talk about the importance of keeping costs low, small teams, and then you want essentially no fat anywhere? — We have 62 people at 37signals, and we've gotten as high as, I think, 80 at some point, and then we…

`0:06:11`

and get rid of all the things that get in the way of making good stuff. And I actually think too many people get in the way oftentimes, and you actually end up making worse stuff the more people who are involved. So, we just try to keep the team small. Any team we have making something…

`0:06:56`

People don't want complicated stuff. They don't want software that's full of things they don't use. People will sometimes buy things like that because they're sold things like that, but when it really comes down to it, that's not what they actually want. And people who buy our software are the…

`0:07:44`

That's it. We've had a COO for a while. They were fine. They were good people. There wasn't enough work for them, frankly, to do the work, so they're just doing things that they didn't need to really do. And then when you do stuff you don't really need to do…

`0:08:30`

— Okay. — Basically. COO roles were longer. They were three years. We tried it twice. For the most part, we give everybody about a year to prove themselves at 37signals. And so, we hire somebody, and they have about a year until we decide if we're going to hire them again. That's how I think of…

`0:09:16`

And so, it turned out with the management stuff, we're like, it wasn't even about the people. It was more like, now that we know what we know now, would we create this position again? And the answer was no. So, we eliminated those positions and never rehired for them. So, that's how we…

`0:10:02`

about what the product does and how it works. I'm trying to buck the trend, right? The human nature is about expansion, typically. Like, things tend to expand. But in the physical world, there's also limits that push back on those expansions. Like, if this mug was burning hot, we would know that's a…

`0:10:49`

it just expands forever and gets worse. Software slides downhill. It gets better for a while, then slides downhill. So, I'm conscious of that, and I'm always trying to make sure that every new version we make of something is a little bit simpler in the fundamental ways than the previous version. It might have…

`0:11:36`

It's forcing us to come up with clever solutions to problems, more creative solutions to problems. It forces me to understand what something really is and not what it could be or what I think other people think of it as, but like, what is this really trying to do? And it's fun to have…

`0:12:22`

that's where they come from, the shower and the software. — A lot of the conversations that Jason and I have are about craft, about the importance of putting your soul into your work and making the best possible product that you can. Our conversations remind me a lot of the conversations I have with my friend…

`0:13:08`

and automate as much of your business's finances as possible. In fact, Karim just wrote this: "AI is all I think about these days. It is our duty to be first movers and push limits so we can make the greatest possible product experience for our customers." Many of the fastest-growing and most innovative companies…

`0:13:57`

— Yeah. — And some of his views are not correlated with one another, which also makes it really interesting. — Yeah. — So, for example, you've been running your company. You started your company when you were 25. — Yeah. — You've been running it for 27 years. — Yeah. — You guys have been profitable every single year. — Yeah. — You have…

`0:14:44`

I don't have long-term plans. I like to make things up as I go. So, that's all tied into that. But yeah, I don't particularly like business. I like running my business. I figured out how to run my business, but the idea of me running another business, I don't want to…