How 37signals shaped their identity through public warfare.
In April of 2021, 37signals co-founder Jason Fried penned a blog post about policy changes they were making at the company. Shortly after that blog post, more than 1/3 of the company decided to leave.
I analyzed Jason’s blog post, interviews around the topic, and social media posts to see what I could learn. There was plenty to learn about organizational management, but comms-wise, things appeared pretty straightforward. So I marked the article “canceled” in my project management database and moved on.
But a thought kept nagging at me…
37signals had formed an incredibly clear identity in my mind, yet I couldn’t figure out how they had built it. So I started digging into all their comms over the years, and what I found was fascinating.
A hidden pattern.
I researched eight pivotal moments in Jason and David’s journey.
Writing on venture capital and exponential growth:
“…nobody these days is content to merely put their dent in the universe. No, they have to fucking own the universe. It’s not enough to be in the market, they have to dominate it. It’s not enough to serve customers, they have to capture them.”
On corporate meetings:
“Meetings are toxic... They are distractions that masquerade as work. They generally see one person talking while everyone else nods along, bored out of their minds. A 1-hour meeting with 8 people isn't a 1-hour meeting—it's an 8-hour meeting. It is a massive tax on productivity.”
On remote work:
“How do you know your employees are working? Simple: look at the work itself. That's all that should matter anyway... Buying commercial real estate just to create an adult daycare where you can micromanage people by looking at the back of their heads is lazy leadership."
On sunsetting profitable products and renaming the company:
“We will be a one product company… To eliminate any doubt about our newfound focus, we renamed the entire company. We are giving up millions in profit from other products because focus is more valuable than expansion. Most companies want to be a portfolio; we want to be a laser.”
On the Apple App Store monopoly:
“There is no chance in bloody hell that we're going to pay Apple's ransom. I will burn this house down myself, before I let gangsters like that spin it for spoils. Apple is acting like an abusive landlord running a digital protection racket.”
On banning politics at work:
“…every discussion can easily blow up into something deeply emotional and personal. It’s not healthy, it hasn’t served us well. And we’re done with it on our company Basecamp account where the work happens. We are a software company, not a political action committee. We're returning to sanity.”
On leaving the cloud:
“The promise that the cloud would be cheaper and easier has largely turned out to be a myth for companies of our scale. We paid a $3.2 million bill to Amazon AWS... renting computers from billionaires is a sucker's game when you can just buy your own hardware, put it in a rack, and run it for a tenth of the cost.”
On rejecting the subscription model:
“You used to pay for business software once, install it, and run it... Today, buying it enters you into a perpetual landlord–tenant agreement. Every month you pay for essentially the same thing you had last month. And if you stop paying, the software stops working. Boom, you're evicted.”
The mirror and the monster.
While it might seem like an assortment of writing on tech and business, there’s a pattern across them all. Jason and David have mastered the use of the antagonistic foil to frame their point of view.
The role of the antagonist (also known as the villain) is to create conflict. And the role of the foil is to create contrast. Using both concepts together (sometimes emphasizing one aspect more than the other) creates a narrative device that allows for powerful, combative language.
I absolutely love how consistently they do this…
Exponential growth = “a disease”
Corporate meetings = “toxic”
Traditional in-office culture = “lazy leadership”
Diversification or anti-focus = “portfolio companies”
Apple = “gangsters”
Workplace politics = “groupthink”
The public cloud = “mega corporations”
SaaS subscriptions = “perpetual landlord”
Look back at the first example when David shared his stance on venture capital and exponential growth…
“…nobody these days is content to merely put their dent in the universe. No, they have to fucking own the universe. It’s not enough to be in the market, they have to dominate it. It’s not enough to serve customers, they have to capture them.”
This frames ‘exponential growth’ as the villain using words like: own, dominate, and capture. At the same time, the framing also behaves as a foil to create contrast. You can imagine the reader thinking: “If those VC guys are greedy, cancerous predators, then 37signals must be calm, grounded, and ethical.” Using this device in their communication triggers our focus and makes the message incredibly memorable.
The magic in the minutiae.
When you zoom out and look at these communication pieces collectively, there’s a meta-idea that surfaces: contrarianism. Here’s Jason from back in 2008…
“I consider it a duty that we at 37signals do our part to swim against the stream.”
And here’s David at a conference…
“When everyone is marching in lockstep toward the cliff, the only sane response is to turn around and walk the other way.”
When I first wondered how they managed to shape their identity so clearly in my mind, this is how: dozens of pieces over dozens of years, always communicating a core identity.
This identity-shaping power is available to your organization as well. Internal memos, blog posts, and speeches should always be part of a bigger story. The larger meta-idea of your organization should be shaped and communicated across every moment, year after year.
And doing so, just imagine what you could accomplish.
Want to browse Jason and David’s communications? You can find a selection here.
Note: Quotes may have been edited to improve readability while preserving meaning and voice.
