Lessons Learned at 37 Signals

Tuesday, March 11th, 2008

Sean Ammirati shares some Lessons Learned at 37 Signals from Jason Fried’s SXSW presentation:

Ignore The Great Unknown
Optimize for today.

Watch Out for Red Flags
Be careful with the words need, can’t, easy, only, and fast.

Be Successful and Make Money by Helping Other People be Successful and Make Money
Spot chain reactions and be the catalyst.

Target Nonconsumers and Nonconsumption
Jason borrowed this concept from Clayton Christensen’s Innovators Dilemma and Innovators Solution.

Question Your Work Regularly
Why are we doing this?

Read your Product
People pay too much attention to pixels and not enough to words.

Err on the Side of Simple
Start with the easy way.

Invest in What Doesn’t Change
Principles can last.

Follow the Chefs
You become famous and successful by giving knowledge away.

Interruption is the Enemy of Productivity
Favor passive communication like email over things that are instantaneous but interrupt your workflow.

Road Maps Send You in the Wrong Direction
Road Maps lock you into the past.

Be Clear in Crisis
People love you even more if you are open, honest, public and responsive during a crisis.

Make Tiny Decisions
When you make tiny decisions, you can’t make big mistakes.

Make it Matter
Everything you do should matter.

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Phileas Frogg: Life has ever loved the sting of living.
McChuck: It’s cool that they can do that, but the main point of fuel cells is to power vehicles. Ceramics aren’t known for their ability to handle potholes.
Jim: The Soviet Union survived Germany’s onslaught only with United State materiel. Then the United State had nukes and the Soviet Union didn’t. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what should’ve happened next.
Bruce: Jim, after Hitler betrayed the Hitler-Stalin Pact, the Soviets would have been nuts not to prepare for every other alliance ending in an invasion of Russia. Nazi and Communist cooperation went back before Hitler took power. German weapons and tactics were tested on Soviet territory with Soviet aid since the early 1920s. By comparison, the US was a stranger.
Jim: The strangest part of the Second World War is how the United State’s military could’ve simply marched to Moscow in a few weeks, nearly uncontested, and simply chose not to—even without the exclusive possession of atomic weaponry which it, in fact, had. Moreover, for four full years, the United State had absolute military supremacy over the Soviet Union: between 1945 and 1949, the one could’ve nuked the other at its convenience and without credible retaliation. The Great General...
Bruce: Before reading Groves, I thought the decisive gift of nukes to Stalin came from a communist going to Oppenheimer and saying, ‘I’d like a vacation back in New York. You know, visit the Soviet embassy, show them some secret plans’ and Oppenheimer saying ‘Sure! My kid’s babysitter Klaus Fuchs can give you tips!’ And that happened. But Joliot-Curie, Communist party member, was thinking of building an A-bomb in the Sahara with Congo pitchblende before the Manhatten...
Space Nookie: Any future tank will have to be manufactured in mass numbers in factories with contested supply chains, then transported to whatever shithole proxy war is ongoing where the bridges are rated for max 40 tons. It will be knocked out, recovered, and repaired multiple times before it is discarded and stripped for parts.
Alex S.: “Main battle tanks rely primarily upon their speed and long-range firepower” Starts with an outdated assertion. When you can have precision fire of dozens of km by missile, round artillery, drones suddenly the tank finds itself as a short range weapon. Then a falsehood, tank speed?! Land movement is always slow.
Phileas Frogg: Rooster Rocket: “Most amerindian women are NOT attractive. From the “smashed in the face with an iron pan” look of those in the southwest, to the reservation welfare-dependantapotomu ses on the reservations, yikes. Further east amerindians were more attractive, especially where there was more white/indian intermingling. Read some James Lafond for more details.” Too true. The Seneca Nation of Indians are near to my home and an old joke in the area goes: “What did the...
McChuck: David Drake (Hammer’s Slammers) and Keith Laumer (BOLO) were prescient. They were both right about what sort of tanks the future might hold, and what those tanks would need to survive.
Isegoria: Earlier today Samuel Bendett cited a Russian piece on lessons learned from Ukraine: The tank is the primary means of line-of-sight fire; in fact, it was designed as a protected platform for such fire It is now an easily detectable and easily hit target with an ineffective line-of-sight weapon system. As a result, the tank has lost its once-essential role as an army’s primary means of breakthrough and maneuver. It is unclear what benefit a vulnerable vehicle with limited armament...
McChuck: They’re not wrong, but such a tank would be hideously expensive. We still need light, medium, and heavy armored vehicles. What we really need is something very similar to the Finnish Patria NEMO. 120mm direct-fire capable, rifled gun-mortar. Interdict an intersection 5 miles away, drop rounds on the other side of the building you’re next to, put rounds into the windows on that building right over there, then blow up the onrushing VBIED.
Bruce: In this book Groves makes the point that the tremendous investment in building the bomb was a factor in deciding to use it. Sunk cost fallacy. If the cream of the US Army regulars had gone into nukes, our chances of using nukes would have been greater. ‘…in time of war every possible regular officer should be in the combat area’. Maybe. Keeping valuable, trustworthy regulars home and throwing expendable allies, felons, and conscripts into the meat grinder first has worked for...
Rooster Rocket: Most amerindian women are NOT attractive. From the “smashed in the face with an iron pan” look of those in the southwest, to the reservation welfare-dependantapotomu ses on the reservations, yikes. Further east amerindians were more attractive, especially where there was more white/indian intermingling. Read some James Lafond for more details.
Rooster Rocket: 1. “The graveyards are full of indispensable men.” 2. That said, I find that so many monumental achievements in Christendom/The West were accomplished by men who, had they died, the achievement’s success would have been in doubt.
Jim: The squaw of noble blood, tall and attractive and severe, tended to die out when subjected to the white man’s hegemony, as the short, stubby, bug-Indian type tended to survive. The prime expression of equestrian nomadic pastoralism emanated from the Great Steppe a few thousand years ago. Perhaps with many generations’ more exposure to horses, the noblest races of Amerindian could have ascended to the level of the ancient Aryan in all respects.
Walt: Have you actually seen the squaws?
Jim: Bob Sykes: “So, the Plains Indians had the perfect lifestyle? Permanent bonding, vigorous outdoor living, lots of red meat, and hot squaws…” Equestrian nomadic pastoralism is the supreme way of being, yes.
Bob Sykes: So, the Plains Indians had the perfect lifestyle? Permanent bonding, vigorous outdoor living, lots of red meat, and hot squaws…
Jim: That is substantially the same strategy employed by the military when moving its officers around every 2-4 years.

Isegoria

Lessons Learned at 37 Signals

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