your customers,competitors,employees,prospects...

everyone else.

your customers,competitors,employees,prospects...

everyone else. your businessyour business

37Signals

Stay small.Avoid plans.

Plans are usually garbage...easy to say if you are self-funded.

Don’t have a mission statement. Live and work for what you stand for.

Learn from success - not failure.

* let’s ask Harper Reed...

Entrepreneurs

< Starters

Business plans, months of prep, hiring, and seeking funding are barriers to entry.

Start and work a little at a time to see if it pans out. You can burn out with little to no risk. Fund it with your day job.

A business has a path to profit.

A startup is a crutch (spending others’ money without profit)

Do morewith less.

Cut out the good leaving the great with a focus on your epicenter.

LAUNCH!!!1

Ship now and get “there” through iterations later.

Make decisions instead of waiting for the best

decision.That doesn’t exist now.

Break larger projects into week or day long projects with goals that can be celebrated.

We suck at estimating.

Prioritize by position - not weight.

Let your customers outgrow your non-complex solution.

Don’t write down feature requests. You will remember the ones that are repeated and matter.

It’s ok to be a quitter. Get more eyes on a problem, and reallocate your time to something you can kill.

Competition

Call your competition out.

Be influenced, but don’t steal.

copying === letting someone else do the bulk of the work

MARKETING

Build an audience instead of blindly wasting money.

Emulate chefs. Your craft and knowledge are the ultimate marketing tool.

Also be like drug dealers.

Really.

Be unforgettable. Be passionate.Sell your story like only you can.

HIRING

You should learn your way out instead of hiring your way out of a problem.

Hire only when it hurts...bad.

Look at cover letters instead of resumes. If it comes down to a few candidates - choose the best writer.

Any college or no college will do. How long is not as important as how well you can do something.

Delegators are dead weight and meeting whores.

CUSTOMERS

Apologies need to be sincere. Everything you do leading up to that point in the relationship is important to make it real.

Speed changes everything. No one should be on hold for 16 minutes.

CULTURE

Culture isn’t instant. It’s like scotch and takes time.

(insert picture of drunk Nick)

After making a change ride out the initial dissent. That always happens.

Build a great environment of busy people who go home at 5 everyday.

Few words - tons of assumptions:

need, can’t, easy, just, only, fast

Don’t f***ing say this sh**.

Inspiration is perishable.

Do it when you are passionate.

Do it now.