Reading up on 37signals
11 deep · digging since dec 02, 25
- $5300 in $100s: The verdict
Jason Fried reports a $100 refundable‑ticket event drew 55 sign‑ups, 50 attendees (90% show‑rate), doubling the prior free event’s attendance and yielding $500 for donation.
- The 37signals Manager Playbook
The article outlines 37signals' internal manager playbook, detailing their practices for effective leadership, team communication, and productivity in a remote‑first software company.
- 37signals Isn't Smarter Than You, But They Are Different
37signals achieves clean code by keeping teams small, cutting scope, and hiring top engineers, a strategy most companies cannot adopt due to feature-driven revenue models.
- Fizzy Design Evolution: A Flipbook from Git
The article describes a technical process extracting Fizzy's daily git screenshots and scoring a flipbook video with Claude-composed music from the app's own audio samples.
- Vanilla CSS is all you need
37signals builds complex web apps with vanilla CSS, no build tools, proving modern CSS features are sufficient for production.
Takes
We just published our internal 37signals Manager Playbook.
@jasonfried
Whenever someone gets promoted at 37signals, we post a company-wide message in Basecamp so everyone knows. Here's a real example of a message that covers two promotions (Silvia and Lewis):
@jasonfried
just ran Claude Fable 5 over @37signals open source Rails code again extracted all the key insights for writing @dhh-like vanilla Rails into reusable guides and skills just drop it in your skills folder and your AI agent will automatically reference it https://github.com/marckohlbrugge/37signals-skills
@marckohlbrugge
We built Upright to replace Pingdom at 37signals for monitoring all our services, and now we've open-sourced it too. Global checks, playwright smoke tests (with video recording!), detailed uptime tracking, and feeding into Prometheus + Grafana. Enjoy! https://t.co/QUVv0SyBuI
@dhh
We're all still fumbling in the dark with agents, but some patterns are emerging (and some disappear quickly again!), and it's our role as software makers to make use of it all along the way. Here are some quick notes from one of those internal sessions sorting it all at 37s. pic.twitter.com/EG0dnfpA9o
@dhh
Unlike Campfire, where we shared a zero-history copy of the codebase, Fizzy's public codebase has the entire life of the product development cycle out in the open. 1,792 pull requests of historical fun and insight into how we make things at 37signals! https://t.co/b0PrQBfJGC
@dhh