The Jason Fried/ Founders Manifesto
Some podcasts stop you mid-step. This was one of them.
Jason Fried on Founders, talking about 27 years of building 37signals. Not the typical growth gospel. Not hustle culture dressed up as wisdom. Just a bloke who figured out what works and refused to apologise for it.
Listening to him, something clicked. This is exactly how I want to build T40.
Not copying his work. He has 27 years of proof. I am at the beginning. But these principles? They are becoming my operating system. Here is what I am taking from a guy who has done it longer than I have been employed.
Profit Is Not Embarrassing
Fried said something so simple it sounds stupid: “The only competition I really have on an annual basis is to make sure that we make more than it costs us to run the company.”
That is it. That is the goal. Not market share. Not valuation. Not headcount for the sake of it. Just make more than you spend.
When you have been in corporate, this sounds radical. I sat in rooms where revenue was celebrated and margin was an afterthought. Companies burning cash like it was kindling, chasing growth at any cost. Then they implode.
Fried calls it “cushy margins.” He said: “I believe in cushy margins so we can screw up and it won’t matter that much.”
That is what I am building towards. TERMS is my attempt at this. Six hour days. No fuckwits. Friday protected. A minimum £xk monthly draw. Not because I have earned the right after decades. Because I am choosing the destination now, not drifting toward someone else’s definition of success.
Blubber, he calls it. Fat on the bones. Twenty percent of 37signals is cash. Can you imagine? I am nowhere near that. But now I know what the target looks like.
The Envelope and the Letter
Here is a metaphor that landed hard.
Fried talked about product development as an envelope. The envelope is the outside, the shell, the container. The letter is what is inside. The actual value.
He said: “I want to just work on the letter and the envelope is just the thinnest little thing.”
Most companies do the opposite. They spend months on the envelope. The rebrand. The new website. The flashy feature nobody asked for. Meanwhile the letter stays the same boring garbage.
I have been guilty of this. When you start out, you think you need more. More services. More capabilities. A bigger deck. A fancier proposal template. You are really just decorating the envelope.
T40 runs on AI. The 80/10/10 model. Eighty percent AI, ten percent me, ten percent specialist associates. That forces me to focus on the letter. What actually moves the needle? What makes a client hire us again?
The associates model helps here. No employees. No office. Lean by design. When your costs are low, you do not need to chase work that does not fit. You can say no.
So What?
The discipline to leave money on the table gets easier when you have been doing it for 27 years. Fried admitted as much. Early on, you say yes to everything. Later, you get picky.
He told a story about passing on an acquisition offer. Just said no. Did not even hear the number. Said: “I’m very comfortable with where we are... I don’t want to fuck that up.”
I am not there yet. I still feel the pull. The prospect says they have budget but the work feels off. The polite part of me wants to take it. The smart part is learning to say “so what?”
Fried talks about “productivity theatre.” The appearance of work versus the reality. Endless meetings, roadmaps, planning sessions. He is ruthless about cutting it. “Work only gets done when people are not talking,” he said.
Six hour days are my rebellion against theatre. If you cannot say what needs doing in six hours, you are not managing well. You are performing.
Backwards Is a Story You Tell Yourself
One of the sharpest observations was about memory. Fried said: “Backwards is a story you’re telling yourself about what you remember about something and it’s probably not true.”
We rewrite history to suit our narrative. The bad year was not that bad. The good hire was obvious in hindsight. We remember what protects our ego.
This is why quarterly planning is often useless. “I’ve always been mystified by people who think they can figure out the next three years today but they’re afraid of figuring out tomorrow.”
Planning too far ahead is vanity. You do not know what you will learn next week. You do not know which client will go quiet or which opportunity will appear.
I am six months into T40. Less than a year from leaving corporate. The temptation is to act like I have a five-year plan. I do not. I have a direction. Trusting gut over data. Keeping the team tiny. Using AI to amplify instead of replace. The rest is figuring it out as I go.
Building in public is part of this honesty. I share the journey because pretending I have it sorted would be dishonest. Fried has 27 years of proof. I have six months of trying. The gap is the point.
The Navajo Rug Mindset
Fried finishes with a story about Navajo rugs. The weavers leave one thread out. A small imperfection. Not by accident. “That leaf is the best it’s ever been... if you want to find great colors look at a bird, don’t look at a book.”
Nature is imperfect. Perfect is artificial. The flaw is the signature.
I think about this with TERMS. It is not polished yet. The website is basic. The processes are being written week by week. It is imperfect because it is alive.
Corporate taught me to hide the work in progress. Launch only when complete. Fried taught me the opposite. Ship imperfect. Let people see the threads. The imperfection is how they know it is real.
What I Am Taking Forward
If you are building a company, or thinking about it, here is what I am stealing from a guy with 27 years on me:
Profit first. Sounds obvious. Most people do not do it. Build cushion early. Say no to work that erodes margin.
Work on the letter. The substance matters more than the packaging. AI helps strip away the envelope. Use it.
Comfort is underrated. Being happy where you are is not complacency. It is a strategy. Do not fuck it up chasing imaginary more.
Short horizons. Plan tomorrow, not three years. Your memory of the past is anyway corrupted.
Leave the thread out. Perfect is the enemy of done. Imperfection is proof of life.
I am early in this. Fried is the proof. I am the guy implementing it now.