manifestos and principles

Hey everyone—

I’m Jason, CEO here at 37signals.

Email gets a bad rap, but it shouldn’t. Email’s a treasure.

It feels great to get an email from someone you care about. Or a newsletter you enjoy. Or an update from a service you like. That’s how email used to feel all the time.

But things changed.

You started getting stuff you didn’t want from people you ... See more

I want to beg you, as much as I can, dear sir, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live ev... See more

Instagram's original product principles are beautiful in their simplicity: 1. Community first 2. Do the simple thing 3. Do fewer things better 4. Ride the wave

Our principlesCreation over consumptionTrue happiness comes from deepening your friendships, not racking up more of them. So why do most social products feel so shallow, with a double-tap to like and meaningless story replies? We think friendship is an act of creation, not consumption. After all, the effort is where the love is.Simple apps, not sup... See more

There is no finish line. There is no winning, no losing.

Everything is a Practice.

A practice is the disciplined repetition of what you know with enough experimentation in that repetition to unlock those things you don’t yet know. It is ever-accumulating, and never-ending. It is sometimes painful, but that is the way.

Individual projects may come to ... See more

Build honesty into your culture, not transparency.

A company is a cathedral built to shelter an idea that might be true.

those with verbal talent are going to have a more important skill set to offer the world in the coming decades, as the AI revolution takes hold—I think that those who are able to give expression to and speak to the deepest desires of the human heart will be the voices the world needs most.