Company · Software · founded 1999
37signals
Chicago web software company founded in 1999 by Jason Fried, Carlos Segura and Ernest Kim as a web design firm. It makes Basecamp and HEY, and the open-source Ruby on Rails framework was first built for internal use there.
Of the 3 people here linked to 37signals, 1 is a founder and 2 are still there. 1 of them also appear at Amazon. These are people who succeeded, not the odds of succeeding.
Description and founding year: en.wikipedia.org. Each person's role links to its own source on their profile.
3 people at 37signals
Founder Still there
Role
Co-founder and CEO, 1999–now
Source
· medium confidence. The page names him a founder (1999, with Carlos Segura and Ernest Kim), calls him CEO in 2006 and lists him as a key person. No current-CEO statement was found, so confidence is medium.
Software 3 / 1
Jason Fried
Co-founder and CEO, 37signals (Basecamp, HEY)
middle-class · some · college degree
Executive Still there
Role
Partner and chief technology officer
Source
· medium confidence. The page describes him in the present tense as a partner and CTO and gives no start year; the 37signals page lists him as CTO as of 2023. Jason Fried hired him as a contract programmer to build what became Basecamp.
Software 2 / 2
David Heinemeier Hansson
Creator of Ruby on Rails; co-owner and CTO, 37signals (Basecamp, HEY)
working-class · outsider · college degree
Investor Past
Role
Minority investor (through Bezos Expeditions, his personal investment company), 2006
Source
· medium confidence. Wikipedia says the company announced in 2006 that Bezos had acquired a minority stake via Bezos Expeditions; whether he still holds it is not established.
Technology 2 / 1
Jeff Bezos
Founder, Amazon
comfortable · elite · college degree
Connected companies
Other companies that share profiled people with 37signals.