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37signals Earns Millions Each Year. Its CEO’s Model? His Cleaning Lady

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Re: 37signals Earns Millions Each Year. Its CEO’s Model? His Cleaning Lady

#71

Post by Evbn »

klochner wrote: post #33
Jd wrote: post #8

"To me that’s far more interesting than a tech company that’s hiring a bunch of people, just got their fourth round of financing for 12 million dollars, and they’re still losing money. That’s what everyone talks about as being exciting, but I think that’s an absolutely disgusting scenario when it comes to business." Hilarious given that Jason Fried was on the board of directors of Groupon (his comments on this "disgu…

Jason made it pretty clear that he was joining the Groupon board: * as a personal favor to Andrew Mason * to get some board experience He emphasized: * he had not changed his stance on bootstrapping companies * his board involvement was not an endorsement of groupon * he sold his shares when given the chance So I guess I'm missing the hilarity, other than seeing you try to pick another fight with Jason Fried.

Andrew Mason is generally not considered a very upstanding CEO. Why is Fried giving Mason personal favors? Are they cousins?

Re: 37signals Earns Millions Each Year. Its CEO’s Model? His Cleaning Lady

#72

Post by gxs »

kenko wrote: post #70
kevin_morrill wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once got to see Jack Welch give a talk and he basically said the same, but about American labor unions. He said if you want job security, the answer is "customers". There is no other shortcut in business.

??? Customers won't give you, hapless employee, job security if your employers can easily replace you with someone cheaper because you have a flimsy (or no!) contract, nor will customers help you with disputes with management, or wrongful termination, or promotion from within, or even the too-little-emphasized increased potential for synergy between the ranks that unions afford, or any of the many other things that u…

Having customers is a necessary, but not sufficient condition.

Re: 37signals Earns Millions Each Year. Its CEO’s Model? His Cleaning Lady

#73

Post by davidw »

citricsquid wrote: post #69
davidw wrote: post #63

> Actually, my cleaning lady, for example, she’s great. There's something a bit... I don't know quite how to put it. Let's just say that I bet she'd willingly trade places with him, cash out, and go enjoy herself instead of cleaning up after other people day in and day out. ( Edit to change the wording just a bit) > The other interesting thing about restaurants is you could have a dozen Italian restaurants in the cit…

> There's something a bit... I don't know quite how to put it. Let's just say that I bet she'd willingly trade places with him, cash out, and go enjoy herself instead of cleaning up other people's crap day in and day out. My mother isn't a cleaner (she's a nurse) but I talked with her before about whether or not if she had the chance she would quit her job and sit on the beach all day doing whatever she wanted and sh…

I can't stand going to the beach myself, and if I were wealthy, would see myself continuing to work on things. I'd probably have more 'projects' though, things where there might not be any way of making money off it. And I sure as hell would be spending a lot more time riding my bicycle instead of getting fat sitting at a desk.

To each his own, but would someone really want to keep cleaning professionally even if they were wealthy? I could easily seeing less-than-profitable but creative hobbies being way more interesting for hypothetical cleaners who were wealthy and wanted to stay busy.

The reality though, is that unless the cleaning lady is good at hiring and managing other cleaners, she's never going to get the chance to cash out, or sell the company or any of the other avenues the 37 signals guys have.

Re: 37signals Earns Millions Each Year. Its CEO’s Model? His Cleaning Lady

#74

Post by officemonkey »

sabat wrote: post #61
whalesalad wrote: post #18

"I won’t name names. I used to name names. But I think all you have to do is read TechCrunch. Look at what the top stories are, and they’re all about raising money, how many employees they have, and these are metrics that don’t matter. What matters is: Are you profitable? Are you building something great? Are you taking care of your people? Are you treating your customers well? In the coverage of our industry as a wh…

He seems to forget that he's not in the same business as startups are; he's viewing startups through a small business lens. see the sickness in our industry He's not in "our" industry. He runs a small business that makes good money, and it happens to use technology. Not the same thing. Are you profitable? Are you building something great? These are not always relevant questions for a startup, depending on what phase…

>I think his cocky attitude has a lot to do with the constant feedback loop in the town he lives in.

Pot, meet kettle.

Re: 37signals Earns Millions Each Year. Its CEO’s Model? His Cleaning Lady

#75

Post by Evbn »

citricsquid wrote: post #69
davidw wrote: post #63

> Actually, my cleaning lady, for example, she’s great. There's something a bit... I don't know quite how to put it. Let's just say that I bet she'd willingly trade places with him, cash out, and go enjoy herself instead of cleaning up after other people day in and day out. ( Edit to change the wording just a bit) > The other interesting thing about restaurants is you could have a dozen Italian restaurants in the cit…

> There's something a bit... I don't know quite how to put it. Let's just say that I bet she'd willingly trade places with him, cash out, and go enjoy herself instead of cleaning up other people's crap day in and day out. My mother isn't a cleaner (she's a nurse) but I talked with her before about whether or not if she had the chance she would quit her job and sit on the beach all day doing whatever she wanted and sh…

Running a book shop with your FU money is completely different from running a book shop to put food onnthr table.

Re: 37signals Earns Millions Each Year. Its CEO’s Model? His Cleaning Lady

#76

Post by saraid216 »

Evbn wrote: post #71
klochner wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jason made it pretty clear that he was joining the Groupon board: * as a personal favor to Andrew Mason * to get some board experience He emphasized: * he had not changed his stance on bootstrapping companies * his board involvement was not an endorsement of groupon * he sold his shares when given the chance So I guess I'm missing the hilarity, other than seeing you try to pick another fight with Jason Fried.

Andrew Mason is generally not considered a very upstanding CEO. Why is Fried giving Mason personal favors? Are they cousins?

Maybe Mason did Fried a favor. That's usually how it works.

Re: 37signals Earns Millions Each Year. Its CEO’s Model? His Cleaning Lady

#77

Post by petercooper »

nanijoe wrote: post #36
ceejayoz wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fairness, that still doesn't make it a startup.

Pray tell, what would make it a startup?

I know this'll be a controversial stance but IMHO.. needing to work 5 or 6 days a week to prove the business case, make the business stick, and to scale the business to a point where you have multiple employees and processes that allow you to only work 4 day weeks if you want.

Of course, some businesses can run on fewer hours from the start, but many require a lot of sweat and long hours to get the engine running.

Re: 37signals Earns Millions Each Year. Its CEO’s Model? His Cleaning Lady

#78

Post by SatvikBeri »

Evbn wrote: post #71
klochner wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jason made it pretty clear that he was joining the Groupon board: * as a personal favor to Andrew Mason * to get some board experience He emphasized: * he had not changed his stance on bootstrapping companies * his board involvement was not an endorsement of groupon * he sold his shares when given the chance So I guess I'm missing the hilarity, other than seeing you try to pick another fight with Jason Fried.

Andrew Mason is generally not considered a very upstanding CEO. Why is Fried giving Mason personal favors? Are they cousins?

Just a year and a half ago Andrew Mason was actually considered one of the most charismatic CEOs in the business. GroupOn had MASSIVE momentum, and was actually known as the fastest growing company in history.

Fried was on GroupOn's board way before any of the investment scandals came up.

Re: 37signals Earns Millions Each Year. Its CEO’s Model? His Cleaning Lady

#79

Post by saraid216 »

kenko wrote: post #70
kevin_morrill wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once got to see Jack Welch give a talk and he basically said the same, but about American labor unions. He said if you want job security, the answer is "customers". There is no other shortcut in business.

??? Customers won't give you, hapless employee, job security if your employers can easily replace you with someone cheaper because you have a flimsy (or no!) contract, nor will customers help you with disputes with management, or wrongful termination, or promotion from within, or even the too-little-emphasized increased potential for synergy between the ranks that unions afford, or any of the many other things that u…

I don't understand why you're being downvoted. I don't know what Welch said, but as it was characterized by the grandparent, Welch's statement is stupid, for exactly the reasons kenko explained.
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