What Jason Fried Learned from 26 Years of Building Great Products
AI and I5 Marras 2025

What Jason Fried Learned from 26 Years of Building Great Products

37signals makes tens of millions in profit every year but Jason Fried isn’t all that interested in running a business.

Instead, he cares most about making great products—like Basecamp, HEY, and Ruby on Rails—products that are centered around a single, coherent idea. These products are complete wholes, where each piece matters—like a Frank Lloyd Wright house or a vintage car.

But how do you create products like that?

In this conversation, we talk to Jason about what two decades of building 37signals has been like—and how to build products that have soul.

If you found this episode interesting, please like, subscribe, comment, and share!

Want even more?

Sign up for Every to unlock our ultimate guide to prompting ChatGPT here: https://every.ck.page/ultimate-guide-to-prompting-chatgpt. It’s usually only for paying subscribers, but you can get it here for free.

To hear more from Dan Shipper:

Listen to Working Smarter wherever you get your podcasts, or visit workingsmarter.ai

Timestamps:

00:00:00 - Start

00:00:32 - Introduction

00:02:06 - What architecture, watches, and cars teach us about software

00:10:54 - How Jason thinks AI plays into product-building

00:20:58 - How developers at 37signals use AI

00:25:47 - Jason’s biggest realization after 26 years of running 37signals

00:29:58 - Where Jason thinks luck shaped his career

00:32:41 - What Jason would do if he were graduated into the AI boom

00:37:22 - Dan asks for advice on running a non-traditional company like Every

00:46:39 - Why staying true to yourself is the only way to build something lasting

00:49:38 - Wholeness as the north star for building products—and companies


Links to resources mentioned in the episode:

Jaksot(98)

He Built an AI Audience Simulator. It’s the Future of Customer Research. - Ep. 49 with Michael Taylor

He Built an AI Audience Simulator. It’s the Future of Customer Research. - Ep. 49 with Michael Taylor

Michael Taylor has perfected the art of getting AI to speak in tongues. He’s taught it to mimic the voices of your customers—so you can see how they would respond before you ship.Michael is the creato...

26 Helmi 20251h 6min

How Nat Eliason Made $200,000 in a Week Teaching AI - Ep. 48

How Nat Eliason Made $200,000 in a Week Teaching AI - Ep. 48

Nat Eliason’s career arc is borderline absurd—but it works. In the last five years, he ran an SEO agency, got into crypto, made $600,000 from a course on the note-taking toolRoam Research, flipped rea...

12 Helmi 202559min

Vercel’s Guillermo Rauch on What Comes After Coding - Ep. 47

Vercel’s Guillermo Rauch on What Comes After Coding - Ep. 47

Guillermo Rauch is one of the most prolific coders of this generation.  But he doesn’t think of himself as a coder anymore.  Coding, he says, is a specific skill that AI is becoming great at. Instead,...

5 Helmi 202556min

How to Prepare for AGI According to Reid Hoffman - Ep. 46

How to Prepare for AGI According to Reid Hoffman - Ep. 46

AGI is coming. Reid Hoffman just wrote the book on how to prepare. According to Reid, every major tech breakthrough (the written word, the printing press, the telephone) triggered mass fear. But, cont...

29 Tammi 20251h 9min

The Venture Capitalist Who Finds the Best AI Products—Before They Win - Ep. 45 with Nabeel Hyatt

The Venture Capitalist Who Finds the Best AI Products—Before They Win - Ep. 45 with Nabeel Hyatt

Nabeel Hyatt is looking for the “Japanese toilets” of AI—products that delight users in unexpected ways. As a partner at Spark Capital, that investment philosophy has paid off. Despite making only 1-2...

22 Tammi 20251h 1min

An Inside Look at Building an Email Client in 3 Months - Ep. 44 with Kieran Klaassen, Brandon Gell

An Inside Look at Building an Email Client in 3 Months - Ep. 44 with Kieran Klaassen, Brandon Gell

Building an email client used to take many years and millions of dollars. But Every’s Kieran Klaassen built Cora—a totally new way to manage your inbox with AI—in just 3 months. He even shipped the or...

15 Tammi 20251h 15min

How AI Will Change Science Forever - Ep. 43 with Alice Albrecht

How AI Will Change Science Forever - Ep. 43 with Alice Albrecht

AI is going to change science forever. Small scale studies will give way to large scale open data gathering efforts. We’ll shift from seeking broad general theories to making contextual predictions i...

18 Joulu 20241h

The Secret to Building Sticky AI Products - Ep. 42 with Chris Pedregal

The Secret to Building Sticky AI Products - Ep. 42 with Chris Pedregal

Chris Pedregal knows how to build AI products that people love. Chris is the cofounder and CEO of Granola, an AI notepad for meetings. We use it all the time at Every—Granola listens in on a meeting a...

12 Joulu 20241h