37signals

Software company founded in 1999 by David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH) and Jason Fried. Maker of Basecamp, HEY, and ONCE. Famous as a counter-model to VC-driven startup culture: no investors, no hypergrowth, profitable for decades.

The Products

Basecamp (2004) was one of the earliest SaaS tools. Project management for teams that do not want 17 Slack channels and three Jira boards. It began as an internal tool at 37signals and then became public. It was also the original Rails application.

HEY (2020) is an email client built around a radical idea: email is pushed at you by strangers, so you should decide who gets into your inbox at all. HEY became broadly visible after Apple used App Store approval as leverage, which triggered one of the longest public arguments ever about App Store fees.

ONCE is the newest move: software you buy once, self-host, and can inspect in source form. Campfire for chat, Writebook for online books. It is the anti-SaaS thesis: subscription fatigue meets data sovereignty.

Why 37signals Is an Idea, Not Just a Company

Rework, the book by Fried and Hansson, is less a company handbook than a worldview. Its central thesis is that many things startups treat as necessary, investors, big teams, pivot freedom, hypergrowth, are distractions rather than prerequisites.

37signals demonstrates that a successful software company can be built without venture capital. That matters even more in 2026, when the VC cycle is in a repricing phase.

Connections

• David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH) - co-founder, creator of Rails, public voice
• Ruby on Rails - Basecamp was the birthplace of Rails; company and framework are inseparable
• Shopify - the largest Rails user; DHH sits on the board, creating a direct bridge between the two worlds

Sources

• David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH) - dhh.dk (2026-04-04)