If you read Wired Magazine, this month you would’ve seen a one-page article (page 056) on the top 10 Web 2.0 acquisition targets for 2007. In order the list was:
Looking at the list 37signals is the only one that stands out as a subscription-based company. They are making real money over fake money and you can count all of their employees with your fingers. The only investment that I am aware of was done by Jeff Bezos and that was more of a partnership than a traditional VC stuck up your ass type of deal.
So why not sell the company? To me that is the wrong question. The right question is why sell the company when everything is going so well? They will be releasing more apps this year and therefore increasing their reach and revenues and because of their strong userbase they can almost do no wrong.
You would think that the only reason that they would sell the company is because they are tired of running it and not a moment sooner. You can’t blame them, they run their own show and control their own profits. How many other online companies today can vouch to do such a thing? And even though you can create their apps on your own for free and some people have done such a thing, the well-oiled machine just keeps on moving.
So if you were Jason Fried, do you sell the company and go live on the beach or do you keep the good times rolling? If you do continue to keep chugging along when do you decide to sell? You can’t run a company forever.
Originally posted on January 8, 2007 @ 1:00 pm