Jason Fried

August 21, 2025

An obligation to independence

One of the great privileges of owning an independent company is that you get to try all sorts of stuff no one else would ever give you permission to do.

And you get to greenlight other people's oddball ideas too. You can — and should — provide cover for weird attempts, strange ideas, and "I mean this will probably never work but..." stuff. Often!

If you are in this position, and you aren't helping unusual things happen, you're missing out on one of life's true pleasures.

Public companies worth billions can't do the kinds of things you can. Businesses that need to justify every move can't do the things you can.

Very few get to do this, and you can. So please make the universe happy and see if that weird, unusual, not-like-everyone-else idea catches fire.

-Jason

About Jason Fried

Hey! I'm Jason, the Co-Founder and CEO at 37signals, makers of Basecamp and HEY. Subscribe below to follow my thinking on business, design, product development, and whatever else is on my mind. Thanks for visiting, thanks for reading.