"Strongly intuition-driven. Believes gut and intuition should be celebrated in business and that all decisions are ultimately judgment calls, even data-informed ones."
Evidence from the Archive
37signals (Basecamp/HEY)
No OKRs, KPIs, revenue targets, or growth targets -- only 'did we make more than we spent?'
37signals runs Basecamp and HEY with ~70 employees vs competitors with 1,500-3,000 employees, with similar customer counts and higher profitability
Has run a profitable, bootstrapped software company for over 20 years with ~70 employees competing against firms 20-40x their headcount, proving that intuition-first management can produce durable business results at meaningful scale. Their core argument: Strongly intuition-driven. Believes gut and intuition should be celebrated in business and that all decisions are ultimately judgment calls, even data-informed ones.
The evidence is specific: 37signals runs Basecamp and HEY with ~70 employees vs competitors with 1,500-3,000 employees, with similar customer counts and higher profitability. Furthermore, no OKRs, KPIs, revenue targets, or growth targets -- only 'did we make more than we spent?'. At 37signals, the dominant decision-making questions are about feeling: 'How does this screen feel? How does this flow feel?'.
In Jason Fried's own words: "I'll just admit that that's the only way I've ever known how to work. I don't know how to make decisions by numbers or I don't find any joy in it, frankly. I've always been intuition driven and gut driven. And frankly, to be honest, I think everyone actually is." (Responding to Lenny's question about how he operationalizes making decisions on instinct and gut.)