Basecamp

Jason Fried started 37signals as a web design agency in Chicago in 1999. In 2004, rather than build a client project in an existing tool, he and programmer David Heinemeier Hansson built their own — Basecamp. It launched publicly and became a hit. DHH open-sourced the Ruby on Rails framework he built to create it, making both Basecamp and Rails famous overnight. Jason and DHH then wrote "Getting Real" and later "Rework" — books on building software businesses without VC, without overtime, without unnecessary complexity. 37signals became the intellectual center of the bootstrapped software movement. They turned down hundreds of millions in acquisition offers. Basecamp crossed $100M ARR. In 2020 they launched HEY, a premium email service. In 2023 they launched ONCE, a buy-once software product line. By 2024 Basecamp's total revenue had grown to an estimated $280M annually with under 60 employees — one of the highest revenue-per-employee ratios in software. The most influential bootstrapped company in history.