Read "Small is Essential", a glowing profile of the innovative web application company 37signals in the May 17 issue of Time. Writes Jeremy Caplan, "Founder and president Jason Fried, 33, decided early on that he didn't need to be in the shiny valley of Silicon to make cool software. Half his team works out of a plain-vanilla Chicago office that 37signals shares with a design studio. The other four are scattered: Portland, Ore.; Chesapeake, Va.; Caldwell, Idaho; and New York City. This tiny crew, only three of whom graduated from college, has built software that many in the world of Web 2.0 consider the best for small-business collaboration. One of its development tools, Ruby on Rails, is the backbone for dozens of popular websites, such as Shopify, Twitter, 43 Things and Jobster. . . Fried admits the 37signals team is stretched thin handling its users' demands. He insists that the bigger a staff gets, the slower it moves. "A lot of teams have problems with overcollaboration," he says. 'Too much teamwork, too many cooks in the kitchen, too many people making decisions.' Simplicity is one of 37signals' guiding principles, in programming as well as management. For most technical issues that arise, simple work-arounds will address 95% of the need with 10% of the effort that would be required to cover everything." Fried (pictured above right) served as Opening Speaker at the 2006 SXSW Interactive Festival.

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