Three is a Magic Number
We make no secret of admiring 37 Signals for bootstrapping a profitable self-sustaining business making great and authentic products that people love. To that end we have no problem in letting them do the talking instead of us when they’ve already said what we’re thinking but much more articulately:
“For companies trying to build new web-based businesses and web-apps, all you need to start is three people. Three people to launch a product. A programmer, a designer, and a “sweeper” – someone who can move between the worlds and also gets common sense business and marketing. Don’t scale up your headcount to match your proposed feature set and vision, instead scale down your feature set and initial vision to match your headcount. The less [sic] people you have the less time you have.”
Despite using “less” instead of “fewer” their sentiment is right on! (I majored in super annoying grammar correction in college.) In this vein we get to make a fun announcement today. We’ve already got a programmer — Walter — and I’m the “sweeper”, so we’ve only got one slot remaining — a designer. Luckily we’ve found not just any designer, but a world class designer and a world class person in Jenny Lam. With the addition of Jenny we now have our three co-founders in place and are excited to make the most of our small team. Everyone please welcome Jenny to Jackson Fish. 
7 Responses to “Three is a Magic Number”
Wow, I’m really disappointed to hear that Jenny won’t be working on Windows any longer, but congrats to both of you!
Aaron
[...] in Photoshop and Illustrator”. Yesterday, that position would have been fulfilled when Hillel announced on the blog that indeed, Jenny Lam was joining his software company as a graphics designer. We’ve [...]
Congrats! Jenny rocks. Looks like Gruge Hasseldorfer will need to look for work elsewhere…
“Don’t scale up your headcount to match your proposed feature set and vision, instead scale down your feature set and initial vision to match your headcount.”
Wise!
[...] all the flattering attention we’ve gotten due to our recent addition we’ve had all sorts of new folks check out our site. In response to our post about the kind [...]
Congrats Jenny! It was inspiring to work with you, even if only on a few tiny projects! I can’t wait to see what you produce at JFM!!
Awww,so I always knew that Jenny was destined for great things–congrats Jenny on your new digs, and congrats to Jackson Fish for landing such a prize.