HP First Major Client

Jason Fried shares how 37signals got started with a small investment and landed HP as their first major client.

"When I first started the business in 1999, we were an agency with 4 of us - 3 partners, 1 employee. We each put 10 grand in, so we had 30 grand to start the business.

Our first customer was HP. HP was giving everyone business way back then - they were the hot company to get a gig with because they paid a lot. The gig was a few hundred grand to do some website design for them. This was '99 when people were paying numbers like that.

From that point on we were profitable because we only had a few people, we didn't take big salaries. We were able to pull out all the money every year. We started out as a C corp for a couple years and then switched to an LLC. We had ongoing client work that would span the gap of the calendar year, so we always had money coming in. Our costs were so low that we weren't ever starving."