I have read on here several times that many entrepreneurs want to squeeze their entire working lives into a few short years, banking on the big payout that will set them free.
37signals, on the other hand, was in business for a long time before Basecamp was even released to the public. It has been a slow road, relatively speaking.
I respect what 37signals has done. It is the way I would want to build my own business. However, have they really worked fewer hours to reach some arbitrarily high income threshold? I would suggest probably not. It has just been spread out over a longer period of time.
But perhaps one could argue that this resulted in those hours being more productive because they were more spread out. So assuming what you're saying is true, they could have gotten more productivity out of the same number of hours as another business that condensed its work more.
37signals, on the other hand, was in business for a long time before Basecamp was even released to the public. It has been a slow road, relatively speaking.
I respect what 37signals has done. It is the way I would want to build my own business. However, have they really worked fewer hours to reach some arbitrarily high income threshold? I would suggest probably not. It has just been spread out over a longer period of time.