This is for swombat too - if revenue has grown 15-30 times since '04 as DHH said at Startup School, and headcount went up by 30%, then that's still 10-20x the revenue per employee.
Costs: Can't be too much more, certainly not nearly matching the revenue growth. They do their own advertising and marketing so that's free. Infrastructure costs are higher because of more accounts, so let's count that as the cost of 7 employees, giving them double the costs. And with extra benefits for employees, put it up to 2.5x of 2004 expenses. total.
The profit picture gets even more ridiculous. If they had 5% margins in 2004, their costs go up by 2.5 and revenues go up by 15, then their profit is over 250x over 2004. Divide that by 3(?) founders/principals and you get a lot per year. Heck, it's still a lot if you divide it by all 12 employees.
37s is probably making more profit annually than most startup founders will ever sell a company for. If they pocket a part of that a year, then they have the equivalent cash to a liquidity event plus they still have the company. Granted, they're exceptionally successful, but hopefully these numbers will open some eyes for people that look down on lifestyle businesses.
I totally agree with this analysis--it looks like they have a ton of money. But that just makes the investment they took from Bezos look even more strange. Any ideas on that?
I think the answer to that is - they didn't take the invenstement from Bezos for the money alone - they did it for the business advice and contacts they could get from him through the investment relationship. IIRC, this was stated, possibly by Jason Fried, on another somewhat recent 37Signals blog post.
If they can walk away that easily (i.e. they are replacable), do the founders add value anyway?