David Heinemeier Hansson

At 20, Hansson founded the online gaming community Daily Rush. He later earned a bachelor’s degree in computer science and business administration from Copenhagen Business School.⁠[1][1]

In 2003, Hansson created Ruby on Rails; Basecamp, 37signals’ project management software, was the first Rails application. By his own account, companies that started out on the framework include Shopify, Airbnb, Coinbase, Square and GitHub, together worth more than $500 billion.⁠[2][2][2]

In 2004, Hansson publicly released Ruby on Rails as an open-source web development framework, for which he received the Hacker of the Year award from Google and O’Reilly.⁠[1]

On February 5, 2004, 37signals launched Basecamp, offering one project free and a 30-day trial of its paid plans. Basecamp was one of the earliest software-as-a-service applications.⁠[3][3][2]

In November 2005, Hansson moved from Denmark to Chicago.⁠[1]

By his own account, he has competed in the 24 Hours of Le Mans since 2012, with 13 starts as of October 2026. He raced for seven years in the FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC), mostly in LMP2 prototypes, and has also competed in IMSA, the ELMS, the 24 Hours of Daytona and the 12 Hours of Sebring, among other events.⁠[2][2]

On June 15, 2014, Hansson, Nicki Thiim and Kristian Poulsen, an all-Danish driver lineup, won the LM GTE Am class at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in Aston Martin Racing’s No. 95 Aston Martin Vantage GTE. After the race, he said the race had been run for the late Danish driver Allan Simonsen.⁠[4][4][4][4]

By his own account, he finished second in the LMP2 class at Le Mans in 2015, took third in class driving a Porsche in 2016, and reached the overall podium with Rebellion Racing in 2017.⁠[2]

While living in Denmark from 2020 to 2023, Hansson invested in Danish software and technology startups including Workfeed, Ziik, Turis, Servicelovers and Upteko; he said that, as of October 2026, he was no longer making new startup investments.⁠[2][2][2]

In 2020, 37signals launched the email service HEY. That June, Apple blocked a bug-fix update to HEY’s iOS app and threatened to remove it from the App Store because the app lacked in-app subscription purchases, sparking wide discussion of antitrust issues around the App Store. Hansson, then Basecamp’s CTO, tweeted about the matter, and Apple’s review board later said it hoped to work with HEY’s developers to find a solution. Apple subsequently approved the blocked update, and HEY introduced temporary email addresses that could be used free for 14 days in order to comply with the review rules.⁠[2][5][5][5][5][5][5]

On April 26, 2021, Jason Fried announced a series of internal changes at Basecamp, including no longer discussing societal and political topics on the company’s Basecamp work account; ending benefits such as fitness and continuing education and instead paying employees the cash value of this year’s benefits (the company had shortly before introduced a 10% profit-sharing plan); disbanding internal committees; and returning decisions involving usage restrictions and ethical dilemmas to Fried and Hansson. Hansson added details of the internal announcement on his own blog.⁠[6][6][6][6][6][6][6]

Within days of the policy announcement, roughly a third of the company’s approximately 60 employees accepted severance and left, including the heads of design, marketing and customer support, many of whom cited the new policies; critics argued that the approach suppressed employee discussion of important issues.⁠[7][7][7]

In 2022, Hansson initiated the founding of The Rails Foundation, dedicated to improving documentation, education, marketing and events across the Rails ecosystem, and became its chair.⁠[2][2]

In October 2022, Hansson announced that 37signals would move its operations out of the public cloud. Basecamp had by then run partly in the cloud for more than a decade, and HEY had run entirely in the cloud since launch, with the company using cloud services from Amazon and Google. He argued that for midsize companies with stable growth, renting computing resources is mostly a poor deal.⁠[8][8][8][8]

On March 23, 2023, the Danish industry association IT-Branchen awarded Hansson the IT-Prisen 2023 in recognition of his influence on the international IT industry through Ruby on Rails and Basecamp, as well as his work, after moving back to Denmark, investing in local software companies and helping improve the Danish startup ecosystem.⁠[1][1][1][2]

In summer 2023, 37signals finished moving seven cloud applications, including HEY, from AWS to its own hardware. Hansson said in October 2024 that the company’s cloud bill for 2024 had fallen from $3.2 million a year to $1.3 million, that about $700,000 of new Dell hardware had already paid for itself in 2023, and that savings over five years were expected to exceed $10 million.⁠[9][9][9][9]

In November 2024, Shopify announced that Hansson had joined its board of directors. Rails has long been part of Shopify’s technology stack, and Shopify said the Rails Doctrine has helped underpin its corporate culture.⁠[10][10][10][2]

Heinemeier Hansson appeared on David Senra’s eponymous interview podcast, in an episode released on July 26, 2026. On the show, he said that 37signals is quite likely his last business; when he eventually retires, it will be a “retirement from capitalism,” meaning a retirement from customers and economic exchange, though he is not against capitalism and is instead a supporter of it. He described the roughly 4,000 hours he has put into Omarchy as a gift to its users and welcomed others to submit improvements on GitHub.⁠[11][11][11][11][11]

In 2026, Hansson established the nonprofit Omacom Foundation and became its president; the foundation holds the Omarchy trademark and funds its infrastructure and the open-source projects it depends on. On August 24 that year, Dropbox co-founder Drew Houston and Peter SteinbergerPeter SteinbergerPeter Steinberger is a software developer and entrepreneur and the creator of the open-source personal AI agent OpenClaw. He previously founded PSPDFKit (now Nutrient), a company making PDF software development kits, and ran it for 13 years, stepping back from day-to-day management after Insight Partners invested in 2021; he returned to programming in 2025 and joined OpenAI in February 2026.Open the full entry joined with $1 million each, bringing the foundation to ten founding patrons and $10 million in funding.⁠[2][2][12][12][12]

On September 23, 2026, Hansson, as CTO of 37signals, gave the opening keynote at Rails World 2026, presenting new Rails features and the framework’s direction. The next day, he spoke with Yukihiro Matsumoto (Matz), the creator of Ruby, about the impact of AI on software development and on the Ruby and Rails ecosystems.⁠[13][13][13][13][13]

Hansson co-owns 37signals with Jason Fried. Founded in 1999, the company’s flagship products are Basecamp and HEY; it has also released early applications such as Highrise and Campfire, the kanban application Fizzy, and the self-hosted ONCE series.⁠[2][2][2]

Hansson and Fried have co-written four books, all drawn from their experience running 37signals: REWORK, which made the bestseller lists of The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Sunday Times and has sold more than a million copies; It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work, on running a calm company; REMOTE: Office Not Required, which distills their experience of remote work; and Getting Real, which shares lessons from the early development of Basecamp.⁠[2][2][2][2][2][14]

Omarchy is a Linux desktop system created by Hansson and incubated at 37signals. The “Oma” in its name comes from the Japanese omakase (chef’s choice): the project preselects tools and default settings, and it emphasizes troubleshooting with the help of AI agents. By his own account, it had been adopted by more than 100,000 users as of October 2026.⁠[15][15][15][2][2]

As of October 2026, Hansson races in the LMP2 class of the IMSA series alongside Shopify chief executive Tobias LütkeTobias LütkeTobias Lütke, who also goes by Tobi Lütke, is a programmer, the co-founder and chief executive officer of Shopify, and a startup investor. He took part in the Ruby on Rails open-source community, has served as Shopify’s CEO since April 2008, and joined the board of Coinbase in 2022.Open the full entry, also a programmer.⁠[2]

37signals: Official website: https://37signals.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[2]

Ruby on Rails: Official website: https://rubyonrails.org/ (opens in a new window).⁠[2]

The Rails Foundation: Official website: https://rubyonrails.org/foundation (opens in a new window).⁠[2]

Omarchy: Official website: https://omarchy.org/ (opens in a new window).⁠[15]

Personal website: https://dhh.dk/ (opens in a new window)⁠[2]

HEY World blog: Public account: https://world.hey.com/dhh (opens in a new window)⁠[2]

X: Public account: https://x.com/dhh (opens in a new window)⁠[2]

LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry: Public account: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-heinemeier-hansson-374b18221/ (opens in a new window)⁠[2]

YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is Google’s video-sharing and creator platform, founded in 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim and acquired by Google in 2006. Built around video uploading, viewing, and creator earnings, the platform has developed Shorts, YouTube Music, Premium, YouTube TV, and products for children, and is headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States.Open the full entry: Public account: https://www.youtube.com/@dhh37 (opens in a new window)⁠[2]

Instagram: Public account: https://www.instagram.com/dhhdrives/ (opens in a new window)⁠[2]