When you're in debt, you're in part beholden to your creditors. Ask anyone with a mortgage.

Reconstruction/guessing line of thought: When profitable, you don't need to indebt yourself to stay afloat, hence less people/entities to account to, hence more freedom.

Running a company without debt is liberating; you have a dozen fewer things to worry about.

Debt in a company isn't like personal debt. Debt, used properly, is a lever to increase profitability. Even very profitable companies that have no "need" for debt will have a target capital structure that includes some debt. It's about maximizing returns for the shareholders. Or freedom or something..

I enjoyed Rework but I find the canonical way they try to pass of these opinions increasingly distasteful.

I agree that there are no simple answers and the guys over at 37s do tend to come across as if they claim there are. That can be attributed either to brevity (or as some people say, rushed) or to them having a more idealistic and less realistic view of the world.

My point is that without completely agreeing with it, the post still has value.

Spending money you haven't earned yet (either through an investor, a bank loan, etc.) can be a very good way to accelerate growth, and sometimes the only way to allow any kind of growth or even continuity. But I do think there is some truth to the cost of debt in having to deal with your creditors one way or another.

>> "When you're in debt, you're in part beholden to your creditors. Ask anyone with a mortgage."

heh No I'm not (I have a mortgage). I'm using the banks money, and investing it to make a pretty handsome return. (I'm in the UK, property prices are doing pretty well).

Debt is useful to build big stuff. As far as I see it, 37signals aren't building big stuff, so they don't need debt.