Jason is a designer by trade, and is routinely involved with the design of 37signals' products. In the same vein, DHH is a partner in the company, but still writes code (as I understand it).
Re: design. Yes, I design. It's the primary thing I do. Design, sketch, work on product simplification, design/think about user experience, etc. DHH still codes as well (he's working on some nice enhancements to Highrise right now, in fact). Both David and I would prefer to design and code all day, but it's not always possible. Lately it's been more possible so we've bee doing it more often.
I apologize if I got things wrong. I was just going with whatever is here: http://37signals.com/about
"Jason Fried is the co-founder and President of 37signals."
and
"Jason co-wrote all of 37signals books, and is invited to speak around the world on entrepreneurship, design, management, and software."
with that kind of workload, I assumed you wouldn't have enough time for anything else. I never said whatever you do is useless. Far from it. Non-technical work that is focused at growing a company is more important than any technical work. After all, what can you do with an insanely great product that you can't sell because you didn't prepare for it properly?
Re: speaking. Not speaking anymore. Really enjoying getting back to product design.