That blue light that blinks incessantly can't actually be seen by you. The rest of us, however, do see it. And it annoys us. After attending one, Ryan Norbauer was inspired to tear down Lovetastic. Now Norbauer runs a Rails consultancy. That kind of devotion is common. After Sean Tierney read Getting Real , he bought 10 copies for his employees at Grid7, an application development shop, and insisted they read it.
Tucked away on a grubby side street in a gentrifying loft-and-warehouse neighborhood about a mile west of downtown Chicago, 37signals' offices hew to the company's small-is-beautiful edict. Actually, offices is a strong word: Headquarters consists of four desks shoved up against a wall. There is no 37signals sign, no receptionist, no indication that 37signals even exists.
The company has just 10 employees, five of whom telecommute and none of whom are expected to work more than 40 hours a week. But 37signals hasn't remained small out of sloth or through lack of opportunity; indeed, it's taken some effort to keep it from growing.
Fried says he has rebuffed numerous inquiries from venture capitalists looking to invest in his company. The sole exception: Amazon. The company has said it accepted the deal because it offered access to Bezos, not because of the money.
Neither will Fried entertain acquisition offers. I really don't understand why everyone's interested in Fortune customers. I just don't get that. In March , a Twitter engineer told an interviewer that he was having difficulty getting Rails to handle his company's massive spike in traffic. Hansson responded by sending a heated email to Jack Dorsey, Twitter's CEO, and chastising the company on his blog for playing the "blame game" instead of solving its scaling problems itself.
The two firms have since resolved the dispute. In January, an executive from hosting provider Dreamhost mused about the difficulty some of his clients were having running Rails applications. Again, Hansson responded on his blog: "Wipe the wah-wah tears off your chin and retract the threats of imminent calamity if we don't drop everything we're doing to pursue your needs. I think that makes sense, especially in an environment where products can and should be niche, and can and should be changed and tweaked.
In keeping with my re-release of prior interviews and articles I have written, here is the one with the good folks at 37Signals. But Norman suggests to 37signals how they should really work: The solution is to decide which customers represent your core audience, and then to observe them at work, the better to understand their true needs.
Jason Fried makes a salient point in their well-written response , comparing what they do to being chefs: And if enough customers tell us our food is too salty or too hot, we may adjust the salt and the heat. We will go into certain patterns and if your pattern is that you have to work 14 hours a day on shitty stuff to meet your ambition, once you meet your ambition, your body will still be, I need 14 hours a day of work. I want to design my lifestyle to be, as it is today, and then I can just continue that.
Andrew : The way you describe life day to day inspires me. There should be a work smell. So take the presentation, for example. And you should probably focus on that. Andrew : You never had that feeling? Have you had that feeling? Andrew : So what did you do? Can you give me an example? A specific example of when you did that, of when you felt that way? David : I felt that way, actually, with presentations.
So, we have that with the Getting Real Workshop. By the end of it, I was not enjoying myself so we stopped. That was the conclusion. We would not do it anymore. Andrew : All right. When Jason Fried was here, your partner at 37signals, I asked him why you guys sold a piece of the company to Jeff Bezos. He said basically you wanted to take some money off the table.
You should just keep working and enjoy your work and so, if you have a profitable company that lets you kick off cash month to month, year to year, why take money off the table?
Why bring in a third investor? And so, what are our options then? OK, take on the full amount of risk ourselves, which is to go all the way and take nobody on board, right? To me, seemed like a somewhat risky proposition, right? To me, this was that. It was, to me, entirely consistent with that risk minimization strategy and then, still thinking like, is my day to day work going to be worse off tomorrow, the day after we sign this piece of paper?
We designed the deal in such a way that I could not answer yes to that question in any way, shape or form. So even if he turned out completely adversary, this was not going to sink the company. That is not true of most kind of investment deals.
If your VC goes bonkers, which happens more often than not, you will suffer the consequences. So just the particulars of this made it a no brainer for me. This was sort of like comparably cheap insurance. Andrew : Why did you think, I wrote this down as you were talking, you thought it was going to end.
Wondering why. There could have been some competitor coming out that was just so much better that they were going to steal all our customers, right? We could have fucked it up monumentally. What happened? David : Not, like, there was not one specific thing. It was more the general idea that, if you look at the history of companies, right?
So this is exactly the same analysis you would always do when you buy insurance. Same analysis. Andrew : Earlier, I just kind of assumed that you wanted to change the industry and leave your mark on it. Maybe I should ask you, why do you speak out so much against venture-funded companies and businesses that will take losses for a while with the expectation of making money in the future.
You did it this morning, you just tweeted out a link to a PowerPoint slide about Color and how crazy it was that they raised money. Why do you do this? David : So, part of it is just my own personal outrage.
So I think the fact that these kinds of deals and these kinds of companies has this intense spotlight on them is sort of brainwashing the next generation of starters to think that this is the way to go. This is the path. This is what we must do. Andrew : Why is that important for you to have them know that? Why would I care to share software that I made and could have kept on my own hard drive with other people?
Why not be the guy who stands up for that instead of the guy who stands up for bootstrap companies? Why not stand up for things that are more aligned with your marketing, with your business? David : I think I can have my cake and eat it, too. I think I can do both things. I find the industry thing is more sort of a pastime. David : Sure. Andrew : OK. Finally, two questions. So definitely do that. So, you get, what is it, five GB for free or something?
Andrew : Two GB right off the bat and it can go up to David : Two right off the bat. That to me seems like a shame. As far as I hear, dramatic and profitable. Other businesses are not that lucky. Then, redesign your plans. Andrew : What number is a right number? I think that the, I really like the split down, I think the most perfect split down we have is the one we have on Basecamp.
As long as 37signals is a hobby, where programmers code for themselves, it may very well succeed as a small enterprise with its current size of 10 employees. I'm happy for them, and for the numerous small developers and small companies that find their products useful.
But their attitude is a symbol: a symbol of eventual failure. Too bad. In fact, that attitude is not so much arrogance as it is selfishness: they are selfish. A little less arrogance and a lot more empathy would turn these brilliant programmers into a brilliant company, a brilliant success. As expected, the publication of this note has released a flood of responses, so let me use them as an excuse to clarify my writing.
One correspondent wrote: " I think you're somewhat mistaken in your evaluation of 37signals. To them, feature-bloat in web applications is akin to food service and seat reservations for Southwest Airlines. Application simplicity and usability are what the customers need most. I do not disagree with the comment: I simply do not believe that arrogance is the solution. Feature-bloat is horrible.
But the disdain they show for their customers is not just arrogance: it is selfishness. The solution is not ignorance of the needs of your customers. Their approach is both arrogant and selfish.
The solution is to decide which customers represent your core audience, and then to observe them at work, the better to understand their true needs.
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