Take their advice but be warned that bootstrapping and mimicking their success is also hard.

We are a huge fan of Basecamp (customer for 5+ year), DHH, Jason, and Rails. However, please also consider the unique talents that they had.

Both Jason and DHH have exceptional skills. Jason is a great writer, designer, and speaker. DHH, the creator of Ruby on Rails is a renowned programmer. Some of the advantages that they had

1. They were the one of the first company to put project management on the "cloud" (early mover advantage)

2. The 37signal team are great writers. Their main advice they had for marketing is blogging. Some of us, especially foreign born founders, can't write as well.

3. 37signals had one of the most famous programmer at that time. (expertise and marketing advantage).

4. They have been honing basecamp for 15 years.

For the rest of us who aren't exceptional ourselves or don't have a brilliant partner we might need some outside funding so we can hire the best talent. Some of us want to do more than having one exceptional products for 15 years.