Workplace experiments: A month to yourself
37signals.com
37signals.com
Are they profitable? I'm curious if their generosity to their employees translates to their bottom line in measurable ways.
I don't know if their generosity to their employees translates to their bottom line. I think it works the other way: they are profitable enough that they can afford to be generous to their employees. The 37signals model seems to be: 1) have amazing people working for you 2) treat them really well. It's highly effective, but you need to have cash in the bank to get to step 1.
"Pricing starts at $20/month."
Almost more than their products, they're known for their very vocal broadcasting against the standard startup focus of investments, valuations, exits, etc...
Their books "Getting Real" and "Rework" represent their bootstrapping, sustainable-business values - they're not timid in speaking out against the nonsense of the modern startup conventional wisdom.
Personally, I think it's a very refreshing and empowering voice for entrepreneurs. It's not without controversy though, so dig in to their content for yourself to make your own judgement. (FWIW - "Getting Real" is a free PDF out there somewhere. I recommend it, though others may or may not.)
If you also read the articles, how is that other stuff difficult to find out? It's like a google query away...
The make a SaaS offering for groupware (coordination, scheduling, chat, etc).
They also created the Ruby On Rails framework, related to which you'll see 2-3 articles per day on HN.
They also wrote a few business books, two of which have been NYT best-sellers.
The make several million dollars a year, and have tens of thousands of customers.
Their business, a standard profitable, bootstrapped business if a ever saw one, is often sneered by startup kiddies on HN because they haven't sold their company for VC mega-bucks or had a huge IPO, VA Lin^H^H^H^H^H^H Google style. (Normal companies are apparently passe in the web 3.0 age -- a new Apple would be something to point and laugh at, a Ben & Jerry's even more so).
I find the very term "lifestyle businesses" condescending. They are bona fide businesses, nothing "lifestyle" about them. Not every business has to be on the stock market or cash-out for big bucks --or even make "billions"
You know what's cooler than a billion dollars? Doing what you like, making a living and employing as many people you can, without turning into a money making monster where what exactly you're making is not as important as ever increasing your revenues and finding new cash-cows.
Pivot, for me, is another word for "my goal is to make money, not to build something specific".
In all seriousness though, I 100% agree with you, especially on companies that pivot to something lightyears away from their original purpose. Chasing money isn't always a bad thing, but it is when it's the only thing.
Instead of coming up with new products or groundbreaking tech 37signals still relies on one past success and heavy Marketing which is mainly about blogging. Yesterday, somebody on HN wrote a laconic post and marked their articles as 'recycled trash from popular business / personal wealth books.' But people seem to like this appreciating every little advice with stronger or just different opinions. And they never forget that 37signals created the foundation of their income and wealth as a coder—Rails. So, upvoting 37signals can't be bad.
It's good to be aware that these writings are Marketing activities and basically indirect lead generation to all of their products. This isn't something bad and everybody should have a decent Marketing strategy too but if it's your only strength while missing product development at all I doubt that's enough to be successful in the long run and you are nothing more than a typical Clickbank vendor.
This is now really the ironic part, sharing advice how to come to new fresh ideas and projects (by taking one month off) considering that 37signals didn't have any new and really successful products for years. And we shall take such advice seriously? Especially when seeing failed and unsold 37signals projects on Flippa right now (Sortfolio offered for 480K).
Maybe one month off is not enough, maybe a hard reset would help 37signals better.
EDIT to downvoters: downvoting != disagreeing, reply if you disagree
2) "This is now really the ironic part, sharing advice how to come to new fresh ideas and project...considering that 37signals didn't have any new and really successful products for years" - well even if this was true, wouldn't an action like this help create something new and successful? And which part of the blog post is advice? So far as I can see, saying what they do != telling others what to do
The problem is combining that desire with capitalism where someone wants to get rich from your ideas, and with a minimum of costs.
Googles most successful products such as Gmail and the search engine was created as small, experimental products, born from the brains of people who were NOT under strict deadlines and pressure to perform. The brain works much better under those conditions, and so does creativity and thinking outside the box.
Today we see the influence of managers and bosses in the way Google ignores privacy. That was probably never part of the vision the product creators had when they put their products together.
It's pretty awesome, and has some produced some great projects like http://kiva.org/live
"Profitable trendy app vendor shows off about how they can afford to piss a month up the wall while their clients are paying for it"
I'm sure if it took off, they'd get to be project lead with a nice pay increase - which is much better than would done otherwise, because they were never going to quit (well not least till their family grew up).
Also, who knows they could use it as springboard for project #2 - the sequel usually makes more money than the original movie.
A shining example of "Shit's Easy Syndrome".
The other important fact is that, when you have good employees, allowing them kind of flexibility can pay dividends both for the company and their own workplace satisfaction. The fact this flexibility is so widely encouraged in the start-up scene is really encouraging.
a) This works for 37s because they have a somewhat don't care attitude. So if a customer quickly wants feature-x, they could respond with "We will look into it but won't guarantee anything". I am not telling that's wrong, but other companies might not have created the same image for themselves
b) Having 'Everyone' work on some other idea could be distracting. Especially Support.
c) Last, and i've heard this from a ceo, if the company dosen't accept the idea to be implemented, by that time employees might be so much interested in the idea that they might want to quit and startup their own with 'that' idea.
In addition to allowing people to go off and do their own thing there also needs to be some sort of evaluation criteria set up or else you're going to have a bunch of annoyed people at the end of the process who worked hard then found out they didn't have a realistic chance to get funded.
b) That's very much the point. You get to switch contexts completely and immerse yourself in the idea. Presumably they have their support and operations concerns covered by non-developers, and if there's an emergency, devs are around to deal with it.
c) Think about it for a minute: "As a CEO, I want my employees should keep their creativity under wraps, so they don't get inspired to quit". If some employees get an idea that doesn't fit 37S, but they believe enough in to give up the very comfortable life as 37S employees for it, then that's a good thing. Or at least, it's an unavoidable by-product of hiring brilliant people.
Just take 3 weeks off or so, and go work on something I want to work on.
Anyone tried this? Any tips?
One benefit/consequence (depending on how you look at it) is that when you return to work (depending on where you are), you may find that it takes awhile for work to figure out how to re-integrate you into the workflow since they've kept rolling without you. In my instance, it made for a gradual re-adjustment back into the things, but it may not be what you want, and I suppose you also run the risk of a workplace deciding they can get by without you while you're gone.
I don't know, maybe that doesn't even worry them. Maybe their real goal is to attract the sort of workers that would be interested in this sort of workplace experimentation. (Edit - I'm noticing a number of comments asking if they're hiring.)