37signals Losing Lustre? Why I Miss The Adoring Fans (simpler is better?!) | Hacker News Reader

37signals Losing Lustre? Why I Miss The Adoring Fans (simpler is better?!)

onstartups.com

19 pointsnickb17 comments

YC tried highrise. It is not good. I actually went to the trouble of telling Fried what seemed broken about it, and got back a reply saying everybody else loved it, so I must be wrong.

Yeah, this is one of the issues they've had for a while.

There's a fine line between having opinionated software and having stubborn software that doesn't respond to user feedback.

According to their book, they don't listen to feedback!

"That's why you start with no. Every new feature request that comes to us -- or from us -- meets a no. We listen but don't act. The initial response is "not now." If a request for a feature keeps coming back, that's when we know it's time to take a deeper look. Then, and only then, do we start considering the feature for real."

What didn't you like about it? I checked out highrise and figured that I wasn't their target market... I just couldn't figure out what to do with it.

I can't remember very precisely. One problem was that we couldn't create a contact without a first name. Another was that it took so many keystrokes to add a new contact. I think another was that you could only see a few per page.

Thanks for the response.

I'm curious about why you didn't like it as well. Could you elaborate?

I would be nice if one of the 37Signals guys registered in YC to give us some lowdown on what's happening at their end.

my current company still finds basecamp a valuable tool, but that's because we're not large enough to have someone doing fulltime project management. Of course, we don't need anything beyond a glorified to-do list -- which is good, because that's pretty much basecamp's core competency.

I'm still using Basecamp for some stuff, it's pretty good for distributed teams. I tried Backpack, though, and it has seemed to actually make my life more difficult.

You can't be the flavour-of-the-month every month. The article seems a bit like hastily written link spam.

What is it with the link spam accusations every time somebody shares an opinion?

Isn't "link spam" what the blogosphere is all about? The guy's sharing an opinion, and being familiar with this blog, and educated one at that.

Enough with this ridiculous accusation already.

Fair enough. Perhaps my first sentence would have been better on its own.

I don't think it is unreasonable to note a disconnect between the article's title and the content. I guess I was hoping for something more substantial. Maybe, an educated opinion on highrise vs. earlier products.

Saying something is getting less buzz/blog-hype over time could be said about almost anything.

Good point, but it's still an interesting observation. 37signals was everywhere in 2006, and now, not so much.

I'm not sure how that translates to anything meaningful, or whether it's just that their message has been received by the audience already.

Personally, I think they have reached a work threshold for their team. They haven't expanded all that much from the original core group, (not that they want to) but they've increased the products they service. There are only so many hours in a day.

I'm actually interested in seeing what happens to them in terms of their "keep it small" mantra and the obvious desire - and need, considering their marketing prowess - to introduce new products.

Now that has the making of an interesting blog post!

Seriously though, you are touching some key points here.

Hastily written? Guilty as charged. As far as link spam, who in their right mind would link to this?

nickb?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com