No, but creating the product is a very small piece of the puzzle. 37Signals have a good amount of existing customers and what looks like a well greased marketing machine. That's what'll make this successful or not.

10 minutes ago I setup up Google groups for a small company. They had no clue what Groups is for, nor why it's better than CC'ing a dozen people. The Groups page does an awful job of explaining it's purpose to non-technical people. The lesson here is that tech people need to learn to communicate with normal humans. 37signals shows you can charge for that as well.

Maybe it is not, but if it's one-click and time saving people would pay for it. For the same reason they pay for things like soccer match results via SMS or $0.99 shopping list app for their iPhone.

> I am have to reconsider the complexity of problems I try to solve for people

I don't know how this product will sell but in general I think that is not a bad maxim.

Exactly my thoughts, there are quite few alternative solutions, Google Groups, Yahoo Groups, even Mailhosted serves[1]. Is 37signals just looking for a different challenge? I am guessing that this will be integrated into one of their other products.

[1] - http://wiki.list.org/display/COM/Mailman+hosting+services

If you work at even a moderate sized company, it probably means you need to make a request to a different department, and 1 or more people may need to sign off on that request. It might take a day or two. Meanwhile you can probably expense $10 with no special authorization and have you email list instantly.

I was thinking the same thing. This is the kind of thing I would create for a friend for free on a weekend or two. Unless I'm missing some huge complexity.

I thought the same thing. Then I tried googling for it.

Seriously, just ask your mom or dad or how they might go about setting up a mailing list.

Why solve complex problems when most people have simple ones?