37signals becomes Basecamp
37signals.com
37signals.com
I hate corporate software as much as the next guy, but at least you know it will be around and supported for a long time to come and without stripping features core to running your business. /rant
On the contrary, I think them refocusing on Basecamp should give you more trust that they won't pull a Google and pull the plug on it.
Maybe I meant to say that departments WITHIN Google are run like startups not Google itself.
It is a corporate company. When millions of people rely on your products you need to be careful when introducing new ones and pulling old ones. I don't think you can run a business like a startup forever if you have millions/billions of users. You cans till maintain some aspects of that startup culture but there are other aspects you have to leave behind. You have to think of how anything you do is going to affect people's long term view of you. The Reader shut down may not have affected a majority of Google's customers but now some people are wary to adopt new Google services. If you pull that kind of thing often enough you damage your long term prospects.
My main point (and question) of my comment was in the first sentence.
For end user software, it's not such a big deal to drop support.
But for a project like Basecamp, businesses are buying it and potentially investing a lot of time and money to integrate it into their processes. Companies buying that kind of software expect it to be around a while. It's a bit disingenuous to sell to them knowing it may not be supported after a short time.
It stinks but it stinks consistently!
I admire a company sticking to their values when they could easily throw them out the window and grow into a massive corporate machine.
Something as trivial as time tracking can easily be done with an external application[1] that plugs directly into Basecamp.
Time tracking is still there in Basecamp Classic, and that's not going away. If you rely on time tracking in Basecamp Classic you can continue to do so.
See this from the announcement page FAQ:
Q: What about Basecamp Classic? "We are fully committed to running Basecamp Classic forever." - http://37signals.com/
I think there are a lot of 3rd parties that integrate with the new Basecamp to provide time tracking. Harvest is the one that immediately comes to mind. While this might seem to not be as good as a first party experience, I would argue that it is better to use a real time tracking app like Harvest, which is waaaaay more capable than the time tracking in Basecamp Classic.
Whatever criticisms you might have of Basecamp, they are certainly focused on avoiding feature creep and bloat. I suspect they agree with my assessment that Harvest et al. provide a better time tracking experience, so there is no reason to complicate their product with a (poorer) duplication of their features.
I know it's not a popular opinion here, but using SaaS is no different from outsourcing part of your operations. If it's a small part and there are plenty of direct competitors, the risk is minimal. However, if it's a critical part of your system and there are no direct alternatives, you really are putting the safety of your business in the provider's hands.
Trusting part of your business process to yourself is always going to introduce risk.
This is the primary fallacy of the anti-SaaS argument. Cloud providers go down, but so do you. For an in-house solution to be superior from a reliability perspective, you not only need to show that cloud providers go down, but that you go down less. Which, unless you are in the infrastructure business - or have a large and competent (read: expensive) business area that's in the infrastructure business - is not terribly likely.
Like many others in the industry, I've had network applications which have run for years without unscheduled downtime. When I'm hosting my own application, I can architect whichever failover/redundancy solution I see fit. If my application does go down, I have physical access to the server and the data. My dependencies are all local, clearly outlined and easy to manage (from a risk perspective).
On the other hand, if I trust your SaaS application I'm also trusting that your backup and resilience procedures are at least as good as mine. I'm trusting that your dependencies are all managed in such a way that a failure can quickly be remedied or a contingency plan activated. I'm trusting your providers in the same way I'm trusting you. The opaque black box of your application frankly scares me. I can manage what I can see and what I can understand.
Not to over generalise, but there is a trend in SaaS application design towards the school of "let someone else worry about it" dependency management. This is clear in both infrastructure and libraries/frameworks. Many even outsource critical functionality to other third party SaaS services altogether (push notification, messaging, queue management, transcoding). Besides core application architecture, we also have to worry about connectivity (mine, yours, all of your dependencies). That's a lot of moving parts which can (and do) fail.
I trust my transparent, well documented system with its clear contingency plans much more than your opaque SaaS application, its unknown dependencies and its myriad moving parts.
And as we see all too often on HN, it's not just about downtime - SaaS applications shut down and disappear. If you're lucky, you get a chance to export your data. I'm certainly not suggesting that companies should continue to operate them at a loss for years, but given the choice between relying on someone else's SaaS product and depending on a locally hosted application, I'm going locally hosted every time when it concerns critical business workflow.
I'm not anti-SaaS at all, I just think we should be clear in our own minds about the risks introduced by relying heavily on third party providers (and I mirror that awareness in dependency management in my own software).
(On a side note: I find it interesting that while many of the users on HN ardently support SaaS, they condemn always-online DRM.)
It would be interesting to see other companies do that in the past:
- "Microsoft is going to become Windows Inc"
- "Apple Computers will be known from now on as iPod Ltd"
- "The new name of the company will be Air Jordan & Co. Nike no more!"
Or "Newton Handheld".
Best strategy for a startup is to find the best market they have a chance at dominating and focus all of their resources on it. Branding is just one of the resources you have. You want everyone to mention your product when they talk about you.
"37signals was founded back in 1999 as a web design firm. With the release of Basecamp in 2004, we began our journey to become a software company. Once Basecamp revenue surpassed web design revenue in 2005, the transition was complete."
"However, because we've released so many products over the years, we've become a bit scattered, a bit diluted."
"So with that in mind, last August we conducted a thorough review of our products, our customer base, our passions, and our visions of the company for the next 20 years. When we put it all on the table, everything lined up and pointed at one clear conclusion. We all got excited. We knew it was right."
"Moving forward, we will be a one product company. That product will be Basecamp. Our entire company will rally around Basecamp."
"From now on, we are Basecamp. Basecamp the company, Basecamp the product. We're one and the same."
This makes total sense. Even if in the future they launch another barnstorming product, if it's under the Basecamp brand/umbrella it will have a stronger brand identity than being launched as a 37signals product.
The same works for 10gen's rename to MongoDB Inc (even if as a UK citizen I find "Mongo" to be a difficult name to sell due to certain negative connotations associated with "mong").
Take a look at Oracle's history [1]:
"Ellison co-founded Oracle Corporation in 1977 with Bob Miner and Ed Oates under the name Software Development Laboratories (SDL). In 1979 SDL changed its name to Relational Software, Inc. (RSI).[8] In 1982, RSI renamed itself Oracle Systems Corporation [9] to align itself more closely with its flagship product Oracle Database. At this stage Bob Miner served as the company's senior programmer. In 1995, Oracle Systems Corporation changed its name to Oracle Corporation."
Again, this makes total sense.
Apple and Microsoft were lucky from the moment of their inception to incorporate with cleverly simple names.
Hardly. Apple was originally called "Apple Computer" and, if you recall, they changed that in 2007 to be more general (http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/09/apple-drops-computer-from...) unlike what 37Signals has done here.
Moreover, "Microsoft" is hardly a clever or simple name -- it began as descriptive -- software for microcomputers -- but it's obscure enough in its construction and they've been willing to build strong sub-brands (e.g.: XBox) so its worked.
The point is that neither reflect the strategy taken by 37Signals here -- one that I believe will cause them problems in the future. Who else has done what they've done? One name definitely comes to mind -- RIM becoming "Blackberry". I'm sure there are others, but saying more about RIM would just be cheap shots -- but suffice to say it didn't do them any favors.
But it doesn't matter because they made successful products and could develop a recognisable brand...
However companies such as Microsoft and Apple are in business of building products, not selling only one.
Companies such as 37Signals are interested in building 1-3 products and never to become a huge corp with 1K people and 20 products.
http://quickleft.com/expansion
The short version is that a product company (Sprint.ly) bought the RoR services company (QuickLeft) and yet took the service company's name. This will let the combined company build the main product more efficiently, but also build more products down the road (which would be awkward if they were called Sprint.ly).
"It was incorporated as Apple Computer, Inc. on January 3, 1977, and was renamed as Apple Inc. on January 9, 2007 to reflect its shifted focus towards consumer electronics."
90% of the 'issues' raised in the comment thread including that by alexcroox can be answered by reading the post.
Here, in case you missed it http://37signals.com/
The other 10% are outright misleading.
BTW, Alex Croox, once you start a business, you must run it forever right? Well, I have decided to build my flow around all your project here alexcrooks.me
Don't shut any down hommie.
PM collab tools are becoming a commodity product in business, and 37 Signals got distracted and missed out on making sure that their brand was front and foremost in customers' minds. They could have doubled down on the brand and become the "Kleenex" of PM tools. But they waited too late and are now scrambling to re-affirm their dominance in the space. Thats how I see this.
1) Strategy is primarily about saying "No" to activities that are not aligned with your goals and values. Here is a great example for saying no in a pretty gutsy way. 2) I have used Basecamp since its launch for my client work and like it quite a bit. However, lately I have preferred to work with Trello. I'm curious to see how Basecamp will change in the near future. Maybe I'm not their target customer any more...
As a single-person team, the free offering from Trello easily Basecamp's.
Much more fluidity and flexibility in how things are organised.
What is Trello like to use with a large team?
To me 37signals was that webdev shop that made Rails and had a cool blog, I never connected them to any of their products Oo
Basecamp needs to move to keep up. They have their commitment to "not too much software" and simplicity which is great but has some tradeoffs. In any case, collaboration between people working on things remotely or in the same office using the internet is not done yet. There are still big things to be figured out. The culture and the technology is evolving. Personally, I use Basecamp and it is better than email for a lot of things, but there are a lot of thing I wish it did or did differently.
In essence, there is plenty of work for a 50 person team in this space. Good luck to them.
I don't see any reason why some of 37's other products can't get rolled up into Basecamp as features/modules though.
Mm - that's what I assumed they would do. Slightly surprised that their plan is to spin them off to third parties.
I love these guys. 37signals are an inspiration, and I've been using and loving Basecamp since I was 17 and running a company with my friends in school.
To the next ten years.
otherwise why not just bring in more devs instead of focusing on one product.
Honestly it can be liberating to strip out less than ideal elements from your business to focus on what you love and what is working the best.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XD2kNopsUs&list=PLuBTPnEIr6J...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzERXJgi5vQ and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPrvnlvnu-k
and yea, don't forget https://twitter.com/shitmydadsays/status/10390379840929792
It's not about some cutesy generalizations you distil into a formula for success and release as a book.
It's certainly not about what language/framework you decide to use.
Commas are useful...
Think of Google and AdWords, Microsoft and Windows/Office, Amazon and their e-commerce business, etc. These companies all have lots of other successful products, each of which is used by millions of people and may generate lots of revenue, but at the end of the day their actual profits come from their 1 core product.
Apple is the most recent example of a company that has successfully been able to create multiple different product lines that were extremely profitable on their own.
So saying that Basecamp is 37Signals' "one good idea" is not a knock on them at all. It simply puts them in the same league as any other super-successful company.
P.S. DHH is an unabashed capitalist and he's gone on the record many times saying that he'd rather be part of a company valued at $100 million that takes home $10's of millions home in profit every year vs a company valued at $1 billion that takes home minimal or no profits every year (e.g. Groupon). I'm assuming that this sentiment is shared by others at 37Signals as well.
Nice work guys, and thanks for all the stories and transparency. Here's to the next 15 years.
I haven't seen someone so proud of their mediocre-at-best product. Basecamp leaves A LOT to be desired. We switched to Jira and couldn't be happier.
The HN/YC model of a "startup" is something that is growing rapidly, as per http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html, so perhaps 37signals was never a startup in the HN use of the term ;-)
But when I mention Basecamp, they say "Oh Basecamp!! Of course! We love Basecamp!"
World-wide, Basecamp is much bigger brand than 37signals.
Just because you've had success doesn't mean you know everything about even your success or why you achieved it. Be humble, even while educating and talking about your achievements.
1) Will they lose the ability to experiment as a one product company?
2) "If we can't find the right partner or buyer, we are committed to continuing to run the products for our existing customers forever." This is very impressive. Forever is a long time, and comes with a real cost if you're not putting in new users.
Bravo for a successful company to be willing to make big strategic moves.
I'm genuinely looking for competitors to Basecamp for small businesses. Zoho?
And I am for making the company and the product as one. One less thing to sell. For companies of that size.
I've used both Salesforce and SugarCRM and they seem a bit overkill for my use.
Bet GitHub steps up, as they use it already.
I'm betting github has a larger userbase than campfire, so what would be the point in paying a few million for campfire?
I thought we were already past the "why buy it if you can copy it".
Is writing a webchat client some black dark art?
There's nothing much you need to know to write a webchat client. Campfire isn't high volume, so it doesn't need to be too efficient either. Last time I checked campfire processes a few messages a second. Heck you could rewrite it in PHP/MySQL if you were that way inclined.
Campfire didn't succeed because it was a good product. It succeeded because they marketed it to their "following" who bought into it.
Many times people will see a product or company and think "how simple, I could have made that ... why did they succeed?" Everyone has assets they bring to the table that help them succeed. For some it means they can create and sell a less than stellar product because they have existing leverage in a market that give them an advantage an average "Joe" wouldn't.
Are we really back to the childish argument of "this is so easy to build, would just take a few minutes"?
The point is, if you bought campfire, all you'd really be buying is the existing customer base.
Actually, they state that any sale or spinoff of the de-emphasized products would not include employees.
So, "people" = men?
I'd suggest you do the same.
And they will also go take VC money ... Going to be fun to watch :)
With even a superficial study of the company, its public figures, or their publications you would know that "taking VC money" or massive growth would be anathema to 37Signals. On the level of "Doctors without Borders" going into the landmine business.
37Signals has an interesting and often counter intuitive approach to a modern software business. While I don't always agree with their methods or dogma, it is fascinating to watch what they try and, more specifically, how they actually execute on their ideals. It's like a science experiment that I don't have to pay for :-)
The worse thing for everyone, customers and voyeurs, would be to take VC money and become like Atlassian.