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Being 37signals for free

wisdump.com

6 pointsjamongkad9 comments

Companies are able to thrive by developing and running such "simple" systems because of characteristics of the typical consumer and the reality that even "simple" systems tend to be more complex and difficult to implement/run than they appear from the outside.

The typical person lacks the time and skill to install open-source clones of web applications. The typical person does not even have a server on which to install those applications!

Running a high-quality, reliable service is difficult. There will always be nitty-gritty pain-in-the-butt performance and reliability issues with anything that gets popular and thus needs to scale. Solving those problems requires compensation of some sort.

These factors are what enable companies like 37signals to exist even if/when they are cloned by an open-source project.

Then there also is the continued innovation that happens while the clones are busy playing catch-up, and the loyalty happy customers feel towards their craftsmen toolmakers.

I think the author answers his own question in this post:

"There are tons of new 'Diggs' popping up because development time is much shorter with online websites and applications than what we are used to seeing with desktop apps."

Yes there are a ton of Digg clones but none of them are Digg. Cloning something doesn't make it popular, it just makes it a clone. If you copied 37Signals products, even if copied them perfectly, it still wouldn't hurt them much. The people who are using that software don't have the time to host their own solution, and they don't want to mess with ads. Besides they are already using the 37Signals products, you would have to have something that made your product better to get people to switch.

We all know how much better OS X is over Windows and look how hard it is to get those people to switch. The same thing applies here.

You've completely omitted the real reason people stay with Digg: network effects. The more people using a Digg-like site, the more valuable it is. Digg clones don't have the traffic, so of course they can't compete.

Switching from Windows to Mac is more of an issue of legacy. If all of the software you like using works only on Windows, and if all of the people in your organization only know Windows, it's going to be difficult (costly) for you to switch.

How are these related to 37signals products? Not very. There are no network effects involved, so that's out. And while you may have a legacy with 37signals, it's such a new product, your organization could probably afford to switch to a competitor without much cost.

The question posed in the article is a good one, then, since if you could match feature for feature and you could do it for cheaper, you'd beat 37signals at their own game.

I'm pretty sure that the project management software activeCollab was written to be a free Basecamp. Up until now, it's been open source and peopele have been installing it on their own servers. (Interestingly enough, the next major release will be split into a free and commercial version, somewhat like Basecamp.)

This article is from April 5, 2006. I think you're right. The developer of activeCollab is doing this. I think it says somewhere on the activeCollab web site the developer originally got started because of that exact blog post.

and interestingly enough, it seems that activeCollab found it much harder to clone than initially thought.

from the web site, "activeCollab is still under heavy development, but you can download activeCollab 0.7.1 and give it a test run."

A whole lot of of work went into making those 37signals apps seem simple.

If you think you can bang them out in a weekend or two then you're either the best programmer I've ever met, or you're in for a heckuva surprise.

Originally I was going to pose the question: Why do people want to cut other people's source of revenue?

But the answer came back to me just as quickly: Because they can.

But can they? One theory for the startup world might be: No matter what your product is, you need to have barriers to entry.

I'll think on it.. It seems to be worth considering how one might actively place barriers of entry so that others can't just copy you.

Making something simple is away harder and takes way longer than making something complex.

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