Comments on: The 37signals Effect

By: Mike Schinkel

Mike Schinkel — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 09:03:21 +0000

Spot on Louis.

Ideologies are dangerous. 37 Signals owes more of their success to their establishment of a cult than to their mantra of “simple.” See the books “The True Believer” and “The Culting of Brands” to better understand what they’ve accomplished and why it has worked so well.

It’s important to note that true believers find identifying with the cult far more important than the doctrine that is espoused. Consider if 37 Signals were to decree next year that in 2010 things had changed and “release only when ready” and “feature rich drives value” should be the mantras? You can almost hear the stampede of agreement on those “facts” already…

JMTCW.

By: louis

louis — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 19:08:40 +0000

Ah! Sorry!

By: Levi Figueira

Levi Figueira — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 17:05:06 +0000

Hmmm.. My “miss the point” comment was more of a sarcastic response to your “Many people who’ve read this and commented want to try to defend “Getting Real”. You guys have missed the point so very badly”… I know you got the point and disagree… The same with me and your opinion!

Sorry for not making the sarcasm more explicit… Interwebz difficult makes! ^^,

By: louis

louis — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 16:44:57 +0000

@Levi,

The only complaint I have with what you wrote is your first sentence. It’s very difficult to successfully argue _I’ve_ missed the point when you then proceed to repeat everything I was trying to say.

By: Levi Figueira

Levi Figueira — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 15:25:32 +0000

I think that, in all honesty, you’re the one missing the point Louis.
The idea of books like “Getting Real” and they’re business philosophy (and the same with others like Joel and books like “Good to Great”) are not about doing what they’re doing… It’s all about knowing and learning how they *did* it and then start *doing* it yourself. Anybody that read those books/articles and seriously went on to doing “something” themselves, considering they have half a brain, they have adapted the concepts to fit their users, business model and object, etc…

The knowledge and wisdom that comes from those books is invaluable though, and the best way to learn and build a successful business is by learning from others who “got there”. You can’t be a “900 pound gorilla” from day one.. They tell us how they did it… You do it as you see best!

Bottom line is: at the end of the day, their methods worked! How about yours?

Thanks for taking the time to write this though…

By: Vineel Shah

Vineel Shah — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 04:50:30 +0000

“Getting Real” is a great ideology for the newest categories of software — single-purpose, instantly usable, low-overhead, “apps”. There are many contexts in which this philosophy makes sense — small web apps, Facebook apps, MySpace apps, iPhone apps, etc.

It’s not a useful ideology to write the next great word processor or an SAP-killer. For that, perhaps Joel Spolsky’s ideology makes more sense.

And another thing — few people are going to pay you for solving a difficult, obscure, technical issue. They will, however, pay you for solving a difficult problem in their life or business — which often means simple, targeted software + all the stuff that goes around the engineering — domain understanding to choose WHICH few features, UI to make it fun and compelling, marketing to reach you and your peers, a community to support your efforts, documentation and books to help you climb a learning curve, business reputation to sell it to your non-technical superiors. You cannot isolate code from the rest of the value prop of any product.

By: Eric

Eric — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 01:37:21 +0000

Thanks for bringing this up – I was thinking the exact same things as I read Getting Real.

And I agree that Getting Real is a great read. It’s very good at crystallizing a lot of things that you’re probably already thinking if you have a background in software.