37signals becomes Basecamp

by okgabr • 12 years ago

327 140 12 years ago

philfreo• 12 years ago

already on the homepage: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7181940

jacobr• 12 years ago

When we meet people, and they ask us what we do, we say we work for 37signals. If they aren't in the tech world, they'll squint and say "what's that?". When we say "we're the folks who make Basecamp", their eyes light up and open wide. "Basecamp! Oh I love Basecamp! My wife uses Basecamp too! [my emphasis] Even our church uses Basecamp!"

So, "people" = men?

IbJacked• 12 years ago

In that one example cited, yes. Universally? No, of course not. Come on, there's no need to stir up controversy in everything you read.

chris_wot• 12 years ago

Gay marriage not legal in your neck of the woods?

Styn• 12 years ago

Because two women can't be married? You're nitpicking.

garethadams• 12 years ago

Christian men too. Call the small-sample police!

yen223• 12 years ago

Sometimes, right before I submit a comment I'd ask myself, "What do I hope to achieve by writing this comment? Will people be entertained by this comment? Will the audience find their worldview challenged? Would the world be better off with the comment I'm about to make, or am I just wasting everyone's time?"

I'd suggest you do the same.

terabytest• 12 years ago

What a shit comment. Not even sugar-coating it.

thescrewdriver2• 12 years ago

Am I the only one who had never heard of 37signals before?

RafiqM2• 12 years ago

Wow, as one of the "pioneers" of the SaaS model, and a highly successful bootstrapped startup for 10+ years, I would have to say... yes, I would imagine you are one of very few people in this community who would have never heard of 37signals.

derefr• 12 years ago

It's weird how open-source encourages using something without really understanding how it originated. I bet less than 10% of the people who use Rails realize it came from a company, let alone which one. (The same will probably become true of dotCloud with Docker soon enough.)

fs111• 12 years ago

Pioneer? web-mail is nothing else but SaaS in the end and it exists way longer than 37Signals...

theknown996• 12 years ago

How can you be a "startup" for 10 years? Will they ever stop being a "startup"?

jasonfried7• 12 years ago

FWIW, I meet people all the time who don't know "37signals". They're in the tech world too.

But when I mention Basecamp, they say "Oh Basecamp!! Of course! We love Basecamp!"

World-wide, Basecamp is much bigger brand than 37signals.

flurdy• 12 years ago

On HN? Yes. Definitely in a small minority. In the world, no, probably 99.9 majority

CmonDev• 12 years ago

I have heard about them. There is that guy there who invented RoR apparently, and likes to posts articles explaining how cool he is etc.

slig• 12 years ago

DHH co-founded a multi-million dollar business, created one of the most famous web-frameworks, races on Le Mans, and has one-of-a-kind sports car made specially for him [1]. He's fucking cool.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pagani_Zonda#HH

theknown996• 12 years ago

They made basecamp, and write articles about how awesome they are.

thescrewdriver2• 12 years ago

What's basecamp?

josteink• 12 years ago

If I can piggyback on the original question... Am I the only one who have never heard about basecamp before?

josefresco3• 12 years ago

I couldn't possibly give you more upvotes for this snarky comment. While 37 Signals/Basecamp (whatever) has made some great products over the years, their self-righteous (IMHO) blog posts always turned me off to them and left me with the impression that they believed in their own bullshit.

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.

jhund• 12 years ago

Two thoughts on 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...

Uchikoma• 12 years ago

Or their move is because of Trello.

3stripe2• 12 years ago

Have just moved to Trello from Basecamp also.

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?

alexcroox• 12 years ago

While I admire 37signals I do find myself increasingly comparing them to Google and their offering. They make incredible services, but it's hard to trust them to build your business workflow around their products. If there aren't stripping back critical business features such as time tracking for our billing in the new Basecamp, they are looking to shutdown or sell others a few years on.

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

sgdesign2• 12 years ago

Well, what would you have them do? Would it really be better for them to keep spreading themselves thin supporting too many products?

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.

k-mcgrady2• 12 years ago

The problem is spreading yourself too thin in the first place, getting people to rely on your products, and then pulling them. I think it's much more acceptable for a small business like 37Signals to do this than a large one like Google. Google has the resources to keep products around, 37Signals doesn't.

csmithuk• 12 years ago

A million times this. We had a small division of our company using Basecamp for a bit but it got canned after some changes and they went crawling back to Salesforce.

It stinks but it stinks consistently!

ryanSrich• 12 years ago

It's pretty well documented that Basecamp is for a certain type of business. There's no reason to bash it. It serves a purpose, just not the one your small division found useful.

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.

1.) https://www.toggl.com/

wlll2• 12 years ago

The only feature I can think of that we ever removed (I might be wrong) is OpenID, because almost no-one used it and it was really confusing.

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/

ry0ohki3• 12 years ago

I get the feeling if a majority of people had switched to the new Basecamp, they would have killed off the old one, but it's such a breadwinner, they are not going to take it away, although I suspect if it ever gets to the point that a tiny portion is on Classic, they will change their mind, which is unsurprising as that's more or less been the concept of their company (to make bold statements and change them when circumstances change).

brianbreslin• 12 years ago

I want to switch to new basecamp, been a basecamp classic customer since 2005 (do i get a gift basket?), but rely on time tracking for my business. I don't want to have to rely on an external time tracking tool.

masnick• 12 years ago

I really don't understand how the author of the parent post is still angry about this. 37s did the responsible thing by continuing to fully support the old version, giving users time to migrate (or not migrate).

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.

janlukacs• 12 years ago

Paymo time tracker also comes in mind :) (shameless plug)

davb2• 12 years ago

I think this is a problem that's inherent in "the modern web". Trusting part of your business process to a SaaS application is always going introduce risk. Sometimes it's a calculated risk, and if you have contingency plans in place then it's acceptable. But in most cases, users simply aren't prepared for the day that a critical part of their workflow changes or disappears.

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.

interstitial• 12 years ago

Shhhh... 99.9% of the Y Combinators are SaaS.

superuser2• 12 years ago

Trusting part of your business process to a SaaS application is always going introduce risk.

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.

LeicaLatte• 12 years ago

Not sure about the move itself but I am glad they chose Basecamp. Started using Basecamp in 2005 and still use it. Basecamp is a nice umbrella all their products seem to fit into.

And I am for making the company and the product as one. One less thing to sell. For companies of that size.

kesor• 12 years ago

Who will buy Campfire? Atlassian or GitHub?

daveoflynn• 12 years ago

Atlassian already owns HipChat.

Bet GitHub steps up, as they use it already.

theknown996• 12 years ago

Github would be better to write a campfire clone in a day or so, and roll it out.

I'm betting github has a larger userbase than campfire, so what would be the point in paying a few million for campfire?

MattBearman2• 12 years ago

So does this mean all their other products will be killed / sold?

wbercx• 12 years ago

They will be kept alive one way or another, as described if you check out the link.

MattBearman2• 12 years ago

Ah, ok. I did read the article, but it was a half read, half skim, so I must have missed that.

jaimebuelta2• 12 years ago

It still escapes me why this recent trend of naming companies with the names of products "for brand recognition" (the other obvious example is 10gen to become MongoDB Inc.)

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!"

_pmf_• 12 years ago

"Apple Computers will be known from now on as iPod Ltd"

Or "Newton Handheld".

polskibus• 12 years ago

Bloomberg was once called "Innovative Market Systems". The customers called BBG terminal as Bloomberg from the start. Hence the renaming. (source: wikipedia).

aytekin• 12 years ago

Large companies have big pockets and lots of people so they split their resources on multiple products. Things are very different for small companies and startups. Losing focus for a small company is deadly. It is extremely hard to be the best in a single market, trying to do it in multiple markets is crazy.

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.

abalone• 12 years ago

You forgot about a product called the Apple II Computer by Apple Computer.

coob• 12 years ago

One way to see the renaming is that it's not for outsiders, it's for those that work there. There's nothing that could do the job of informing everyone in your company what the new direction is more effective thank this.

hrvbr• 12 years ago

Big companies do it too: EADS has become Airbus Group.

camus2• 12 years ago

Airbus existed before merging with other companies to create EADS.

mherdeg• 12 years ago

Like RIM and BlackBerry?

teh_klev• 12 years ago

I think it all depends. What 37signals have done makes sense because outside of the tech arena "37signals" is perhaps a confusing and difficult name/identity. I guess also because Basecamp has eventually become their flagship product they are primarily identified by it. You can trace this evolution in the blog post:

"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.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_Corporation

incongruity• 12 years ago

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.

jaimebuelta2• 12 years ago

Microsoft is an awful company name, that back in the day could make a little sense, but it lost it a long time ago.

But it doesn't matter because they made successful products and could develop a recognisable brand...

fmavituna• 12 years ago

We recently changed our company name to Netsparker Ltd. after our flagship product. Because we have no intentions to build and sell 10 more products in the next decade.

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.

rch• 12 years ago

It happens the other way too:

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).

gvb• 12 years ago

- "Apple Computers will be known from now on as iPod Ltd"

"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."

Ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Inc.

protomyth• 12 years ago

They got rid of a word, and it proves jaimebuelta's point even more since they ditched the word that actually related to the product they sell.

keeptrying2• 12 years ago

This smells like they are going to try to pull a Atlassian.

And they will also go take VC money ... Going to be fun to watch :)

rxdazn• 12 years ago

what's pulling an Atlassian?

sah2ed• 12 years ago

To prepare for an IPO.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7029681

ordinathorreur• 12 years ago

Why would a profitable company like Basecamp need VC money?

ry0ohki3• 12 years ago

Profitable companies take VC money all the time. In fact, I would guess that's where most VC money goes to (despite all the high profile SV startups that get press). Companies do so to grow at a faster rate.

billyhoffman• 12 years ago

Do you even know anything about 37Signals?

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.

jasonfried7• 12 years ago

Yes, it will be fun to watch, but no VC money. Not our thing. We have all the money we need to do everything and anything we want to do.

keeptrying2• 12 years ago

But Atlassian dreams? :) Good for you guys.

usablebytes• 12 years ago

People, please watch these few videos to genuinely understand what 37Signal guys (David and Jason) stand for before having a say.

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

speeder• 12 years ago

I was wondering from the headline if there was a merger... And from reading the post, it downed to me: I am one of.those that never realized the Basecamp 37signals connection, and I do read their blog!

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

kristiandupont• 12 years ago

Just fyi, the idiom is "it dawned on me".

level09• 12 years ago

is it just me or they are saying 'in other words' that only basecamp succeeded and most other products failed ?

otherwise why not just bring in more devs instead of focusing on one product.

lukevdp• 12 years ago

I don't think you can call highrise being valued for "tens of millions" and campfire in "single digit millions" a failure.

josefresco3• 12 years ago

Did you read the post? They specifically said they don't want to grow, and want a company where everyone knows everyone else. Simple "hiring more devs" flies in the face of this desire.

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.

jasonfried7• 12 years ago

Campfire and Highrise are not failures at all. They generate millions a year in profits. They just aren't our focus anymore. We want to focus all of our energy on one thing, not multiple things. Nothing more than that. No hidden agendas or hidden news.

cstejerean• 12 years ago

So what does this mean for the future of Campfire and Highrise?

faramarz• 12 years ago

Me thinks they are feeling some pressure from rising stars like Asana and they are quickly trying to solidify their lead before it's too late.

droopyEyelids• 12 years ago

I don't think Asana competes with base camp, at all. It's an over customizable nightmare that you need engineers to administer for Big Corps. It competes with Jira. Basecamp is something that a nontechnical person can use.

Grue3• 12 years ago

10 years after they released Basecamp and apparently it's still their "best idea". This explains why every 37signals blogpost I read was so devoid of good ideas. One hit wonders.

rgrieselhuber• 12 years ago

I think most people would be happy to have a single idea that provided the basis for a multi-million dollar business. Have you had better luck?

theknown996• 12 years ago

That's the point though. It's largely down to luck.

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.

arbuge• 12 years ago

If I had one idea with 15m businesses signing up, 7000 every week, like Basecamp has, every 10 years, I'd be happy.

Commas are useful...

pshin45• 12 years ago

I remember DHH talking about this on a podcast once i.e. for most super-successful companies, the lion's share of their of their PROFITS (not usage or revenue w/o profit) have typically come from 1 or 2 core products.

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.

netcan• 12 years ago

Software is a hard business. Novel becomes trivial fast. Competitive edge can become a standard "best" practice fast and a product or business which was revolutionary and profitable one decade can seem naive the next.

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.

taude• 12 years ago

And that space has a ton of competitors in it now, too. Some heavy hitters like Podio, Asana, Zoho.

I don't see any reason why some of 37's other products can't get rolled up into Basecamp as features/modules though.

henryaj2• 12 years ago

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.

jasonfried7• 12 years ago

Anything is possible with software - especially horrible complexity. Rolling more things into something isn't the way forward. We're committed to getting simpler over time, not harder. Not more stuff, but the right stuff.

Angostura2• 12 years ago

No mention of Trello, I see.

ry0ohki3• 12 years ago

I saw a couple of people saying things like this, it always seemed to me they are different customers, Trello is for internal project management, where Basecamp is better for external client facing management (which is what 37s made it for to begin with).

dirtyaura• 12 years ago

Why would they mention competiting product?

Angostura2• 12 years ago

Because Trello is a Basecamp product?

OoTheNigerian• 12 years ago

Lol. People, why the hate?

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.

lucasnemeth• 12 years ago

Single product company is more Omakase.

psteinweber• 12 years ago

Simple wins, and they know it!

henryaj2• 12 years ago

Basecamp may not have all the power features that some HN readers (and myself) would want, but in retrospect that's exactly the point - it makes their software simple and accessible.

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.

buttsex• 12 years ago

We managed dozens of clients at a time and one of the biggest compliments we get is on how easy it is to use Basecamp. Really looking forward to the new ideas they have in store.

bovermyer• 12 years ago

Bravo, Basecamp. This is a wise move. Also, you clearly showed a lot of thought about where the other products will go with your scenarios. I approve.

jasonfried7• 12 years ago

Thanks. Glad it came through as clear in the end.

simonswords82• 12 years ago

Whenever I think 37 Signals may have started to slow down or stop innovating they throw another curve ball.

Nice work guys, and thanks for all the stories and transparency. Here's to the next 15 years.

GnwbZHiU• 12 years ago

I still don't understand why basecamp is so popular. In my opinion it's just an average product, nothing special about it, but it has so many users.

mhp• 12 years ago

You underestimate the power of marketing, design, and timing then. A good product is not a prerequisite to being popular by any means (although it certainly helps).

wj• 12 years ago

I had just signed up for Highrise but haven't started implementing it yet. Sounds like the product will live on but I wouldn't mind some recommendations for alternatives if anybody has some.

I've used both Salesforce and SugarCRM and they seem a bit overkill for my use.

melvinram• 12 years ago

PipelineDeals and Pipedrive are both I've used and would recommend. If I had to narrow to one, I'd go with PipelineDeals.

snark42• 12 years ago

Zurmo?

contingencies• 12 years ago

TLDR; 37signals -> 1 signal: "basecamp"

rwhitman• 12 years ago

I'd say this has more to do with an existential crisis - the landscape for project management collaboration tools is very crowded with competitors, and some are vastly superior in many ways to Basecamp. I stopped using Basecamp years ago and groan every time a client makes me log into it. The early adopters have mostly given up on their core product.

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.

amplification• 12 years ago

Any evidence to support this? If anything it seems like growth is accelerating.

jasonfried7• 12 years ago

No crisis. Business has never been better. The reasons are all honest and all clearly spelled out at http://37signals.com. We just don't want to hire a bunch more people and we don't want to have to spread ourselves too thin. Focus is where it's at and we want to regain it.

andyhnj• 12 years ago

Am I the last guy still paying $7/month for a solo Backpack account? I've looked for good alternatives a few times, and never found anything I like as much as Backpack for basic note-taking. As long as they'll keep taking my $7, I guess I'll keep using it.

skinnymuch• 12 years ago

Haha, so am I. I thought I was the last person on it :P

rootuid• 12 years ago

TeamWork.com their biggest competitor, did this last week.

doodyhead• 12 years ago

It's great to see an Irish start-up having such a big impact globally.

keehun• 12 years ago

Can anyone name a trust-worthy competitors? I've done some searching and most competitors seem to be still branded with "Web 2.0" bubbles and the apps left rotting in its own feces the last 5 years.

I'm genuinely looking for competitors to Basecamp for small businesses. Zoho?

pooshoot• 12 years ago

"When we meet people, and they ask us what we do, we say we work for 37signals. If they aren't in the tech world, they'll squint and say "what's that?". When we say "we're the folks who make Basecamp", their eyes light up and open wide. "Basecamp! Oh I love Basecamp!..."

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.

anon808• 12 years ago

This makes perfect sense, and the 'spin-out' of knowyourcompany.com now makes even more sense. I think it's a good move.

mathattack• 12 years ago

Very interesting. 2 observations:

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.

37signals becomes Basecamp

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