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Is his claim true? I'm glad some companies like Basecamp provide a counterexample... > “History has not been kind to technology companies who do not continue

Is his claim true? I'm glad some companies like Basecamp provide a counterexample... > “History has not been kind to technology companies who do not continue to grow. Technology companies either grow or they die. There is no middle option.”

jacquesm 6y ago
There are not that many Basecamps though. If a niche is competitive enough then the eat-or-be-eaten law tends to be applied quite rigorously and one way to avoid being eaten (or at least, to avoid being eaten on someone else's terms) is to show healthy growth. That's why month-to-month growth is a very good metric to gauge a start-ups eventual success. Think of Basecamp as a very successful exception. And there is nothing wrong with that, in fact I'd like it if there were many more companies like that. In NL we have an interesting IT cooperative that I was an early investor in that is moderately successful, nowhere near as successful as Basecamp but at least they have tried. The remainder all seems to follow the usual patterns. Stagnation makes you into a sitting target rather than a moving one and those are much simpler to dispatch so better keep moving.
spoopyskelly 6y ago
Didn't Basecamp just try growing into email?
PragmaticPulp 6y ago
Basecamp is a relatively small company. Comparing Basecamp to a publicly traded enterprise is apples and oranges. Furthermore, it’s important to realize that Basecamp’s company culture evangelization is partially a PR push for the company. I have no problems believing that Basecamp’s employees enjoy the work environment, but their constant insistence that their way is the only way to run a company and that all other company cultures are fatally flawed is some dishonest rhetoric. I loved it when I was a junior IC straight out of college and thought every DHH Tweet was a new revelation about how my employer was dumb, but the more time I spend on the operations side, the more I realize that Basecamp’s PR push is more about sowing discord to sell books and products than about actionable advice.
- Barrin92 6y ago
  >Basecamp is a relatively small company. Comparing Basecamp to a publicly traded enterprise is apples and oranges. yet there are also significantly more small companies than large companies in terms of employment. Looking at the last stackoverflow survey, half of all developers report to work companies with fewer than 100 employees, whereas only ~10-15% work at very large firms. The same is true for publicly traded business of course, it's a small minority of the market. So I wouldn't disregard basecamps attitude as atypical because they are small. Small is normal.
  - PragmaticPulp 6y ago
    > So I wouldn't disregard basecamps attitude as atypical because they are small. Small is normal. New Relic (the company discussed in this article) is a publicly-traded company. I wasn’t dismissing Basecamp for being small, I was pointing our that what works for Basecamp’s 57 employees isn’t necessarily going to work for New Relic’s 2000 employees.
  - scarface74 6y ago
    Stack Overflow’s survey is a self selected sample. If you are working in a large company doing enterprisey things in something like C# or Java and you are a “dark matter developer”, you probably aren’t hanging out on StackOverflow. Also how many small companies are “lifestyle companies” and not small companies trying to grow fast and get acquired?
    - Barrin92 6y ago
      I'm not sure lifestyle company is the right description. The overwhelming majority of companies are small businesses, privately owned. Think Qt. Or Datomic. The startup scene itself is only a tiny fraction of the global tech sector, it's a sort of business pretty much exclusive to a few cities around the world. All unicorns on the planet summed up are smaller than Apple in value.
      - scarface74 6y ago

jacquesm 6y ago

There are not that many Basecamps though. If a niche is competitive enough then the eat-or-be-eaten law tends to be applied quite rigorously and one way to avoid being eaten (or at least, to avoid being eaten on someone else's terms) is to show healthy growth. That's why month-to-month growth is a very good metric to gauge a start-ups eventual success. Think of Basecamp as a very successful exception. And there is nothing wrong with that, in fact I'd like it if there were many more companies like that. In NL we have an interesting IT cooperative that I was an early investor in that is moderately successful, nowhere near as successful as Basecamp but at least they have tried. The remainder all seems to follow the usual patterns. Stagnation makes you into a sitting target rather than a moving one and those are much simpler to dispatch so better keep moving.

spoopyskelly 6y ago

Didn't Basecamp just try growing into email?

PragmaticPulp 6y ago

Basecamp is a relatively small company. Comparing Basecamp to a publicly traded enterprise is apples and oranges. Furthermore, it’s important to realize that Basecamp’s company culture evangelization is partially a PR push for the company. I have no problems believing that Basecamp’s employees enjoy the work environment, but their constant insistence that their way is the only way to run a company and that all other company cultures are fatally flawed is some dishonest rhetoric. I loved it when I was a junior IC straight out of college and thought every DHH Tweet was a new revelation about how my employer was dumb, but the more time I spend on the operations side, the more I realize that Basecamp’s PR push is more about sowing discord to sell books and products than about actionable advice.

Barrin92 6y ago
>Basecamp is a relatively small company. Comparing Basecamp to a publicly traded enterprise is apples and oranges. yet there are also significantly more small companies than large companies in terms of employment. Looking at the last stackoverflow survey, half of all developers report to work companies with fewer than 100 employees, whereas only ~10-15% work at very large firms. The same is true for publicly traded business of course, it's a small minority of the market. So I wouldn't disregard basecamps attitude as atypical because they are small. Small is normal.
- PragmaticPulp 6y ago
  > So I wouldn't disregard basecamps attitude as atypical because they are small. Small is normal. New Relic (the company discussed in this article) is a publicly-traded company. I wasn’t dismissing Basecamp for being small, I was pointing our that what works for Basecamp’s 57 employees isn’t necessarily going to work for New Relic’s 2000 employees.
- scarface74 6y ago
  Stack Overflow’s survey is a self selected sample. If you are working in a large company doing enterprisey things in something like C# or Java and you are a “dark matter developer”, you probably aren’t hanging out on StackOverflow. Also how many small companies are “lifestyle companies” and not small companies trying to grow fast and get acquired?
  - Barrin92 6y ago
    I'm not sure lifestyle company is the right description. The overwhelming majority of companies are small businesses, privately owned. Think Qt. Or Datomic. The startup scene itself is only a tiny fraction of the global tech sector, it's a sort of business pretty much exclusive to a few cities around the world. All unicorns on the planet summed up are smaller than Apple in value.
    - scarface74 6y ago