4 ms·

For some reason, I don't imagine BaseCamp's use is really exploding like some other startups might in terms of database usage. It could very well be a case of

by ohashi 15y ago

For some reason, I don't imagine BaseCamp's use is really exploding like some other startups might in terms of database usage. It could very well be a case of their growth is scaling in-line with Moore's law, so it just happens to work out well.

moe 15y ago
I agree. Without any figures this is a pretty meaningless blog-post...
ams6110 15y ago
I think most "other startups" would LOVE to be in the ballpark with BaseCamp in terms of usage. No BaseCamp is not big like Facebook, but you've heard of them right? Most "ordinary" business people who do project planning work have probably heard of BaseCamp too. Most people never hear about most startups, fewer try their services, fewer than that become regular users. The point of the post is that in many/most cases, it's still easier and cheaper to throw hardware at a performance problem than to devote scarce engineering effort to optimization. And it's only getting more and more so. If you are a startup and you can throw $10,000 of hardware at a problem you can then keep your $100K engineers working on things that hardware alone can't solve.
- jonknee 15y ago
  > Most "ordinary" business people who do project planning work have probably heard of BaseCamp too. I don't think so. Maybe we just have a different opinion on ordinary, but I come across people all the time that would think Excel is the normal thing to use for this (and pretty much any other task...). Using web applications for day to day workflow is still alien to a lot of "ordinary" business types.
  - ams6110 15y ago
    Granted. s/most/some/
- untog 15y ago
  Most "ordinary" business people who do project planning work have probably heard of BaseCamp too. I think this might be the tech bubble showing. I've never heard of any non-tech, non-startup companies using Basecamp. I'm not saying that they don't, of course, but I'd be interested to hear some case studies in its use outside of tech-savvy crowds.
  - tsunamifury 15y ago
    Exactly. As horrible as it is, sharepoint rules this area and probably has an install base that dwarfs base camp. When the average corp person thinks project and file management they think sharepoint.
    - jiggy2011 15y ago
      This is possibly another bubble. Most programmers probably work at either BigCo enterprises (banks, insurance companies, telcos etc) or at "startup" type tech businesses or freelance agencies. There are other industries that contain a lot of small businesses and probably employ very few programmers, think restaurants , local shops , small law or accountancy practices etc. These guys probably aren't using sharepoint, most of them are probably using excel spreadsheets combined with paper. I'm not sure how many of these guys are using things like basecamp but they a lot of them probably should be.
  - hello_moto 15y ago
    I thought 37signals website has videos of "satisfied" users? and some of them don't seem to be "tech" and "startup". Probably small businesses, but I don't think we can lump all "small businesses" == "startups"
  - dhh 15y ago
    Last I checked, I believe something like 20% of our customers were from the tech/startup scene. The vast majority of our customers are regular businesses. But yes, we're still tiny compared to behemoths like Sharepoint. All the more reason to be excited about the next 20 years!
patio11 15y ago
Even among startups, web scale data requirements are the exception, not the rule. Facebook and Google are ginormous. There are many, many very impressive applications whose database wouldn't tax a single commodity server. (Similarly, there are applications that make terrible businesses but which consume computing resources like losing a byte of information would doom humanity.) I mean, go through a list of YC companies or other startups you respect, winnow it down to the ones that exited or otherwise achieved some level of success, and play guess-the-size. How many terabytes of storage do you think e.g. Airbnb needs?
- j_baker 15y ago
  One thing I've found is that scaling rarely means solving difficult problems. Rather, it means putting more time into finding optimal solutions to problems that are trivial at smaller scale. For example, should your startup use Apache, nginx, or HAProxy as a load balancer? If you're just launching, the answer is "Who cares, just ship the fucking thing!". If you reach the point where you start measuring page views in the billions (and yes there are start ups that are at this point), it matters a great deal. Or should you use Postgres, MySQL, or some shiny NoSQL thing? Again, probably doesn't matter for small websites. But for larger services, it matters. Also, don't underestimate how large log files can grow in a data-driven business (like AirBNB seems to be). I could easily believe that they have many terabytes of data just from logging actions their customers have taken.
  - adgar 15y ago
    > Also, don't underestimate how large log files can grow in a data-driven business (like AirBNB seems to be). I could easily believe that they have many terabytes of data just from logging actions their customers have taken. Logs don't have remotely the same access requirements as the databases used to serve a product.
    - j_baker 15y ago
      Indeed, but it's worth pointing out that in this case "different" doesn't necessarily imply "easier". Instead of having to access the data across many concurrent connections, you have to be able to store the data efficiently so that it doesn't take up too much space and you can do jobs on them that don't take 3 weeks to complete. And let's not get into how you collect and merge them together. There are open source tools to do these things, but you're still looking at a decent amount of infrastructure to make it work.

by ohashi 15y ago

moe 15y ago

I agree. Without any figures this is a pretty meaningless blog-post...

ams6110 15y ago

I think most "other startups" would LOVE to be in the ballpark with BaseCamp in terms of usage. No BaseCamp is not big like Facebook, but you've heard of them right? Most "ordinary" business people who do project planning work have probably heard of BaseCamp too. Most people never hear about most startups, fewer try their services, fewer than that become regular users. The point of the post is that in many/most cases, it's still easier and cheaper to throw hardware at a performance problem than to devote scarce engineering effort to optimization. And it's only getting more and more so. If you are a startup and you can throw $10,000 of hardware at a problem you can then keep your $100K engineers working on things that hardware alone can't solve.

jonknee 15y ago
> Most "ordinary" business people who do project planning work have probably heard of BaseCamp too. I don't think so. Maybe we just have a different opinion on ordinary, but I come across people all the time that would think Excel is the normal thing to use for this (and pretty much any other task...). Using web applications for day to day workflow is still alien to a lot of "ordinary" business types.
- ams6110 15y ago
  Granted. s/most/some/
untog 15y ago
Most "ordinary" business people who do project planning work have probably heard of BaseCamp too. I think this might be the tech bubble showing. I've never heard of any non-tech, non-startup companies using Basecamp. I'm not saying that they don't, of course, but I'd be interested to hear some case studies in its use outside of tech-savvy crowds.
- tsunamifury 15y ago
  Exactly. As horrible as it is, sharepoint rules this area and probably has an install base that dwarfs base camp. When the average corp person thinks project and file management they think sharepoint.
  - jiggy2011 15y ago
    This is possibly another bubble. Most programmers probably work at either BigCo enterprises (banks, insurance companies, telcos etc) or at "startup" type tech businesses or freelance agencies. There are other industries that contain a lot of small businesses and probably employ very few programmers, think restaurants , local shops , small law or accountancy practices etc. These guys probably aren't using sharepoint, most of them are probably using excel spreadsheets combined with paper. I'm not sure how many of these guys are using things like basecamp but they a lot of them probably should be.
- hello_moto 15y ago
  I thought 37signals website has videos of "satisfied" users? and some of them don't seem to be "tech" and "startup". Probably small businesses, but I don't think we can lump all "small businesses" == "startups"
- dhh 15y ago
  Last I checked, I believe something like 20% of our customers were from the tech/startup scene. The vast majority of our customers are regular businesses. But yes, we're still tiny compared to behemoths like Sharepoint. All the more reason to be excited about the next 20 years!

patio11 15y ago

Even among startups, web scale data requirements are the exception, not the rule. Facebook and Google are ginormous. There are many, many very impressive applications whose database wouldn't tax a single commodity server. (Similarly, there are applications that make terrible businesses but which consume computing resources like losing a byte of information would doom humanity.) I mean, go through a list of YC companies or other startups you respect, winnow it down to the ones that exited or otherwise achieved some level of success, and play guess-the-size. How many terabytes of storage do you think e.g. Airbnb needs?

j_baker 15y ago
One thing I've found is that scaling rarely means solving difficult problems. Rather, it means putting more time into finding optimal solutions to problems that are trivial at smaller scale. For example, should your startup use Apache, nginx, or HAProxy as a load balancer? If you're just launching, the answer is "Who cares, just ship the fucking thing!". If you reach the point where you start measuring page views in the billions (and yes there are start ups that are at this point), it matters a great deal. Or should you use Postgres, MySQL, or some shiny NoSQL thing? Again, probably doesn't matter for small websites. But for larger services, it matters. Also, don't underestimate how large log files can grow in a data-driven business (like AirBNB seems to be). I could easily believe that they have many terabytes of data just from logging actions their customers have taken.
- adgar 15y ago
  > Also, don't underestimate how large log files can grow in a data-driven business (like AirBNB seems to be). I could easily believe that they have many terabytes of data just from logging actions their customers have taken. Logs don't have remotely the same access requirements as the databases used to serve a product.
  - j_baker 15y ago
    Indeed, but it's worth pointing out that in this case "different" doesn't necessarily imply "easier". Instead of having to access the data across many concurrent connections, you have to be able to store the data efficiently so that it doesn't take up too much space and you can do jobs on them that don't take 3 weeks to complete. And let's not get into how you collect and merge them together. There are open source tools to do these things, but you're still looking at a decent amount of infrastructure to make it work.