I think his criticism is warranted when you think of 37signals without Ruby on Rails or the open source angle. Judging them just on their products. I don't rea

I think his criticism is warranted when you think of 37signals without Ruby on Rails or the open source angle. Judging them just on their products. I don't really see people refer to them as the cream of the crop. Basecamp's UX is opinionated but still complicated: I get lost on it even though it's a simple product. It seems to work well for a team more similar to 37signals'. Hey.com I haven't seen take the world by storm, even though it does seem better than most e-mail software (and I do appreciate their technological solutions on it). I guess most people don't have that problem with e-mail that the Basecamp founders do. That's a bit of a trend for them: they often claim people should do one thing and everything else is worse, even though that one thing really works for them and might not work for anyone else. Their agile methodology, their team size, their tech stack, etc. they often pose themselves as the "sane" ones doing it simple and easy, while everyone else is chasing the wrong thing. So in that sense I can see why OP said they're reactionary. I would disagree, however, as they've been revolutionary on many fronts, but it's usually as part of a contrarian view that sometimes is more of a miss than a hit.