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"How can we afford to put our business on hold for a month to "mess around" with new ideas? How can we afford not to?" Taking advice from today's 37Signals on

by aresant 14y ago

"How can we afford to put our business on hold for a month to "mess around" with new ideas? How can we afford not to?" Taking advice from today's 37Signals on how to build your company is like taking advice from Michael Phelps on how to become a competitive swimmer. They are both FREAKS of nature: a perfect combination of natural talent, decades of hard work, expert coaching, and unlimited resources. I love being an observer to their dominance, but you have to look hard at these "lessons" to take away what's the signal vs. what's the noise for your average start-up!

jbigelow76 14y ago
Attributing 37Signal's success, partially, to "unlimited resources" seems off. Except for a small investment by Jeff Bezos after they were already bootstrapped they had to make due with what resources they could get in exchange for their products and services. Twitter, Facebook, Zynga... those are the kind of start ups that can be accurately tagged with the "unlimited resources" descriptor, for 37Signals to get the resources they currently have they had to execute in ways none of those other "start ups" have been expected to.
- mibbitier 14y ago
  point is, by following 37signals advice, you will not be 37signals. You probably won't be successful either.
- aresant 14y ago
  Sorry - clarification - when I said "today's 37signals" I literally meant that 37signals TODAY, in the present. 37signals is NOT a startup and yet much of the advice / information that they produce is disseminated in that spirit. In other words I see an article like that and I believe if a young 37signals had taken that advice they would have had trouble becoming 37signals!
calibraxis 14y ago
Not as a slight against you personally (I'm talking statistically, and you may mean something else), but whenever such articles pop up, I always expect a businessman to chime in about how only a superhumanly talented or lucky team can do such things. It mirrors my real-life observations of businessmen "innoculating" their subordinates against such dangerous ideas when they come up. (Implying that they and their underlings are inferior.) (This isn't unique to corporations. Even progressive nonprofits seem to dislike working with outspoken, truly horizontal organizations where self-management is the norm. Because they ironically have bosses and other trappings of corporate hierarchy. Their employees often observe that the new boss is like the old.) 37signals have taken pains to explain that, of course, any company has to think for themselves and not ape some blogpost they read.
- aresant 14y ago
  37signals is the real deal of superhuman talent. I had the benefit of exposure to members of the 37signals team in their early days when they did contract work, built their remarkable "redesigns", etc. It was crystal clear to me instantly that they were ABSURDLY talented, their design work looked like nothing else at the time and influenced an entire generation of not only web designers, but entrepreneurs, etc. So while I agree that "anybody can do anything", 37signals started the race with an incredible lead in just raw, unfiltered talent.
- davidw 14y ago
  Objectively, not many companies have someone on staff who has built something like Rails, and nurtured it into something used the world over.
qq66 14y ago
If your analogy is correct, then it's probably advice worth listening to -- although Michael Phelps' swimming advice isn't going to get me 18 gold medals, it's probably going to make me a better swimmer than I am today.
- vidarh 14y ago
  It is certainly well worth listening to them if they describe what they did that was successful for them while starting out, but that's a very different scenario from describing what they do now. I don't know swimming, but I do know powerlifting. I had hip mobility issues when I started. Which meant I put in ages getting my form right and improving my flexibility to be able to safely progress on the back squat. My lightest warmup weight now - a measly 60kg - was a sticking point for me for months where it'd leave me in pain, until I got the flexibility down. Once I did, it took me just 6 months to reach 150kg, and I've improved steadily since. Someone with the same flexibility problem that were to copy my current training regime, would "just" end up in pain for however long it'd take them to figure out the same flexibility issues that I dealt with if they were lucky. But if they were not, it'd take very little to end up in hospital, e.g. if they started with too heavy weights. Similarly, I push myself a lot closer to my failure point than you want a beginning lifter to do, because I've had years to learn how I feel when I reach failure and how to manage it without harming myself. If I put too much on the bench when doing bench presses, I know how to put the bar safely down on my chest and roll it off. Meanwhile many beginners will panic and try to put the bar off at a risk of dropping it on their heads or neck. 50kg dropped on your head is way worse than, say, 120kg slowly put down on your chest and rolled down - the latter at worst gives me a slight bruise for a few hours. What I'd say if I were to instruct a beginner vs. someone near my level would be vastly different. E.g. for someone near my level I'd talk about how essential a belt is, while for a beginner it is counter-productive. I'd talk about alternative grips and using chalk for the deadlift to prevent the grip from failing - something that is utterly pointless for a beginner. For a beginner I'd be stressing form, form, more form and flexibility. Copying me, or listening to what I would recommend - that works and is safe enough - for someone near my level would either put a beginner at severe risk of hurting themselves or waste their time (I'm far closer to my natural limit - I progress at about 1/10th of the speed I did when I started, yet the effort involved is vastly higher).
pdog 14y ago
Serious question: Isn't it better to learn from the best?
- bthomas 14y ago
  Not if you have different goals. Most web dev shops (and their consumers) just want to build things that don't break.
- vidarh 14y ago
  If you learn the right things. If you learn from what they did when they were facing the same challenges you are, rather than what they do when facing challenges at an entirely different level. Chances are you're solving different problems.
23david 14y ago
lol. I don't think it's necessarily that extreme. 37Signals just has a counter-culture mindset that leads them to experiment where other people just accept the status quo. They're just trying to come up with solutions to intractable management problems: 1. Studies show that people aren't 100% productive. 2. Studies show that company cultures and the company environment tends to discourage (or at least not nurture) people from being creative at work. So instead of accepting the status quo, they're experimenting with different ways to achieve these goals...

by aresant 14y ago

jbigelow76 14y ago

Attributing 37Signal's success, partially, to "unlimited resources" seems off. Except for a small investment by Jeff Bezos after they were already bootstrapped they had to make due with what resources they could get in exchange for their products and services. Twitter, Facebook, Zynga... those are the kind of start ups that can be accurately tagged with the "unlimited resources" descriptor, for 37Signals to get the resources they currently have they had to execute in ways none of those other "start ups" have been expected to.

mibbitier 14y ago
point is, by following 37signals advice, you will not be 37signals. You probably won't be successful either.
aresant 14y ago
Sorry - clarification - when I said "today's 37signals" I literally meant that 37signals TODAY, in the present. 37signals is NOT a startup and yet much of the advice / information that they produce is disseminated in that spirit. In other words I see an article like that and I believe if a young 37signals had taken that advice they would have had trouble becoming 37signals!

calibraxis 14y ago

Not as a slight against you personally (I'm talking statistically, and you may mean something else), but whenever such articles pop up, I always expect a businessman to chime in about how only a superhumanly talented or lucky team can do such things. It mirrors my real-life observations of businessmen "innoculating" their subordinates against such dangerous ideas when they come up. (Implying that they and their underlings are inferior.) (This isn't unique to corporations. Even progressive nonprofits seem to dislike working with outspoken, truly horizontal organizations where self-management is the norm. Because they ironically have bosses and other trappings of corporate hierarchy. Their employees often observe that the new boss is like the old.) 37signals have taken pains to explain that, of course, any company has to think for themselves and not ape some blogpost they read.

aresant 14y ago
37signals is the real deal of superhuman talent. I had the benefit of exposure to members of the 37signals team in their early days when they did contract work, built their remarkable "redesigns", etc. It was crystal clear to me instantly that they were ABSURDLY talented, their design work looked like nothing else at the time and influenced an entire generation of not only web designers, but entrepreneurs, etc. So while I agree that "anybody can do anything", 37signals started the race with an incredible lead in just raw, unfiltered talent.
davidw 14y ago
Objectively, not many companies have someone on staff who has built something like Rails, and nurtured it into something used the world over.

qq66 14y ago

If your analogy is correct, then it's probably advice worth listening to -- although Michael Phelps' swimming advice isn't going to get me 18 gold medals, it's probably going to make me a better swimmer than I am today.

vidarh 14y ago
It is certainly well worth listening to them if they describe what they did that was successful for them while starting out, but that's a very different scenario from describing what they do now. I don't know swimming, but I do know powerlifting. I had hip mobility issues when I started. Which meant I put in ages getting my form right and improving my flexibility to be able to safely progress on the back squat. My lightest warmup weight now - a measly 60kg - was a sticking point for me for months where it'd leave me in pain, until I got the flexibility down. Once I did, it took me just 6 months to reach 150kg, and I've improved steadily since. Someone with the same flexibility problem that were to copy my current training regime, would "just" end up in pain for however long it'd take them to figure out the same flexibility issues that I dealt with if they were lucky. But if they were not, it'd take very little to end up in hospital, e.g. if they started with too heavy weights. Similarly, I push myself a lot closer to my failure point than you want a beginning lifter to do, because I've had years to learn how I feel when I reach failure and how to manage it without harming myself. If I put too much on the bench when doing bench presses, I know how to put the bar safely down on my chest and roll it off. Meanwhile many beginners will panic and try to put the bar off at a risk of dropping it on their heads or neck. 50kg dropped on your head is way worse than, say, 120kg slowly put down on your chest and rolled down - the latter at worst gives me a slight bruise for a few hours. What I'd say if I were to instruct a beginner vs. someone near my level would be vastly different. E.g. for someone near my level I'd talk about how essential a belt is, while for a beginner it is counter-productive. I'd talk about alternative grips and using chalk for the deadlift to prevent the grip from failing - something that is utterly pointless for a beginner. For a beginner I'd be stressing form, form, more form and flexibility. Copying me, or listening to what I would recommend - that works and is safe enough - for someone near my level would either put a beginner at severe risk of hurting themselves or waste their time (I'm far closer to my natural limit - I progress at about 1/10th of the speed I did when I started, yet the effort involved is vastly higher).

pdog 14y ago

Serious question: Isn't it better to learn from the best?

bthomas 14y ago
Not if you have different goals. Most web dev shops (and their consumers) just want to build things that don't break.
vidarh 14y ago
If you learn the right things. If you learn from what they did when they were facing the same challenges you are, rather than what they do when facing challenges at an entirely different level. Chances are you're solving different problems.

23david 14y ago

lol. I don't think it's necessarily that extreme. 37Signals just has a counter-culture mindset that leads them to experiment where other people just accept the status quo. They're just trying to come up with solutions to intractable management problems: 1. Studies show that people aren't 100% productive. 2. Studies show that company cultures and the company environment tends to discourage (or at least not nurture) people from being creative at work. So instead of accepting the status quo, they're experimenting with different ways to achieve these goals...