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Something I've always been curious about with 37s. What % of their first (say) 100 customers were RoR developers?

by jiggy2011 14y ago

run4yourlives 14y ago
Considering they had a design business before they started selling online tools, I'd say not as high as you think. In fact I'd make a guess that most of the 'beta testers'/first users of Basecamp were probably former clients that had projects to manage. Rails developers probably helped with the explosive growth of the products, but not as much with the initial investments. Keep in mind the entire idea of Basecamp was that it was to be an internal tool.
- jiggy2011 14y ago
  Yes, the explosive growth was what I was getting at; I should have specified their first paying customers. It's kind of like wondering how many customer Fog Creek software got because of joelonsoftware.com or indeed how often YC gets first pick of the best startups because of HN.
jasonfried 14y ago
0%. RoR wasn't released when we released Basecamp, our first product. RoR wasn't really a thing yet.
- jiggy2011 14y ago
  Thanks for the answer. I'm sort of curious how much of the growth of basecamp you attribute to the RoR community though? Do you think if you had instead just written it with PHP or something you would have had a similar level of success?
  - ams6110 14y ago
    Very few customers care anything at all about technology issues such as whether a SaaS product is built with RoR, ASP, PHP, Python, or whatever. They just care whether it solves their problem at a price that is a good value. Unless you are specifically targeting some niche market of software engineers, the underlying technology just doesn't enter into the discussion. Basecamp was built for project managers.
    - jiggy2011 14y ago
      I mean for early exposure. If you have the attention of a bunch of developers because you are leading a popular project then they are more likely to check out your new product than if it was just launched by some random company. If you do a good job impressing them, they will help spread the word.
      - jasonfried 14y ago
        The early exposure we got was from our audience on our blog, Signal vs. Noise. They were web design shops like us (that's what we did before we morphed into a product company). These were customers that were like us - small shops that needed a better way to collaborate, communicate, and present with their clients.
  - nikcub 14y ago
    Having followed 37signals since their very first blog posts, it was the screenshots of their upcoming app (basecamp) and its great new design that got them attention and a lot of buzz amongst bloggers. Rails was assisted by 37signals' already established brand and name. The blog already had tens of thousands of subscribers at the point it was released.

Something I've always been curious about with 37s. What % of their first (say) 100 customers were RoR developers?

Considering they had a design business before they started selling online tools, I'd say not as high as you think. In fact I'd make a guess that most of the 'beta testers'/first users of Basecamp were probably former clients that had projects to manage. Rails developers probably helped with the explosive growth of the products, but not as much with the initial investments. Keep in mind the entire idea of Basecamp was that it was to be an internal tool.

jiggy2011 14y ago
Yes, the explosive growth was what I was getting at; I should have specified their first paying customers. It's kind of like wondering how many customer Fog Creek software got because of joelonsoftware.com or indeed how often YC gets first pick of the best startups because of HN.

jasonfried 14y ago

0%. RoR wasn't released when we released Basecamp, our first product. RoR wasn't really a thing yet.

jiggy2011 14y ago
Thanks for the answer. I'm sort of curious how much of the growth of basecamp you attribute to the RoR community though? Do you think if you had instead just written it with PHP or something you would have had a similar level of success?
- ams6110 14y ago
  Very few customers care anything at all about technology issues such as whether a SaaS product is built with RoR, ASP, PHP, Python, or whatever. They just care whether it solves their problem at a price that is a good value. Unless you are specifically targeting some niche market of software engineers, the underlying technology just doesn't enter into the discussion. Basecamp was built for project managers.
  - jiggy2011 14y ago
    I mean for early exposure. If you have the attention of a bunch of developers because you are leading a popular project then they are more likely to check out your new product than if it was just launched by some random company. If you do a good job impressing them, they will help spread the word.
    - jasonfried 14y ago
      The early exposure we got was from our audience on our blog, Signal vs. Noise. They were web design shops like us (that's what we did before we morphed into a product company). These were customers that were like us - small shops that needed a better way to collaborate, communicate, and present with their clients.
- nikcub 14y ago
  Having followed 37signals since their very first blog posts, it was the screenshots of their upcoming app (basecamp) and its great new design that got them attention and a lot of buzz amongst bloggers. Rails was assisted by 37signals' already established brand and name. The blog already had tens of thousands of subscribers at the point it was released.