5 ms·

37 Noise

86 points by rguzman 17y ago

petercooper 17y ago
I was a SvN subscriber since it started (used to follow 37s when they were doing their design stuff) but unsubscribed when they posted that $100bn Twitter thing for similar signal/noise ratio reasons - though hopefully I'll go back one day. Despite that, this post is a bit noisy itself and doesn't make its point clear.. :)
- jacquesm 17y ago
  That was indeed the most stupid post they ever wrote. It made me wonder if they realize that if you use your PR channels for silly fluff like that they'll dry up quicker than you could possibly imagine. April fools posts should be done around April 1st, if not you're burning up one of your most valuable resources.
- undees 17y ago
  The dollar-bill one? I'm curious as to why that post is the one that killed it for you -- I thought it was kind of cute. There have been a couple of posts that have prompted me to wonder why I bother reading SvN, but that one seemed harmless.
  - petercooper 17y ago
    It was them trying to play The Onion or Valleywag, except it seemed more like a tantrum related to the pushback on some of the previously contentious posts. It felt like a "we're better than you" play to me, and there had been too many posts like that in the weeks before.
borism 17y ago
good write-up that will calm down some people's nerves hopefully (especially in VC/angel community, as they seem to be most pissed off.)
kwamenum86 17y ago
...drivel
borism 17y ago
Executive Summary: everything written on start-ups should be taken with a grain of salt.
- Periodic 17y ago
  I think it might be worth reminding everyone that everything written should be taken with a grain of salt.
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
- jacquesm 17y ago
  Start-up people should be a bit more careful about what they write. There is a reason why big companies see blogging as a danger, imagine the CEO of some big company making a public gaffe like that. It wouldn't go down very well, it's your credibility, and by extension the credibility of your company that is at stake when you blog. Better be a bit more careful, even if you feel strongly about a subject (or maybe especially then).
  - gills 17y ago
    Maybe there's a selection bias among 'start-up people' for being more comfortable of the risks associated with having a big mouth...
  - borism 17y ago
    maybe, maybe not. I prefer that dying breed of big-co's CEOs that speak clearly what's on their mind instead of usual BS corporate speak. Remember that Larry Ellison rant on cloud computing last week? Or ousted Seagate CEO Bill Watkins saying "let's face it, we're not changing the world. We're building a product that helps people buy more crap - and watch porn." in an interview. That's what I mean and that's what I miss. Anyway, I wouldn't call 37Signals provocative posts gaffes. They're meant to stir up things, sure, but they're usually written in quite good taste (unlike many pieces critical of them) and they clearly express 37signals LLC vision and principles.
mahmud 17y ago
This is the gist of his argument and it's not at all supported: "But no. 37s is a brand. They sell basecamp and books. Their sales go down when less people prescribe to the "getting real" ideology. And out the window goes intellectual honesty." Rewrite the article so this is the premise and the rest the supporting arguments. Otherwise it's just a premise sandwiched between irrelevant anecdotes.
- jacquesm 17y ago
  I don't think having a major officer posting an entry based on a false premise is good for your brand in any way. So I don't buy the ulterior motive angle. Jason Fried must by now be seriously regretting choosing Mint in the way he did to make his point. He's lost a lot of credibility while trying to argue something that actually needed to be said. Let's get passed the point of the Mint exit being VC driven, and let's look at the larger picture he is painting, because I do believe it is correct.
  - dschobel 17y ago
    Has it ever been proven that the Mint exit was under VC duress? Didn't Aaron publicly refute this himself?
    - jacquesm 17y ago
      No, it wasn't. One of the investors has said so in quite clear terms, besides that there are plenty of people quoting 'sources' saying that that was a nonsense story. http://www.businessinsider.com/mintcom-founder-wanted-to-sell-vc-conspiracy-wrong-2009-9 http://www.businessinsider.com/mintcom-founder-wanted-to-sel... http://www.texasstartupblog.com/2009/09/18/jason-time-to-get-out-of-the-tub/ http://www.texasstartupblog.com/2009/09/18/jason-time-to-get... http://blog.josephnet.org/?p=96 http://blog.josephnet.org/?p=96 He should have simply not made that call without the evidence to back it up.
- rguzman 17y ago
  That's about right: that's the main argument and not all that well supported. I don't think I'll rewrite the article, but here is a bit more support. I hope I don't need to argue that 37s is a brand. They do sell basecamp and books. Forgetting basecamp for a second, Getting Real is a very opinionated book (and they just published another) and it has an implied "ideology": do less without investment, make it look nice and charge money. The only "supporting argument" for that is that it worked out for 37s. They sell more books by promoting that ideology. Now, this is unfounded, but I suspect it is true: people hoping to imitate 37s use basecamp and I'd venture that at least ~5-10% of their users are trying to imitate them. So, ideology -> sales. I would like to be able to do these quantitatively to have a real founded argument, but that is out of the question. The whole thing is just my perception of the situation.
tjogin 17y ago
While I think Jason Fried's post on the Mint exit was atypically ignorant, quite frankly — I don't think they wrote it believing that it would make everybody dislike the idea of a $170M exit. I think he was just expressing his opinion, like the rest of us. As ignorant as it was, it was still just an opinion, it wasn't scheming. There weren't ulterior motives.
- jacquesm 17y ago
  I don't think it was ignorant at all. He used the wrong foundation (and admitted so in the first line of his post) to make a very valid point. In case you mised it: Somebody someday has to have the balls to stand up to the status quo and sit it out all the way to the end instead of cashing out at some point. The problem with that is that: - cashing out is very very lucrative - you yourself will become part of the status quo if you don't sell out at some point - vcs really are looking at the 'exit', it's just that they prefer a 'late successful' exit over an 'early' exit (because once you are a winner you might as well win big, the chances of scoring a winner being as low as they are). - sticking it out for the long run isn't 'sexy' So there are a lot of factors driving the CEOs of young and successful companies to sell out to a larger fish at some point. Only very few companies are immune to that, I think right now Google and Microsoft are the few companies that are not going to be sold in the foreseeable future, they're here to stay. And Microsoft is as much a part of the establishment as you can be at this stage. Maybe facebook too, but I think they might just be hooking for a tremendous exit at some point. Almost everybody else is up for grabs if the price is right. We need many more googles, companies that are in it for the long haul. And barring that, if you do cash out do it like Elon Musk did, and plow your newfound fortune in to something absolutely amazing instead of lounging around and throwing parties and buying baseball teams, and writing long blog posts about how everybody is doing everything wrong.
- dasil003 17y ago
  There weren't ulterior motives. Weren't there? It seems to me there are always ulterior motives. That doesn't mean he was conscious of those motives when he wrote the article, or that they were in any way sinister, but when selling a philosophy is your bread and butter then there is a very strong tendency to turn a blind eye to any realities that don't jive with that philosophy. Even those of us who aren't selling anything do this all the time, so imagine when your livelihood is on the table.
gfodor 17y ago
At a high level the thing that bugs me about this entire thread of conversation is that in my mind, there are really only a few areas of things worth working on: 1. Alleviating human suffering. 2. Scientific exploration and discovery. 3. Building tools or technology that enhances others' abilities to do 1. or 2. Notice that "bug tracking system", "personal finance management", and "company collaboration software" are not on the list. (And no, I don't want to hear about a stretched analogy about how they actually are alleviating human suffering. Please.) Also notice "social networking" is mysteriously absent as well. (Edit: To be fair, Twitter has had a few days where I really think it is making a positive difference in the world. Crapplications on Facebook, not so much.) The only excuse to not be working on one of these things is if you are working towards building some capital in order to do so. Flipping a startup is a great way to do this. At the end of the day, all these neat software tools people are building are not all that important in the grand scheme of things. What they are good for though, is enabling visionaries to start to address real problems by removing financial constraints. I am hoping that Aaron will now turn into another Elon Musk now that he has got a big chunk of $140M to work with. While he is solving real problems 37Signals and everyone else who has a lower bar for what it means to be a real contributor to society will be running their "Italian restaurants" for the next 20 years.
- petercooper 17y ago
  FWIW, I voted it up because I think you made the best comment on this post so far. I tend to think in similar terms to you regarding that list and thinking in that way got me out of a slump. I thought being a techie or an entrepreneur was a waste of time because of all the disadvantages, but I realized that if you're creating technologies or anything that helps others push the species forward, you're part of the good side of life.
- greyman 17y ago
  I happen to work on development of the software, whose aim is to alleviate human suffering (it is used in hospitals.) But we also use bug tracking system, as well as company collaboration software during our development. So those actually fall in your point 3).
ssharp 17y ago
The 37Signals blog still has a ton of great information in it - particularly on design. However, their opinions on anything outside of design have been getting more and more obtuse. There is more noise than signal these days but they're still relevant enough to read. Their one-size-fits-all approach to business models has always been as ridiculous as their holier-than-thou attitude towards funded startups. They just seem to be getting more gratuitous as of late. The company clearly had a mental investment in Mint and were disappointed by their exit. That investment and let down led them to act immaturely.
- jonny_noog 17y ago
  Such disclaimers as the below would seem to directly contradict your claim that they espouse a "one-size-fits-all" approach: http://gettingreal.37signals.com/ch01_Caveats_disclaimers_and_other_preemptive_strikes.php http://gettingreal.37signals.com/ch01_Caveats_disclaimers_an... Or is your complaint that they don't find it necessary to preface every single post on SvN with such disclaimers? In fact, this complaint would be addressed by that same link. I'm not trying to defend the Mint post by any means (although I do think, as someone else already mentioned, that the larger picture being painted by the post - once you get past the drama that has been generated - is interesting), I'm sure that post (and probably a few other posts) could have been handled better by Jason. But please, let's stop parroting the same old hyperbole about 37S.
hyperbovine 17y ago
Anyone else finding it increasingly hard to care?
- rguzman 17y ago
  I thought that myself about 20 times while writing it and submitting. There seems to be plenty of discussion online about the mint post.
run4yourlives 17y ago
Why is everyone looking for a damn messiah/devil all the time? It's always a dichotomy with some people, either you agree with people like pg always all the time, or you are expected to be a 37Signals "fanboy" and worship at their alter. Hell, they are just people folks. People with valid experiences, but people nonetheless. It is perfectly acceptable to agree with certain things a person says and not with others. More importantly, disagreeing with a person on a topic does not automatically render their views on other topics invalid! You do not need to be in one camp or the other, you can choose on a per topic basis, and hell, you can even change your mind as your experiences change and you gather more data. I know that some can't believe it, but even pg can sometimes be wrong, wildly so. Stop kicking a dead horse already. Fried told you what he felt about a particular topic, and you're acting like he sat around the table at his secret liar in the Bahamas playing out a masterful attempt to better the 37Signals brand. Come on.
mhartl 17y ago
37 Signals is ... It appears that the temptation to misspell 37signals extends even to its parody, "37 Noise"---which clearly should have been called 37noise (or perhaps, to make the analogy more exact, 37noises).

86 points by rguzman 17y ago

I was a SvN subscriber since it started (used to follow 37s when they were doing their design stuff) but unsubscribed when they posted that $100bn Twitter thing for similar signal/noise ratio reasons - though hopefully I'll go back one day. Despite that, this post is a bit noisy itself and doesn't make its point clear.. :)

jacquesm 17y ago
That was indeed the most stupid post they ever wrote. It made me wonder if they realize that if you use your PR channels for silly fluff like that they'll dry up quicker than you could possibly imagine. April fools posts should be done around April 1st, if not you're burning up one of your most valuable resources.
undees 17y ago
The dollar-bill one? I'm curious as to why that post is the one that killed it for you -- I thought it was kind of cute. There have been a couple of posts that have prompted me to wonder why I bother reading SvN, but that one seemed harmless.
- petercooper 17y ago
  It was them trying to play The Onion or Valleywag, except it seemed more like a tantrum related to the pushback on some of the previously contentious posts. It felt like a "we're better than you" play to me, and there had been too many posts like that in the weeks before.

borism 17y ago

good write-up that will calm down some people's nerves hopefully (especially in VC/angel community, as they seem to be most pissed off.)

kwamenum86 17y ago

...drivel

borism 17y ago

Executive Summary: everything written on start-ups should be taken with a grain of salt.

Periodic 17y ago
I think it might be worth reminding everyone that everything written should be taken with a grain of salt.
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
jacquesm 17y ago
Start-up people should be a bit more careful about what they write. There is a reason why big companies see blogging as a danger, imagine the CEO of some big company making a public gaffe like that. It wouldn't go down very well, it's your credibility, and by extension the credibility of your company that is at stake when you blog. Better be a bit more careful, even if you feel strongly about a subject (or maybe especially then).
- gills 17y ago
  Maybe there's a selection bias among 'start-up people' for being more comfortable of the risks associated with having a big mouth...
- borism 17y ago
  maybe, maybe not. I prefer that dying breed of big-co's CEOs that speak clearly what's on their mind instead of usual BS corporate speak. Remember that Larry Ellison rant on cloud computing last week? Or ousted Seagate CEO Bill Watkins saying "let's face it, we're not changing the world. We're building a product that helps people buy more crap - and watch porn." in an interview. That's what I mean and that's what I miss. Anyway, I wouldn't call 37Signals provocative posts gaffes. They're meant to stir up things, sure, but they're usually written in quite good taste (unlike many pieces critical of them) and they clearly express 37signals LLC vision and principles.

mahmud 17y ago

This is the gist of his argument and it's not at all supported: "But no. 37s is a brand. They sell basecamp and books. Their sales go down when less people prescribe to the "getting real" ideology. And out the window goes intellectual honesty." Rewrite the article so this is the premise and the rest the supporting arguments. Otherwise it's just a premise sandwiched between irrelevant anecdotes.

jacquesm 17y ago
I don't think having a major officer posting an entry based on a false premise is good for your brand in any way. So I don't buy the ulterior motive angle. Jason Fried must by now be seriously regretting choosing Mint in the way he did to make his point. He's lost a lot of credibility while trying to argue something that actually needed to be said. Let's get passed the point of the Mint exit being VC driven, and let's look at the larger picture he is painting, because I do believe it is correct.
- dschobel 17y ago
  Has it ever been proven that the Mint exit was under VC duress? Didn't Aaron publicly refute this himself?
  - jacquesm 17y ago
    No, it wasn't. One of the investors has said so in quite clear terms, besides that there are plenty of people quoting 'sources' saying that that was a nonsense story. http://www.businessinsider.com/mintcom-founder-wanted-to-sell-vc-conspiracy-wrong-2009-9 http://www.businessinsider.com/mintcom-founder-wanted-to-sel... http://www.texasstartupblog.com/2009/09/18/jason-time-to-get-out-of-the-tub/ http://www.texasstartupblog.com/2009/09/18/jason-time-to-get... http://blog.josephnet.org/?p=96 http://blog.josephnet.org/?p=96 He should have simply not made that call without the evidence to back it up.
rguzman 17y ago
That's about right: that's the main argument and not all that well supported. I don't think I'll rewrite the article, but here is a bit more support. I hope I don't need to argue that 37s is a brand. They do sell basecamp and books. Forgetting basecamp for a second, Getting Real is a very opinionated book (and they just published another) and it has an implied "ideology": do less without investment, make it look nice and charge money. The only "supporting argument" for that is that it worked out for 37s. They sell more books by promoting that ideology. Now, this is unfounded, but I suspect it is true: people hoping to imitate 37s use basecamp and I'd venture that at least ~5-10% of their users are trying to imitate them. So, ideology -> sales. I would like to be able to do these quantitatively to have a real founded argument, but that is out of the question. The whole thing is just my perception of the situation.

tjogin 17y ago

While I think Jason Fried's post on the Mint exit was atypically ignorant, quite frankly — I don't think they wrote it believing that it would make everybody dislike the idea of a $170M exit. I think he was just expressing his opinion, like the rest of us. As ignorant as it was, it was still just an opinion, it wasn't scheming. There weren't ulterior motives.

jacquesm 17y ago
I don't think it was ignorant at all. He used the wrong foundation (and admitted so in the first line of his post) to make a very valid point. In case you mised it: Somebody someday has to have the balls to stand up to the status quo and sit it out all the way to the end instead of cashing out at some point. The problem with that is that: - cashing out is very very lucrative - you yourself will become part of the status quo if you don't sell out at some point - vcs really are looking at the 'exit', it's just that they prefer a 'late successful' exit over an 'early' exit (because once you are a winner you might as well win big, the chances of scoring a winner being as low as they are). - sticking it out for the long run isn't 'sexy' So there are a lot of factors driving the CEOs of young and successful companies to sell out to a larger fish at some point. Only very few companies are immune to that, I think right now Google and Microsoft are the few companies that are not going to be sold in the foreseeable future, they're here to stay. And Microsoft is as much a part of the establishment as you can be at this stage. Maybe facebook too, but I think they might just be hooking for a tremendous exit at some point. Almost everybody else is up for grabs if the price is right. We need many more googles, companies that are in it for the long haul. And barring that, if you do cash out do it like Elon Musk did, and plow your newfound fortune in to something absolutely amazing instead of lounging around and throwing parties and buying baseball teams, and writing long blog posts about how everybody is doing everything wrong.
dasil003 17y ago
There weren't ulterior motives. Weren't there? It seems to me there are always ulterior motives. That doesn't mean he was conscious of those motives when he wrote the article, or that they were in any way sinister, but when selling a philosophy is your bread and butter then there is a very strong tendency to turn a blind eye to any realities that don't jive with that philosophy. Even those of us who aren't selling anything do this all the time, so imagine when your livelihood is on the table.

gfodor 17y ago

At a high level the thing that bugs me about this entire thread of conversation is that in my mind, there are really only a few areas of things worth working on: 1. Alleviating human suffering. 2. Scientific exploration and discovery. 3. Building tools or technology that enhances others' abilities to do 1. or 2. Notice that "bug tracking system", "personal finance management", and "company collaboration software" are not on the list. (And no, I don't want to hear about a stretched analogy about how they actually are alleviating human suffering. Please.) Also notice "social networking" is mysteriously absent as well. (Edit: To be fair, Twitter has had a few days where I really think it is making a positive difference in the world. Crapplications on Facebook, not so much.) The only excuse to not be working on one of these things is if you are working towards building some capital in order to do so. Flipping a startup is a great way to do this. At the end of the day, all these neat software tools people are building are not all that important in the grand scheme of things. What they are good for though, is enabling visionaries to start to address real problems by removing financial constraints. I am hoping that Aaron will now turn into another Elon Musk now that he has got a big chunk of $140M to work with. While he is solving real problems 37Signals and everyone else who has a lower bar for what it means to be a real contributor to society will be running their "Italian restaurants" for the next 20 years.

petercooper 17y ago
FWIW, I voted it up because I think you made the best comment on this post so far. I tend to think in similar terms to you regarding that list and thinking in that way got me out of a slump. I thought being a techie or an entrepreneur was a waste of time because of all the disadvantages, but I realized that if you're creating technologies or anything that helps others push the species forward, you're part of the good side of life.
greyman 17y ago
I happen to work on development of the software, whose aim is to alleviate human suffering (it is used in hospitals.) But we also use bug tracking system, as well as company collaboration software during our development. So those actually fall in your point 3).

ssharp 17y ago

The 37Signals blog still has a ton of great information in it - particularly on design. However, their opinions on anything outside of design have been getting more and more obtuse. There is more noise than signal these days but they're still relevant enough to read. Their one-size-fits-all approach to business models has always been as ridiculous as their holier-than-thou attitude towards funded startups. They just seem to be getting more gratuitous as of late. The company clearly had a mental investment in Mint and were disappointed by their exit. That investment and let down led them to act immaturely.

jonny_noog 17y ago
Such disclaimers as the below would seem to directly contradict your claim that they espouse a "one-size-fits-all" approach: http://gettingreal.37signals.com/ch01_Caveats_disclaimers_and_other_preemptive_strikes.php http://gettingreal.37signals.com/ch01_Caveats_disclaimers_an... Or is your complaint that they don't find it necessary to preface every single post on SvN with such disclaimers? In fact, this complaint would be addressed by that same link. I'm not trying to defend the Mint post by any means (although I do think, as someone else already mentioned, that the larger picture being painted by the post - once you get past the drama that has been generated - is interesting), I'm sure that post (and probably a few other posts) could have been handled better by Jason. But please, let's stop parroting the same old hyperbole about 37S.

hyperbovine 17y ago

Anyone else finding it increasingly hard to care?

rguzman 17y ago
I thought that myself about 20 times while writing it and submitting. There seems to be plenty of discussion online about the mint post.

run4yourlives 17y ago

Why is everyone looking for a damn messiah/devil all the time? It's always a dichotomy with some people, either you agree with people like pg always all the time, or you are expected to be a 37Signals "fanboy" and worship at their alter. Hell, they are just people folks. People with valid experiences, but people nonetheless. It is perfectly acceptable to agree with certain things a person says and not with others. More importantly, disagreeing with a person on a topic does not automatically render their views on other topics invalid! You do not need to be in one camp or the other, you can choose on a per topic basis, and hell, you can even change your mind as your experiences change and you gather more data. I know that some can't believe it, but even pg can sometimes be wrong, wildly so. Stop kicking a dead horse already. Fried told you what he felt about a particular topic, and you're acting like he sat around the table at his secret liar in the Bahamas playing out a masterful attempt to better the 37Signals brand. Come on.

mhartl 17y ago

37 Signals is ... It appears that the temptation to misspell 37signals extends even to its parody, "37 Noise"---which clearly should have been called 37noise (or perhaps, to make the analogy more exact, 37noises).