dhh

24 ms·

211.
by dhh 17y ago
What? Our main business is to sell collaboration and productivity software to millions of users. Sharing our opinions on running a business is what we've been doing for the last decade. [seems like the parent poster chicken out and deleted
212.
by dhh 17y ago
Not as much rushed as "good enough". When you have other things to do besides writing, you tend to get to that. Getting the idea off my chest and on to SvN rapidly means that it gets out there. Worrying about endless refining means that it
213.
by dhh 17y ago
The only time our lack of credit history has hurt us at 37signals is when we were looking for some sort of credit, like net-30. In that instance, we changed to net-10 and things were fine. If you don't need credit, you don't need a credit s
214.
by dhh 17y ago
That's true. I think it's unlikely that I'd build a better company than what I have with 37signals. If I had some great ideas for a better company, I would be busy implementing those ideas at 37signals. And no, I certainly don't think any o
215.
by dhh 17y ago
Of course there's a detrimental effect of selling the company that I've invested the last decade into. The investment is much deeper than purely financial. It's the pride of getting there, the satisfaction of staying there, and the joy of c
216.
by dhh 17y ago
How are you making shit like "afraid of being ridiculously wealthy" up? I have no qualms with money -- neither earning it or spending it. I believe that 37signals has legs to run for another 20 years. So selling for 10x todays revs seems li
217.
by dhh 17y ago
Most acquisitions fail. Most founders end up leaving the bigger company once their golden handcuffs are off. There's a reason for that. The company they loved working at changed to be undesirable once consumed by the incumbent. A huge part
218.
by dhh 17y ago
This get a lot of crap regardless: http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2146-theres-quality-control-f... With 140,000+ apps, the bulk are bound to be shit. Deal with spammers and hardcore porn like every other site on the web deals with it. "Is
219.
by dhh 17y ago
Heh, I actually don't mind DHH in written form (let's face it, it's a long name and plenty of people can't get the spelling right). It's when people start calling me that in-person where things get a little weird.
220.
by dhh 17y ago
We've found that nothing makes us more money than being drastically simpler than the competition. No single feature is mentioned more often than "simple", "no need for training", and "easy to use" as the reason for why people use our produc
221.
by dhh 17y ago
This point wasn't about accumulation of features, although that's a worthy topic in itself. This is about what you need to ship this iteration, this version, that product. Once you have something out there you'll iterate. And yes, you'll li
222.
by dhh 17y ago
I feel the same way. I have no urgency for 2.0. Even search isn't much of an issue if you just restrict your project scope a bit. For example, for Rails apps I just open everything but log and vendor and everything is snappity snap.
223.
by dhh 17y ago
Allan is a computer scientist in the truest sense of the word. Intensely fascinated by doing core research and discovering new, deep insights. He has made enough money off TextMate to allow him to pursue this passion without much concern fo
224.
by dhh 17y ago
Initially, yes. We picked the top cities by population in the US. We're going to change that shortly, though, so it's based on the number of firms in those cities. That way London or Berlin or Tokyo or whatever can bubble up on the list if
225.
by dhh 17y ago
Compared to our jobs board, Haystack is actually overflowing with features. The jobs board has been around for two years, made over a million dollars in revenue, and continues to do very well. People will pay for Haystack if it works for th
226.
by dhh 17y ago
Agree. We're working on that. Stay tuned.
227.
by dhh 17y ago
It's not designed for people who just do back-end work. If you're a shop that does both front- and back-end work, then you're more than welcome to join though!
228.
by dhh 17y ago
People upload their own images. We just resize them.
229.
by dhh 17y ago
If you see your work uploaded under someone else's account, you can write support for Haystack and we'll investigate. Doubt it'll be a major problem.
230.
by dhh 17y ago
We originally wanted to do this for web developers, but we didn't find it to be very useful without the visual component. With web design, you can very quickly scroll through a lot of portfolios and find a style you like. That wouldn't work
231.
by dhh 17y ago
This was a bug and it has been fixed. We do not consider CRSF attacks to be a feature. This is completely different from allowing legit users to post HTML/JS from inside the application. We now also have a dedicated email address and public
232.
by dhh 17y ago
I'm on board with the term "lifestyle business" if we make it imply "very profitable business that continues to grow revenues without adding additional cost". I would think that's the nirvana description of any business, though. "Which is m
233.
by dhh 17y ago
You are equating growth with head count, which is a common fallacy, but still a fallacy. Our measure of growth and success is profit and growth in profit. For the past many years now, we've had spectacular yearly growth and we've yet manage
234.
by dhh 17y ago
Another bullshit dichotomy. We want to change the world in a big way. We certainly face hard odds (building a multi-million dollar business is very hard regardless of how you go about it). We just want to do all of that and do other things
235.
by dhh 17y ago
As much as what? And what are you willing to bet :)? We certainly don't have a 4-hour work week, but we sure don't keep a 60-hour one either. Yes, there are exceptional weeks here and there were there's a brief spike, but those are just tha
236.
by dhh 18y ago
According to that definition, we enjoy flying blind, then. We never did any substantial research in any of the areas that you suggest and we managed to do just fine. Doesn't mean that you should never do those things, just that I generally
237.
by dhh 18y ago
Sure does. There's a backup database that has a live replication feed, of course, for availability. But for performance, we only need one. I'd only run one application server too, if I could get away with it. Dealing with 1 is much easier t
238.
by dhh 18y ago
I'm truly honored to have a whole post dedicated to me because a mistake on a list of 101 computer quotes. Someone has too much time on their hands. Oh, and OF COURSE I was quoting Alan Kay.
239.
by dhh 18y ago
Success is never guaranteed. It'll always be hard. No matter what you do -- follow Getting Real or get $10M in VC -- you'll probably fail. That's a truth of statistics. But the risk of failure should hardly deter you, so if you're left with
240.
by dhh 18y ago
Rails wasn't even released until 6 months after Basecamp was a out (and doing very well). It didn't really get popular until about 1-2 years later. By that time, Basecamp was doing incredibly well and we had released other products. As the

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