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Know Your Company grows up and moves out

37signals.com

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Re: Know Your Company grows up and moves out

#21

Post by AndrewKemendo »

The issue of knowing your people is such a basic fundamental tenant of leadership that every year or two another tool is invented to solve it. 360 degree feedback was the previous hot company evaluation tool and 15Five had a pretty interesting approach to this as well. I haven't used know your company, but it seems to me that at its core it is an employee feedback tool - with the caveat that it is as minimally intrusive as possible (which is always the goal by the way).

I would love to see how it actually works compared to other management tools, but my company is not big enough to actually be able to implement it.

I do think this is an example of the way that startup/technologists/hackers do things when compared to the rest of the universe of management/leadership: reinventing the wheel that the business management community has been chiseling on for over a century. Hopefully this will do great things.

Re: Know Your Company grows up and moves out

#22

Post by jasonfried »

anon808 wrote: post #13
jasonfried wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What did you want to know that we didn't share?

Why are you spinning off the business if it's profitable? Why isn't Claire joining 37S instead? What's happening to ClarityBox? What other operating scenarios did you guys consider? Who is going to run the business . . . will Claire be doing product development, programming, customer support herself? What exactly will she be doing? Is she hiring people? Who are these people? Of course you don't owe anyone any of that…

Know Your Company was a big experiment from the start. A totally new kind of product for us, an entirely new kind of business model for us, etc. And now we're taking that to the next level with an entirely new strategy for us: Spinning it off into it's own autonomous company and letting it find its own direction.

As I mentioned in the original post, we wanted to hire Claire to run Know Your Company inside 37signals, but there was a fundamental conflict of interest: She had interviewed everyone at 37signals as part of a consulting project, and knew a lot of details about how everyone felt about the company. Everyone spoke to her in confidence as an outside consultant, not as a colleague. Bringing her into 37signals as an employee later would be a violation of that trust, so we weren't able to hire her.

You'd have to ask Claire how she plans on staffing the company, but initially it's just her with a little bit of our help during the transition. As far as I understand, soon she will be bringing someone on part time to help with product development until she's ready to make a full-time hire. Slow, steady, and prudent.

Hope that was helpful.

Re: Know Your Company grows up and moves out

#23

Post by jasonfried »

larrys wrote: post #18
jasonfried wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$100 per person one-time works exactly how it reads. If you have 27 employees, it costs $2700 one time. If you hire 3 more people, it's an extra $300, one time. If you let someone go, and hire another person, it's an extra $100. We don't sell against seats, we sell against unique people. No recurring monthly or annual fees.

From the blog post: "This is a one-time investment, not an ongoing expense." I like the idea and it makes sense. But I think it has to be restated in a way to not sound as if there is a hidden cost that pops out when getting to the fine print. That creates a negative in a buyers mind [1]. Needs to be restated in more of a "ok I understand makes sense" or might backfire. [1] Example: I had a building security system q…

It's all very clearly explained when we talk to the customer. Remember, no one can buy Know Your Company without spending at least a half hour talking with us first. We go through every single thing about the product, the model, and how it all works in those 30 minutes.

Re: Know Your Company grows up and moves out

#24

Post by larrys »

jasonfried wrote: post #23
larrys wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the blog post: "This is a one-time investment, not an ongoing expense." I like the idea and it makes sense. But I think it has to be restated in a way to not sound as if there is a hidden cost that pops out when getting to the fine print. That creates a negative in a buyers mind [1]. Needs to be restated in more of a "ok I understand makes sense" or might backfire. [1] Example: I had a building security system q…

It's all very clearly explained when we talk to the customer. Remember, no one can buy Know Your Company without spending at least a half hour talking with us first. We go through every single thing about the product, the model, and how it all works in those 30 minutes.

Separate thought.

I was at a funeral the other day for a man who built a very successful residual alarm installation and monitoring business.

At the eulogy it was said that he taught his kids to say "and that's only" specifically the word "only" (not "just").

Btw, I would think that there is a fair amount of elasticity in this pricing. I would guess that people would pay $125 as easily as they would pay $100. "think" means that I would test. You may have already.

Since I brought up the point (which you answered) the way I would restate the copy (since this is HN and people want to learn and debate) would be:

(for now let's go with $125 for my illustration)

"The cost for this?

It's only $125 to setup an employee.

That's it.

The fee is one time and there are no additional or ongoing charges.

None at all."

(Note the word "setup" is used).

My point is by saying "$125 per employee" in my mind the (ad copy) gives me the impression that I won't have to pay if I replace an employee. The "only $125 to setup" in my opinion takes away that issue for the most part.

Strictly my thoughts from playing with pricing and wording for many many years. Others may feel differently. Personally I feel $125 is a better number than $100 can't quite put in words why.

Re: Know Your Company grows up and moves out

#25

Post by mathattack »

jasonfried wrote: post #22
anon808 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you spinning off the business if it's profitable? Why isn't Claire joining 37S instead? What's happening to ClarityBox? What other operating scenarios did you guys consider? Who is going to run the business . . . will Claire be doing product development, programming, customer support herself? What exactly will she be doing? Is she hiring people? Who are these people? Of course you don't owe anyone any of that…

Know Your Company was a big experiment from the start. A totally new kind of product for us, an entirely new kind of business model for us, etc. And now we're taking that to the next level with an entirely new strategy for us: Spinning it off into it's own autonomous company and letting it find its own direction. As I mentioned in the original post, we wanted to hire Claire to run Know Your Company inside 37signals,…

This was a remarkably human-centric explanation. Thank you.

Re: Know Your Company grows up and moves out

#28

Post by anon808 »

jasonfried wrote: post #22
anon808 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you spinning off the business if it's profitable? Why isn't Claire joining 37S instead? What's happening to ClarityBox? What other operating scenarios did you guys consider? Who is going to run the business . . . will Claire be doing product development, programming, customer support herself? What exactly will she be doing? Is she hiring people? Who are these people? Of course you don't owe anyone any of that…

Know Your Company was a big experiment from the start. A totally new kind of product for us, an entirely new kind of business model for us, etc. And now we're taking that to the next level with an entirely new strategy for us: Spinning it off into it's own autonomous company and letting it find its own direction. As I mentioned in the original post, we wanted to hire Claire to run Know Your Company inside 37signals,…

yup, it makes sense why Claire wouldn't be part of 37s, and if the fit with her and the product is one-of-a-kind, makes sense that it would be organized separately if thats the only way to have her be a part of it. Of course now that you add more color, I'm more curious. I always got the impression you were more personally associated with Know Your Company than the other 37s products (having your signature on the marketing page), if so, are you personally bummed to give up the product and not direct it's continued development? Are you going to be working on something new?

Re: Know Your Company grows up and moves out

#29

Post by swombat »

I read through part of the slightly scammy-looking long sales letter (complete with bullet points and money-back guarantee) at https://knowyourcompany.com/ and still don't have a clue what this product does.

Can anyone enlighten me?

PS: @jason - the comment about the sales letter is not a comment about 37S, of course, but I'm sure you're aware of the format you're using there...

Re: Know Your Company grows up and moves out

#30

Post by pixelmonkey »

Parse.ly has been using this product for the past several months. In fact, I think we are the "smallest customer" that Jason cited, with 16 employees. We're a fully distributed team (as I described in http://bit.ly/distributed-teams), so it was a particularly good fit for us.

Our team loves the product. They loved it from the first week it was in use. It sends a weekly email rounding up what everyone is working on every week. It also has team members sharing interesting social things like favorite recipes, childhood stories, books, and movies. And the "Company Question" (a weekly question picked by management) allows us to get regular feedback from employees, which we used to do sporadically using hacked-together Wufoo surveys, but this has much less friction and actually works. One of my favorite of these questions that we recently asked was, "Is there anyone at the company you wish you could apprentice under for a few weeks?"

I don't want to reveal too much about the product because I don't want to preempt their own marketing of it, but here's a quick glimpse of how the "Questions" view of the product looks -- this is where you can see the answers from employees of past questions. In general, it has a simple, sparse, and beautiful design that achieves the goal of the product with ease.

http://ubuntuone.com/3gYi3mg65rCM30dTSGsYB8

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