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Two big announcements

37signals.com

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Re: Two big announcements

#91

Post by matthewrudy »

gkoberger wrote: post #19

Very interesting announcement. I'm sure they're making the right decision, and I'm even more sure they did a ton of user testing. However, it's weird to lose the 37 Signals brand. I actually don't like Basecamp as a product, but I love 37 Signals. I treat their books like a bible, and read their blog posts religiously. Somehow, they seemed like more like a philosophy than just a product, and Basecamp (and Rails and t…

I agree, I actually don't use any 37signals products.

Basecamp doesn't work for how I organise projects, and Campfire is a poor competitor to HipChat.

But I frequently point to them as an example of how to run a company. And they know their customers really well.

I guess I'm just not one of their customers.

Re: Two big announcements

#92

Post by adrianhoward »

dror wrote: post #65

We use basecamp and campfire at work. Basecamp is mediocre, not horrible and not great. Campfire sucks compared to similar tools that I've used in the past. Seems to me that they've been successful mostly because of their involvement in the Ruby and startup world, rather than making great products. Nothing wrong with that, but it's good to be clear about the distinction between a company that makes great product and…

"Seems to me that they've been successful mostly because of their involvement in the Ruby and startup world, rather than making great products"

You also need to look at when basecamp & campfire were first released. They were significantly better in comparison to the competition at the time. And while basecamp doesn't personally fit with how I run and manage projects, I know a lot of people who are very happy with it. It fits in with how a lot of companies (many of them not "technical" companies) run their projects. For a certain kind of business it's a very good product.

"Nothing wrong with that, but it's good to be clear about the distinction between a company that makes great product and a company that's good at marketing itself"

A company that's not good at marketing and sales doesn't stay a company - no matter how good the products are ;-)

Re: Two big announcements

#93

Post by adrianhoward »

PhilipA wrote: post #74

Am I the only one who doesn't get why Basecamp is praised so much? I think it is okay, but nothing exceptionally. Also if I didn't knew the product, I would never signup when looking at the frontpage, it looks very outdated, and not very trustworthy. Hopefully a better focus, will make the experience more up-to-date.

" I would never signup when looking at the frontpage, it looks very outdated, and not very trustworthy. Hopefully a better focus, will make the experience more up-to-date."

Almost certainly a sign that you're not the target market for basecamp. They do a lot of testing on their landing pages (see http://signalvnoise.com/posts/2991-behind-the-scenes-ab-test... for example.)

Re: Two big announcements

#94

Post by HarveyKandola »

veidr wrote: post #66
midas007 wrote: post #35

There are so many project management apps out there, the competition is fierce. For a proj mgmt app to succeed, there either has to be USP and massive value. For example, Asana is especially good. I haven't tried Basecamp recently but it wasn't as lightweight, low-cost and nice as Asana.

I am extremely interested in this space, both as a user and as a developer[1]. As it happens, I use (and pay for) both Asana and Basecamp. I use Asana internally with my own staff, and I use Basecamp externally with clients. My clients tend to be non-technical businesses with custom software needs -- and most of them would be like "WHAT. THE. FUCK. HELLLP~!" if I asked them to use Asana. Keyboard shortcuts, context m…

It's not easy building that project-management app that is usable by both geeks and customers.

We (http://countersoft.com) are pushing the approach of a single tool for both project tracking (geeks) and ticketing (customers). It's not easy to say the least because customers love to just do everything in email!

Re: Two big announcements

#95

Post by timedoctor »

HOw is having two versions of Basecamp (old and new) simplification?

Also I think Asana is beating Basecamp in terms of having both simplicity and power, although I would say that the Basecamp UI is more simple than Asana, Asana is a lot faster and a lot more powerful and Asana is free for up to 15 users. I think Asana will take a lot of business away from Basecamp over the long term.

Having said that, in our business we use Jira, Asana and Basecamp (part of the reason for using all 3 is that we integrate our product with them). We keep Baecamp as a central repository of information and for that purpose Asana is not really as well suited.

For task management, Asana is way better than Basecamp.

Re: Two big announcements

#96

Post by nacs »

theknown99 wrote: post #87
dror wrote: post #65

We use basecamp and campfire at work. Basecamp is mediocre, not horrible and not great. Campfire sucks compared to similar tools that I've used in the past. Seems to me that they've been successful mostly because of their involvement in the Ruby and startup world, rather than making great products. Nothing wrong with that, but it's good to be clear about the distinction between a company that makes great product and…

It was also a pretty dick move when they complained after someone (from Google?) reimplemented campfire in a day, and made them take it down. If your entire product can be copied in a day, it's probably not that great.

I'd think an HN user would know better.. It takes drastically less time to clone a product than to make it from scratch and refine it to perfection.

Re: Two big announcements

#97

Post by theknown99 »

nacs wrote: post #96
theknown99 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was also a pretty dick move when they complained after someone (from Google?) reimplemented campfire in a day, and made them take it down. If your entire product can be copied in a day, it's probably not that great.

I'd think an HN user would know better.. It takes drastically less time to clone a product than to make it from scratch and refine it to perfection.

So why did they cry and make google remove the webchat client then?

The idea that campfire is refined to perfection is laughable.

Re: Two big announcements

#98

Post by capdiz »

adrianhoward wrote: post #92
dror wrote: post #65

We use basecamp and campfire at work. Basecamp is mediocre, not horrible and not great. Campfire sucks compared to similar tools that I've used in the past. Seems to me that they've been successful mostly because of their involvement in the Ruby and startup world, rather than making great products. Nothing wrong with that, but it's good to be clear about the distinction between a company that makes great product and…

"Seems to me that they've been successful mostly because of their involvement in the Ruby and startup world, rather than making great products" You also need to look at when basecamp & campfire were first released. They were significantly better in comparison to the competition at the time. And while basecamp doesn't personally fit with how I run and manage projects, I know a lot of people who are very happy with it.…

"A company that's not good at marketing and sales doesn't stay a company - no matter how good the products are ;-)".

does a product that grows due to word of mouth amount to good marketing? i believe not. dropbox, github and recently put.io. i learnt about these products because of word of mouth e.g show hn not Google ads or some youtube marketing gimmick. i tend to use a product if a friend i know is immune to FOMO recommends it to me.

Re: Two big announcements

#99

Post by inthewoods »

I started a software company years ago with three friends. We had some good success. We then saw an opportunity to start another product that was adjacent to Photoshop - basically a tool to improve Photoshop productivity. We moved most of our engineering team to focus on this product. Then Adobe built the functionality we provided right into the product, and our entire installed base moved to that. Meanwhile, we had neglected our core product and customers had become frustrated with the lack of progress and were moving onto other tools.

I tell this story because I wonder if this is what happened with 37Signals/Basecamp.

Re: Two big announcements

#100

Post by k1w1 »

calibraxis wrote: post #90
dror wrote: post #65

We use basecamp and campfire at work. Basecamp is mediocre, not horrible and not great. Campfire sucks compared to similar tools that I've used in the past. Seems to me that they've been successful mostly because of their involvement in the Ruby and startup world, rather than making great products. Nothing wrong with that, but it's good to be clear about the distinction between a company that makes great product and…

What are great alternatives to Basecamp? (I don't use Basecamp but am interested in the space.)

The thing that Basecamp does well is that it is a generic project management tool that can be used for any kind of project - thus its wide appeal. The most interesting alternatives are ones that specialize in particular types of projects. For example, if you are a designer there is Solo and if you are a product manager there is my product Aha! - http://www.aha.io. These alternatives specialize by taking the common elements of project management software (like todo lists, calendars and comments) and tailoring them towards a particular job function.
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