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37signals becomes Basecamp

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Re: 37signals becomes Basecamp

#111

Post by amplification »

rwhitman wrote: post #106

I'd say this has more to do with an existential crisis - the landscape for project management collaboration tools is very crowded with competitors, and some are vastly superior in many ways to Basecamp. I stopped using Basecamp years ago and groan every time a client makes me log into it. The early adopters have mostly given up on their core product. PM collab tools are becoming a commodity product in business, and 3…

Any evidence to support this? If anything it seems like growth is accelerating.

Re: 37signals becomes Basecamp

#113

Post by interstitial »

davb wrote: post #79
alexcroox wrote: post #17

While I admire 37signals I do find myself increasingly comparing them to Google and their offering. They make incredible services, but it's hard to trust them to build your business workflow around their products. If there aren't stripping back critical business features such as time tracking for our billing in the new Basecamp, they are looking to shutdown or sell others a few years on. I hate corporate software as…

I think this is a problem that's inherent in "the modern web". Trusting part of your business process to a SaaS application is always going introduce risk. Sometimes it's a calculated risk, and if you have contingency plans in place then it's acceptable. But in most cases, users simply aren't prepared for the day that a critical part of their workflow changes or disappears. I know it's not a popular opinion here, but…

Shhhh... 99.9% of the Y Combinators are SaaS.

Re: 37signals becomes Basecamp

#114

Post by incongruity »

teh_klev wrote: post #82
jaimebuelta wrote: post #30

It still escapes me why this recent trend of naming companies with the names of products "for brand recognition" (the other obvious example is 10gen to become MongoDB Inc.) It would be interesting to see other companies do that in the past: - "Microsoft is going to become Windows Inc" - "Apple Computers will be known from now on as iPod Ltd" - "The new name of the company will be Air Jordan & Co. Nike no more!"

I think it all depends. What 37signals have done makes sense because outside of the tech arena "37signals" is perhaps a confusing and difficult name/identity. I guess also because Basecamp has eventually become their flagship product they are primarily identified by it. You can trace this evolution in the blog post: "37signals was founded back in 1999 as a web design firm. With the release of Basecamp in 2004, we beg…

Apple and Microsoft were lucky from the moment of their inception to incorporate with cleverly simple names.

Hardly. Apple was originally called "Apple Computer" and, if you recall, they changed that in 2007 to be more general (http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/09/apple-drops-computer-from...) unlike what 37Signals has done here.

Moreover, "Microsoft" is hardly a clever or simple name -- it began as descriptive -- software for microcomputers -- but it's obscure enough in its construction and they've been willing to build strong sub-brands (e.g.: XBox) so its worked.

The point is that neither reflect the strategy taken by 37Signals here -- one that I believe will cause them problems in the future. Who else has done what they've done? One name definitely comes to mind -- RIM becoming "Blackberry". I'm sure there are others, but saying more about RIM would just be cheap shots -- but suffice to say it didn't do them any favors.

Re: 37signals becomes Basecamp

#115

Post by superuser2 »

davb wrote: post #79
alexcroox wrote: post #17

While I admire 37signals I do find myself increasingly comparing them to Google and their offering. They make incredible services, but it's hard to trust them to build your business workflow around their products. If there aren't stripping back critical business features such as time tracking for our billing in the new Basecamp, they are looking to shutdown or sell others a few years on. I hate corporate software as…

I think this is a problem that's inherent in "the modern web". Trusting part of your business process to a SaaS application is always going introduce risk. Sometimes it's a calculated risk, and if you have contingency plans in place then it's acceptable. But in most cases, users simply aren't prepared for the day that a critical part of their workflow changes or disappears. I know it's not a popular opinion here, but…

>Trusting part of your business process to a SaaS application is always going introduce risk.

Trusting part of your business process to yourself is always going to introduce risk.

This is the primary fallacy of the anti-SaaS argument. Cloud providers go down, but so do you. For an in-house solution to be superior from a reliability perspective, you not only need to show that cloud providers go down, but that you go down less. Which, unless you are in the infrastructure business - or have a large and competent (read: expensive) business area that's in the infrastructure business - is not terribly likely.

Re: 37signals becomes Basecamp

#116

Post by kristiandupont »

speeder wrote: post #39

I was wondering from the headline if there was a merger... And from reading the post, it downed to me: I am one of.those that never realized the Basecamp 37signals connection, and I do read their blog! To me 37signals was that webdev shop that made Rails and had a cool blog, I never connected them to any of their products Oo

Just fyi, the idiom is "it dawned on me".

Re: 37signals becomes Basecamp

#117

Post by rch »

jaimebuelta wrote: post #30

It still escapes me why this recent trend of naming companies with the names of products "for brand recognition" (the other obvious example is 10gen to become MongoDB Inc.) It would be interesting to see other companies do that in the past: - "Microsoft is going to become Windows Inc" - "Apple Computers will be known from now on as iPod Ltd" - "The new name of the company will be Air Jordan & Co. Nike no more!"

It happens the other way too:

http://quickleft.com/expansion

The short version is that a product company (Sprint.ly) bought the RoR services company (QuickLeft) and yet took the service company's name. This will let the combined company build the main product more efficiently, but also build more products down the road (which would be awkward if they were called Sprint.ly).

Re: 37signals becomes Basecamp

#118

Post by gvb »

jaimebuelta wrote: post #30

It still escapes me why this recent trend of naming companies with the names of products "for brand recognition" (the other obvious example is 10gen to become MongoDB Inc.) It would be interesting to see other companies do that in the past: - "Microsoft is going to become Windows Inc" - "Apple Computers will be known from now on as iPod Ltd" - "The new name of the company will be Air Jordan & Co. Nike no more!"

> - "Apple Computers will be known from now on as iPod Ltd"

"It was incorporated as Apple Computer, Inc. on January 3, 1977, and was renamed as Apple Inc. on January 9, 2007 to reflect its shifted focus towards consumer electronics."

Ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Inc.

Re: 37signals becomes Basecamp

#119

Post by jasonfried »

rwhitman wrote: post #106

I'd say this has more to do with an existential crisis - the landscape for project management collaboration tools is very crowded with competitors, and some are vastly superior in many ways to Basecamp. I stopped using Basecamp years ago and groan every time a client makes me log into it. The early adopters have mostly given up on their core product. PM collab tools are becoming a commodity product in business, and 3…

No crisis. Business has never been better. The reasons are all honest and all clearly spelled out at http://37signals.com. We just don't want to hire a bunch more people and we don't want to have to spread ourselves too thin. Focus is where it's at and we want to regain it.

Re: 37signals becomes Basecamp

#120

Post by jasonfried »

ry0ohki wrote: post #73
wlll wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only feature I can think of that we ever removed (I might be wrong) is OpenID, because almost no-one used it and it was really confusing. Time tracking is still there in Basecamp Classic, and that's not going away. If you rely on time tracking in Basecamp Classic you can continue to do so. See this from the announcement page FAQ: Q: What about Basecamp Classic? "We are fully committed to running Basecamp Classic…

I get the feeling if a majority of people had switched to the new Basecamp, they would have killed off the old one, but it's such a breadwinner, they are not going to take it away, although I suspect if it ever gets to the point that a tiny portion is on Classic, they will change their mind, which is unsurprising as that's more or less been the concept of their company (to make bold statements and change them when ci…

The number of people have nothing to do with it. We won't kill it off because we made a commitment not to. We're keeping our word. Simple as that.
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