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You can always do less

37signals.com

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Re: You can always do less

#21

Post by daniel-cussen »

z8000 wrote: post #14

This was the best part of the referenced page: "Don’t be such a suck up Dan." As if Carl here was just so damn annoyed that Dan beat him to "first DHH! First! Pick me for kickball!" I just picture Jan Brady as Carl: "Marsha Marsha Marsha!" Ok enough semi entertainment by poking fun at the followers of David (since when did he start going by one name like Prince or Madonna or Quasimoto?)

I read "The Rails Way" and apparently he hates the moniker DHH. He prefers Heinemeier Hansson, if he's being referred to by his last name like Dawkins or Lessig or Obama, but if it's more casual or frequent, especially if it's on his blog, David works.

I suddenly feel all fanboyish though...ech.

Re: You can always do less

#22

Post by _pius »

revetkn wrote: post #3

"For every 1 day estimates of a task, there’s a simpler version of that you can do in 3 hours, and an even simpler still you can do in 30 minutes. Back yourself into a corner and these versions will vividly appear before your eye. You can always do less." I wonder if this was the reasoning behind 37s' storing passwords in plaintext instead of taking an extra 10 minutes to write the code to encrypt them?

Touché.

Re: You can always do less

#23

Post by almost »

nwjsmith wrote: post #8
tome wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://www.jgc.org/blog/2009/05/can-you-trust-37signals-with...

This is from May, and 37signals just made a fairly large change to their authentication system (I think its called Launchpad). Their password recovery system now works differently than described in this post, so I doubt they're still storing them plaintext (thank goodness).

As I understand it they changed how they did things in response to the linked blog post.

Re: You can always do less

#24

Post by dhh »

tekomino wrote: post #18
dhh wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 likely add more than you started with. But that's a side point.

You do less, you make less. You do more, you make more (money). The only reason 37 Signals adds more, like every other successful company, is to make more. Less is just a story, more makes money. In my company no other event generates more cash than adding and doing more in the product. No other event. It is true for any other company... I am just getting tired of all "less" parroting :-)

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 products.

We live and die by renewals. There is nothing to be gained for us by just keeping to add a bunch of stuff left and right that'll rock the foundation of simplicity. Whatever we'll pick up from the initial excitement will be wiped out by raising the barrier and getting too complex.

So less is indeed how we made a name and continue to make money.

Re: You can always do less

#25

Post by dhh »

daniel-cussen wrote: post #21
z8000 wrote: post #14

This was the best part of the referenced page: "Don’t be such a suck up Dan." As if Carl here was just so damn annoyed that Dan beat him to "first DHH! First! Pick me for kickball!" I just picture Jan Brady as Carl: "Marsha Marsha Marsha!" Ok enough semi entertainment by poking fun at the followers of David (since when did he start going by one name like Prince or Madonna or Quasimoto?)

I read "The Rails Way" and apparently he hates the moniker DHH. He prefers Heinemeier Hansson, if he's being referred to by his last name like Dawkins or Lessig or Obama, but if it's more casual or frequent, especially if it's on his blog, David works. I suddenly feel all fanboyish though...ech.

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.

Re: You can always do less

#26

Post by [deleted] »

tekomino wrote: post #18
dhh wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 likely add more than you started with. But that's a side point.

You do less, you make less. You do more, you make more (money). The only reason 37 Signals adds more, like every other successful company, is to make more. Less is just a story, more makes money. In my company no other event generates more cash than adding and doing more in the product. No other event. It is true for any other company... I am just getting tired of all "less" parroting :-)

[deleted]

Re: You can always do less

#27

Post by tekomino »

dhh wrote: post #24
tekomino wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do less, you make less. You do more, you make more (money). The only reason 37 Signals adds more, like every other successful company, is to make more. Less is just a story, more makes money. In my company no other event generates more cash than adding and doing more in the product. No other event. It is true for any other company... I am just getting tired of all "less" parroting :-)

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 products. We live and die by renewals. There is nothing to be gained for us by just keeping to add a bunch of stuff left and right that'll rock the foundation of simplicity. Whatever we'…

"simple", "no need for training", and "easy to use" is not the same as less. You added plenty over the years. You continue to add developers to your team. You are doing more and more. You are making it easy to use, but you are not doing less. You are not removing, you are constantly adding.

You guys are brilliant at marketing. No doubt about it. You know how to make things easy to use. No doubt about it. But you have to add more and more features just like any other successful company to stay relevant. If you do not do that you would not be growing and people would not be renewing.

Re: You can always do less

#29

Post by access_denied »

tekomino wrote: post #27
dhh wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 products. We live and die by renewals. There is nothing to be gained for us by just keeping to add a bunch of stuff left and right that'll rock the foundation of simplicity. Whatever we'…

"simple", "no need for training", and "easy to use" is not the same as less. You added plenty over the years. You continue to add developers to your team. You are doing more and more. You are making it easy to use, but you are not doing less. You are not removing, you are constantly adding. You guys are brilliant at marketing. No doubt about it. You know how to make things easy to use. No doubt about it. But you have…

Do you really think people renew an 37signal-product account because they got that nice little present of cute-new-feature each month? (Hint: Maybe they use software to solve an ongoing business-problem, not to play 'diskbox.)

Re: You can always do less

#30

Post by patio11 »

teej wrote: post #17
tekomino wrote: post #4

The problem is that this looks good when written but bad when you have to follow it. If you look at 37 Signals products over the years they relentlessly add more and more and more while preaching less and less and less. See disconnect? The truth is that you must always add more otherwise product goes stale. They know it but "do less" as a story sells better...

You're missing the forest for the trees. The heart of "do less" and "minimum viable product" isn't to do a crappy job or to have a minimalist product. The point is to relentlessly prune your feature set and relentlessly prune your features so that you're solving real problems and offering the most value per feature. Prune your feature. If you cut two less use-cases from your feature's spec, is it still meeting user's…

Teej has an excellent memory for offhand remarks on my blog, and that incident was a great example of what not to do.

Issue: Many customers email me to ask "Can I access the cards I create at home from school?", "Can I print the cards I create at home from school?", etc etc. The cards exist as files on their hard disk but a significant portion of my customers cannot reliably locate files they have saved, as evidenced by email.

Solution: I'll let them save files to the clooooooooooooud (technically, just my server, via a simple web service) and then all they have to do is open up their copy of BCC at school and, boom, there are the cards they were working on.

Why This Belly Flopped: I launched the online version of my software prior to launching this feature and my customers who had previously had problems with distributed file management took to it like ducks to something ducks like a whole lot. Additionally, the feature was an abstraction customers were not used to -- it doesn't work by hitting the Save button like every other piece of Windows/Mac software they have ever used. (By comparison, saving in the online version is so easy customers don't even realize it is happening.)

What It Cost Me: Probably 12 hours of development time to marginally increase satisfaction of 20 paying customers and add 0 sales. By way of comparison, the next major pair of features added to the software took 4.5 hours and have been used by thousands of people, and an A/B test I wrote Monday night in 15 minutes has already done more for my business.

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