My Beef with 37signals

First, let me say that 37signals does creative work and meets the needs of many people (and if you read to the end of this post, you'll see I actually want you to spend money with them). But I find some of the advice they've been dispensing lately to be lacking.

To put it simply, they suggest cutting corners in the name of innovation.

Now, I'm a foe of bureaucracy as much as any entrepreneur. And I love it when a sudden brainstorm leads to immediate prototyping without delving into the whys and wherefores. But some of the stuff on their blog lately, as well as in their online book, I think send the wrong message to entrepreneurs.

Some examples:

37signals rails against meetings. But meetings matter. It seems hip to bash meetings, especially in the startup world, but it isn't that meetings are bad. Bad meetings are bad. Entrepreneurs need to learn how to run good meetings that foster discussion and arrive at actionable decisions. And there must be follow-up. Jason writes "Meetings are expensive when you think about the opportunity cost. On a pure cost basis, meetings can quickly become liabilities, not assets." Baloney. When you skip formal meetings you have more "expensive" drive-by meetings (whether they be in person, on the phone, over IM, or email). And God forbid there are more than 2 people involved in a project -- then you have scattered drive-bys that keep people on different pages.

My advice: Have meetings. Just make them smarter.

37signals plays to the Lowest Common Denominator. In his "Growing in vs. Growing out" post Jason states: "We’d rather our customers grow out of our products eventually than never be able to grow into them in the first place." This may work for their own product set (though I question it over the long term, but they know their customers better). But growing with your customers can be an important way to evolve a business and develop better revenue streams. In their book "Getting Real" they assert "When we built Ta-da List we intentionally omitted a lot of stuff ... We kept the tool clean and uncluttered by letting people get creative. People figured out how to solve issues on their own."

I'm in favor of simplicity, but not at the expense of valuable functionality. If users are needing to create workarounds to your service, you ought to seriously look at adding that functionality. To suggest otherwise seems cool to other geeks, but geeks aren't the only customers for most companies.

My advice: Don't dumb down your product if a significant portion of your user base wants more.

But, but, but...

... You Should Still Read "Getting Real" by 37signals because 90% of it is good advice!

I know it seems odd for me to argue this after attacking a couple of key points in the book. But the rest of it is a powerful and simple way to communicate to Internet entrepreneurs how to keep things simple when they're getting started. It mirrors much of my own thinking and clearly and concisely walks through the key elements of a startup.

Getting Real is available online and is well worth the $19 charge. Just watch for the potholes I mention and, as always, use your own judgment on what else may be a little over the top.

Comments

[Dharmesh Shah]

Came across your blog for the first time today (I'm a Boston local myself).

Thought you might find this related article on 37signals interesting:

http://onstartups.com/Home/tabid/3339/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/550/Disagreeingwith37signals1LessIsSometimesLess.aspx

Regards.