This is Signal vs. Noise, a weblog by 37signals about design, business, experience, simplicity, the web, culture, and more. Established 1999 in Chicago. Visit the Product Blog for more information on our products.

What’s next?

Hey Jason, I’m curious what you guys use for credit card processing, authorization, and generally how you structure the process of billing your customers (and handling refunds).

I’m curious because I’m working on a subscription version on my site and I need to know how to go from stealing underpants to profit (sweet sweet profit).

Do you have some photos from your offices to show to the community :) ?

I’d like to hear more about your transition from being a web design company to a web app company. What made you take that route? What were the difficulties? What did you tell your existing clients and how did they react to it?

Another thing: how do you deal with disagreements between staff members (when making design choices)?

How many hours a week do you actually work?

Also, I’m curious about home work vs. in office, but I know it’s different for each of you (especially because you guys LOVE the remote stuff).

Patrick, in a previous post, they mentioned using Authorize.net for credit card processing. I know your question is more involved than that, but there is a piece of it. ;-)

I have a few, but they’re all quick ones

1) Do you have any plans to take your workshops international?

2) Have you ever been disappointed with one of your own products, either in the public reaction to it, or in the way people ended up using it?

3) What made you give up on “The filter” posts?

4) When people rip off your UIs, does it annoy you , or do you see it as flattering?

I, too, am interested in more insight into the billing structures of a subscription-based service. Primarily, this would involve the tools you use, etc. How much of it is automated? Are there any unique challenges in your setup or do things run pretty smoothly?

What would it take to sell one of your apps? With 5 apps, and 1 on the way do you ever think you should drop one or make it open source (writeboard, ta-da lists)?

What are a few things that have changed since Jeff Bezos came on?

Where do you see 37signals in 90 days? 1 year? 5 years? (I know you mentioned you don’t like to think so far in advance but curious)

What are areas 37signals refuses to enter and why?

What are the top 10 sites you check on a daily basis?

If 37signals were an animal what animal would it be and why?

... Ill stop there but I could go on…

I will repeat the question asked by Shai:

What are the top 10 sites you check on a daily basis?

Plus,

If Google wants to buy 37signals and all of your products, what would be the price tag?

What were the challenges you faced early on when DHH was still in Denmark, especially as far as ownership and taxation is concerned? I think you’ve covered the “working in different time zones” issue pretty adequately, but I’ve not heard you talk much about this.

How is the relationship with Jeff Bezos helping 37s?

Do you ever wear the headband just for kicks?

Just one more, I use Basecamp to manage my PhD , and occasionally use CampFire for tutorials with students.

Have you ever considered a strong push into the education/ academia market? It’s crying out for software like yours

What do you use to for accounting software to keep track of business revenue?

Do you find some software is better than others and why.

How has your relationship with Jeff Bezos changed things? I caught a History Channel special about Jeff/Amazon the other day, and was a bit surprised to find him so likable. I don’t think he ever stopped laughing in the clips in that show.

Oh, and I have to ask, got any gigs for independent usability specialists in Chicago? ;)

For a young aspiring designer, what is the best way to get into the game? What are best ways to develop skills? How do you get hired by a great company like 37signals?

I’ve been teach myself design, CSS , and php, and I want to make it full time career. Any response is greatly appreciated.

I thought you might have written something about Marcel Molina Jr leaving 37 Signals.

How soon is Highrise coming out? Are you open to beta testers?

Love the new logo, though preferred Sunrise name.

I would like to second Patrick’s post. I am also curious about how 37signals handles credit card processing.

Presumably because of your low overhead (low staff, shared office) you are making a huge profit… where does the money go? Are you building a huge fund, or do you pay it out to yourselves?

I would also really like to know what sort of billing/credit card processing/cycling you guys use.

A lot of folks have commented about how there is some overlap between Highrise and Basecamp. How do you determine when a tool is too big to add to, and should be a separate application? What’s your philosophy on integrating tools in general (software, smartphones/PDAs, etc.)?

Question: Not to sound like a pessimist, but How long do you think that you will be able to stay in business given the fact that the web moves so fast.

Are you finding free alternatives putting a big dent into your business model, or is it more about the support offered like with FogCreek and their products.

Can you share some times when you bought items for the business or office that, looking back, were either silly or were purchased too soon? Are you bargain hunters in general? Or is your time more valuable that you don’t care to haggle and bargain hunt.

Thanks for the opportunity to ask these questions.

Someone asked already, but I’d be curious as to what a typical work week is like (hours, days). Has it progressed from one routine to another?

When you were first starting out, were you trying to manage 37signals as “a side job” like so many of us these days?

What I am most interested in is how you (Jason) sought out the talent/team that is 37signals. Obviously there was no Job Board/Gig Board at the time. You’ve touched on the process a bit in Getting Real, but where did you initially look? LinkedIn? Personal referrals?

Again, thanks.

I’d love to read the inside story on how David went from being an outside contractor to being a full partner at 37signals.

Thanks for the answer Jason!

What are some of the books that you find yourself re-reading, or books that helped shape your perspective?

What are your fears? (business, competition, etc.?)

How do you go about coming up with the “Big Concept” for the work you do?

Do you look at focus group research? Do you look at competitors and try to figure out if there are gaps you can fill? Or do you have Eureka moments where the idea just hits somebody and you know it’s a good idea?

Or is it a combination of all of these?

http://averageidea.com

Can we see some photos of your offices? I love seeing pics of other peoples workspaces…

what can’t you talk about?

I would like to here more about the tools you use, how you use them. What characterize your workflow…

Thanks for the insight on finding people, and yes, it helps. Since you didn’t mention a specific tool or network service I can only assume you’ve come across people from personal and professional contacts?

Any insider info on my other question about starting out and managing time?

I think your story is pretty interesting. You didn’t really build products from guessing what consumers wanted, but instead built solutions based on personal needs as a company.

Many folks think web applications are the golden ticket to overnight success. You guys don’t build great products, but offer great solutions. Before you built solutions for yourself (and then sold them as a service), you orchestrated solutions for various clients.

Initially, what was your primary focus as a company, and how did you land your first half-dozen clients.

I’m always curious on how people manage their professional life with their home life. I’ve gathered that at least one of your employees is married and has a child. Do any others have spouses/children and for those who do, what principles do you like to follow to maintain balance? Strong separation? Are you always available to one or the other?

How much time is spent planning (not coding) for an application?

Regarding design. You remarked earlier that it is all about practice. Myself, I find it very difficult to come up with really good color schemes, layouts, etc. The actual act of coding up effects, pages, etc, is made easier with the various libraries out there of course, but honestly my biggest personal gripe right now is look and feel or lack thereof I guess.

How do you (or others reading this) get your ideas for look and feel, color schemes, images (or whaen to use them), etc? For me, it is a constant struggle and somewhat disappointing. I often feel I just can’t break the barrier.

At what moment did you know it was time to go back to the drawing board during development of Highrise?

Some of your copywriting practices. It’s obvious you guys are great at copywrite, and have taken some inspiration from “sales letters” for your landing page designs. I’d like to hear more about what went into that process: headlines tried out, what you’ve tested (e.g testamonials or no testamonials, etc.), how you’ve tested (e.g. do you use any kind of split testing software to test the sales page).

I only read and hear about your success. If you don’t mind could you talk a bit about some of your failures, why you failed and how you overcome your failure.

No this is not an interview and sorry to dwell on the negative, but everyone has setbacks.

Someone mentioned academia, and I agree …

1. Have you ever considered a vertical web app products? Something for education or health care, perhaps.

Obviously, it’s a smaller market … but such products can usually carry a higher price tag.

2. I’m curious who on the 37s team is married, single, has kids, etc.

Do you feel corporate websites are shying away from quality writing in favor of jargon and if so, why do you think they do so?

If you had several billion in cash today as a company and were looking to buy another company, which company would you buy? Why?

I second Nate’s comment. You guys are mostly known for your interfaces, but how much do you believe your copywriting skills have to do with your success?

If you had only one thing you could say to a young aspiring web developer, what would it be? In other words, if nothing else, what would you want them to know?

(And yeah, that young aspiring web developer is me)

One for your new systems guy :o)

Im curious how you balance free accounts against paid accounts, do you run them all on the same architecture.

I dont think you guys cull accounts maybe you do?

And One for David :o)

All your products are account based, does each account have its own separate database or do they run of one large database.

One more for David (Im being greedy now)

In you database Schema do you use ‘copies’ of commonaly used data to keep performance up or is everything queried on the fly from a fully normalised database.

Thanks for the opportunity to ask these questions guys!!!

If you weren’t designing software, you would be…

Why won’t you take PayPal? From the UK, it’s a pain when you don’t want to keep using a credit card for small purchases. Five bucks coming out of a debit card is much more sensible, but not possible when you only take Visa/MasterCard/Amex.

If this isn’t a foot in the water for another book, it should be. I’d buy it!

I know this has been brought up already (David S and ADR ): I’d like to know how you dealt with client work back in the day. How did you balance the process that became “Getting Real” with your client’s expectations?

For instance, the clients wants an accurate estimate of how much the project is going to cost and when it’s going to be complete. How do you estimate that cost up front when features will change drastically during the course of development?

What if you have a great idea half-way through the project, and want to make major changes, but the client’s budget is fixed?

What if a feature you agreed to build is no longer necessary—how did you explain that to the client?

I’m wondering how you managed your client interaction—and if you have any tips for working in that sort of client-centric environment?

I’m guessing this means having a client who trusts you enough in the first place… Do they really exist? :)

What do you love most about what you do?

“Question: Not to sound like a pessimist, but How long do you think that you will be able to stay in business given the fact that the web moves so fast.”

Well considering that 37signals has been around since 1999, has weathered the dotcom bust, isn’t a startup, and has pioneered some of the tools that the “fast-moving Web” uses, I think they’re going to do just fine.

There are no stupid questions, just stupid people, right? Jeez.

What do you use to do SMS Messaging from Backpack? I’m looking to write some notifications into one of my apps, but I’m not sure how to go about that.

We’ve already seen server setups from companies like The Robot Co-op and Joyent, but I’m more curious about some of the system design decisions that you’ve made to ensure scalability for users.

It’s one thing to scale a site and it’s another to scale a site that’s user generated content driven…

What thoughts or difficulties have you had with Rails and serving situations to handle the amount of requests that you do?

I think we all want to believe that sites built with Rails can scale easily, but some of us (including myself) are working on larger websites that have seen troubles in areas of scaling…

The question I get asked most often is… Can Rails work for a large site? I know the answer is yes (cause it does and my team is out to prove it) but I think the community as a whole could benefit largely from more statistics and diagrams of systems… alongside of considerations taken.

Jake

@Jason

You can simply find the email suffix @cingular.com etc and put the phone number in front and just use an email notification.

Nut sure if 37s uses this but its what i use.

Highrise will be an OpenID consumer (unless you change your minds, which I don’t think you will). Do you plan to make your existing applications OpenID consumers?

I want to know why your RSS feed items are constantly updated thereby spamming my reader with your old posts. Does it drive a little extra trafffic? Does your blog software just not function correctly? This has basically increased your signal to noise ratio to 1:20 and is quite annoying.

What skills, fundamentals, and philosophies, do you think should be taught in junior high and high school to encourage and prepare students for work in design/development?

How did Rails get big?

Did you think about marketing it? Was there a strategy similar to what you describe in Getting Real for your web apps?

What are the nuances of targeting the developer/designer/cool guy 2.0 community when it comes to something like Rails?

Active accounts across your products… how many?

James, how can anyone answer that question? What does “active” mean? 3 days? 10 days? 2 weeks? 30 days? 90 days?

You guys do a great job presenting the story of an inspired team that transitioned from consulting, to consulting with products on the side, to just products (and frameworks). I won’t say you made it look easy- you’ve shared a lot about how you did it -but there had to be a lot of tough days with difficult decisions during this process that you haven’t talked about.

What was the hardest thing about balancing the business of consulting with all these web apps you guys were so excited to build? Or put another way, did you spend your Saturdays doing the fun part or catching up on the work part?

Sub question: Who made sure the lights stayed on? I’m guessing it was you Jason, but when did you get to hand over the reigns?

There are so many things I’d like to know but I’ve narrowed it down to my top 2.

At a business level, do you find you’ve got into flow which lets you turn all your business ideas into reality, or do you need to cull some ideas due to the limitation of time?

At a personal level, I’m curious to know if any of you believe in God, and if you’ve found your purpose and meaning in life? (Hope that’s not too deep)

- PR. Anything you have to say with about how you outsource “PR” (I’ve heard from this blog and around you have a great PR person). How much of a budget to you spend on PR? What does a PR person actually accomplish? Etc.

- Profitability. Can you say anything on how fast you guys were to some kind of profit with Basecamp? When you launched Basecamp you guys were still taking on some consulting, I believe. Did you need to do that to still cover the 37signals pay roll, or were you guys making enough with Basecamp soon out of the gate? I realize that you need/want to be secretive in this area, but any kind of advice or knowledge would be enlightening.

How’s the Audi? What’s your favorite color?

You look for likeability and character and intelligence and you haven’t hired me? Whoa.

Finally; when are you bringing your road show to Baltimore or Philadelphia? We MUST have cigars and scotch!

Hand over the reigns? To whom?

Oh, my team is small but we recently hired a part time accountant to help with a lot of the operational stuff. It’s her passion, whereas the rest of the team loves building neat stuff and working for our clients. I guess I was asking, ‘Who at 37signals loves making sure all the billing gets done?’

What was the hardest part about managing the money-in and money-out part of consulting while also launching products? Was it a relatively smooth experience since your flagship product Basecamp directly addressed the issue of communicating with clients?

Hope that makes more sense. Thanks.

Are you going to build a CRM System ?

If on the market will appear a CRM on Rails solution with great interface and many good features would you hire the one who did it or would you talk / invite him in any way?

A few months back you had a screencast of a bunch of backpack improvements that were a few weeks away. What happened? I was really looking forward to the advanced sorting capabilities, etc.

Did the idea of selling Rails as a product development suite ever cross your mind?

What haven’t we talked about that you are interested in?

What’s wrong with Mark Pryor ?

;-)

@DHH… Thanks for the encouragement… the database scaling and the application servers “scaling” but there always seems to be something that pops up. Kind of like playing whack-a-mole…

I wasn’t intending the question to be the typical “but can it scale” FUD , because I’m seeing our application scale, just not as fast or as easy as I would like it to.

Maybe I was looking for other tidbits from people by trying to create the sense of FUD and having people come back at me hard…

and yeah… go rails!

Jake

Any news on that Backpack update you previewed a few months ago?

Thanks for taking questions!

I was reading the Basecamp forums and some websites created by disgruntled customers. It is clear that there is a part of the customer base who really, really, really wants Gantt charts, and every time you say “no, sorry.”

How do you avoid giving in to a persistent vocal minority?

How do/did you decide on how to break up the business ownership? You’re an LLC so there are obviously 1 or more members (I assume David is a member) but how do you go about figuring out the percentages to share?

Has anyone come on board with ownership as their only incentive (no salary)? If so, again, how do you figure out how much to share?

What’s the most fun part of the job for each of you right now? Was there anything this week (Highrise related, an interview, customer service well done) that you were excited to do the moment you hopped up out of bed in the morning?

I’m interested to know: what happened to SingleFile?

I first heard about your company in a design mag article some years ago, which looked at your 37better ideas and SingleFile. By the time I googled around for it, it was no longer operational. I was real keen to check it out.

Did you just lose interest in it? Not enough members? Not happy with the product?

I want to know how you keep and find the right kind of people for your organization. It seems to me that a successful and nimble company like yours really has to rely on a thorough gelling of personalities.

I’ve frequently seen situations where different employees in small companies have very different ideas about which directions are good for the company and which aren’t; especially between “traditional business people” (the MBA or age 40+ crowd) and the younger generation of web savvy people.

The other day, while reading the book online I had this idea, feeling… call it whatever you want: I would love to see how you would design an email client / app / interface. Your experience and expertise applied to the task of solving the problem of a usable interface I’m sure would amaze everyone.

Please, make a web email client.

User Testing:

How much do you do? How much do you want to? What is stopping you?

Answers that Blast Radius and At Large Media have (publicly) provided basically say:

“Its too expensive, recruiting is hard, you need too high fidelity (and that takes too long / expensive)...”

How about you?

What kind of server hardware an setup do you use for your products (hardware, os, monitoring e.g.)?

Why Basecamp aint multilingual? Is that because you can’t really control all copy?

What’s this thing with Chigacos web-companies: SkinnyCorp, 37signals, Coudal Partners… All are best in what they do and all from chigaco. Why’s that?

Cheers up guys. I keep an eye on you – and have to say I copy lots of ideas from you.

I’d also like to see pics of offices/working environments…

Perhaps Mark Imbriaco can elaborate a bit on cluster setup, any optimizations, system specific tuning, process monitoring etc. ( no hardware details, that is sooo overhyped )

Will 37signals ever do an in-depth introspect into the anatomy of building a commercial web application? Something along the lines of Bare Naked App?

Thanks.

Just like others, I am interested in your office photos :)

Another question: What are your office hours? Are you strict in your office hours?

Another question: What do you do everyday? What are your recursive tasks happening every day?

Thanks guys!

You guys are a very open company, but how do you decide what you can share with us and what you can’t?

What was your gross profit last year?

You once wrote 37signals is spread out over 4 cities and 8 time zones. How do you share documents? I can imagine multiple people are working on the same photoshop document for instance.

yeah i’ve got a question: where do you get the time to blog??? ;)

You all dress very casually which I feel is perfect for a small biz. But what about a web design co with 70 people working? How the people should dress? and how the Head of Design and other Team Leads should dress in your opinion? I should also tell you the fact that this 70 people Design Dept is part of a 170 people web design and development company. So whenever people are casually dresed (which they actually like) they look a bit diff (unpro too) from other dept people. Please share your view if possible.

Do you have a business plan? Do you update it frequently (every year, every 6 months, etc.)?

If you have a business plan, what kind of topics, objectives you define in this plan.

Thanks for being open and encouraging small bizz…

How do you motivate yourselves everyday for some boring tasks such as recursive daily tasks (support, etc.)?

Do you feel ‘I dont want to work today’ similar feelings?

I struggling with creating a ‘great’ homepage design for my application. A page designed so it will convert potential users into sales. Any tips on Do’s and Don’ts for this?

What kind of car does everyone drive? :)

I posted a comment about how to seek a partner to start a business and I think it got removed. Was it because it is off-topic?

I would be really interested to get a broad, arial view of your app design process, from inception to first-release. You’ve [graciously] talked about little design decisions and even epicenter design philosophy, but how does it all fit together. Do you start with html mocks? When does testing come into play? Do you do behavior driven dev? Do you start building controllers and add the necessary models, or vice-versa? Do you build feature-at-a-time-wise regardless of what controllers/models the feature affects, or do you try to complete a controller at a time (or a model at a time)? In short, what is the process? Love the tips, they have improved my workflow and ui’s to no end.

I must have been one of the first people to get Getting Real (I paid for it, and I don’t regret it). You explain all the bits, which, like I said, are really usefull, but it is not very clear (at least not to me) how the bits fit together; the process.

. . . and I’d happily pay again for the privelage of knowing your process.

Are there any philosophical differences of opinion that continue to crop up during development? I know y’all have drunk the Getting Real Kool Aid, but are there other recurring disagreements that come up project after project?

Jason – how do you pronounce your surname? is it fried as in cooking or freed as a german would say it?

And David – you used to regard it as an advantage that you were on a different continent. How is your productivity now that you are in the same time zone?

When will you launch Highrise?

I just want to give a big Thank You for creating Rails and for having the 37signals philosophy.

I know you’re not 37zoltans, but I’d like a little future-telling:

There’s currently a lot of discussion in both the design and technology world regarding RIAs and the future of AJAX . Some believe that AJAX consists of too many “hacks” to become an enterprise standard, and tend to favor Flex for its platform independence. Do you perceive the ever changing browser landscape as a threat, and if so, do you reckon a time will come where 37signals, living off web applications, will exchange its Rails framework for Adobe Flex?

I would love to get your perspective on building a founding team at a start up.

Whats your ideal structure? 1) One founder + core team 2) Two founders + team members as needed? 3) ??

LOL @37s worrying about “enterprise standards”

In a world of increasingly bad spelling and grammar, especially on blogs and websites, I have yet to see a spelling error or typo on your site. The professionalism is refreshing.

Do you guys have an internal publishing policy regarding posting on the site?

Any plans for a spell check for Basecamp? If not, is there a philosophy behind that decision? Few things at 37signals seem to be thoughtless.

On a more technical end…

37signals of course uses Rails for all of its services. Some of these services combine and/or reuse other services. For example, Basecamp uses TadaList (or similar), Writeboards, and Campfire…in addition to being Basecamp.

How is this separation and reuse achieved? Are they all one big application, merely split up by checking out different files in subversion? Are they entirely different applications, using web services (ie: REST ) to reuse each other?...or perhaps DRB ? If none of these are the case, how’s it done? =)

I am interested to know how you people function. It seems that you have basically two hardcore designer in your team (Matt and Ryan) and Jason Santa Maria has been hired for some work at this moment. But we hardly know who has worked on what. I am asking this specifically because every designer has his/her own style and it shows on their work. But the designs you do are almost of same style. Then how is work (specially design) getting shared and who (Matt, Ryan and Jason Santa Maria) is doing what at this moment?

Please share if possible.

Thanks for answering!

What do you do with the money you earned? Do you invest it to real estate, cars or to your business?

What I wonder is, do you keep your money for future business investment or do you care about your personal needs?

Thanks if you can answer.

DHH , I am not asking you the amount of money you earned or earning.

What I wonder is your lifestyle and future plans about your company. Are you saving your money for future investments or investing them to real estate or buying cars?

Else, I am not interested in your revenue ;)

Thanks.

Jason: Question – Did you ever contemplate dropping out of college?

Matt: Question – I think I remember reading that you practice yoga. Any recommendations on simple exercises you do throughout the work day?

DHH : Comment – We’re trying to push Ruby big time in India – the land of Microsoft. We’re starting by helping out with the Getting Real Translation to Hindi and working with local partners to hold Ruby Training Sessions. Just wanted to say thanks the the work you’ve done in building great resources and a driven community.

As you have grown in size, esp. expanded your team, are there any aspects to the project mamagement process that have had to change? Can you just let your people fly, comfortable that they will do the Right Thing? I’m guessing this is the case, given your hiring practices and prior discussion, but I’m curious if there have been changes over time, given your growth.

Thanks for openeing up your ‘knowledge base’ to the rest of us.

Way up there, John S. wrote: “I want to know why your RSS feed items are constantly updated thereby spamming my reader with your old posts….This has basically increased your signal to noise ratio to 1:20 and is quite annoying.”

I’d like to know this too. I don’t want to unsubscribe, but it’s gumming up the works in my feed reader.

What percentage of users who sign up for free versions of your software convert to paid versions?

What’s your primary source of revenue (which application, which plan; or selling getting real, or job boad, etc)?

What are your thoughts on: Myspace? Facebook? YouTube?

Ahhh- but Jason, DHH has a spelling error in one of his responses on this very page!

I have a small Interactive Design Agency I want to know more about 37 Signals estructure as we believe in small teams but is getting hard to answer all our clients without hireing more people - How many people are working in 37 Signals and which functions have them - Do you outsource some of your work or you do all by yourself - Do you have accounting and all the administrations matter outsources Sorry for my english(i do my best but I do not write in english often)

@Mark Imbriaco

“In general, we try to buy hardware such that we’re never at more than 50% utilization of our current systems, so that we can handle failures and growth gracefully.”

I thought 37signals hosted its applications at Rackspace, which does not provide co-location services.

http://37signals.com/svn/archives2/and_then_there_were_8.php

So what hardware are you referring to that 37signals purchases?

If you’re asking what we want to know…what happened to Marcel? No “goodbye” post, even. It’s like waking up one morning and my wife has cut my brother-in-law out of all of our photo albums.

Would you guys be up for entertaining a VC major one of these days? I school in the loop, and ever since I started using Basecamp, I seriously can’t shut up about it; to loley professors, students, the janitorial staff…

I’m really no ruby rockstar… but I love UI design, and when great ideas come around from great minds, I just can’t digest enough of them ahem Getting Real.

What is a “VC Major” ?

I wanted to know about the process you go through in naming your products. Starting with Basecamp, how did you choose that name? Did you use any online tools for researching potential names and possible trademarks? You mentioned that the name Sunrise had to be scrapped due to potential trademark problems. Could you elaborate on the naming process and trademarking it?

What about non disclosure agreements when choosing a hosting provider?

Did you chose Rackspace because they were a hosting only company and thus were not competing with you? Would you consider hosting with Textdrive/Joyent and their new accelerator hosting offer knowing that:

a) you would be competing in the same business b) there is no reliable way to obfuscate or compile rails code

Do you make you hosting provider sign a non disclosure agreement before doing business with them?

How do you handle legal matters at 37 signals?

Hi, I’d love to hear your thoughts on how to get the word out about a new site or product. I feel I’ve created something good, but I need eyeballs on it. Brian

Jason – I’m curious about what you do day-to-day. Are you doing strategy work, design work, information architecture? If you had to do it over again, would you be a programmer?

hey there, i’d like to know how you are dealing with file-uploads. usability is quite an important part here – but by now, i haven’t found a proper solution yet. thanks for the great articles and description of usability in your products – very useful!

Do you still are just 3 people working on basecamp or did the team grow once the number of users reach certain amount of accounts

Care to comment at all regarding the process you go through in naming your products and trademarking them? Any advice would be appreciated.

How do you estimate the amount of users you think each new product will have

I’ll probably regret this because it may be obvious but after having done some detective work… what are you using for your blog software? Is it roll your own?

Speaking of the blog – any plans to roll out a comments RSS feed? Would have been pretty handy for this post.

Every time I’ve emailed you guys for support I’ve received one back usually within an hour and usually from JF himself! How do you guys get any work done when you’re this good at getting back to support emails?

You had a post a while ago about turning off the phone, email, etc. to focus and get some work done. Do you guys follow this advice yourselves?