Interviews
Tuesday, April 11th, 2006
Jason Fried
- 37signals
In this interview Jason Fried, founder of 37signals, sits down for a chat with Ryan Carson about what’s important when building web apps, cash flow, how he keeps his team motivated and how they decide to price their web apps.
Download the MP3
Summary of the interview
- 37signals has just released a new book, Getting Real, which is for anyone who has built or is considering building a web app
- They sold just under 5,000 copies in only 3 weeks
- They keep 100% of the profits as it’s self-published
- The traditional publishing model works well for 1st time authors, but it’s not great for people who already have an audience
- The book took about 3 - 6 months to pull all the content together for the book
- Jason is able to manage so many web apps and projects because all of 37signals products are simple
- Jason uses Backpack to keep track of his random personal info
- They’re now trying coupons on their products and have had a significant impact on upgrades
- Jason gets daily reports on how signups are going
- Pay attention to cash flow, but don’t obsess
- Keep an eye on expenses and don’t buy things you don’t need
- They try to keep their decisions temporary, so the impact is smaller
- If you keep decisions small, they’re often quicker to fix
- They try to keep the number of pages low for each product
- They take inspiration from Apple’s product pages
- They’ve just finished the API for Basecamp
The Future of Web Apps returns to Miami on 23 and 24 Feb 2009. The awesome speaker lineup includes Michael Arrington, Daniel Burka, Jason Fried, Joel Spolsky, and Gary Vaynerchuk. Book now as there are a limited number of conference passes for just $200 (normally $395) - be very quick as they won't last long!
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What an awesome site. Here for the first time, what great info such as this interview.
Cash flow and more…
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Hey Michael, thanks for the kinds words :)
Great stuff, really pleased you’re doing this site.
There was a lot of background noise on this interview - maybe in future this could be fixed…
Yeah, apologies for the background noise. This is one of the first interviews we did and we’ve learned a lot since!
I love this site! It really gives me a new profound look into to the community that is helping the web grow. I am interested in learning more about the ever-changing web and this site gives me the best information. Thank You:)
[…] First off, I’ve listened to a few interviews with Jason, so I’m going to start with those. I highly recommend listening to them. Most recently, I listened to Jason on MarketingMonger, and that interview really pushed me to get this post up here (been meaning to talk about Jason for quite some time). Another very accessible interview with Jason was on Amber MacArthur’s Inside the Net podcast. The Web 2.0 Show had another great chat with Jason and finally on Vitamin Jason gives an interview titled Web apps, Cash flow and Pricing. […]
Great interview, love both Ryan and Jason’s approach to building a web app and also your ambition with all the multiple projects you guys have going.
Ryan, question for you, what is the song playing at the end of this interview. Its great!
Chris
Hey Chris,
Glad you enjoyed the interview. I can’t actually remember who the band is. Yikes. I’ll try to check into that!
- Ryan
Hi Ryan,
Really interesting interview from the company who seem to be booming right now, some good points and hints to make use of there. One question I have though regarding the pricing for a Web App is:
When is the best time to introduce your “paid for” plans ?
For my upcoming project I will have the, now standard, free account but I will also have higher featured paid for accounts. However, I’m not sure if I should have these available from start-up or whether to introduce them at a later stage enabling me to bring my app online quicker (the coding for the higher featured accounts will take a little longer to implement).
Does introducing paid for accounts at a later stage put off your existing users, therefore, would having them available from the launch signify to your customers where you intend on taking the app ? Or is it more than acceptable to build up the user base on solely free accounts and then offer the paid for options as an “extension” to the system ?
What are your thoughts on this ? It would be good to hear from others too about their experience(s) on the best time to introduce paid for accounts.
- Mike
Hey Mike,
Great question.
I’d highly recommend launching as soon as you can. You will learn a ton about what your users think is valuable and it will probably be different than what you thought.
Get the app out there, get people using it, then adjust it.
Regarding people’s reaction to introducing a paid-for-plan later? I don’t think it’s a problem at all.
Good luck!
Ryan
[…] I was pondering this today: when I use some of the (great) products that 37signals puts out, I feel like they’re all similar in some way. It’s because they are — they’re small, they quickly change in small ways, and they have very few pages. it turns out Jason Fried architects their products to be like that for good reason. They’re maintainable and they can put out more software with less developers, and they do the job (and only the job) well. I like this philisophy. Relevant part from the interview summary: They try to keep their decisions temporary, so the impact is smaller […]
[…] Cada vez hay más publicaciones de calidad para mantenerte informado sobre el término del año, “Web 2.0″, y su contexto. Al excelente y precursor A List Apart y los innumerables blogs temáticos que circulan por la web se les suma Vitamin. […]
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