Back in June we launched Know Your Company, a tool for helping company founders, owners, and CEOs get to know their companies again.
A few hundred one-on-one demos later, we’re about to hit our 100th paid customer.
Because of Know Your Company, thousands of employees have a louder voice, and a hundred company owners have bigger ears. Employees are sharing things they’ve never been asked about before, and owners are hearing things they’ve never heard before. New insights come weekly, and more feedback is flowing in both directions. Things are changing for the better at Know Your Company companies.
Back of the napkin financials
From the business side, in just six months, Know Your Company has booked $390,000 in revenue (and is profitable). The pricing model is $100 per-employee one-time (once you pay for someone you never pay for them again). The smallest customer has 16 employees, the largest has 105. As existing customers grow or replace employees, about 20 new employees are added to the system every week. Customer retention is holding strong at 99% (unfortunately we’ve had one cancellation).
Referrals are healthy too – we get a fair number of emails from CEOs who’ve heard of Know Your Company from existing Know Your Company customers. Even more promising, we’ve been hearing from CEOs who heard about Know Your Company from their employees!
Growing up
What started as a hunch, then launched as an internal experiment, before ultimately becoming commercial product, has blossomed into a thriving business.
In the spirit of continued experimentation, we’re about to take it up a notch and try something we’ve never done before: We’re spinning off Know Your Company into its own business.
In January 2014, Know Your Company the product will become Know Your Company the company, separate from 37signals.
Meet Claire Lew, the new CEO of Know Your Company
The new company will be co-owned by 37signals and Claire Lew. Claire will be the CEO and run all day-to-day operations. We’ll be on the sidelines purely as advisors, ready to help if called upon. If all goes well, Claire will ultimately own more of the company than 37signals will.
So who’s Claire? Claire’s someone we’ve had our eye on for a while. They don’t come much sharper (and nicer!) than Claire. In fact, we originally contemplated hiring Claire to run Know Your Company from the start, but things just didn’t come together.
Claire went off to start ClarityBox, a consulting practice aimed at helping owners understand what their employees really thought. You can watch her talk about it here:
ClarityBox’s mission was similar to Know Your Company. We obviously saw the same kinds problems out there and wanted to help solve them in similar ways.
So once it was clear that Know Your Company had legs, and that we wanted to spin it off into its own company, Claire was the natural match to run it.
I pitched her the idea and she was into it. We hammered out a deal and related details in a couple of weeks and signed the formal agreement yesterday. We’ll be transitioning the company and product over to Claire this month, and she’ll run it completely starting in January. I’ve heard some of her initial ideas so I’m excited to see where she takes it.
Know Your Company
So if you’re a founder, owner, or CEO of a company between 25 and 75 people, and you feel like you don’t know as much about your company as you used to, it’s time to get to Know Your Company again. Claire will show you how.
Michael
on 18 Dec 13I am fascinated by this. Will the designers, developers and ops be 37signals employees and hardware sharing time between the companies, or are some 37signals employees moving to the new company? Will that (clearly effective—nice job there) one-page sales pitch site now be signed by Claire instead of Jason? Do these companies share any physical space?
Rahul
on 18 Dec 13Congrats & welcome Claire! Looking forward to seeing where the new team will take the product. So far it’s been working perfectly for us.
Jason Fried
on 18 Dec 13Michael: Entirely separate company. No shared software, hardware, or people. Claire sometimes works out of our office, but she doesn’t have dedicated office space here.
The sales site will ultimately be redesigned by Claire.
Saya
on 18 Dec 13Congrats Claire!!!! Seems like you & Husband left Ignite at just the right time, at the top of your game and what with all this exciting newness! Best of luck.
Emily
on 18 Dec 13Fantastic news. Congrats, Claire & Know Your Company!
BS
on 18 Dec 13I Claire hiring? Maybe some new job postings on weworkremotely.com?
BS
on 18 Dec 13Whoops… thats supposed to be *Is Claire hiring?
Glen
on 18 Dec 13Congratulations, I have watched from afar this great concept and it is so good for companies that you have been able to grow this concept and idea into what it has become. Claire sounds like the best person to take this to the next level.
Travis
on 18 Dec 13@37signals
Why don’t you just say what this really is … You sold this product to Claire (just like how you sold Sortfolio).
Jason Fried
on 18 Dec 13@Travis because that’s not what happened. We spun it off into its own company – we own a piece, Claire owns a piece, we have a vested interest in seeing it continue to do well. Nothing was bought or sold.
James
on 19 Dec 13Jason, congrats to you and Claire. She will be great! I am a big fan of your book Rework. It has helped me grow my cleaning company 800% in 9 months from a great part time job to a full time job.
Jay
on 19 Dec 13I agree this is fascinating… If you don’t mind answering – in the beginning you said that 37id was used for sign in, as well as using the same server infrastructure. Since you say above you won’t be sharing either software or hardware, does that mean it is migrating to a new environment the new company is investing in? Was 37id removed from the picture? Just curious!
Congrats and good luck!
Jason Fried
on 19 Dec 13@Jay we will be removing the association with 37id as part of the transition.
Anonymous Coward
on 20 Dec 13Hype
Andy
on 20 Dec 13Jason, did you use the Switch methodology to discover deeper user needs for the product?
Jay
on 20 Dec 13Thanks for the response Jason…
Travis
on 20 Dec 13@Jason
If Claire owns a piece, then by definition 37signals sold some part of equity of KYC to her.
Travis
on 20 Dec 13@37signals
Can you fix your blog formatting. You’re blockquote doesn’t work. And what you see in the “preview it” is different that what is displayed when you actually post a comment.
Jason Fried
on 20 Dec 13“If Claire owns a piece, then by definition 37signals sold some part of equity of KYC to her.”
We gave it to her. She didn’t have to pay for anything.
Michael
on 20 Dec 13Travis, the equity would have been “sold” in exchange for Claire’s participation in the company. It’s a common business practice.
bwdfoegg
on 24 Dec 131
Elliott
on 25 Dec 13Jason,
What do you see as the main differences that make KYC suitable for separation, whilst Highrise (for instance) isn’t?
This discussion is closed.