Venture Voice: The first to lose - Signal vs. Noise (by 37signals)

Venture Voice: The first to lose Jason 25 Jan 2006

19 comments Latest by uh why?

The votes are in and Joel Spolsky and I grabbed a Venture Voice Entrepreneurial Achievement Award. That means we came in second and third (the order isn’t specified). I’m honored to have just been nominated. Venture Voice will be announcing the winner shortly.

First I’d like to thank everyone who voted for me. I really appreciate the support and your kind, enthusiastic words. I hope we can continue to deliver for you. We’re certainly going to try our best.

Of course all the success 37signals has achieved thus far is due to the entire crew: David, Ryan, Matt, Jamis, Sam and Marcel. I may have the loudest mouth (although DHH is gunning for that title), but hopefully our products speak for themselves. And those are the result of everyone’s efforts. That’s what really matters.

But I’ve gotta say, I hate coming in second. When you come in second you’re the first to lose. But it’s a long race and the best way to win is to stay back a little until the home stretch. So until then second seems like a good place to be.

Thanks again for the award and congrats to the winner, whoever you are.

19 comments so far (Jump to latest)

Manfred 25 Jan 06

�Campfire is a group chat app.�
�Sunrise is a CRMish app for small businesses.�
�Compass is basically another app that integrates all of our apps.�

Nice, looking forward to see them.

Matt Todd 25 Jan 06

Congratulations team 37signals. Thank you for diving in to the (ad)venture!

M.T.

Lance C 25 Jan 06

You know, if Campfire was out by now, you might’ve been first.. LOL jk!:) Congrats:). I think it’s because I forgot to vote. (among others)

Don Wilson 25 Jan 06

Compass? Did I miss something?

Jeremy 25 Jan 06

Don: Not yet… :-)

theCreator 25 Jan 06

Ah. The bitter taste of so close yet so far

I also have it from reliable sources that they’re also working on the following new projects:

S’mores — Allows you to harass anybody that does not use Ruby (on Rails) in their work with harsh tauntings.
Poison Ivy — A tool to assist in the creation of hyper-complex forms and documents.
Tent — A calendar which conveniently pushes all deadlines back, constantly, and sometimes will totally rearrange your calendar to enhance your schedule (to allow for me goof-off time).
Snake — A generic anti-productivity tool.

I don’t know about you, but I’m really looking forward to these new apps!

;-)

Taylor 25 Jan 06

… room for improvement.

matt Carey 25 Jan 06

�Compass is basically another app that integrates all of our apps.�

Looking forward to this one!

engelgrafik 25 Jan 06

There is nothing wrong with coming in second. My Dad is a chemical-engineer-cum-finance-executive for a major chemical company and he always used to say that in the business world being second is great because it means you do not suck and that you always have a goal to do better.

Amine 25 Jan 06

Congrats!! 37s Nice Work.. :)
“in the business world being second is great because it means you do not suck and that you always have a goal to do better.” Nice Quote

Mark 25 Jan 06

“We try harder” - Avis, 2nd place car rental company

A damn good brand promise

Jake 25 Jan 06

Someone’s been listening to Seinfeld…

“If you get the gold, you won. If you get the bronze, at least you got something. But if you get the silver it’s like… congratulations, you… almost won. You are the number 1 loser. Nobody lost ahead of you.”

J 25 Jan 06

What’s this nonsense about not liking coming in second? Are you going to put gung ho slogans in your products? How does this macho “second is losing” stance fit with your ideals of being small and satisfying needs. Do you really want to be Microsoft?

JF 25 Jan 06

Do we really want to be Microsoft? No. Do we really want to stay small? Yes. Do we think we can have massive impact in the markets we want to pursue and still stay small? Absolutely.

The Colonel 25 Jan 06

It’s just like my pappy always said:
“Second place is just a fancy term for first loser.”

But then again, my pappy liked to hit the sauce.

Congratulations, JF!

Chad 25 Jan 06

Second isn’t first to lose. The absolute bottom is the first to lose, hell - I think you scored wonderfully. Good Job! In fact, if this is the type of products we can expect from “second best” - KEEP EM COMING! =)

#]# 26 Jan 06

What’s up with your photo? You look like you are whistling dixie.

uh why? 27 Jan 06

I was immediately reminded of Powerline blog winning the “blog of year” award last year - almost all the other venture voice interviews were more infomative