The danger of quick&dirty, and I think your worry while you were designing and coding your prototype, is that the code you’ve written becomes production code because of some rush-to-publish later on. If you just keep reminding yourself and all those evolved that this won’t happen, quick&dirty can be fun and successful. Good luck with your new project.

@Jason

As a member of The Deck Network, how are you permitted to linking to your Inc.com posts because the terms of The Deck state:

“The Deck ad is the only ad on the page.” http://decknetwork.net/

Since you are being paid by Inc.com to write those posts, that are also published in their print magazine, you are by nature promoting & linking on 37svn to something you have been paid for which is not in The Deck Network.

Do you just break the rules of The Deck because you are a co-owner of The Deck and rules don’t apply to you?

There isn’t a single svn post where I am not completely baffled by some bitchy person bitching about something completely tangential to the post…

I am with Andrew, have had that happen a few times myself. However isn’t always a bad thing. I do love the idea of toe in water, get it out see if it floats. Very envious that you guys are still in a position to be able to do that, congrats!

I wonder - rather than focusing on methodology (I agree this matters!) - do you spend any time worrying about motivation? To me, spending weeks without progress sounds more worrying on that level than on a ‘how we work’ level…

Are the people who’ve been there still as hungry as before? Even at high cost? Have you hired with hungry and risky in mind? Are you prepared to not have (or be) the safety net?

AC touches on a good point that I constantly see 37signals trip up on.

37signals (or anyone for that matter) should always put a disclaimer on posts where there might be perceived biasis in the post.

For example

A. On this post Jason should have put a disclaimer stating he’s paid by Inc magazine.

B. On venture backed company posts that 37signals often writes on, they should put a disclaimer that Bezos is an investor in 37signals.

Etc…

It would stop the negative talk because it’s all a result of people feeling like 37signals is trying to trick them when I’m sure that’s not what’s being done.

Jason’s link is not an advertisement. There is no logo for Inc. magazine, nor is Inc. named, and when you land at the target there is no (dominant) marketing effort to try and get you to purchase a subscription to the magazine. The link is simply to an article on a magazine’s website.

Typically when 37signals talks about venture capital it in regards to obtaining a bunch of capital to get started and the pitfalls of that. Their “investment” from Bezos was nothing of the sort. They were already profitable and successful. So, the disclaimer is useless. It would be the same as putting a disclaimer on an orange at the super market that says, “This is not an Apple”.

But, as that saying that is all to popular these days goes, “Haters gonna Hate!”

@Anonymous Coward By that logic, this blog should have no posts about any 37S products which Jason makes money from (Basecamp, Highrise, etc.), unless of course those products were also being advertised on the Deck Network.

I hope you can see how ridiculous that sounds.

A better example of The Deck Network issues is not this Inc.com post but 37signals having their own Advertisng Job Board on the front page next to The Deck

A better example of The Deck Network issues is not this Inc.com post but 37signals having their own Advertisng Job Board on the front page next to The Deck

37signals – You guys spit so much wisdom. Thank God for it/you. These stooges whining about the Deck network, give me break. You’re missing out on the gold

I second that John. Thanks Jason (and 37 signals crew) for sharing! Ignore the stooges.

Better tell Matt Haughey to remove The Deck because he sells a t-shirt in the footer of Metafilter, Coudal because they link to Field Notes, Marco because he links to The Magazine, and so on. Really, there shouldn’t be any sites allowed to link to The Deck because any link or piece of content is self-promotion in some way.

B

Holy fuck. And YOU drove 56 in a 55 zone today. Did you turn yourself in??

Good article, Jason. It’s easy to lose our way. I need to keep moving on my own Basecamp-killer.

:)

Thanks.

When I switched from a large company to a start up it took me awhile to shift gears from creating pixel perfect mockups and html/css to good enough designs and code. But, this actually worked out well. Once we were able to start using the product we were able to quickly create a better design because we had a better understanding of the product from actually using it. No guessing required. Good article Jason.

It makes me wonder if there is a product in this problem. Of course things like Balsamiq and Bootstrap already exists, but maybe even they have too many features/options. I’m I designer with very limited ‘computer hacking skills’, but I can imagine a product for designers and dev’s that could allow you to hack together the product from the back or front in a super limited way to make sure you don’t go too deep to early.

3 colours, 2 button sizes with few options for labels, etc.

Alternatively, a Photoshop or Illustrator plugin that restricted what you could and couldn’t do could be a nice hack.

If this already exists let me know :)