Most of the people I know who are money-making-machines got started really early. Lemonade stands, car washes, lawn mowing, baseball card trading. I think the reason they are money-making-machines today is because they started early. They learned the skills of negotiation, pricing, selling, and market-reading early. They have more practice selling than most people. That’s one of the reasons they’re better at it than most people.

Making money takes practice, just like playing the piano takes practice. No one expects anyone to be any good at the piano unless they’ve put in lots practice. Same with making money. The more you practice the better you get. Eventually making money is as easy for you as piano is for someone who’s been playing for 10 years.

This is one of the reasons I encourage entrepreneurs to bootstrap instead of taking outside money. On day one, a bootstrapped company sets out to make money. They have no choice, really. On day one a funded company sets out to spend money. They hire, they buy, they invest, they spend. Making money isn’t important yet. They practice spending, not making.

Bootstrapping puts you in the right mindset as an entrepreneur. You think of money more as something you make than something you spend. That’s the right lesson, that’s the right habit, the right imprint on your business brain. You’re better off as an entrepreneur if you have more practice making money than spending money. Bootstrapping gives you a head start.

So if you’re about to start a business, or if you already have a business and you’re thinking about taking funding, or if you’ve already taken funding and are considering going back for more, consider the alternative. Don’t raise money, raise prices. Sell sell sell. Get as much practice as you can. Force yourself to practice. Force yourself to learn how to make money as early as you can. You may hate it in the short-term, but it’ll make you a great businessperson in the long term.

Some recent posts at the 37signals Product Blog:

Highrise
New in Highrise: Filter tasks by category
We just added a new feature to Highrise. Now you can filter your tasks by category. To filter by category, go to the Tasks tab. If you have any categorized tasks, you’ll see a pulldown with the categories you have used in the header of the page.

New in Highrise: More storage, same price
Good news: We’ve just added more file storage to all paying Highrise accounts — at no additional charge. We hope this additional storage helps those who are already near the limit, and encourages others to attach even more files to their contacts without worrying as much about hitting their limit.

Now all Highrise accounts include SSL security
As of today, all Highrise plans — including the free plan — include SSL secure encryption. Prior to this update only Solo, Plus, Premium, and Max plans included SSL. To turn SSL on for your account, click the Settings link at the top of the screen and scroll down to the SSL section.

[Case study] How Basecamp helped Design Extensions grow from a 1 man shop doing under $50k/year to a 5 man shop doing over $250k/year
“Any tips or tricks for other customers? Once a project moves from a production status to more of a maintenance/on-going project that may not be accessed on a regular basis, but we still want to leave active, we move them to the company ‘ZZ Maintenance.’ This helps separate the projects we are in and out of every day from accounts we might only be in once a month.”

How GetFave.com uses Highrise to manage sales leads
Through a feature our programmers have developed, we can feed leads into highrise on demand. Then, these leads are randomly distributed to our sales reps (users/people) and tasks to call the leads are automatically created. The sales reps use HR to manage the entire sales process, from calling and setting meetings to taking meeting notes and referring back to them. We use tags to categorize the leads. I like the note taking and I also like the ability to create tasks.

Basecamp
New in Basecamp: Thumbnail previews of images on the Files tab
Today we added a new feature to make organizing image files in Basecamp even better. Now files such as JPG, TIFF, PNG, and GIF images uploaded to Basecamp show a thumbnail preview on the Files tab. You can click the thumbnail to zoom-in for a larger preview. This makes finding files easier and brings image zooming available elsewhere in Basecamp to the Files tab.

Continued…

Jonny Trunk’s Recommendations tip you off to music you haven’t heard without just handing it to you. For example, here’s something Jonny recommends:

A quick scroll through Amazon will show you which Mingus album he’s talking about. But that small effort on the part of the listener changes everything. It’s fun to get new music, but it’s even better to discover new music yourself. By leaving the legwork to the reader, Jonny also leaves some of the joy of discovery. Besides, good music is always better when you earn it.

It goes beyond music too. The best moments are those Kathy Sierra ones where we think “Aha! Yes! I kick ass”—and those usually happen not by following instructions but by connecting the dots between the instructions.

Spreading some design love in our internal Campfire chat room…

Ryan Singer: Another gem from Jason Santa Maria’s blog where every post is a unique design:

Jason Zimdars: Yeah, love his work. Another guy that constantly redesigns his site at a super high level is Tyler Thompson. Love his stuff.

A few years ago we launched the 37signals Job Board to answer a question we heard all the time: “Do you know where we can find a programmer or a designer? We need to hire one but we don’t know where to find one.” Since then, over 5,700 jobs have been posted, and many positions have been filled.

Another question we hear a lot

So there’s another question we’ve been hearing a lot: “Can you recommend a web designer to help us with a project?” or “Do you know any good web design firms in Chicago? Or New York? Or Denver?” Now we’ll have an answer to that question as well: Haystack.

Here comes Haystack

Today we’re launching Haystack. Haystack is a site where web designers (firms and freelancers) can answer the three basic questions a client typically asks at the beginning of a search:

• What does your work look like?
• Where are you located?
• What’s your typical budget range?

This is what clients want to know. Haystack lays it all out for them. Browsing on Haystack is like browsing dozens of web designers sites, but browsing them all on the same page. It makes finding the right web designer significantly easier than the old fashioned way (finding and browsing dozens of different designer’s sites). Clients can favorite firms they like and review them all on one page (that’s nicely printable and sharable, too).

What’s it look like to clients?

Here’s what Haystack looks like to a client who’s browsing to find a web design firm. They can filter by city and typical budget range. They’ll see pictures of matching designer’s work so they can hone in visually:

View in more detail

What’s it look like to designers?

Adding yourself or your company to Haystack is a quick two step process. You upload a picture that best represents your work, you choose the major city that’s closest to you, and you select your typical budget range. We then create a Haystack listing card for your company. The card is created as you’re filling out the form so you can see exactly how it’s going to look.

Your card is then added to the mix so clients can spot it as they browse the site. Everyone who is listed also gets a dedicated page where they can describe their company in more detail and display their work at full size.

Does it cost anything to be listed on Haystack?

Nope. Any web designer can list themselves or their company for free. Free listings include one image, and a small Haystack listing card.

We also offer a Pro listing for $99/month. The Pro listing includes room for a 6-image slideshow, your logo, and a listing card that is four times as large as the free listing. Pro listings also appear above free listings.

View full size

How will we be promoting Haystack?

We’ll be promoting Haystack through a variety of web-based ads, targeted local advertising (“Looking for a web designer in Boston?”), links on blogs, mentions in newsletters, and promotion to the 37signals customer base (which is made primarily of small/medium businesses). We’ll be bringing the traffic so you’ll be getting the exposure. All for far less than it would cost you to reach the same number of people.

If you’re a web designer, get listed today!

Get listed on Haystack today! We hope Haystack helps you land great clients. And if you’re a client, we hope Haystack helps you land a great web design firm.

O’ReillyGMT interviews our own Mark Imbriaco.

Here’s an interview I did at Erlang Factory with Mark Imbriaco of 37signals about Campfire. Among the high end topics we discussed – how did Campfire come about, how was it written, how do the rest of 37signals regard it, what Mark is learning this year and, most importantly of all, who would win in a fight between Erlang and Rails!

The US cover of Freakonomics is a play on the old “comparing apples to oranges” phrase:

Well, it looks like comparing apples and oranges is a strange concept in many places. Check out the different analogies used on the cover (green egg yolks, banana corn, three headed scissors, etc.) from editions in foreign countries:

(L to R: Chinese, Denmark, Estonia)

(L to R: Indonesia, Norway, Hungary)