What question would you like to ask David and/or Jason? Leave it as a comment. (You can hear previous Q&A with them on episode 8, episode 10, and episode 11 of the 37signals Podcast.)
SvN Flashback: Top Ten Lies of Entrepreneurs (Guy gets it right)
January 8, 2006 – Face it: Technology is a commodity these days. If you can do it, someone else can do it. And it’s likely they can do it better. What really makes the difference is design, copywriting, execution, clarity, passion, and the overall customer experience. The stuff you can’t specifically define or bulletpoint are the things that matter.
New jobs on the Job Board: Google, Amazon, TripIt, Kayak, and more
View all of the jobs and internships at the 37signals Job Board.
Programming Jobs
Google is looking for a Front End Software Engineer in New York, New York.
Amazon is looking for a Software Developer Engineer in Seattle, WA.
AT&T Interactive is looking for a Sr Software Engineer in Glendale, CA.
The Nielsen Company is looking for a Lead Software Engineer in Tampa, FL.
View all Programming Job listings.
Design Jobs
MTV Networks is looking for a Senior Interface Designer in New York, NY.
TripIt is looking for a UI/UX Design Lead in San Francisco, CA.
Kansas State University is looking for a Web User Interface Designer in Manhattan, KS.
Kayak is looking for a Senior UI Designer in Concord, MA.
The Job Board also has iPhone Developer Jobs, Customer Service/Support Jobs, Business/Exec Jobs, and more.
Jumping to a specific part of a long podcast (or other long audio/video file) can be a challenge on your iPhone. The controls work fine for a five minute song but lose accuracy when it’s an hourlong file.
This complainer explains: “For hour-plus podcasts, it’s absolutely ridiculous that you have a scrollbar that’s roughly half the vertical width of the iPhone. Every miniscule tick that the slider moves is 2-3 minutes! When you want to rewind 20 seconds or so, this is absolutely unacceptable.”
Turns out there’s a neat solution: Instead of going left/right, 1) touch the slider, 2) drag your finger down, and 3) then move it left or right. This lets you move the scroller with “fine point” precision and allows you to fast forward or rewind to just the right spot.
Sortfolio deserves a better home. Make us an offer.
Sortfolio, our visual directory of web designers, has been helping companies find web design firms (and helping web design firms find clients) since October of 2009.
Sortfolio works
It’s been working quite well for people. In a recent survey we conducted, 45% generated new business through Sortfolio, and 64% said leads were moderate to high quality.
We believe in Sortfolio. It’s still the best way to browse web design firms. It beats Google, text directories, or hiring your friend’s cousin. Browsing by visual portfolio, budget range, and location is the most perfect combination we’ve found to hone in on the right fit for your web design project.
Sortfolio deserves a better home
However, we haven’t been able to dedicate many resources towards improving it or promoting it. Our efforts are focused on our products and our Job Board. We believe Sortfolio deserves to thrive, but 37signals is no longer the best home. So we’re looking to sell it to a company that can give Sortfolio — and its customers — the love and attention they deserve.
Revenues and business model
Sortfolio has been holding steady between $17,000-$20,000/month for quite some time now. Paying customers are billed $99/monthly. They can cancel at any time. Free listings are available for all. Currently there are just under 10,000 total accounts, 195 of those are Pro accounts. We’re sure a dedicated sales person could upsell quite a few people.
Futher, the Sortfolio model could expand into a variety of other verticals including photographers, wedding planning, catering, illustrators, artists, etc. I’d love to see a Sortfolio for calligraphy or hand lettering.
Make us an offer
If you’re interested, make us an offer. We’re open to anything as long as it’s cash. We’re not interested in equity. Maybe it’s all cash, maybe it’s cash + royalties on future sales. Who knows. Come at us with something serious and we’ll consider it.
If you’re interested, or have any other questions, please email jason@37signals… We expect to receive a lot of offers, so we won’t be responding to anything we don’t consider a serious offer. We’re serious about selling so please be serious about buying. We’ll help get the word out whenever you are ready to relaunch.
What’s more, delegating isn’t easy for me. Even though the paperwork and other chores were piling up, I still had a hard time letting go. I have a feeling I’m not alone in this. It’s tough for the person who started the business to begin to let go. For more than a decade, I’ve been involved in every decision at this company, from which hosting company to use to what brand of paper towel goes in the kitchen. When you’re that used to having every decision run through you, it can be a bit unnerving to surrender control. I understand that it’s silly to believe that every small decision needs to run through you. But it’s such a primal instinct when your business is your baby.
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Jason’s latest Inc. Magazine column on hiring an assistant
Jason’s latest Inc. Magazine column on hiring an assistant
Bootstrapped, Profitable, & Proud: SparkFun
When Nathan Seidle blew up some electronics in late 2002, he began to scour the internet for replacement parts. But the results disappointed him. “The state of online electronics stores was pretty horrible,” he recalls. “I remember just wanting to see a picture, any picture, of what it was I was trying to order. But with that frustration came the clarity that there was an opportunity. Maybe, just maybe, I could start a website that sold electronic bits and pieces — and they would have pictures. Non-blurry pictures! And maybe even a picture of the back of the electronic device. In 2002, this was blasphemy. Electronics were ugly — who would want to see the back side? But I knew I did, and I figured there were a few other people with similar needs.”
So in 2003, he started brainstorming business names. He realized making sparks is really what started him down this path. “Any time I’m frying things, I’m always having fun and pushing the limits of my abilities. When I found the SparkFun.com domain available, I knew it was perfect.”
Not knowing what to sell, Seidle (right, in a photo from CNNMoney.com) originally purchased just a handful of products. The orders started coming in immediately, but at a slow pace — one or two per day. “Over time, I was able to write more tutorials and build more projects using the parts we sold,” says Seidle. “It was not until 2004, once I graduated from University of Colorado that I had time to design original SparkFun products. Ever since, we’ve been growing our design and production abilities.”
Now, SparkFun helps customers assemble all kinds of projects, from an earthquake data logger to a high altitude balloon to a touchscreen mouse. Products include things like resistors, LEDs, humidity sensors, and LCD screens which are sold to crafters, designers, artists, DJs, teachers, professors, and engineers. In addition to online tutorials, SparkFun now offers classes too.
Starting from scratch
The business began with about $2500 worth of credit card debt, according to Seidle. “I believe about $2000 went to inventory purchases and $500 went to infrastructure including $25 for a scale, $15 for a tape gun, etc. I forgot to buy boxes to actually ship product to customers. How I made it this far is good fodder for pundits.”
This Arduino Mobile Camera by “Dr_Speed” uses Bluetooth control from an Android phone, a Canon A530 Camera, and a Vex mobile base.
The incredible delivery system of India's dabbawallahs
Every day, approximately 4,000 dabbawallahs deliver 160,000 home-cooked lunches from the kitchens of suburban wives and mothers direct to Mumbai’s workers in “the world’s most ingenious meal distribution system.” (Hey UPS, how’s that for logistics?)
Dabbawallahs pick up the home cooked lunches in the suburbs, hop on trains, and deliver them, via bike, to Mumbai office workers. Later on, they pick up and bring back the same empty tiffins (the name for the metal containers used).
Despite the lack of fuel, computers, or modern technology involved, a tiffin goes astray only once every two months. So for every six million tiffins delivered, only one fails to arrive. That’s why Forbes awarded the dabbawallahs a 6 Sigma performance rating (a term used in quality assurance if the percentage of correctness is 99.9999999 or more).
Continued…SvN Flashback: Essential vs. Non-Essential
February 7, 2006 – When you build an app always look out for the non-essential features. Make sure they don’t make it into your v1.0. They slow down your release, they dilute your focus, they require resources that pull you away from perfecting the core of your app, and they open the door to more bugs at launch.
I don’t need every customer. I’m primarily in the business of selling a product for money. How much effort do I really want to devote to satisfying people who are unable or extremely unlikely to pay for anything?...
Maybe you think there aren’t enough people willing to pay $5 for an app with no free version. I used to think that, too. But I was wrong.
I’ve made a lot of assumptions in the app market over the last three years that turned out to be wrong. Most frequently, I underestimate demand, both for my product and for others.
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Marco Arment in “Why Instapaper Free is taking an extended vacation”
Marco Arment in “Why Instapaper Free is taking an extended vacation”