If you’re in Chicago any time before Jan 20, 2013, spend a few hours walking through the Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec exhibition at the MCA.

This is one of the few times the MCA has opened up its exhibition space to furniture/object design. I hope the success of this show encourages them to continue the trend.

The Bouroullec brothers are really on to something. They somehow manage to combine high-tech with organic with comfort. A cool mix of simple and complex, sharp angles and slow curves, and an explosion of multiples. Wonderful colors and mastery of materials. Their work with textiles is something to behold.

They are inspiring.

Check it out if you have the chance. You won’t be disappointed.

Continued…

Jeff Bezos stopped by our office yesterday and spent about 90 minutes with us talking product strategy. Before he left, he spent about 45 minutes taking general Q&A from everyone at the office.

During one of his answers, he shared an enlightened observation about people who are “right a lot”.

He said people who were right a lot of the time were people who often changed their minds. He doesn’t think consistency of thought is a particularly positive trait. It’s perfectly healthy — encouraged, even — to have an idea tomorrow that contradicted your idea today.

He’s observed that the smartest people are constantly revising their understanding, reconsidering a problem they thought they’d already solved. They’re open to new points of view, new information, new ideas, contradictions, and challenges to their own way of thinking.

This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have a well formed point of view, but it means you should consider your point of view as temporary.

What trait signified someone who was wrong a lot of the time? Someone obsessed with details that only support one point of view. If someone can’t climb out of the details, and see the bigger picture from multiple angles, they’re often wrong most of the time.

Great advice.

Customers don’t just buy a product — they switch from something else. And customers don’t just leave a product — they switch to something else.

The first workshop sold out in just 5 days, so if you‘d like to attend, register now.
It’s in these switching moments that the deepest customer insights can be found. On the 2nd of November, a select group of 24 people will attend a unique, hands-on, full-day workshop to learn about “The Switch”.

Most businesses don’t know the real reasons why people switch to — or from — their products. We’ll teach you how to find out.

The workshop will be at the 37signals office in Chicago. The cost to attend is $1000. The workshop will be led by 37signals and The Rewired Group.

You’ll participate in live customer interviews.

You’ll learn new techniques for unearthing the deep insights that most companies never bother to dig up.

You’ll understand why people switch from one product to another and how you can increase the odds that the switch goes your way.

And you’ll be able to put everything you learned to immediate use.

There’s only one simple requirement: You’ll be asked to bring something with you. It won’t be a big deal. Details will be provided one week before the workshop.

Spots are limited. Only 24 people will be able to attend and participate. Want to be one of the 24? Register now. We will see you on November 2.

There are a bunch of ways to become a better designer. But here’s a way you probably haven’t thought much about: learn to program.

Design is about solving problems, making things clearer, and making things work better. However, your designs don’t help anyone until they work. This is usually where a programmer comes into the picture. They make your designs work. But don’t you want to be able to do that?

I do. That’s why I’ll be taking the all new Rails for Designers class this fall at The Starter League. It’ll be hosted at our offices in Chicago.

So if you’re a designer, you know HTML and CSS, but you don’t know how to turn your designs into real, live applications, I hope you’ll join me, as well as a few of the other designers at 37signals, for the intensive, two-day a week, 3-hours a day, Rails for Designers class. Let’s learn how to make our designs work.

Important: Applications are due by this Sunday, September 16th. Don’t procrastinate – don’t miss out.

I haven’t met someone who doesn’t like Uber. Drivers included. Every time I take a ride with Uber I chat up the driver to see how they like it. They love it. They rave about it. They feel liberated. They feel in control. They feel modernized. And they love getting paid faster (and more – Uber takes a smaller cut than a traditional limo/car company).

But what I really love about Uber is how they’ve smartly focused the full experience on the ride, not the ride plus a transaction.

This is a fundamental shift – and a stellar example of designing the whole customer experience.

Cabs and traditional limo rides have always ended with a transaction. They pick you up, but before they drop you off you have to transact. You give them money, or give them a card, you wait, they give you change or charge your card, you have to think about tip, and then you get out. It’s like a retail store, except that I’m not going in to buy something, I just want a ride. That whole process hasn’t been rethought for decades.

Since you store a credit card on file with Uber, and since the Uber rate includes the tip, you just get in the car and get out of the car. The transaction happens, but it doesn’t happen in front of you. It’s not a condition, it’s not a step, it just happens behind the scenes, automatically, so you don’t have to bother. You call for a ride, you get a ride. That’s Uber.

Yes, there’s a downside – you don’t know how much the ride is when you pay for it. But no matter what it is, you’d be paying anyway (you can’t choose not to pay after you get to your destination). This is just about where the transaction happens – in your way or out of your way. Uber bet it’s best out of your way. I think that was the right bet. It was a risk, but they took it and they made the experience better.

Today we’d like to announce that we’ve bought a stake in The Starter League. This is the only investment that 37signals has ever made in another company.

What is The Starter League?

The Starter League (formerly known as Code Academy) is a small school in Chicago that teaches Rails, Ruby, HTML/CSS, and User Experience Design. The classes are intensive, three months long, two or three days a week, and taught in person. The goal is to go from knowing nothing to being able to build and ship software. Not the best software ever written, but something real, workable, and distinctly your own.

Here’s why we invested.

A little over a year ago I met Neal Sales-Griffin. He came to take a free one-night Ruby course that was being taught at our office. I was in the audience too and Neal was sitting behind me. After the class he introduced himself and we chatted for a bit.

Neal had been trying to learn HTML, CSS, and Rails on his own. He holed up in his house, bought every well-reviewed book on the subject he could find, read them all, and spent countless hours trying to go from no knowledge to just enough knowledge to be able to build the basics of whatever he wanted.

Problem is, he couldn’t. And it’s not because he’s an idiot – he’s anything but an idiot. But he just couldn’t learn from books or online tutorials. They only got him as far as the examples themselves. He wasn’t learning how to think, he was only learning how to put this code in front of that code to build whatever the book or tutorial prescribed.

Further, he didn’t feel like online tutorials or books encouraged him to make a definitive commitment to learn the material. They were too passive. He was looking for immersive. He wanted to go all-in, not just dabble in his free time.

He knew there had to be a better way. But there wasn’t.

So he said fuck it, hooked up with his friend Mike (his co-founder), and built the school that they wished already existed. They tapped Jeff Cohen, recognized as one of the best Rails teachers in the world, to be the first teacher. They were lucky that Jeff just happened to live in Evanston, just outside of Chicago.

They priced tuition for their first 3-month Rails class at $6000. They put up a simple web site and announced that they were accepting applications. And soon enough they had more applications than they had spots. So they added another class (which still wasn’t enough to cover the demand). With nearly $200,000 in tuition revenue, they bootstrapped their school to profitability before the first class even graduated.

Now you can see why we like these guys. Self-starters, bootstrappers, talk walkers. They built something for themselves on the hunch that there were plenty of people out there just like them. And they were right.

Just one year later, from a couple of classrooms in Chicago, they’ve graduated nearly 300 students from over 25 states and 12 countries, generated over $1,000,000 in revenues, kept their company small, stayed focused on quality over growth, and maintained healthy profit margins. Remember: All within a year, from nothing, from nowhere, with no outside funding, from a couple of guys who had an idea, the drive, and the dedication to make it happen.

I’ve been watching Neal and his crew build this thing from the sidelines. I love their opinions about teaching, their point of view, their philosophy about requiring commitment to learn something new, their hustle and hard work, their focus, and their genuine interest in making something that matters. These guys are doing something amazing, and they’ve only just begun.

We also have strong opinions about teaching. Teaching is core to 37signals – from our books REWORK and Getting Real, to our blog Signal vs. Noise, to our many speaking engagements at conferences and universities around the world. We even dedicated about 20% of our office space to a classroom.

So a couple months ago, Neal and I began talking about how we could work together. How could 37signals help The Starter League teach students something they couldn’t learn anywhere else?

After a few lunches and discussions with Neal and Mike, we saw the way forward. We knew how 37signals could help.

So we decided to go all-in and buy a small, non-controlling, non-voting slice of The Starter League. This isn’t the kind of tech investment that you’re used to reading about. We’re not looking to get out, we’re looking to stay in. We’re investing because we want to help these guys build the best place to learn how to ship software and build profitable software businesses. No school like this exists, but it will. The Starter League will be this school.

So that’s where we are today.

Where do we go from here?

This isn’t just a cash investment – it’s a sweat investment, too. Here are the other ways 37signals will be investing in The Starter League:

• 37signals will host an all-new Rails for Designers class in the 37signals office starting this fall. The class will run on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 3-6pm. Tuition will be $6000.
• 37signals will take at least one intern per quarter from the current Starter League class. The internship could be in Rails, design, or whatever other classes are taught.
• 37signals will help The Starter League develop curriculum around 37signals-style practices of software development.
• 37signals will help The Starter League design the best student experience in the business.
• Various people from 37signals will serve as mentors and guest speakers during The Starter League classes.

…and I’m sure plenty more as time goes on.

So if you’re looking to learn how to build a web app from scratch, The Starter League can help you get where you need to be. No experience required, either. Let’s learn together, let’s build together, let’s make great products and profitable companies that last.

We’re now accepting applications for the fall sessions, including the all new Rails for Designers class (hosted at the 37signals office) and Ruby Dojo, the all new advanced Ruby class.

Here we go!

RELATED:

• Neal Sales-Griffin’s post announcing the partnership and new classes.
• The Chicago Tribune’s coverage of the announcement.