Seed Conference
I went to the Seed Conference today at IIT. The CEOs of 37signals, Coudal Partners, and Segura, Inc all gave talks. I picked up some interesting nuggets there that I’d like to share.
How did you make the decision to transition from a client business to a product business?
Jason of 37Signals answered this one. He says when the time comes, it should be a no brainer. The way to do this is make it a very smooth transition. Work on the products on the side, treat them as a separate client even. Start by using them yourselves, then sell them. If they are useful enough, you’ll be making as much money with products as with clients, so naturally you’ll cut out the clients.
How to find creative inspiration
Jim Coudal says that first moment, when a new idea dawns on us and we’re considering the possibilities, is the most important moment for creativity. As soon as you think of something cool, this initial burst of creative ideas hits, but it’s like a wave that is strong at first and decays over time. You have to capitalize on your incredibly short attention span by dropping everything for a few hours or a day. You have to constantly be trying new things and experimenting on the side. Even keep an “idea book” for the ideas you don’t have time to capitalize on just yet. This is where many, many new businesses and products have come from, some side project that becomes something bigger.
Many of these ideas fall flat, but that’s ok, it’s not a waste of time. You learned something, and you felt a little bit of the passion that makes the job fun. Coudal made a hilarious short video highlighting this feeling of discovering a new hobby that seems amazing at first, but eventually gets kinda boring.
You should steal ideas
Coudal encourages everyone to seek out the ideas, graphics, movie styles, singing styles, any artistic thing you like, and copy it. Don’t resell it, but just remake it. You have to “sit in the chair Picasso sat in” if you really want to learn how to incorporate that style into your work.
How to deal with clients
A lot of talk focused on being “selective” with the clients you do work for, only choosing projects that allow you to deliver great, interesting work. I’d like to think there is an inverse relationship with cost and “coolness”, where at a certain cost, the coolness matters much less, and vice versa.
Carlos Segura starts every new project discussion with “what’s your budget?” so he can have a clear idea up front and not waste time with proposals he doesn’t want to do.
37signals found they could cut out the specifications, wireframes, and literally everything in a project proposal besides the price, and the client would be fine with that. This saves a lot time doing unrealistic planning.
On Process
Jason says you should build things in general how you’d build it if you were your own client, and you were making a personal website: fast prototyping, review, refinement. Just because you’re working for a client doesn’t mean tons of documents, wireframes, and workplans make sense if you wouldn’t do them for yourself. They’ve cut all these inefficiencies out of their processes. He says this is also the best way to ensure quality. You have to use it while you build it. You can’t just “paint quality on at the end.”
On Design
Carlos Segura says that “communication that doesn’t take a chance doesn’t stand a chance.” He gave tons of examples from his work to back that up. He means that you can’t expect to do something conventional and get good results. You have to take a chance, do something creative and unusual, or don’t expect any results.
On Marketing
37signals built their marketing strategy around Kathy Sierra’s idea that “you can either outspend them or out teach them.” They give the analogy of chefs to back this up. The most famous chefs are the ones who give away their secrets. This part really has me motivated to keep this blog and the wiki updated more frequently. I’ve really been slacking on this lately.
On productivity
Jason stresses to keep your team apart. He says that interruptions are the biggest enemy of productivity. He makes the analogy of REM sleep to REM work. They encourage alone time and use only passive collaboration (posting messages and email), which allows you to work until a natural breaking point and respond when you have time. Justin and I could improve at this. I’ve always noticed I get the most done late at night when no one is up, and this is because you get in the “coding zone”. I feel that using a combination of headphones, and saving communications until we’re not actively working would be more effective. Nobody should get hurt feelings if you seem to be sealing yourself off when the goal is to be more productive.
Recommended Reading
Jason recommended a few books that I’d like to check out soon: Maverick by Semler, Against the Odds by James Dyson.
Meeting DHH
The highlight of my day was having lunch with David Hansson, the Ruby on Rails creator. He was there to see Jason speak. He had already heard of Junction! He knew about it through Steve Yen, probably before we branched the code and made our own version with the same name.
October 31st, 2007 at 7:27 am
Brian, great thoughts and takeaways from SEED. I had a great time and it sounds like you did as well.
I was intrigued by the “copy ideas” approach Jim suggested — I do this mentally with design work I consider now and then.
I like to think through how I might approach the same problem and very often realize why the designer made one decision over the other.
It’s interesting to start out thinking “Why did the designer do it that way?” and end up thinking “Ah, I see why they did that… very clever solution!”
I think this process can also be applied to coding and UI structure with similar benefits.
Thanks for the notes!