extendr.com founders: Getting Real is "a crux component to our success"

Joseph Rueter and Neil Berget, co-founders of extendr.com on the influence Getting Real had on them:

Getting Real concepts played key roles in framing our thinking regarding web development as we built and continue to build extendr.com and other web applications. We had an idea for an optimized search results service that our friends thought was worth building. We figured if they wanted it and offered to pay us for it maybe others would too. We just had to find away to build it. Enter the conceptual framework of Getting Real and the utility of Basecamp.

First off the subtitle of Getting Real hooked us. We wanted smarter, faster, easier ways to build our successful web applications. Who wouldn't? The most powerful and challenging concept that never seems to be complete is "Build Less." It takes a ton of work and time to decide what is essential. However, don't worry, it's a crux component to our success.

We both work day jobs and we live 30 minutes from each other so meeting up all the time late at night was not an option. Further, we often work on a time shift (i.e. we're not working at the same time of day). Therefore we had a need for dynamic digital list making and management. We needed a way to past notes to each other.

We use your concepts and web tools nearly every day and are delighted by their simple solid utility. Thanks for making great stuff.

Notre Dame professor uses 37signals as example of a company that "gets" marketing

A marketing professor at the University of Notre Dame's Mendoza College of Business is using 37signals as a case study in his summer marketing course:

Hopefully we're on the opposite side of the spectrum as Enron! Learn about our approach to marketing in our book Getting Real.

Backpack just turned 4! (and a look at the design process for the new Backpack site)

Backpack just turned 4 years old a couple of days ago. We launched it on May 3, 2005 (Here's the blog post that launched the product). Happy birthday Backpack!

Also, "Design Decisions: The New Backpack Marketing Site" is a new post at Signal vs. Noise that shares the thought process and some of the design decisions we made while redesigning the latest version of the Backpack site.

IntelliGantt: Publish and synchronize Microsoft Project with Basecamp

IntelliGantt aims to make it easy to publish and synchronize projects in Microsoft Project with Basecamp.

You don't have to give up the power of Microsoft Project for the simplicity and efficacy of Basecamp. IntelliGantt gives you the best of both worlds, which means a happy project manager and a happy (and productive) team.

John Milan of TeamDirection, Inc. explains further:

I run a small company that creates project management applications and Add Ins for the desktop. Our value add is around collaboration and how easy we make it to publish data to collaborative systems. We’ve been doing SharePoint for a while but I’m pleased to say we now have something useful for Basecamp as well.

I’ve admired what Basecamp has accomplished for a while and believe it solves much of the team interaction for delivering a project. My hope is our tools can provide a better avenue for the project manager to work in their world and let the productive team stay in theirs.

We have two main products we just hooked up to Basecamp (and by just hooked up, I mean today :).

IntelliGantt (our desktop application) and The IntelliGantt Add In for Microsoft Project both make it very easy to publish and synchronize projects with Basecamp. We’ve made simple screencasts:

Screencast 1
Screencast 2
Screencast 3

My hope is a few folks will help us kick the tires and provide feedback before we raise its visibility.

Thanks all. I look forward to working with you and hopefully adding to the flow of new users.

If you have thoughts, contact TeamDirection.

"Getting Real helped us build ProofHQ on a $15,000 budget and bootstrap to breakeven"

Mat Atkinson of ProofHQ, a proofing and approval tool that is "as easy to use as email," writes in to tell us how Getting Real influenced his team:

We used Basecamp to run our product development.  You may remember that we also integrated our own product with Basecamp so that designers can add rich review and approval capability to Basecamp projects.  It's been a huge success.  Nearly 30% of our clients are Basecamp users.
 
I saw the post on LILO and wanted to let you know how much that resonated with our story and how much Getting Real influenced us.  It helped us build ProofHQ on a $15,000 budget and bootstrap to breakeven.
 
We started work on ProofHQ in Jan 2007 and I bought Getting Real on 15 March 2007.  Although I had founded a tech start-up before, Getting Real summed up exactly how I wanted ProofHQ to be run.  Frankly, it was an inspiration then, and continues to be today.  That's not to say that we agree with everything in it, but the main themes ring so true.
 
We built ProofHQ to solve one of the biggest problems that we had faced in previous jobs - getting graphic and web design reviewed collaboratively.  We now use ProofHQ every day all day to manage design of our own app, so we really did build it for ourselves.  This was a key lesson - USE YOUR OWN PRODUCT.
 
We decided to fund development organically.  My last start-up raised a lot of VC, so this time we wanted to try a low-burn approach.  We focussed our own efforts on core R&D (there is some cool image conversion and streaming technology under the hood), but we outsourced our design, corporate ID and non-core web application work via Elance and 99Designs.  We spent a total of $15,000 getting to Beta in Jan 2008.  VC IS NOT THE FIRST OR ONLY OPTION.
 
HAVE A MANTRA - Our mantra from day one was that the in design and marketing bad process kills great creative.  Every designer, design firm and marketing team strives to deliver great creative, but with inefficient processes even the best creative gets undermined.   Our aim was to focus on one small but very common area of marketing process... getting design reviewed and approved.  Back in 2007 it was sometimes hard to get heard as marketing budgets were still big, but in 2009 that is a message that resonates loud and clear. 
 
We launched in May 2008.  By November 2008 our revenues exceeded operating costs for the first time and we just broke even.  All this has been possible by keeping the team small, keeping our costs low and moving fast.
 
Well I could go on and on, but it's great that 37s has had an influence on us in so many ways.

Do you have a Getting Real success story? Let us know.

View your Highrise tasks in your Backpack Calendar (or any other calendar that accepts iCal feeds)

Did you know you can view your Highrise tasks in your Backpack Calendar (or any other calendar that accepts the iCal format)? First, go to your Tasks page and scroll down to the bottom. You'll see a link that says, "Subscribe to your iCalendar task feed."

Copy this link and then add it to your calendar. If you're not sure how to add an iCal feed to your Backpack Calendar, follow the directions at this Backpack FAQ.