Small Town, Big Ideas

Does Simple Have to Mean Less?

Joel Spolsky has a great post about the subject of Simplicity as it relates to software development. Building simple software applications is one of the Web 2.0 mantras as small companies take on their larger counterparts, trying to compete by doing less. Many of these companies seem to believe that if you build less features into a product, the product will be easer to use, and thus more attractive to businesses and consumers that are tired of bloated software that's too complex to figure out how to use in the first place. 37 Signals has built their entire marketing campaign around their Build Less philosophy and they've become famous because of it.

But... do you really have to build fewer features into your product for it to be simple and easy to use? I think that building fewer features into a product can make it simpler than a product that has too many features, but simply building fewer features surely doesn't mean your product will be a success.

Joel says:

"A lot of software developers are seduced by the old '80/20' rule. It seems to make a lot of sense: 80% of the people use 20% of the features. So you convince yourself that you only need to implement 20% of the features, and you can still sell 80% as many copies."

This sounds great on paper, but does it really hold true? I don't think so, and Joel doesn't either:

"Unfortunately, it's never the same 20%. Everybody uses a different set of features."

I couldn't agree more. In fact, I've long believed that we are the epitome of a company that sells a service where everyone uses different features and features differently. If you disagree with me, I challenge you to take any five people you know and watch how they use email. The reality is, everyone who uses email has developed his or her own personalized habits—and just about everyone uses email.

I believe the real answer lies in building powerful, feature-rich software that can be personalized and most importantly, is easy to use. This is no easy feat, which is why not everyone is successful in software development. But the reality is, in our business at least, we need to build many of the features that our customers want—and our customers have employees that all use email differently.

Walt Mossberg on Web-Based Calendars

Walt Mossberg, the Wall Street Journal personal technology journalist (and I think one of the most widely read tech journalists in the industry), wrote a great article today on web-based calendaring. He apparently just junked his Lotus Organizer software for some web-based calendaring programs. According to Walt:

For many people working in large organizations, with Microsoft Outlook or other calendars on servers, this is already a reality. But for consumers and small businesses, it's a hassle. It's a pain to keep updating calendar programs that live on multiple computers, even if you only use one type of computer, and even with the help of a PDA or smart phone, like my Palm Treo. And it gets far worse if you use both Windows PCs and Macs, or if you'd like to occasionally rely on public computers or borrowed computers on the road.

I couldn't have said it better myself. If you follow my blog, you'll know why this excites me. If not and you care, go here and I'll tell you all about it.

Go here to read the rest of Walt's article.

Side-Business Software: The neglected software market

This is an interesting article from 37 Signals, makers of Basecamp and some other pretty cool hosted software products. They state their belief that:

The most innovative software designed over the next 10 years will 1) be web-based, 2) will come from small teams, 3) will come from self-funded companies, and 4) will be for the “side-business” or 1-10 person business market.

This is an interesting observation and I agree with some/most of it... I believe the future is all about web-based software, I think small (smarter, faster, better) companies will have a lot of success in this market and I believe many of them will indeed be self-funded (or at least not venture funded with millions of dollars to blow)... but I think that small and medium sized businesses can also benefit from the same types of simple yet powerful "software as a service" applications as the side-business market. Small businesses, like side-businesses don't have time or money to purchase and manage complex software applications, plain and simple.

As an FYI, we started using Basecamp a couple of weeks ago to track all of our ideas and upcoming projects. So far, it’s been a valuable investment, it’s pretty easy to use and hopefully will help us to track our ideas and collaborate internally more effectively as we grow (we're not a side-business, but their tools seem to be powerful enough for small to medium sized companies as well).

These guys seem to have a great thing going and are definitely a company to keep an eye on moving forward.