37signals: What are You Replacing?

☑ People are always doing something to solve their problem.
▪️Customers aren’t starting from scratch—they’re managing projects with email, meetings, or a whiteboard.
▪️Convincing them to switch means showing why your product is worth the change, not just how it’s different.

☑ Context is everything.
▪️Your users might not even call what they’re doing “project management.” They’re just communicating, delegating, or keeping tabs.
▪️Finding the words they use (“things fall through the cracks”) will help you speak to the real pain your product can solve.

☑ Your "competition" might not look like a competitor.
▪️For Basecamp, the real rival was email—a tool most didn’t see as project management.
▪️The “no barrier” appeal of email means products must offer a clear, better alternative to overcome the ease of “the habit.”

☑ More isn’t always better—think “just right.”
▪️Many think more tech will boost productivity. Yet too many tools often mean things slip, and productivity drops.
▪️Effective tools, like Basecamp, should simplify, not complicate.

When you're thinking about your product, think about what it replaces, not just what it offers

People are already solving this problem one way… your solution has to be typically so much better… for them to break free of the habit of the present

You're always getting someone to shift behavior. That's really the deeper piece here

Our point of view is… relating to people's situations, relating to people's struggles, understanding what they're going through

We are trying to sort of swim right in that middle golden lane of just enough, not too much

You can absolutely add technology to a mix and end up worse off

It is very tempting and human to just go like, no, no, no. Let's just go back to the old thing

The only way to figure that out is to actually use something

Try them both, feel them out, see how they feel to you and to your team, and then you'll know

We're not just going to give you some software tools. We're also trying to educate you… about how to understand project management

Our stuff is quite cheap, and yet still you have that impulse that some people just want to look someone in the eye

Whatever I'm going to say… none of that matters. What matters is use them both, feel them out, see how they feel to you

Better is not always the criteria. A lot of times it's like how does it feel? Is this intuitive to us?

The challenge is to actually prove it, is to actually show it, is to demonstrate

People come to Basecamp and for whatever reason decide this is not right for them… and then they come back to Basecamp with a new appreciation

Imagine you had two doors… one door said more secure… then you find out when you install that door, it has eight locks on it