Creating Passionate Users

37 Signals Passion Review

9 out of 10 hearts for the 37 Signals folks--as perfect a passionate user rating as I'll probably ever give.

From usability to pricing models to support to communication with users... everything they do at 37 Signals demonstrates that users matter most. And they're especially brilliant at knowing what not to include-- i.e. the happy user peak. [Note: this review is not about the products themselves; it's about what they're doing to create passionate users]

When we reverse-engineer passion, we find common attributes among things for which people are truly passionate, and 37 Signals has nearly all of those attributes (or is well on the way). This post includes a summary of some of those attributes, with a note about things that 37 Signals is doing in each area.

37 Signals, for the few who don't know already, makes three delightful, elegant, and "addictively useful" programs Basecamp, Backpack, and Ta-da List. If you don't know about them, stop right now and go to their page. We'll wait.

First, a clue from their main page about why they're products are so damn useful:

"Who are your investors?"

"Our customers. They pay us and we build products for them. We're a private company self-funded through revenues. We don't have any impressive names on our board of directors. We believe that if you build great products for great customers then the rest comes easy."

And here's just a few of the user/fan quotes on their main page, that we'd all kill to have:

"Perfectly conceived... the most elegantly executed web app I've seen"
"Backpack is perfectly conceived and the most elegantly executed web app I've seen. Period. I'm excited again about keeping things organized at work and at home. I plan to be Backpack-ing a lot every day." -Richard Bird

"Genuinely a pleasure to use and interact with"
"We've just started using it, and the reaction from our clients and team has been singularly amazing. For the first time, a project management and collaboration tool that people will actually use - not just because it does the job in a simpler and better way, but because it's also genuinely a pleasure to use and interact with." -Dom Rodwell

"A massive, positive impact on our working practices"
"Basecamp has already been key to winning a project, being the main thing that differentiated us from a very close competitor, and it's had a massive, positive impact on our working practices, even after just a couple of weeks." -Simon Rudkin

"Backpack has changed the way I live"
"37signals has done it again. First Basecamp changed the way I work and now Backpack has changed the way I live! It took about 10 minutes to decide to sign up for a paid plan and half that time was looking for my credit card!" -Hunter Hillegas

When the rest of us read through those quotes, we should ask ourselves, "What would we need to do to be able to have quotes like that for what we deliver?" From software users to church members to real estate clients to blog readers... how could we get people to talk... no feel this way?

People with a passion want to:

1) Connect

Passionate users want to hook up with others who share the same passion. Check out the discussion forums for their Basecamp product, and the high level of activity on the 37 Signals blog. They could do more to help passionate users connect with one another, but they're off to a good start.

2) Evangelize

Passionate users evangelize to others. Like I'm doing right now. Try a google search on Basecamp. Yes, you get references to mountaineering, but even on page one, half the results are about this one product. And the deeper you go in the returned links, the more user-evangelists you'll find. People in love... want to share it with others.

3) Learn and Improve (growth and continuous development)

Although I listed this as number three, it's the one we consider most important for long-term passion. If users can't grow and evolve and become "Basecamp-heads", the passion will be somewhat limited. I'm not sure how 37 Signals is going to handle this in the future, so I'll give them a 6 out of 10 on this one so far. But they do have a great start by making it easier for users to get better. I have some thoughts on how they could do more here, but I'll save those for another post.

But... there is one dimension on the learning and growth chart where they get a Spinaltap 11 out of 10--they have a road show workshop called Building of Basecamp, where user/developers can meet an learn how to do what 37 Signals has done. Here's a review of the workshop from someone who attended. This tour also gives people another way to connect.

4) Spend time

Passionate users will spend an irrational amount of time with the thing they're passionate about. The more 37 Signals does to give people new and more powerful ways to use their products, the more time those users will spend.

5) Spend money

People who are passionate about something want more ways to spend money on their passion (assuming it's worth it, and they always find a way to justify that it is). By using a tiered pricing model, the 37 Signals products offer a great way for users to get, well, sucked in. In a nice way, of course. There are options for going higher up the chain. But for non-developer users, that's where it ends right now. The Building of Basecamp workshops, though, is a fabulous way to offer passionate users (who happen to be software developers) a way to become more involved and spend more time and money.

6) Pride items / Showing Off

They fall down here on that most important step--T-shirt first development.

Yet even their users are asking for shirts. They need a way for passionate users of their products to express to others that they're part of the tribe. Of course, it doesn't need to be 37 Signals that does it... they could encourage others -- especially other passionate fans -- to do it for them. That means less direct revenue for them, but far more passionate street cred if they help support a Passionate Wake.

7) People, Legends, Myths, Stories

Where there is passion, there are stories and people and gossip. 37 Signals is on their way here--at least two of the 37 Signals team are quickly becoming the geek equivalent of rock stars -- David Heinemeier Hansson (Ruby on Rails creator), and Jason Fried (he has Tom Peters has a fan!). And it's not just "The Signals" that matter. They're doing a great job of capturing user stories as well:

http://www.basecamphq.com/casestudy-donor.php

Given how young the company is, I'm impressed with how much they've done in this area. Most WAY larger companies aren't doing half as much as these guys to promote what users are doing... to make the users the heroes. I haven't heard much gossip, although I'm sure there are some stories circulating that perhaps the Ruby folks know about.

8) Meaning

Where there is passion, there is a sense of something bigger and more meaningful. That "if you think it's just about hitting golfballs, you SO don't get it..." attitude. 37 Signals has a Basecamp Manifesto that says, among other things: "Basecamp is more than a product, it's a new way of thinking." And they back it up with specific examples (and a product that lives up to the manifesto). The fans of 37 Signals, or its individual products, or the related Ruby on Rails, seem to believe that there's more here than just software. It's a world view... and a world view that people are finding appealing and consistent with their own values. Being a Basecamp fan, for example, says something about the user. (And t-shirts would give the user a way to tell the world.)

SUMMARY

Overall, I give them a 9 out of 10 Hearts on the passionate users scale -- a rating I believe will be extremely rare. That they're doing all of these things at such a young stage in their business is remarkable, and is both a cause and effect of passionate users.

To get a 10, they could do just a little more (although as they grow, they'll need to do more in order to grow with their users).

Here are few ideas, but they're just off-the-top-of-the-head and not necessarily well thought out:

1) Get cracking on the pride items like t-shirts and decals. And they'd get an 11 if they encourage someone outside the company to do it. (These aren't mutually exclusive--it would be great if both 37 signals and other third parties were all offering pride items, support, add-ons, etc.) Take a lesson from the yard gnome photo thing, and come up with a clever way for people to send in photographs of... what? Hmmmm... it can't be photos of the product in use, like you can do with a physical iPod or book. But if you had those cool t-shirts... you could have them send in photos people take of themselves in unusual places, wearing their 37 Signals/Basecamp t-shirts. A lot of your users are geeks. You SO know they'll do it.

2) They should continue to work on building long-term learning and growth opportunities for users -- something they've already got going on in a big way for their users who are also developers, but I'd love to see more learning experiences for non-developer users. Don't just teach me to use your product well, teach me to seriously kick ass at the things I do with your product. Make me a better project manager in areas that go beyond what the software is responsible for. Help me become better organized and spend more time in flow (the premise behind GTD, which they unofficially support. You could say that part of what 37 signals does is to support David Allen's Getting Things Done wake!)

Where there is passion, there is a Next Level, and the 37 Signals folks have one for developers with Building of Basecamp. But they could use more of a Next Level concept for "regular" users. Is there a way to tell when someone is a Backpack guru?

They're already doing a fantastic job with helping users learn and grow -- far better than probably any other software company of this size and scope (sure, it's easy for Adobe and Macromedia to have lots of tutorials, but this is a very small company). And in a way, one of their biggest strengths -- that their products are SO usable -- means they don't really need much support and learning. So my suggestion would be to keep pushing the learning into areas that go beyond the software, and into the realm of ways in which the software helps and changes people's lives. Clearly that's already starting, if we are to listen to the user quotes. And we should.

3) Maybe encourage actual user groups -- which could be both physical and online (an extension of the forums), as a way to encourage connection between users.

4) More stories, please. More about the founders, and more about the users. Maybe some inner knowledge worth knowing and worth talking about could be propogated. Just don't put it on your website... it's worth a lot more if it's discovered.

Way to go 37 Signals. Y'all are most inspiring! I can't wait to see what you do next. And please, please, make your first t-shirts come in extra-small : ) (and FYI my favorite colors are orange and blue).