

37Signals website in 2000 when they had 4 people and no DHH - sudonim
http://37signals.com/00

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noahc
The biggest take away here is the iterative process they went through each day
to get to where they are today. Imagine if I showed you the old 2000 homepage
and today and said in 11 years they were going to have had a board seat on the
fastest growing company ever, be making millions, and be the darling of every
bootstrapped in the world.

The point start today and in eleven years you'll be some where.

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oscardelben
Aesthetically I would say it was a good looking website even by today's
standards.

~~~
dasil003
Especially when you compare it to the best designed websites of the time.

Granted, going minimalist was a very wise choice; IE6 was far and away the
most advanced browser of the time, and the real thorn in every web designer's
side was Netscape 4. But the bottom line is that the design holds up, which is
remarkable regardless of which design direction you take.

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jasonfried
The home page and full site: <http://37signals.com/manifesto>

~~~
sudonim
Jason, I stumbled upon this last night while googling. Im guessing that
leaving this up is deliberate? What's your reasoning for doing so?

~~~
jasonfried
We're still proud of it. I think a lot of it remains true. It's good to have a
permanent reminder of where you started, too.

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silverlight
I always wondered where the 37 signals came from:

"Mankind constantly analyzes radio waves from outer space in the search for
extraterrestrial intelligence. Since this analysis started, almost all of the
signal sources have been identified. 37 signals, however, remain unexplained."

...a little more out there than I would have thought.

~~~
sili
That would also explain their link to the SETI project at
<http://37signals.com/37>. Edit: just noticed that it's also on 37th page of
the site. Delightful.

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glasner
Quite the blast from the past. My favorite old link is to their 37better
project:

<http://37signals.com/better> <http://37signals.com/better/bank/index>

~~~
run4yourlives
The bank website is still better than 99% of all enterprise applications from
a UI perspective.

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kieranyo
Woah I'd completely forgotten about K10K! (from <http://37signals.com/23>)

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avrvrv
What's a DHH ?

~~~
DuncanIdaho
DHH is a force of nature. Usually appears around topics that are part of
Enterprise folklore and causes combustion of said topic.

DHH also caused Rails to happen. With it the DHH spawned another force of
nature called the Rails community. The rails community acts very much like DHH
and also causes various combustions of various topics. The Rails community
also closely monitors DHH activities and should some threat to DHH arise, the
Rails community spawns instantly to protect the pure essence of 37 signals
idea that is DHH. Oh and Rails community also buys books that DHH has
materialized.

~~~
aeden
What an awesome comment. Worth permalinking.

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ptn
Does anybody know who those 4 guys were?

~~~
jasonfried
Jason Fried (me!)

Ernest Kim (now at Wieden+Kennedy, at Nike before that)

Carlos Segura (Segura, 5inch, t26)

Matt Linderman (still at 37signals)

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pixeloution
37BetterBank: <http://37signals.com/better/bank/index>

This is still better then most banking websites. It's too bad no bank ever
hired them to create the public facing UI.

~~~
angelbob
Looks a lot like Mint. Wonder if that's intentional on Mint's part.

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retlehs
Back in 2002: [http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2340-flashback-
the-37signals-...](http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2340-flashback-
the-37signals-homepage-back-in-2002)

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camworld
That's a classic. My old pioneering blog, camworld, is in there a few times.
But I sold the domain several years ago. It's a porn site now. Oh well, the
times. They do change...

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mkr-hn
The drop-down navigation is a blast from the past.

~~~
Jem
Yes, and now the next time one of my designer colleagues tries to use them in
a website and I say "lay off, that's SO 2000" I have a working example to
prove it.

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Johngibb
I remember the days of clear.gif! (or blank.gif, spacer.gif, etc...)

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lkozma
Another design studio's credo: <http://www.artlebedev.com/studio/>

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autalpha
heh, cute: <blink>12:00</blink> (<http://37signals.com/03>)

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bradleyjoyce
is it just me or does this get posted like once every 8 months or so?

~~~
nedwin
I hadn't seen it before, found it interesting and have also been here for a
while.

