

Profitable and proud: Campaign Monitor - luckystrike
http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2342-profitable-and-proud-campaign-monitor

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sosuke
The series sounds like it could be really great, I wonder if they have a
frequency for new interviews planned already? The series title alone got me
though, as someone who is working on a startup that is something I really
aspire to be, profitable and proud.

Campaign Monitor is a great service too, I frequently reference and share
their Guide to CSS support <http://www.campaignmonitor.com/css/> to coworkers
who have questions on what can and can't be done with styling in emails.

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dhh
We have a couple of other companies lined up but there's no schedule yet.
Hopefully we'll start getting a steady flow of suggestions for companies that
fit the profile and do something every couple of weeks.

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davidw
This looks like it could be pretty interesting. 37signals feels like something
of an outlier to me: they talk a good game, but I don't really get the feeling
that I could do something similar, because I don't have a hugely popular blog,
nor did I create an extremely popular web framework.

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dhh
Do you know who else didn't use to have a popular blog? 37signals.

When Basecamp launched, we had something like 4,000 readers of SvN. Now that's
a fair chunk, but certainly not unobtainable.

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rguzman
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivor_bias>

How many people/companies start blogs and don't succeed like you guys did?

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jasonfried
Plenty, but it's a lot easier for a company to bootstrap and hit $1MM in
revenues and be profitable than it is to be the next Apple or Google or
younameit.

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rguzman
Hitting $1MM in revenues strikes me as "about as difficult" as raising a
series A if not harder. However, having to bootstrap places constraints on the
type of product/company one can build. There is also the time factor. Some
products have a right time and place and bootstrapping may lead to missing a
window of opportunity.

Trying to be the next google or younameit is playing the lottery, no argument
there. Bootstrapping to $10-100MM strikes me about as unlikely as being the
next google.

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jasonfried
"Bootstrapping to $10-100MM strikes me about as unlikely as being the next
google."

That's not even a contest. $10MM+ bootstrapped companies are far more common
than "being the next Google." More stories on the way.

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corruption
I notice you took the low end of the scale. I wonder if there are many 100MM+
companies that bootstrapped.

