McSweeney's iPhone app creator says Getting Real and Basecamp made it possible

Russell Quinn and McSweeney's — an American indie publishing house — officially announced their joint iPhone app last Tuesday. Within three hours it had surged to number 1 in the U.S. iTunes book category, broke the top 50 in the all-category Highest Grossing chart, and created a storm of excitement on Twitter.

Below, Russell details how Getting Real inspired the effort and how the team used Basecamp to manage the project.

The collaboration started over the summer. I had been thinking about writing my own iPhone app for a while, but knew that to make something really compelling, I needed great content and a known name that would be prepared to take the risk with me.

I've been a fan of McSweeney's for a long time, and creating an app for them seemed like the perfect match. I had an iPhone. I read their books and watched their DVDs. I would really like to see their content on my iPhone. I was to be my own target audience.

I fired off an email to them proposing that we work together on such project. They replied within 30 minutes and an hour later we were Skyping and formulating the first strategies.

As McSweeney's are based on the west coast of America and I'm currently living in Zürich, Switzerland we had a major time difference to contend with. We started using Basecamp that same day, and have used it ever since for everything from reviewing screen designs, to hammering the copy into shape in Writeboards, to keeping track of deadlines and development to-do lists. A second project also served as an excellent platform for our closed beta stage, giving our testers a place to collect the new binaries and leave feedback.

The whole process from start to finish felt very agile and focussed on just creating the best product we could. The timezone mismatch meant that we were effectively a 24-hour team. I would work all day in peace, then send some previews or questions as I left my workspace for home. Eli, from McSweeney's, would then collect opinions, plus any necessary material and upload it before I awoke in the morning.

This "Getting Real" ideology, combined with an extensive use of Basecamp for all our communication and project management needs, means we really have 37signals to thank for making the logistics of this project possible in such a short timeframe. Hey, even our server-side system is running on Ruby on Rails.

Congrats on the success Russell!

Jamie Wright on Getting Real with consulting

In this interview, Jamie Wright, president of BrilliantFantastic Consulting describes how he applies the Getting Real software development process to his own consulting practices.

Getting Real inspires developer of iPhone calendar app

John S. Eddie of Zicron Software writes in about how Getting Real helped him release his first iPhone application: Years [iTMS link].

I just wanted to express how thankful I am for the great advise you have given in your book Getting Real, and also through your blog and other public events. Even though your book states ' ...web applications' I find a lot of the advise transcends to other development environments.

Reading Getting Real gave me the motivation to leave my full time job and start my own company. I have just released my first iPhone application: Years.

Before I began the project I sketched out all my ideas and played around with some prototypes before eventually starting the development. I concentrated on two main features that I tried to do really well. I think it really helped build a very functional application.

One of the aims of Years was to build an application that is extremely easy to use. Looking at Years you will find that I made some opinions about how it would be used - I could easily have just implemented a settings screen. I fully appreciate that some people may want options but until there is a crowd the application will remain as simple and elegant as it is now. I expect the application to be driven forward by it's users when enough people shout about a feature I will give it careful consideration for a future update.

I launched early so that I could get customer feedback quickly while I work on the remaining features that I have planned. I'm looking forward seeing how customers make use of the scribble feature, perhaps they will help improve it in ways I could never imagine.

I could really go on and on about the development process but I thought I'd just share a few thoughts with you...

Once again thank you for sharing your wisdom with the world. I'm really looking forward to the release of your new book.

Here's a look at the Years app:

How Getting Real helped Litmus evolve from a side project into a $1m/year business

Paul Farnell attended a Building of Basecamp workshop years ago and then read Getting Real. He says that gave him the confidence boost to finish and launch his side project: Litmus. Around three years later, it’s now making almost a million dollars a year. Paul tells us more below...

Litmus helps web designers run compatibility tests on their website and HTML email designs. It began as a side project. A prototype running on computers under my desk at university five years ago. Now we have thousands of customers, revenue of over $1m and six people on the team.

My first taste of Getting Real was at the Building of Basecamp workshop in Copenhagen. It was an eye opener for me. Here's a few things we adopted.

Under-doing your competition
Litmus was built to be the antithesis of the other services that existed in this space. Their services were clunky, over-engineered and under-designed. We stripped out features, picked defaults that made sense, and kept the flow as simple as possible. It was liberating.

Embracing constraints
We had 3 people and £500 ($800) to build a version one. We worked in our spare time. We hosted the servers in my university room. We used old computers and licenses donated by friends and family. As we've grown we've tried to keep these constraints in place, even if they're now somewhat artificial. We religiously justify every expense to see if it'll directly help us make more money.

Less mass
Our product direction changed significantly within the first two years. We started by offering a cross-browser testing service. Then people asked us for email testing. Then email service providers (like Campaign Monitor) wanted to integrate our testing into their products. Staying small and lean made this easier to do.

Funding yourself
We've turned down outside investment. We've done it on our own terms. It's been steady, organic growth over the past five years. And we've loved every minute of it.

Today we're working on things that no other companies in this space are doing. It's exciting. We're staying small, focussed and agile. And we're proud of that.

Getting Real has played a large part in getting us where we are today. I hope that by sharing some of our experiences it'll inspire others to try taking this path. It's incredibly rewarding.

10 key takeaways from Getting Real

Todd Garland of BuySellAds.com recently published 10 Key Takeaways from Getting Real:

The book is AWESOME. Really, if you are building, have built, or work on ANY product (web-based or not) you must read this book. I could have titled this “50 Takeaways” and gone on much longer, there is just so much good content in this book. It’s short, to the point, and is a great way to find some inspiration and new ideas to give you a little extra hop in your step. Please, go read it now: Getting Real.

One takeaway Todd mentions is "Constraints force creativity / Stay lean"...

When I first launched BSA I was working another full-time job. And, being the honest chap that I am I could only work on BSA before 9am and after 7pm (I was at another startup that I was truly passionate about too, so it wasn’t the standard 9-5). That meant waking up at 5 or 5:30 and answering support emails, all of them, and then working on the site late at night. Having those time and bandwidth constraints forced me to be really good at solving problems quickly. Which, in turn, helped set the pace for quality support here at BSA.

Another: "Don’t sweat the small stuff at first, just get something live"...

Who cares if it’s NOT going to scale - worry about that when you get there. Surely, if you need to scale your app because it’s growing quickly and bursting at the seams, you will figure it out. Do you think we planned to serve billions of impressions per month when we first launched BSA? No way, but it became a possibility very quickly and we then figured out how to scale (and we’re still figuring out how to scale it beyond that now).

Read the full piece for more.

Getting Real is one of Tim Ferriss' five must read books

Tim Ferriss and Kevin Rose Discuss Their Top 5 Must-Read Books:

On Ferriss' list: Getting Real. He says, "It has the potential to change your life and your business...It does have a software focus but all of it can be applied to entrepreneurs in general."

"Getting Real was a pivotal read for me and my business partners"

Justin Wills on how Getting Real influenced him and his partners at Society6:

I just wanted to drop a note and thank you for writing Getting Real. I can't say I've ever been someone to champion a book or to change the way I operate based on one. That said I have to say that Getting Real was a pivotal read for me and my business partners. The first time I read the book I had many a tearful laugh, having experienced the pitfalls of not Getting Real first hand.

As my partners (Justin Cooper and Lucas Tirigall-Caste) and I developed our new enterprise we were able to adhere to many of the precepts of the book, from both the business and software standpoint. At crucial points in the development of our platform we held true to much of the great common sense in it.

Recently we launched our new company, a platform to create unique opportunities for artists and creative people, called Society6. Our proudest moments have been when new members tell us how simple the site is and we remark to one another about how many features we were disciplined enough to NOT put it into it.

Read Getting Real.

extendr.com founders: Getting Real is "a crux component to our success"

Joseph Rueter and Neil Berget, co-founders of extendr.com on the influence Getting Real had on them:

Getting Real concepts played key roles in framing our thinking regarding web development as we built and continue to build extendr.com and other web applications. We had an idea for an optimized search results service that our friends thought was worth building. We figured if they wanted it and offered to pay us for it maybe others would too. We just had to find away to build it. Enter the conceptual framework of Getting Real and the utility of Basecamp.

First off the subtitle of Getting Real hooked us. We wanted smarter, faster, easier ways to build our successful web applications. Who wouldn't? The most powerful and challenging concept that never seems to be complete is "Build Less." It takes a ton of work and time to decide what is essential. However, don't worry, it's a crux component to our success.

We both work day jobs and we live 30 minutes from each other so meeting up all the time late at night was not an option. Further, we often work on a time shift (i.e. we're not working at the same time of day). Therefore we had a need for dynamic digital list making and management. We needed a way to past notes to each other.

We use your concepts and web tools nearly every day and are delighted by their simple solid utility. Thanks for making great stuff.

Notre Dame professor uses 37signals as example of a company that "gets" marketing

A marketing professor at the University of Notre Dame's Mendoza College of Business is using 37signals as a case study in his summer marketing course:

Hopefully we're on the opposite side of the spectrum as Enron! Learn about our approach to marketing in our book Getting Real.

"Getting Real helped us build ProofHQ on a $15,000 budget and bootstrap to breakeven"

Mat Atkinson of ProofHQ, a proofing and approval tool that is "as easy to use as email," writes in to tell us how Getting Real influenced his team:

We used Basecamp to run our product development.  You may remember that we also integrated our own product with Basecamp so that designers can add rich review and approval capability to Basecamp projects.  It's been a huge success.  Nearly 30% of our clients are Basecamp users.
 
I saw the post on LILO and wanted to let you know how much that resonated with our story and how much Getting Real influenced us.  It helped us build ProofHQ on a $15,000 budget and bootstrap to breakeven.
 
We started work on ProofHQ in Jan 2007 and I bought Getting Real on 15 March 2007.  Although I had founded a tech start-up before, Getting Real summed up exactly how I wanted ProofHQ to be run.  Frankly, it was an inspiration then, and continues to be today.  That's not to say that we agree with everything in it, but the main themes ring so true.
 
We built ProofHQ to solve one of the biggest problems that we had faced in previous jobs - getting graphic and web design reviewed collaboratively.  We now use ProofHQ every day all day to manage design of our own app, so we really did build it for ourselves.  This was a key lesson - USE YOUR OWN PRODUCT.
 
We decided to fund development organically.  My last start-up raised a lot of VC, so this time we wanted to try a low-burn approach.  We focussed our own efforts on core R&D (there is some cool image conversion and streaming technology under the hood), but we outsourced our design, corporate ID and non-core web application work via Elance and 99Designs.  We spent a total of $15,000 getting to Beta in Jan 2008.  VC IS NOT THE FIRST OR ONLY OPTION.
 
HAVE A MANTRA - Our mantra from day one was that the in design and marketing bad process kills great creative.  Every designer, design firm and marketing team strives to deliver great creative, but with inefficient processes even the best creative gets undermined.   Our aim was to focus on one small but very common area of marketing process... getting design reviewed and approved.  Back in 2007 it was sometimes hard to get heard as marketing budgets were still big, but in 2009 that is a message that resonates loud and clear. 
 
We launched in May 2008.  By November 2008 our revenues exceeded operating costs for the first time and we just broke even.  All this has been possible by keeping the team small, keeping our costs low and moving fast.
 
Well I could go on and on, but it's great that 37s has had an influence on us in so many ways.

Do you have a Getting Real success story? Let us know.