I asked, “How do you justify the time spent on a new book over time you could spend on better or future software products?” Here is the excerpt of their live show where he answers my questions at 8:12 in.

Watch live video from 37signals Live on Justin.tv

I couldn’t repost the live show (if the embed code is out there please let me know!), so I decided to post this interview with Jason. With all that I’ve talked about this company recently you might think that I idolize the guy but I really just think that he and his company have very simple philosophies that drive a startup in the right direction. I want to strive to drive SocialDreamium in the same direction. I also like how he’s not really a techy guy but runs a web software development business. That’s what it’s all about baby!

Baby, if you were words on a page, you’d be what they call fine print

But it’s probably no surprise that a solid one liner probably won’t work on any self respective female. Where it will work however, with your startup. A solid one liner can provide focus and direction for your company. A solid one liner helps all of your efforts focus on what Guy Kawasaki would call, “making meaning”. In looking at some of the startups that are most influential to me right now it because very obvious to me that having a solid one liner is very important to get the message and the focus right out in the open for all customers and employees to focus on. It will help drive everything from product development to company culture.

- Inbound Marketing System

Hubspots claimed inbound vs. outbound marketing system is what they are all about. The important thing is to be found by the people looking for you vs. trying to find the people who aren’t looking for you. They’re marketing team has done a phenomenal job with webinars for small business owners and strong tools for grading your site or twitter account. Hubspot focuses on improving a companies marketing with a different approach, and it works.

- Easy to use web-based application

No matter how many times you watch Jason Fried speak about software development, or how blogging has helped their company, or why they wrote and now sell the ebook, Getting Real: The Book – The smarter, faster, easier way to build a successful web application, he always comes back to the same thing – Make simple, fast, and useful software. Easy to use web-based application is by no means an official mantra. In fact last week they asked the community on their blog, “how would you describe what 37 Signals does?” So, they clearly don’t have it down to an exact phrase but when the same message is said in different words everytime it still becomes very powerful. Especially when they back it up with great products.

- A little feedback goes a long way

Rypple is a startup out of Toronto that builds a piece of software that promotes and makes feedback simple in the workplace. It’s easy to use and has a great workflow. In fact, it has to be easy to use because the point is for non-Gen Y’ers to embrace more feedback for Gen Y’ers. Rypple’s tag line of “a little feedback goes a long way” is the heart and soul of their software. Make feedback simple to improve the workplace and the work lives of Gen Y’ers who want it.

- Powered by Services

Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos has explained that Zappos does not focus on doing customer service but rather making service part of the company culture. “Powered by Services” is a tag line and a mission statement for Zappos and is very accurate. Customer service is not just something that each employee practices but it is the life blood of the company, they truly are powered by a service culture. This has been the focus for Zappos and it is very obvious. Zappos has been highlighted as the go to example for great company culture that has lead to great business success.

Follow the leaders and work on developing your core focus. What is your startups One Liner?

37 Signals

When Jason Fried, founder of 37 Signals was first building his company he was inspired by chefs. He shared at a talk recently that he found it interesting that even though chefs have all these cooking secrets they don’t hesitate to share them. Chefs write books about their secrets and host TV shows giving their secrets away. Their “secrets” became their product! This appeals to any individual. Myself for example, with no cooking stills at all (my gf can attest), am very intrigued by some cooking shows just because they are teaching me to be the expert. In reality what they are doing is giving me the power of information. This power of information is what reaches and appeals everyone. I don’t know anyone that doesn’t want the power of information. What Jason discovered is that empowering people with information can create a huge following or audience and that audience becomes a few things:

• a powerful marketing team
• a powerful support team
• a very powerful and lucrative customer base

This realization has helped 37 Signals to become a very profitable software company with a huge audience on its chosen communication platform, their blog Signal vs. Noise. This ground up approach, starting not with big name software publications or traditional “respected” media, but with their own blog that anyone could subscribe to proved to be hugely successful.

Building Obama

The next, perfect, example of embracing bottom up growth is the completely unexpected win of PE Barack Obama in the presidential election 2 weeks ago. There has been no shortage of coverage on how PE Obama has utilized non-traditional media to build a huge following of over “8,000 Web-based affinity groups, 750,000 active volunteers, and 1,276,000 donors“. It certainly shows that by reaching out through social media tools DIRECTLY to the people and not only through debates, press conferences, and traditional media PE Obama was able to create a loyalty to his cause maybe stronger than any in the past. He certainly was the first to use technology is such a huge way during a presidential campaign. Whether it directly affected votes I’m sure could be debated but certainly through donations his involvement and attention to this group had an enormous and undeniable effect.

As startups may have realized this trend first, as is normal in the tech world, the political world has now shifted in the realization that reaching the “common man” directly is a very powerful act. Daniel Debow, CEO of Rypple, wrote in his recent Huffington Post blog post:

I think Obama’s improbable election will be the final “evidence” point that convinces the business world that they need to understand the change that is coming to their way.

I believe this to be very true. Adapting to change is what keeps a business alive at any level and smart corporations must and will react to this shift.

GE opens up to bottom up

Just as getting into politics on this blog is something that I almost never do I’m going to comment on my employer General Electric because it has recently made moves towards embracing bottom up growth that I totally respect.

GE recently launched a site called GEreports.com. GEreports is basically a blog for GE. They cover anything from how much the company is spending on it’s revolutionary ecoimagination campaign, to posting talks from CEO Jeff Immelt (which are really awesome in person). They share recent new products from all of the different GE portfolio businesses and overall does a good job of showing the public (the bottom) what they are up to. I’m sure the growth of GEreports.com will not sky rocket right away but as large corporate blogs grow and as companies let their communications departments have a bit more freedom and openness I think that they could become very powerful communication platforms for the general public, investors, and in my case…employees.

This last move from closed to open and from top down to bottom up that is beginning in corporate America is a bit surprising to me, but very encouraging. As we grind through a very tough economic state we see a call for great regulation and disclosure from corp America. The start of blogs and other communication platforms from corporations to the public will do nothing but encourage this sort of open and honest behavior. I’m not naive enough to think that if a corporation has a blog it means they are immune to scandal. However, what it does mean is that at least someone inside the organization understands the importance of reaching to the bottom without using traditional, slow, and overly scrubbed media to inspire openness and growth.