Wise Startup Blog

I was listening to a great podcast from David Hansson from 37 Signals who had some really amazing insights on how he built a $10+ million company with only 15 employees.

How Can You Out Teach?

So when his team was building Basecamp, a project management suite for small businesses, a lot of people in the press were saying to him, what makes your product so good?

Won’t Microsoft come in and build a better product? They have so many more resources, time, money, etc.

So for David, his team of 3 people working part-time had a ton of constraints on what they could do. They had jobs, limited experience, and little money, so they had to learn how to build a more lean product. They figured out ways to cut corners in the right places, and make the product as simple and efficient as possible.

And then when it comes to marketing the product, they would never be able to spend more money than Microsoft, so they decided to teach the community how they built it.

Their blog is notorious for having amazing tutorials, productivity tips, and a general open-door policy of sharing their secrets with the community. In doing so, they’re able to make their users passionate about their service because their users feel like it’s more than just a product that they’re selling, but it’s a service to their businesses and to the rest of the web community.

Can you think of a way you can out teach in your own business?