Chowrangi

The field of Information Technology is littered with weird success stories. In this new era of Web 2.0, there are also many stories which provide lots of inspiration. 37Signals is one of those killer stars.

Run by just 8 men, including the founder Jason Fried, age 33, is supporting about million users through its groundbreaking products. Their premier business is web-based collaboration software. Their products include Basecamp, Highrise, Campfire and Backpack.

Basecamp is used by project team for collaboration by working jointly on lists, documents and tools for tracking the time spent. Highrise is used for sharing and tracking the contacts. Campfire is used for chatting about projects and for brainstorming. Backpack is used for managing the shared calendars and photos.

There are some very useful mantras of the 37Signal team. According to them, “Interruption is the biggest enemy of productivity. We stay away from each other as much as we can to get more stuff done.” They also abhor the meetings. On their blog, Signal vs Noise, which is read by more than 65,000 readers, Fried says, “First kill your meetings they waster employees’ time.” How True.

He also says, “Use asynchronous communication and software instead to exchange information, ideas and solutions. Next, dump half your projects to focus on the core of your business. Too much time and efforts are wasted on second-tier objectives.”

Fried is also a great believer in giving employees as much as independence and freedom to work as possible. He says, “Let your employees decide when and where to work so they can be both efficient and happy. As long as their fingers are near a keyboard, they could as easily be in Caldwell, Idaho, as in Chicago.”

Now 37Signals is eyeing the financial software market and beyond.

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• Just Brought About Change - August 27th, 2008
• Speck of Hope - August 27th, 2008
• Daggers Drawn - August 27th, 2008
• More Load Shedding - August 27th, 2008
• Whose Writ is This - August 26th, 2008
• So They Parted - August 26th, 2008
• New Alignments - August 24th, 2008
• Vindicated Operartion in Swat - August 24th, 2008