Making things that multiply

What It Covers

37signals cofounders Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson explain how building multiple products creates opportunities to discover design patterns, technical innovations, and interface ideas that can be adapted across their entire product portfolio.

Key Questions Answered

• •Design Pattern Discovery: Building Hey email revealed the stacked cards interface pattern (reply later, set aside) that now appears in Fizzy and Basecamp 5, demonstrating how new products generate reusable design solutions that wouldn't emerge from working on a single product.
• •Technical Innovation Through Greenfield Projects: New codebases enable experimentation with fresh architecture and frameworks without legacy constraints. Rails framework development directly correlates with 37signals product launches, as each new product drives framework improvements that benefit the entire ecosystem.
• •Back Catalog Evaluation: Revisiting Basecamp 2 after years revealed valuable features like activity blocks at project tops that improved orientation. Time provides clarity on which past ideas deserve revival, similar to how century-old books prove their worth through survival.
• •Benchmark-Based Design Assessment: Evaluate new designs against specific benchmarks like deployment speed, dependency count, and onboarding time rather than aesthetic preferences. This approach reveals whether complexity additions actually improve outcomes or just accumulate weight without proportional benefits.