V1 is for Us

What It Covers

37signals cofounders Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson explain their principle of building version one products exclusively for internal company needs, using real problems rather than imagined customer use cases to guide development.

Key Questions Answered

• •Internal Use Cases Only: Version one must solve actual problems the company experiences daily, not hypothetical external scenarios. 37signals scrapped six months of work on Highrise CRM when they realized they were building for imagined customers instead of their own needs.
• •Quality Validation Through Dogfooding: Teams can only gauge solution quality when solving problems they personally experience. When 37signals forced technical staff to use Writebook despite missing search functionality, the internal rebellion revealed exactly what features needed development for reference materials.
• •Post-Launch Patience: Wait weeks or months after launching before acting on customer feedback. Users bring expectations from previous tools and need time to adapt. Hey email still receives archive button requests years later from users conditioned by Gmail habits.
• •Problem vs Solution Requests: Listen to underlying user problems, not their proposed solutions. When Hey users demanded delete buttons, 37signals identified the real problem as not wanting to see dealt-with emails, then created cover art feature allowing users to replace email lists with family photos.