I posted a video from the Jimmy Kimmel show a while back. It was a video that his girlfriend (Sarah Silverman) had made for him, and featured a song that got stuck in my head for a while.
That is, until I saw the video below. Now I can’t get this song out of my head!
Step 1 — Stare curiously at the couch, trying to figure out if it’s moving because the neighbor downstairs is doing something strange.
Step 2 — Realise that it’s rather late at night, so neither your neighbor downstairs nor the empty flat next door is responsible.
Step 3 — Remember that it feels strangely like an earthquake you felt in Hawaii on holiday about ten years ago.
Step 4 — Go to bed.
Step 5 — Wake up to news from the BBC saying there was a earthquake (5.2 on the Richter scale) in Lincolnshire.
[UPDATE]: Based on a number of comments below, via e-mail, and through additional research I’ve updated my original estimates. I think 37signals had revenue of ~$4million in 2007 and ~$8million in 2008. Please read my new post for details and to download the updated spreadsheet to play with the model on your own.
Inspired by a recent post on 37signals’ Signal vs. Noise blog, I decided to play around and see if I could try and figure out exactly how much money they’re making. Though my analysis is crude (as they obviously won’t release key figures), I think I’ve got a pretty decent handle on their turnover. Based on my calculations, they made around $3.5 million in 2007 alone, and look to make over $5 million in 2008.
So how did I come to this? Let’s dig a little deeper…
37signals clearly doesn’t talk about specific numbers much at all. They’re private and close-held, so there’s no reason to. That said, they have provided some numbers in three key posts that I’ve seen:
What’s making money and how much had some initial discussion and a datapoint for number of Basecamp projects.
Ask 37signals: Numbers had key data for all of the different products.
The New Backpack’s first 24 hours provided a few new numbers on Backpack.
To complete the analysis I took pricing data from the various pricing pages and other data from the overall 37signals website(s).
There were a few different ways that I could have modeled 37signals’ revenue. I decided to look at the data the same way that 37signals charges for their products: month-to-month. Each month, a certain number of people sign up for accounts. A large majority of these are free accounts, so the use of these accounts are limited. (And some people will just register and try them out, never to return.) A slice of these accounts will be (or will turn into) paying customers.
Each subsequent month, a new group of accounts are registered. However, this time a certain number of accounts are carried over (except for those that cancel the service), and these are added to the new paying accounts for that month.
What 37signals provided in their “Ask 37signals: Numbers” post was not the number of accounts, but instead they posted:
They posted more information, but I decided that I would try to create a model that would match these datapoints.
Essentially I use this model with assumptions on how each pay and free account generate new projects/pages/etc., play with the numbers within general assumptions of growth and ratio of free/pay accounts, match the data provided, then calculate monthly revenue based off an assumed revenue per pay account times the number of current pay accounts. Simple!
I had to make some assumptions to use the model above:
Basecamp is clearly the main revenue generator for 37signals. It’s been going the longest, and so has built up a good number of pay accounts and people who really value the service. I estimate that at the beginning of 2008, 37signals is making nearly $300k per month from about 5k pay accounts.
Backpack is the second oldest application for 37signals, and with the recent changes to make it multi-user, I think this is really set for a lot of growth in 2008. Up until now, I estimate that 37signals is making about $35k per month from about 2300 pay accounts.
Campfire was released in early 2006. This is a hard product to estimate, but based on my (rather wild-ass) guesses, I believe they are making about $9k per month from 600 pay accounts.
Highrise is the new kid on the block, and competes with more sophisticated CRM software. (I’m sure Jason and Co. would describe their competition as needlessly complicated CRM software.) I estimate that over the past year Highrise has grown to contribute $30k per month to 37signals from 1100 pay accounts.
Other streams
37signals doesn’t just make money from their web applications. There are three other streams that should be taken into account:
Since each Job Board ad runs for 30 days and costs $300, I just counted the number of current advertisements to guess their revenue. From this alone it looks like 37signals is making nearly $40k per month! The Gig Board adds to that, but it looks to be negligible. Please note the sampling error… to make a more accurate measurement I would need to count the number of ads every “x” many days and average them all out. My version is quick and should at least be in the right ballpark.
The Deck is an advertising network that runs on the 37signals blog. I calculated the total revenue for the Deck based on the cost of an ad and the number of advertisers, divided by the number of blogs on which Deck ads appear, and added in a factor that represents a somewhat larger share of the revenue for 37signals since it’s one of the most prominent blogs in the network. Based on all of this, I estimate that they earn about $6k per month from The Deck.
Finally, they have certainly made some money from selling copies of Getting Real. 30k copies of the PDF version sold for about $19 each, and the book version sells for $25. I estimate that they earn about $10k per month from these sales (PDF and hard copies).
All together, I believe 37signals currently generates revenue of approximately $400k per month from a diverse stream of applications and other revenue sources. If this continues, they are on track for yearly revenues of almost $5 million. This makes them incredibly profitable. They have 9 employees, plus some other help from time to time (it appears.) Jason Fried and DHH (and Jeff Bezos) must be doing quite well.
Well, I don’t blame you. To quote a great Radiohead song, I might be wrong. This analysis is a bit crude because of a lack of data. You may have very different assumptions that you would use in this analysis would could dramatically change the figures here. My growth model might be quite a way off.
Here’s the Excel file I used to calculate everything; try it out for yourself.
Right-click this link to download the 37signalsRevenueModel.xls
Just plug the assumptions into the relevant boxes and see how the figures line up for you.
Let me make it clear that I’m both a big fan of 37signals and a user of their applications. I did this partly for my own edification and partly to better understand the industry of SaaS. (I’m working on an app of my own, but since I’m not a professional developer it’s taking quite me a while.)
Clearly 37signals has be incredibly successful, and I’m very happy for them. They clearly give back, through Ruby on Rails, thoughtful blogging, etc. And if they’re making $5 million a year, it’s no wonder why Jeff Bezos wanted to invest!
That said, 37signals clearly laid out in Getting Real that “Outside money is plan B.” With revenues of $3–5million and a small team, that fits completely with Furqan’s thoughts on early-stage venture capital funding. They could probably scale their apps a lot larger, but by maintaining a clear and consistent focus, they’re able to do what they do best and keep their quality and craftsmanship at the highest levels.
I believe that Barack Obama is the best candidate to succeed George W. Bush as President of the United States. I wanted to highlight three recent articles on Barack that I found interesting. (Then again, it’s easy to find an article interesting when it shows “your” candidate in a positive light.)
Vanity Fair recently ran an article called Raising Obama, which discussed the important role that both his mother and his grandmother played in his life. Largely a background piece, it really focused on his family and his upbringing in Hawaii as well as the beginning of his political career.
Newsweek ran an article called Barack’s Rock, which discusses his wife Michelle and their relationship. She certainly seems like a strong woman herself, rising from a South Side of Chicago childhood to Princeton and Harvard Law School, only to be coaxed into community work through Barack.
While those are both interesting reads, there is one article that I found truly fascinating. It talks about Obama hopes to achieve through politics, and how his community organising has directly impacted his philosophy and the kind of campaign that he hopes to run. The kicker? It was written over ten years ago, as he was running for Illinois State Senate in 1995. Check it out on the Chicago Reader website here.
I think it is absolutely remarkable exactly how consistent Barack Obama has been in his political career, from when he first ran for office to his current run for the presidency. Certainly his scope has changed, but the philosophy is the same. In order to build a better life for our country and our society, we all need to become involved.
The popular criticism of Obama is that he’s just a great speaker, and hasn’t “done anything.” “All hat and no cattle.” That sort of thing. (Which ignores some very important legislative accomplishments both as a member of the Illinois State Senate and the US Senate, by the way.) These critics say that idealism won’t get the drug companies and insurance companies to give an inch on any health care bill.
I think there’s more to him here than many believe, and it can be shown in a short segment of a speech I found on YouTube. He speaks directly to how he will solve political problems as President; hope inspiring people to action, and that action overcoming tremendous opposition. Check it out here:
Jed Christiansen 