DISQUS

jedc · 11 months ago

Thanks for the link, Furqan!

You're right... this is more appropriate for a great April Fool's post, but an interesting diversion. The number of people that I have seen buy MS Project just to create GANTT charts (using none of the other capabilities) demonstrates how fragile their market dominance is and will be. Everyone I know that works or has worked at Microsoft are all really, really smart... maybe their business acumen lags their technical acumen?

obiefernandez · 11 months ago

Hey man, you should have waited to publish this on April 1st. Hysterical!

fnazeeri · 11 months ago

I actually considered that.

Matt Hooks · 11 months ago

Nope.

jredville · 11 months ago

How is IronRuby not already doing the "Microsoft will also have to commit to porting Ruby to .NET" part of the equation?

fnazeeri · 11 months ago

From what I gather, it's not done, but I could be wrong.

jredville · 11 months ago

No it's not done. We can run Rails, irb and RubyGems (among other things, those are just big names). We are committed to delivering a 1.0 release that is compatible with 1.8.6. That's why I say they are committed.

fnazeeri · 11 months ago

I'm reminded of the story of the ham and eggs breakfast. The chicken is involved whereas the pig is committed. Time will tell whether Microsoft is the chicken or the pig; if it's the latter, you could could pretty quickly become a pretty important dude. Good luck!

TedHoward · 11 months ago

I'm pleased to see that someone else beat me in posting about IronRuby, and the pig analogy is the perfect counterargument. If Microsoft can get some RoR people excited to use Azure, then I think Microsoft starts to look a bit more pig-like than chicken-like. I have heard of RoR being used, mostly by consultants, at larger enterprise firms, so the population of "RoR people" is not entirely composed of Silicon Valley startup trend followers, which means that it's more likely that Microsoft will attract RoR people imo.

Peter Cooper · 11 months ago

A year ago I'd have said this was ridiculous, but things are changing in a bit way out there, and especially at Microsoft. I'm on the fence as to whether they'd sell, but I definitely wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft made an offer like this at all.

MS has a big enough cash pile and if it can present a humble enough image of change where it's seen to really need new blood to grow and redefine itself into the future, I think it could pull on board quite a few big names. It wouldn't surprise me to see 37signals amongst them.

Peter Cooper · 11 months ago

Oh, and don't be too dissuaded by the negative comments. A prediction of $42 oil would have been seen as nuts several months ago too, or the collapse of several of the world's largest financial institutions just a year or two ago.. Things change fast out there, and if MS has any sense, they'll be doing so too.

Keep making bold predictions - they might not come true, but the reality will be even more outrageous..

Cassio · 11 months ago

Just one little thing: They're enthusiasts of being small and having no external investors.....

anonymous · 11 months ago

This won't happen. The blog post only has appeal because you are arguing in favor of something everyone else knows/believes will not happen. Thinking outside the box does not in itself constitute a "good" thought. It has to actually be a possibility -- otherwise, it's a waste of time.

Why? Because you've neglected culture. Microsoft is smart enough to know which companies can integrate into the Microsoft way and which cannot. 37signals is not microsoft material and we all know this, except you.

fnazeeri · 11 months ago

You are totally right that Microsoft and 37signals respective corporate cultures are like oil and water. My argument is that part of the problem with Microsoft is the "Microsoft Way." What's interesting is that Jason Fried has shown himself to be a capable evangelist. He's written a book. He is an excellent public speaker and apparently enjoys speaking as he does it frequently. It's exactly somebody like him who Microsoft needs to help them evolve without which they will slowly fade away. So as improbable as it sounds and as hard as it certainly would be, there is a rationale for it to happen.

Andrew Field · 11 months ago

Thanks for the link to Flowchart.com. Once in a while someone comes up with a piece of software that is intuitive, useful, and priced right. Great software should be usable with no instructions or training, and guessing as to how to do something should get you the right result most of the time. BaseCamp doesn't quite meet that standard, but it is pretty good, and a helluva lot better than MS Project for anything but the largest projects.

Here's another gem: http://www.techsmith.com/screen-capture.asp
I started using SnagIt a year or 2 ago, and it absolutely rocks. A great use is including screenshots in emails about website changes, or even xls snags. I probably dump snags into 3 Word, ppt or emails a day. And no, I have nothing to do with the company, I just love their software. 90% of the time I use it instead of Photoshop or Illustrator.

condor · 11 months ago

"So why $300 million? Because that's what it is going to take."

'Just because', has never been a rational reason for anything. If you're going to make such bold statements back them up, otherwise your just trying to out-noise all the other noise out there, which adds zero value to the discussion.

fnazeeri · 11 months ago

What I was thinking (but did not articulate) is that the ZOPA for this deal is large because the value to MSFT of 37signials is very high (revenue from MSFT's MBD group aka "applications" was $19 billion in 2008 growing at 15% per year and roughly worth $60 billion). If you assumed that MSFT believed even 2% of their MBD group revenue was at risk and could be staved off with an acquisition, then their willingness to pay would be something like $600 million. So the trick is to guess what would be market clearing terms within this ZOPA between say $80 million and $600 million. It's all conjecture anyway so I picked $300 million out of thin air. BTW, I initially thought $200 million (see the URL of the blog post) but then changed my mind thinking Jason Fried had bigger cojones than that.

anonymous · 11 months ago

Why do you pretend to know anything?

Let alone have the audacity to try predict something so fundamentally stupid.

Please stop blogging.

ajkirwin · 11 months ago

Fuck off, will they.

I make the prediction that you are talking out of your ass.