You do less, you make less. You do more, you make more (money). The only reason 37 Signals adds more, like every other successful company, is to make more. Less is just a story, more makes money.
In my company no other event generates more cash than adding and doing more in the product. No other event. It is true for any other company...
I am just getting tired of all "less" parroting :-)
We've found that nothing makes us more money than being drastically simpler than the competition. No single feature is mentioned more often than "simple", "no need for training", and "easy to use" as the reason for why people use our products.
We live and die by renewals. There is nothing to be gained for us by just keeping to add a bunch of stuff left and right that'll rock the foundation of simplicity. Whatever we'll pick up from the initial excitement will be wiped out by raising the barrier and getting too complex.
So less is indeed how we made a name and continue to make money.
"simple", "no need for training", and "easy to use" is not the same as less. You added plenty over the years. You continue to add developers to your team. You are doing more and more. You are making it easy to use, but you are not doing less. You are not removing, you are constantly adding.
You guys are brilliant at marketing. No doubt about it. You know how to make things easy to use. No doubt about it. But you have to add more and more features just like any other successful company to stay relevant. If you do not do that you would not be growing and people would not be renewing.
Do you really think people renew an 37signal-product account because they got that nice little present of cute-new-feature each month? (Hint: Maybe they use software to solve an ongoing business-problem, not to play 'diskbox.)
