Comments on: Estimating 37signals revenue and general profitability

By: jedc

jedc — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 14:16:42 +0000

Amazon S3 is for cloud storage – essentially just hard drives on the internet.

Rackspace is the actual cloud computing – the servers that do all the processing for the 37signals products.

Hope that helps.

By: Ed

Ed — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 12:14:40 +0000

Great analysis, very informative to those of us who wouldn't know how to go about doing such a thing. One question though: I don't understand the Amazon S3/Rackspace differentiation. Isn't S3 a cloud hosting environment in and of itself. If so, why the need for Rackspace servers?

-thanks

By: jedc

jedc — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 07:16:42 +0000

Amazon S3 is for cloud storage – essentially just hard drives on the internet.

Rackspace is the actual cloud computing – the servers that do all the processing for the 37signals products.

Hope that helps.

By: Ed

Ed — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 05:14:40 +0000

-thanks

By: jedc

jedc — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 10:49:37 +0000

Well, if you look at my model it generally assumes that ~95-98% of users just try it and don't use it long-term. But those that do use it long-term are very loyal. My model seems to match up fairly well to most everything they've posted recently.

They are a very profitable and successful business.

By: Julian Stone

Julian Stone — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 20:23:11 +0000

Here's two posts I wrote a while ago on a similar track of trying to guess their numbers…
Well worth a read.

Does BaseCamp have long term users? or a million tyrekickers?
http://julian101.com/2008/02/does-basecamp-have...

Do you believe Software Companys’ Hype? I’m unconvinced.
http://julian101.com/2007/03/do-you-believe-the...

By: blog.jedchristiansen.com » Blog Archive » 37signals is one hell of a profitable business

Wed, 25 Feb 2009 17:32:49 +0000

[...] [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 o…. [...]

By: jedc

jedc — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 14:42:51 +0000

Hi, Helgi.

I took a quick look, and it looks like it does. The only hard numbers they mentioned were $5k/month of revenue in 6 weeks and 2.8million total projects, both of which are right in line with my model.

The biggest assumption to get their actual revenue figures is the average revenue per account, which is really an educated guess. But I think I've got a decent handle on their overall customer growth.

Thanks for thinking of me!

By: Helgi Thor

Helgi Thor — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 09:19:20 +0000

Hello Jed,
Love your analysis, it's just the stuff I'd been wondering about. Did you happen to notice this post http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1556-happy-b... ? It's got some new numbers from 37 Signals, I was wondering how they match with your prior analysis?

By: jedc

jedc — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 10:02:13 +0000

Have they released figures that would provide hints for what their sales
are? If you could provide any links, I might have a go at it.