Business Lessons from 37 Signals $1000 Master Class

Holy Crap! Jason and DHH got 40 people to pay $1000 to hear them talk for a day about starting a company.<p>Wow... Just... Wow...<p>Dudes, really. Save your money for ramen noodles and start hanging out at other Hacker News meetups[1].<p>Or, better yet, move to Silicon Valley, start attending meetups[2] and startup events[3]. Make a point of handing out business cards and asking people out for coffee. I can guarantee that within a year you'll become friends with any number of entrepreneurs who will give you similar or better advice for the price of a beer.<p>Hell, if you move out here, come to a Hackers and Founders event, I'll buy you a beer.<p>By the way, we're probably going to be turning Hackers and Founders into a non profit, because I feel like it's wrong to try make a quick buck off of hackers who are eating ramen noodles and trying to get a startup off the ground. YMMV<p>&#60;/rant&#62;<p>ref:<p>[1] <a href="https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AmQExXr67OcTdDBZZl93MXZwaE4tWlQwTENVMnVQalE&#38;hl=en#gid=0" rel="nofollow">https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AmQExXr67OcTdDBZZl9...</a><p>[2] <a href="http://www.hackersandfounders.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.hackersandfounders.com</a><p>[3] <a href="http://startupdigest.com/" rel="nofollow">http://startupdigest.com/</a>

I found the day a lot deeper than can be summarized into some twitter posts. If you want the text/ramen edition of their advice most of it is in their books. What you get from attending the master class is the same advice but demonstrated through examples of their own projects in the morning and attendees projects in the afternoon. It all adds up to a much richer experience. There is nothing like getting ideas and advice in person. But of course you may not agree with everything and it may not all apply to you. It's up to you to apply it as you see fit.

These need fleshing out. By shortening them to fit in tweets you've made some of them ambiguous, and others lack any context to apply them. For example, <i>We judge a lot about how good a design is by how long it takes to implement.</i> could go either way, on KISS principle, or persistent A/B testing.

25) Use a thick marker during design since you can only focus on the key things.<p>More info: <a href="http://37signals.com/svn/posts/466-sketching-with-a-sharpie" rel="nofollow">http://37signals.com/svn/posts/466-sketching-with-a-sharpie</a>

I hope I'm wrong, but it sounds like you paid $1000 to have DHH read rework to you.<p>I literally knew almost, if not every item on the list from reading their books/blogs. I'm sure the experience was more beneficial then just reading the books, but was it worth $1000?<p>I'm generally a very big fan of the 37signals gang and their products and philosophy, but lately it really seems more and more that they are getting a bit greedy. Starting from publishing blog content as books to the $10 paint app, it's uncomfortably reminiscent of the tony robbins shtik.

Maybe these bits are "out of context" or "need fleshing out" because you can't always summarize learning in a series of tweets or a blog post. Maybe that's why the event is $1,000 - you're paying for a learning experience, not just content.

<i>38) The 37signals logo is a guy saying hi.</i>!!!!!

Half of these are just wrong. The other half are just irritating.