It’s not what I’d have thought they’d do. Perhaps my model of S37 is wrong, but would you expect a bunch of hip young(ish) things to want to give up their experimentation and consolidate their energies on a maturing cash-cow?
Is this actually a sign that 37 Signals are in trouble? Or that investors are squeezing them? (Do S37 even have outside investors?)
One possible thinking is that they’re going to spin off other products as separate companies, which S37 retain ownership of but, presumably, hand-over management of to other, hungrier, more focussed people. That’s a potential way to scale up. But it’s not entirely clear that this the big strategic focus. Especially as they claim they’d also willingly support these other products in maintenance mode forever.
They say it’s odd. But that that’s cool because they like to be unorthodox. I guess what seems weird to me is that this just doesn’t seem “fun”. Does that mean that S37 are becoming the poster-children for “anti-fun”?