Stowe Boyd and Jason Fried: Where Should Basecamp Focus its Resources?

Know More: Basecamp, Collaboration, networking, real-time 2.0, networking

Should power users dictate the course of development of applications? That is the basic question that I think Stowe Boyd and Jason Fried of Basecamp are debating.

Stowe is a power user of Basecamp - he works with four different companies, each which use Basecamp to manage their projects. With each company he has a different Basecamp account. He would like to see a unified dashboard, where all of the accounts he has are grouped together for easy access.

Jason points out that:

Most people are not like you. Most people are not as connected as you. Most people, the vast majority of our customers in fact, have one Basecamp account that they use with their clients or just internally. Yes, there are folks with multiple accounts, but they are the slim minority exception, not the norm. The majority of our customers aren't well connected techies, they are small business owners that use a tool alone or with their clients. They have their own small world. Multiple Basecamp systems are rare among these folks.

He goes on to remind Stowe that Basecamp is only 2.5 years old and that the company prefers to "nail the basics in our apps first" and add more advanced features later.

Stowe is more concerned with the social approach of sharing project information. He feels that is what makes Basecamp special, not so much its internal applications (he calls whiteboard kludgy - I agree).

I can see both sides of the argument here. Stowe believes that for Basecamp to really take off, the social aspects need to be prioritized. Jason, on the other hand, wants to prioritize making what they already have work better.

Jason's argument is persuasive. In making the internal applications better and adding features, Basecamp is going to attract more users. Those users, if they are "Power Users" are more likely to overlook the small inconvenience of needing to log in at separate locations. Those users are also pretty few, although they are probably market-drivers.

I note, however, that the "bug" Stowe sees hasn't stopped him from using Basecamp, or recommending it to his clients. In the bigger picture, this is excellent evidence for Jason - allocate your resources to imporve the features most people use daily.

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