Now, it of course just makes sense to have your company operate according to your world view, but its always good to step back a bit from the (well-deserved) positive feedback and reflect on whether that is the whole picture. (Even though I do agree with most of what they've been doing, and much of it happens to coincide with the approaches I'm taking, etc.).
Small business is certainly an underserviced niche, and a potentially large one. Is pure web-based, externally hosted the right way to go? The same way we can make a hand-wavey argument that nobody wants to do maintenance, we can make a hand-wavey argument that nobody wants to put up with network issues, having your data outside the company, and user interfaces that despite the best AJAX-du-jour, are still clunky at best compared to well-done desktop apps. Or even mixed, client-side with remote data (think iTunes, or even Konfabulator... Tim O'Reilly had the most insightful comment that what was striking about Yahoo's acquisition of Arlo et. al. was the validation of web services to desktop apps).
What about reaching small business folks, the whole marketing side of things? To date, Basecamp has been hitting the (techno-savvy) early adopters. Will they be able to reach a larger audience? My guess is not effectively as a small company. While sometimes small businesses will think of themselves as small businesses (usually only when asked to fill out surveys that include company size), more often they see themselves as accountants, marketing professionals, writers, architects, etc. and read publications etc. to match. Which makes them harder (and considerably more expensive) to reach.
I think the people who have a good chance at reaching people with the sort of tools we're talking about are people like Quicken, who already have a relationship with those people. I don't think a small company can do it. Do enough to make a handsome living for themselves? Definitely. But serve a broad base of the small business market? Nope.
The underlying Ruby on Rails is subject to the same concerns about hyperbole as it gets increasingly popular. It's way of doing things has a lot of advantages, but as with anything else, its got its niche, its strengths and weaknesses, and stepping back to understand that is important. DHH is young and brash as a promoter, but I can relate to that.
Having said all that.... if you're in the middle of all this, focused on what you're doing (as the 37Signals guys are), it's good to believe in what you're doing, and make no mistake, what they're doing is enough to keep them busy and paid. And while the scope is larger than what they're doing, it's not taking over the world.
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