There are a lot of different ways to do things. We only have the answers that work for us. We don't pretend to have your answers. That said, we don't preempt everything we say with "it depends." Reasonable people understand that everything depends.
We simply share our way based on our experience. Take whatever value you find and leave the rest behind.
From the front pages of our book: http://gettingreal.37signals.com/ch01_Caveats_disclaimers_an...
"We acknowledge a large part of our own success is due to our popular blog. Unless you have a popular blog, some of the advice may not work for you"
From "Founders at work", Joel Spolsky when asked for advice for startups:
"I would recommend that you create a weblog and have millions of readers every month from around the world that read it. That's not really necessarily followable."
I thought that was a pretty cool honest answer.
Companies that write a blog with 5 subscribers are simply not playing in the same league. Yes, of course, you have to start with 5, and I'm sure you did at some point, but to suggest that you can apply X ideas to achieve Y without discussing these enormous 'external' conditions that are directly attributable to this achievement is not telling the whole story.
Which is longer than you've worked on any of your software, if I'm not mistaken. That would, in some ways, make it the biggest barrier to entry. The software is good, but certainly not impossible for good people to replicate in a relatively brief time, so what really seems to differentiate you is the blog/rails/following - that is something that cannot easily be replicated.
In all fairness, some of this may be a by-product of the very close association between 37signals and Rails; for all its strengths, I feel the Rails community often exhibits some of the same characteristics.
e.g. saying "My problem with 37signals is..." instead of "I think many people's problem with 37signals is..."
The former gives you possession over your subject, the latter is both redundant in saying "I think" (you wrote it, of course it's what you think!) and uses "many people" as a crutch that requires the ability to read minds to verify. It isn't that it's an false thing to say, it's just empty of meaning, and should be omitted.