Of course you don't owe anyone any of that info. However, if you crack the door open just a little bit, don't be offended/surprised etc. if my curiosity is piqued and I want to open it.
Of course you don't owe anyone any of that info. However, if you crack the door open just a little bit, don't be offended/surprised etc. if my curiosity is piqued and I want to open it.
As I mentioned in the original post, we wanted to hire Claire to run Know Your Company inside 37signals, but there was a fundamental conflict of interest: She had interviewed everyone at 37signals as part of a consulting project, and knew a lot of details about how everyone felt about the company. Everyone spoke to her in confidence as an outside consultant, not as a colleague. Bringing her into 37signals as an employee later would be a violation of that trust, so we weren't able to hire her.
You'd have to ask Claire how she plans on staffing the company, but initially it's just her with a little bit of our help during the transition. As far as I understand, soon she will be bringing someone on part time to help with product development until she's ready to make a full-time hire. Slow, steady, and prudent.
Hope that was helpful.
The product is in great hands now with Claire fully-focused on making it better as her full time job.
I'm standing by as an advisor and eager to help when called upon.
We also still own a sizable piece of the company so it's in our best interest to see it succeed.
And we're customers - we use Know Your Company every week.
Also, Claire was friend of friend of mine in college, and I'm very excited for her!
As the CEO of Know Your Company, I'll be running the business day-to-day. In the beginning, that will include everything from sales to customer support. I'll be bringing on a part-time programmer to do a bit of product development + maintenance until I'm ready to make a full-time hire. Overall, I'm not looking to build a huge team out-of-the-gate. I want to focus on talking with customers, listening to why KYC works for them, and learning how it could be better.
I'll be placing ClarityBox, the consulting practice, on hold to focus on running KYC and delivering the product. In the future though, I could potentially envision both a service and product offered together.
Let me know if you have any other questions – I'm happy to answer them.
I think it makes a lot of sense and is a smart move.
Gives an incentive to the person running it to "do their own thing" and by creating a separate entity they can also sell it more easily (if they want to). Or give an equity stake to Claire. And empower her to take chances she might not take if she is just "joining 37 signals" and is all distracted with general company goals.
More importantly it even creates a template to start other similar businesses and do the same. And not to get dragged into the day to day of each and every business or product line or decision.
"not to get dragged into the day to day of each and every business or product"; 37S has a successful history of getting into the day to day of every business and product, that's what they do exceptionally well. Why change that?