Know Your Company was a big experiment from the start. A totally new kind of product for us, an entirely new kind of business model for us, etc. And now we're taking that to the next level with an entirely new strategy for us: Spinning it off into it's own autonomous company and letting it find its own direction.

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.