Amazon founder and chief executive officer Jeff Bezos has invested in 37 Signals, a Chicago-based software-as-a-service company. The investment comes from Bezos Expeditions, a personal investment company of Jeff Bezos. The company has steadfastly refused venture capital investments, but I guess changes are in order.
Since we launched Basecamp we’ve been contacted by nearly 30 different VC firms. We’ve never been interested in the typical traditional VC deal. With a few exceptions, all the VCs could offer us was cash and connections. We’re fine on both of those fronts. We don’ t need their money to run the business and our little black book is full. We’re looking for something else. What we’ve been looking for is the wisdom of a very special entrepreneur who’s been through what we’re going through.
37Signals makes products such as the Ta-Da List, Basecamp, and BackPack.
11 comments so far
2:09 PM PT
Interesting move by Bezos. I am convinced he made a very good choice.
37Signals continues to produce simple, easy-to-use, clean software applications that avoid the web 2.0 hoopla and provide practical value.
My guess is they will soon be bought over by a larger software firm interesting in tapping in to new-age web apps with revenue-generating potential. This would provide Bezos with a great short term ROI.
He is a savvy man and I guarantee he expects this move to pay off big time.
2:11 PM PT
Maybe the Free Basecamp that was released a few weeks back. helped them recognize that in order to outrun open source they needed investment.
2:13 PM PT
I don’t know what to make of this. It still hasn’t registered. This has to be about expanding their reach. Does that mean new products or just help getting the 37s name out there through Bezos? Or both? I guess we’ll see.
2:52 PM PT
Is this concept ready? I used their Ta-Da List service often until one day my account simply disappeared, losing all my info & befuddling their tech support. Why should we trust this paradigm?
3:08 PM PT
I was under the impression that 37Signals has always been funded by Amazon under the table.
Am i just making this up?
8:08 PM PT
Hello?
I can’t believe nobody has made the S3 connection.
Amazon has this really hot and interesting storage service, and 37Signals is the leader in simple webapps.
Me thinks Bezos gets paid on both ends of this relationship.
PS. OT: Om, have you seen the ML report that says ESPN should shutdown their MVNO? Boy thats a big surprise.
5:10 AM PT
http://www.activecollab.com/ - free basecamp cloon
4:31 PM PT
I agree with Matt. My guesstimate is that they will be leveraging the S3 service sooner, rather than later. Not necessarily a bad thing though.
9:46 PM PT
This deal has nothing to do with S3 (anyone can use S3 anyway — that’s the point of S3).
9:29 PM PT
Jason, did not mean to imply that the deal was done because Bezos wants you to use S3, or even required it as part of the deal. That being said, it does make sense given the relationship for the topic of S3 to be discussed given your business and Amazon’s push into core web services.
6:05 AM PT
[…] GigaOM : » Jeff Bezos Invests in 37Signals “Amazon founder and chief executive officer Jeff Bezos has invested in 37 Signals, a Chicago-based software-as-a-service company. The investment comes from Bezos Expeditions, a personal investment company of Jeff Bezos. The company has steadfastly refused venture capital investments, but I guess changes are in order.” […]
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