You’re reading Signal vs. Noise, a publication about the web by 37signals since 1999.

4 Profitable

www.asp.md

I’d be interested in seeing the combination of #2 and 4, personally.

Johnny Cupcakes

Zoho

MetaGeek – visualize your wireless landscape

http://www.metageek.net/

You could profile us (Intellum). We meet the criteria, use Basecamp to manage some pretty intense courseware projects with Fortune 500 clients, and used Rails to build our Learning Management System (for what that’s worth). Come to think of it, we hired our last developer off your job board too!

I’ve no idea what their revenue is but according to wikipedia Ellislab has never taken VC.

They created codeigniter and expression engine.

I’d certainly be interested to read about them.

www.propertysolutions.com

www.mutualmobile.com

i do not care about vc money, profitability or revenue as long as the case displays great visions and entrepeneurship!

Would you accept a media company? Because I’d like to nominate Talking Points Memo (TPM Media LLC ).

4) is profitable

Gelaskins?

www.queenbee-creations.com

Not a tech company—they make cool bags and other such things. They embraced “local” before it was the hot thing on the block, and continue to make everything locally, by hand, to order.

Great people, great products, great success story!

I nominate Five Guys Burger, as I recall, they took NO VC funding, it’s not sexy but let’s just say they did pretty well and recession friendly, they started with fewer people than 37Signals :D

One Mighty Roar

Threadless

feedly.com

37signals?

I think you guys should profile a company like my friends company called ESSO Watches. They are a negative ion watch and they are really cool. Its so weird how they make you balance so much better you guys should check them out. They have been growing like crazy and are getting big on Facebook. He is also probably going to be on that show Shark Tank so he might be finding some really big investors soon.

@Ashit Vora—Threadless took VC.

Wegman’s Grocery store (www.wegmans.com).

I’d actually really love to hear you profile a company that WAS a service company but satisfied the criteria of #2, 3, and 4.

That said, I don’t know if these guys satisfy all the criteria, but if they do: The guys behind Evernote (evernote.com) Stark Reality Restaurants (starkrestaurants.com) Rickshaw Bags (rickshawbags.com) The Envato Network (envato.com) Urban Daddy

I’d like to see a company that makes a physical product. ;) A little harder to bootstrap.

2 & 4 for sure!

Bungie Software Valve Corporation

2,3 and 4. www.elstr.com. Though it’s not a real product but a web framework to build fast and flexible business portal solutions.

I would like to see a debt free company profiled that has no intention of selling out or being crazy popular, but at the same time is really good at what they do.

StreamSend (streamsend.com)

http://www.colorcraft-va.com/

ColorCraft are printers and have been around for a long time. Our Cub Scout pack visited there last year and they have a pretty neat operation.

Although printing is a fading industry they are doing some pretty neat stuff.

From out tour I found out that they are privately held, I do not however know if they ever took funding.

Maybe an odd answer, but Mojang Specifications (creator of the indie game hit Minecraft). What’s interesting is that one developer built a loyal following while keeping his day job, only quitting once profits were ramping up.

He’s now making over $1 million a month (from what I can tell) on a game that’s not even in beta yet.

Envato fits perfectly with the bootstrapped, profitable and proud profile. Great guys too, super helpful.

Balsamiq fits the criteria: sells a product, no funding, had $1M in revenue last year, is profitable.

I would say zoho

Threadless would be cool.

I am not sure if everyone is understanding the question. Matt is not asking what the requirements should be, he is asking for a specific company and what the requirements are for nomination.

However, after initially skimming the post, I thought that was the question as well. So, I don’t think “2 and 4” are what he is looking for as an answer.

I would like to recommend UGAL (www.ugal.com</ a>). I am a web designer here in Portland and have worked with them on a number of projects. Their application is amazing and now my clients believe I am a genius. Superb support (handled by the founder of the company) and the cool thing about them is that while they are small (4-5 people I believe), they have offices in the US and in France.

@Ashit Vora:

I didn’t know feedly.com was selling a product.

Rivendell: www.rivbike.com

OkCupid.com !!

They have been kicking butt lately.

Goldstar.com has 1.2 million members, 40+ employees and was bootstrapped 8 years ago as a side project by three founders. We’re still 100% founder, family and employee owned. We make it easy for people to go out more by providing fun ideas, half-price tickets, member reviews and everything you need for great nights out.

iFixit hits all four. We bootstrapped ourselves from a dorm room with no outside capital, and we’re now the largest Apple parts company. We made the Inc 5000 list the last two years.

Our goal is to teach everyone how to fix all their own stuff. We are happily profitable giving away our repair manuals and selling the parts and tools people need to fix things.

FlightAware(.com)

Sorry for the selfish request, but growing companies have to try, right? I regularly crash weddings too…good food. AmeriCommerce, we are often talking about how we use Basecamp to enhance our product and customers. We’re self-funded/profitable and community driven and model a lot of our openness around 37signals ideas. We are over the revenue requirements and have even been desiring/hoping to work with 37signals to integrate Basecamp and Highrise right into our solution one day. If we could team up, it would fill a needed gap for growing ecommerce companies. Oh, you mentioned you may want to branch out writing on just software companies so don’t worry, we’re not a software company…umm…we are an idea company…ya, that sounds good, we’ll go with that. Thanks for everything 37!

Fog Creek Software

frontgatetickets.com

Dogster.com

SleepTracker A friend’s company. While the product works great, the amazing part of the story is how the founder runs the business.

TicketZoom

Niner Bikes

JLab Audio

J&T Coins

Eeboo

Fuel Belt

Faryl Robin

www.Shipito.com meets all your criteria! Kind of

Chicagoan Sean Harper and TSS Radio. #94 on the Inc 500. http://www.tss-radio.com/

MetaFilter?

In 1976 computers filled rooms the size of small houses, and programs and data were stored on punch cards. Base SAS , consisting of about 300,000 lines of code, produced about 150 boxes of cards – a stack more than 40 feet high. Laid end to end, the boxes of cards would stretch more than 180 feet.

SAS . From $138,000 revenue in 1976 to $2.1 billion in 2009, SAS remained privately held and profitable. Their story could be a good study of what lies ahead for 37signals’ next 30+ years.

As an aside, I found this tidbit from their history interesting:

In 1976 computers filled rooms the size of small houses, and programs and data were stored on punch cards. Base SAS , consisting of about 300,000 lines of code, produced about 150 boxes of cards – a stack more than 40 feet high. Laid end to end, the boxes of cards would stretch more than 180 feet.

http://www.sas.com/company/about/history.html

([Something might be wrong with the Posting of comments here. I think blocks enclosed in quotes get posted while the rest of a post does not get posted. Please ignore the previous post.])

To clarify, I’m not talking about the airline nor software as a service. By SAS I mean: http://www.sas.com/company/about/history.html

My girlfriend is obsessed with ModCloth, an online store selling retro indie and vintage cloths and buys stuff at least once a month:

Founded by high school sweethearts, Eric Koger and Susan Gregg Koger, and built on a foundation of love for vintage and retro clothing, ModCloth.com is an online clothing, accessories, and decor retailer that aims to provide a fun and engaging shopping atmosphere for you, our customer.

She talks about them all the time so I could love to see a profile of these guys and why they’re so successful.

Palo Alto Software’s founder has mentioned bootstrapping his company. He took it from his garage to a world wide software company.

Survey Analytics – http://www.surveyanalytics.com/

I heard their story the other day and it was compelling and I can personally guarantee profanity.

Doesn’t look like they took VC funding but I’ll throw down for FreeAgent (www.freeagentcentral.com). They’re an awesome group doing a lot of things right, including great customer support and integrating with Basecamp ;)

Saved me hours of time and thousands in profitability.

Another suggestion, outside of tech and one for the Canadians:

Kicking Horse Coffee (www.kickinghorsecoffee.com)

1) Sells excellent fair trade and organic coffee to the largest grocery stores in Canada and the US, plus distributes internationally. 2) Started in a garage with the owners (a husband and wife team), who are still the essence of the exec team. Not sure about VC funding. 3) Sell about $10 million annually around the world. 4) Is, no doubt, very profitable.

Plus) Great logo, ethics and website

Smugmug. They’re pretty open with their customers, but I’d love to read an interview with them.

5) employs less than N amount of people on a long term (N < 50, long term > 5 years?) 6) not looking to sell the business (how would this be measured?)

ALthough I understand why there is $1 million requirement, it is heavily discriminating against companies located in the post-communist countries in the Central Europe. I think, if you drop the requirement, there are many interesting companies to be found there.

www.ourkidsasd.com – They make and sell nutritional supplements to help children with Autism.

Copyblogger LLC

Planning Center Online is a good one: http://www.planningcenteronline.com/

AMERICAN MUSCLE americanmuscle.com

The three founder team started a computer parts business while some of them were still in high school, then expanded into the Ford Mustang aftermarket and exploded. Featured by Fortune as one of the fastest growing companies. Meet all requirements.

Sells actual automotive products (just moved to a bigger warehouse). No VCs. Way beyond 1 million—maybe more than any company you featured and certainly profitable (fuels growth). Would be a nice branch out of the tech field but still relevant since they did make a name for themselves using a virtual storefront. Also some interesting tales about there battle over their original name and how international production played a role.

I have one founders email address/number if you are interested.

http://www.divinparadis.com/

www.ecorebates.com (who sells private label SaaS apps and data services to major retailers and brands like www.sears.com/energystar and www.whirlpool.com/cashforappliances) to help increase sales of energy efficient products for consumers.

No outside $$, 100% bootstrapped, cash flow positive, and having an impact on our nation’s energy consumption. (Full disclosure – I’m the founder)

Craigslist

www.mutualmobile.com

Hey Matt – We’d love to be on the blog… You know us! We provide OnSIP, a hosted VoIP service for small businesses.

We meet all the requirements you listed. Our biz profile is similar to 37Signals – bootstrapped, employees scattered about with a main office, building a platform on open source, supporting developer API ’s, and we don’t believe in employee signing contracts either :)

But, we have some unique aspects as well. We are possibly the only business VoIP services that also provide developer API ’s, exposing all OnSIP functions in webservices. We provide a free SIP -proxy to customers, and we support all SIP -standard phones. And, as a critical business service provider, our uptime needs to be extremely high… We’re up against traditional phone service AND other VoIP services… Please shoot me an email if you’re interested. nicole (AT) junctionnetworks (DOT) com. Thanks!

CustomInk www.customink.com

The CustomInk story began in 1999 when three former college classmates got the bug to start a business about a year after graduating….[http://www.customink.com/our_story/#loc-f]

medforcetech.com

We sell document imaging and workflow (bpm) solutions to businesses around the country. Currently most of our customers are medical providers that have a lot of paper and business processes like any business. Going paperless and managing their process makes them more efficient. We offer our software both SaaS and installed. We have been around since 2002 and are bootstrapped, profitable and proud.

You should profile smartbear. While he’s since sold the company, Jason Cohen bootstrapped and iterated to find the need for, and the best solution for, software peer review. He’s also one of the smartest entrepreneur advisors out there, and can speak thoughtfully about having acheived Bootstrapped, Profitable & Proud to embarking on his next adventure

I second the nomination for Jason Cohen.

Hi,

Why exclude consulting companies? I am bootstrapping a startup. Our product is funded by consulting—just like 37 signals was before products starting bringing in revenue.

I can’t really think of another way to bootstrap a company except by consulting while building up the product.

Am I missing something?

Ron

Patagonia

5.) A company that is in a “boring” niche and profitable

never took VC

Ron,

One reason for excluding consulting companies might be that revenue is one of the criteria and revenue as a measure of consulting profitability is different than that for product profitability. Consulting services are often per person or per hour. You can reach a $1 million revenue mark by having 10 people who bring in $100,000 each while getting paid $90,000 each. Not much profit margin. Sure, you could do the same with product: sell a lot of products at no margin. But somehow the approach to profitability just is different between products and services.

I’m just guessing though.

Consulting while building a product is the most common way to reach product profitability. In fact many of those companies profiled did just that. The difference though that they are profiled after reaching profitability on their products and profiled based on their product revenue, not their consulting revenue.

I recommend that you research Ron Morris of TAEradio.com. As far as I know he does not have any current companies that fit your requirements but he has had some in the past. Beyond that he should help in pointing you in the direction to find someone in his network to profile.

Josh Bulloc Kansas City, MO How can I help?

http://www.ustwo.co.uk

I’m going to suggest something that is quite a bit different from most if not all other replies: Line Ski’s.

While I have no idea what their revenue is, they might fit the requirement. They were started by Jason Levinthal as a parttime university project, and he ended up producing the world’s first twin-tip ski’s. While not the first to market them (Salomon was), he did build his company from residing in his garage to having their ski’s made in the K2 factories (if I’m not mistaken). They’re still pretty damn small, and are great guys. The couple times I requested support to find a product in Europe I was always helped in a friendly manner. Should check them out, there’s a couple videos of them speaking I’m sure, they probably have an interesting story to tell.

I work for Timeshare Relief and we are huge advocates of your philosophy and use your products. People pay us to help them get rid of their timeshares. Crazy sounding I know, but there really isn’t a good way to get rid of them outside of the service we provide.

No VC ever, and the owners started the company in their living room.

Sparkfun?

EliteFTS

On one hand, they sell high-end exercise equipment.

On the other hand, their website is an unparalleled source of the best information for strength training. For anyone trying to get stronger, for any sport or purpose, this site is a goto destination. Its filled to the brim with free articles from some of the top trainers and nutritionists, and many of the strongest men and women to put themselves under the bar. On top of all that, they have a Q&A section, where you can ask questions and get advice from those same people, and logs where you can keep track of their progress in the gym.

They also give small business advice, with a specialization towards people who want to open their own gym.

1) Yep, we sell helpdesk software 2) Indeed 3) And then some 4) Certainly is, have been since inception

jamie.edwards youknowthesymbol kayako.com

PS: Love the series.

We’ve worked with http://www.mediaburst.co.uk for years now, I’m not sure how much they turnover but I know they do well and have never taken VC funding. You should check em out.

I’ll second Rob Q’s vote for mediaburst.co.uk. They’ve worked hard to make mobile marketing products that are very simple to use.

I’d go for mediaburst.co.uk. Speaking as a luddite, they’ve made products that even I can understand and seem to be developing new stuff all the time.

At the risk of sounding like an echo, mediaburst (mediaburst.co.uk) would make for a good profile: they have a small team, good products and loyal customers.

Emprivo

Wistia

You wouldnt think an envelope company would be thriving today, but we are.

On the web for 10 years, niche product, profitable and growing.

www.hudl.com – startup, but profitable this year, 1m+ rev, no VC, only Angels, if that counts. Their founders were featured in Fortune 30 under 30.

Definitely Johnny Cupcakes.

Printfection.com – not a dime of VC, profitable, > $1m, started while the founders were in college.

No-hassle promotional merchandise (t-shirts, coffee mugs, etc). Very unique web-based giveaway system to reward your customers without the hassle of old-school screen printers.

I’m the Founder & we’re a loyal 37signals customer!