The New Backpack's First 24 Hours

The New Backpack's First 24 Hours Jason F. Feb 20 2008

30 comments Latest by Jed Christiansen

Yesterday’s big Backpack update was a huge success. It was the best day in Backpack’s history — even better than the last big update in July ‘07 and add anywhere in Oct ‘07.

We usually don’t share numbers, but we thought we’d break tradition and give people a peek into Backpack’s signups, upgrades, and financial performance yesterday.

317 Upgrades

Yesterday 317 people upgraded their Backpack accounts. This includes free → paying upgrades and paying → paying upgrades. Here’s how they broke out:

2 Max ($149/month)
1 Premium ($99/month)
12 Plus ($49/month)
54 Basic ($24/month)
111 Home ($12/month)
137 Solo ($7/month)

61 New Pay Signups

Yesterday 61 people signed up for new paying plans. This means they selected a pay plan on the signup page. Here’s how it broke out:

1 Max ($149/month)
1 Premium ($99/month)
13 Plus ($49/month)
26 Basic ($24/month)
11 Home ($12/month)
9 Solo ($7/month)

We had about 200 new free signups as well, so about 30% of all signups yesterday were pay signups.

$4,131 New Net

Upgrades + pay signups – downgrades – cancellations = $4131 new net revenue for yesterday. On an annualized basis that’s about $50,000/year. We’re very happy with that number.

Thanks to all our paying customers for putting your trust in us. We hope you continue to find the new Backpack useful and valuable. We’re already finding it invaluable in keeping our own company organized (and, man, do we need it).

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Over 1 million people use 37signals' simple web-based software to collaborate on projects, track contacts, and organize their business with an intranet.

30 comments so far

Kevin Milden 20 Feb 08

I am one of the 317. You guys added a lot of features officially that we were sharing one backpack login to pull off. Thanks for doing that.

allan branch 20 Feb 08

Jason thanks for sharing these numbers. Very cool, congrats on the success.

Ben Nevile 20 Feb 08

Congratulations! we heart Backpack.

Rick Reich 20 Feb 08

Brilliant success from a brilliant product – congrats!

Jeff Mackey 20 Feb 08

Interesting insight. Thanks for sharing! And congrats on a successful launch/update! The new features are definitely sweet.

Scott Wintheiser 20 Feb 08

Without disclosing too much financial information, I’d love to know how 317 compares with your overall backpack membership. How many active members choose to stay where they were?

Also, we upgraded to the plus plan and we’re very happy so far. Great job!

Anonymous Coward 20 Feb 08

How did you decide upon the different plans? Or more directly, why 6?

Scott 20 Feb 08

When you do a big upgrade like this, do you have a target net increase in mind that you need/want to hit in order to justify (financially) all of the time you spent on the upgrades?

I guess what I’m asking is, how much of a “budget” for the upgrade costs do you create or think about ahead of time?

JF 20 Feb 08

We don’t have a target in mind or a budget. We believe in the product and believe in the changes and believe the work we put into it will pay off. We’ve seen this approach work for every release and every product so far.

We usually don’t work on any one release for more than a few months so we have a good feeling for how much time/money we’re investing. Plus we usually just have one person on a release for 90% of the work/time. Then we all join in to finish the last 10% or so.

If we were working on things for 2 years, and had 5 people working on it full time, we may have to approach our work differently.

Terry Sutton 20 Feb 08

I don’t know why, but releasing this kind of info increases my general trust level. Just an observation.

Awesome, just enough cash to pay half of Mr. Bucks salary! j/k.

Erik 20 Feb 08

Definately agree with Terry. Good job!

Tim 20 Feb 08

Thanks Jason for the information! You went into much more details that one could find on any company. Which is very interesting because I always wonder how well companies are doing and how much they actually make with their products.

In the case of 37signals in particular, it feels like you are doing great and since you’re a small team (aren’t you like 8 or 9?), I end up pretty fast trying to figure out how much each of you end up making…

Anyway, congratulations!

Stacy 20 Feb 08

You guys are definitely THE industry leader in web apps, hands down. Releasing real-time details like this is stunning to say the least. And I’m so grateful you did as it helps me think through my own web app. Thanks and Congrats!!!

ron 20 Feb 08

@Stacy

”....You guys are definitely THE industry leader” = 317 Upgrades + 61 New Pay Signups???

maybe if 37S where based in Monaco (Population = 30,000:)

Arlo 20 Feb 08

I’m glad you’re raking it in and making BP more like Basecamp, but where’s the iphone version?

Jeff Ward 20 Feb 08

Thanks. Very inspiring.

Ivan 20 Feb 08

What are the numbers of other products, ex. Basecamp?

Adam 20 Feb 08

Always cool to see this type of information. Congrats on your success.

Geoff 20 Feb 08

Thanks for breaking tradition. Many in this audience appreciate you connecting the dots between product and revenue.

And thanks for the upgrades as well.

alan 20 Feb 08

jason and co.

we’ve been reading your blog – and obviously Getting Real – for the past couple of years, and we’re big fans of all your apps, but more so the head-space you guys inhabit. the ethos of simplicity, of less, all those inspirational details you so readily share has inspired not just us but many more out there. we return here quite often to find these little bits of inspiration (even between the Air and Kindle ‘product placements’.. ;)

nothing that i’ve read here in all that time has inspired me as much as this post. not because it’s about money and figures – although it is – but about what’s possible if you put your mind to it, and stick with what you believe in.

thanks for sharing this aspect, and in particular thanks for doing what no-one else usually does.

@Ron – leadership is about inspiration and getting others to follow you because they feel it. Size is only one of many components, not THE component (as she said lol).

Dante 20 Feb 08

A couple more product upgrades, and you can trade up to the Audi R8 with the V12 diesel!

Josh Walsh 20 Feb 08

Ok… so what’s Bezos’ cut?

;-)

Jean-Pierre 20 Feb 08

Jason,

What a vision ! Again ! I use backpack since years for private stuff (few pages). I also use Max Basecamp and Highrise Plus. But your statement of intranets made the click. We have a wikipedia thing installed on our server to handle procedures since years (people hardly use it). When I introduced this morning to my staff we would move everything to Backpack the answer was “much easier” !

BTW your numbers of sales today could be much higher. I signed up yesterday for the free account and already moved today to Plus.

Thank you to you and your team, really !

Scott Brooks 20 Feb 08

Simple elegance. Great Job guys. I have just cracked open my new account and we are up and running here at CS using it. cheers Scott

Amy 20 Feb 08

All the new features are neat, but the thing I’m most excited about is being grandfathered in with my current plan (the $5 one). I picked it because it was all I needed, not all I could afford. Thanks for not insisting I need more.

Anonymous Coward 21 Feb 08

What about cancelations.. There must be at least 1!

Ric Mazereeuw 21 Feb 08

Given how good you guys are at keeping things simple, I’m curious: What sort of formulas do you use to track retention rate, lifetime value, upgrade conversion, etc.

I’m not looking for actual numbers, but just your methodology…

Jed Christiansen 25 Feb 08

With all this talk on numbers, you got me thinking about how 37signals does financially. I put together an analysis and Excel spreadsheet where anyone can put in their own assumptions. You can find it here:

http://blog.jedchristiansen.com/2008/02/25/37signals-is-one-hell-of-a-profitable-business/

I thought some people here might be interested in it, and how it could apply to their own projects.

This is Signal vs. Noise, a weblog by 37signals about design, business, experience, simplicity, the web, culture, and more. Established 1999 in Chicago. Follow us on Twitter for more information on our products.

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