Not Another Post About Reality TV

Mena has a great post up on Mena's Corner today, talking about the good aspects of being a (relatively) big company. It's funny, because in the grand scheme of things, Six Apart is such a small company. Particularly when you realize that we have 3 proper products, and physical presence in 3 different continents—then a company with less than 100 people doesn't seem quite as big.

Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson from 37 Signals have both responded to Mena's post on their own weblogs (this is the beauty of blogs, people, in action!). From their responses, I wonder whether they took Mena's post as criticism of being small—I certainly didn't read it that way, and not only because I'm biased, but because it was one of the most reasoned, non-defensive posts Mena's ever written, in my opinion. [1]

What Mena, Jason, and David seem to agree on—even if it's the one thing that they all may think they don't agree on—is that different companies need different sizes to succeed in the markets in which they're doing business.

Believe me, both Mena and I really, really understand the appeal of being small—for sheer productivity, nothing compares to the month (1 fucking month!) in which we developed the first Movable Type release. But we never would have been able to produce three product releases in one 2-week period as a 2-person team! And we never would have been able to create a Japanese version of Movable Type 3.2 in only a couple of weeks, either.

So that is one of the key benefits of growing (again, relatively) big—being able to expand your goals & your ambitions to multiple products, around the world.

[1] Last night, I was reading in bed while Mena was writing this post, and I just kept hearing her typing and typing. And I thought, oh shit, it's another 10,000-word Kottke response. But all bias aside, I thought her post was incredibly succinct, and really made me remember how much I love this company & the things we've accomplished.