Rails Scales!

Doing Things That Don’t Scale

One central idea when building a startup—and really, any kind of technological company—is to establish a business that scales. This is what differentiates successful startups from regular tech businesses. While a regular business takes a specific fee to solve a specific problem (I’m thinking specifically of most consultancies), a startup builds a general solution that can be used again and again to generate income. Sometimes, a company may start consulting and end up building this solution. For example, a firm dedicated to building websites may end up using all that experience to create a tool so anyone can subscribe and make their own site. This was the case with 37signals, the creators of Rails and their flagship ...