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Awhile ago I did a piece called ‘Web 3.0 in Production‘ which primarily discussed Phil Wainwright’s idea of Web 3.0 as additional layer on top of existing web services. Although I do not like the versioning the idea behind what Phil explained was very good. Obviously it is not a new idea but its basically building services upon services.

Basically the idea is using an API and aggregation to create new applications or interfaces built on top of existing web services. While surfing last week looking into this further I stumbled across Project Detail. Project Detail has built a business on top of 37Signal’s very popular Basecamp product. They have the mentality of, “If you can’t beat them, join them.” This is an excellent idea because 37S is a small shop and are building Basecamp to do one thing and one thing well. ProjectDetail is just extending this application to do specific functionality that provides to a specific audience.

After perusing their site and blog I decided to contact them as I was interested in their company and ideas. Chris Busse from ProjectDetail got back to me and so I put together an interview so we could get to know them better. He also showed me the demo of their support ticket add-on for Basecamp. Check it out here.

Screenshot:

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Q&A

1. How did you start your company & what was the initial idea that led
to where you are today?

I needed a time tracking tool for my consulting practice, so in late 2004
I started working on creating an online project management system with a
strong focus on time tracking. At the time I had looked at Basecamp but
it didn’t have a time tracking feature and I saw that as being what put
the “professional” in professional project management system, especially
for small teams looking to minimize the number of tools they rely on.

I work with a group of a half-dozen consultants specializing in CRM
systems for membership associations and we were finding that a lot of time
was slipping through the cracks that should have been getting billed to
clients — especially when it came to ad-hoc support issues that came up
throughout the day. I was creating a tool for us to use internally and
make available to others as a product.

Things got pretty crazy with another business venture and I had to put it
on the back burner after it was about 75% complete in spring of 2005.
When I had the chance to pick back up on it, Basecamp had the time
tracking feature that I needed originally so my enthusiasm for my own
system was somewhat diminished. The look on my business partner’s face
when I told him we were going to use Basecamp instead of what I’d been
talking about non-stop a few months before was priceless.

2. Was the company solely started to integrate with Basecamp?

Ironically, Project Detail Systems started out to compete with Basecamp.
Now that the API is available, Project Detail is focusing solely on
Basecamp add-on development. There are still a number of ideas from the
design of my original system that we’re going to be bringing out in the
form of add-ons for Basecamp.

3. How stoked were you when 37S announce the API?

Extremely. When I saw the first teaser and Ruby on Rails example in their
blog several months ago I was excited but a bit apprehensive and bought a
RoR book, figuring I’d need to know that to work with the API. I consider
myself to be pretty much “platform agnostic” – to the user, it shouldn’t
matter what language a hosted web application is written in as long as the
presentation is correct and it works. When it came out as XML over HTTP I
was ecstatic though because I could reuse 10 years worth of VB and ASP
code.

That being said, I still plan to learn RoR and may consider transitioning
to that platform, but I’ve always been wary of anything that does
automatic code generation.

4. How soon did you begin work in preparation for its release?

I guess you could say that I had mentally prepared long before its
release, having immersed myself in the issues involved in developing
hosted project management software. I was also lucky to already have a
database and web server ready to go in a hosting facility, and the company
already formed beforehand.

The API was announced on March 25th, and I posted the first public demo of
the Support Tickets Add-on we’re working on to the Basecamp forum on April
6th.

5. What’s your company structure - ie: number of developers/designers/ etc

Project Detail Systems is a company that I own, but I work with a pretty
tight group of other consultants that I mentioned before and am a partner
in two of their companies. So basically that makes this “my baby” but I’m
getting a lot of support from them. Right now this is mostly in the form
of business and process analysis and turning our clients into testers but
later it will lead to more full-time involvement.

Once the cash flow picks up the first think I’d like to do is bring a real
designer into the picture. My patience with hand-coding CSS only goes so
far.

6. Is this full-time? Is it a side-job until it grows?

In 2001 when I was downsized from the “dot com builder” company that I
worked for during the Internet bubble I decided I wasn’t going to go back
to a 9-5 job, even if they did have an arcade and keggerators and tempt me
with big stock options again.

I’ve worked with various consulting partnerships since then which gives me
the luxury of working on this as if it were any other client project. So,
part-time, but still part of my day job (and a lot of after-hours, being
in “startup mode” and all that).

7. Do you see yourself as a Web 2.0 / 3.0 company? (i hate the terminology)

I hate the terminology too. I guess by the definition (or my
interpretation) of Web 3.0 I’ve seen around here — online software built
entirely on another web service’s API — we’d be Web 3.0, but you’ll never
see me use that term (or Web 2.0) on my site. That’s all marketing-speak
though. Here’s my programmer’s take on it:

Back in the day you had client-server systems. If you wanted to build a
product onto that you got yourself an ODBC driver and wrote calls to the
database layer. If you were lucky the system you were working with might
have its own API to enforce the business rules. Flash forward to Web 2.0
and the database isn’t yours anymore; you’re paying a monthly fee to use a
hosted solution like Basecamp.

Now they offer an API and you know what? There’s your ODBC driver.
Basecamp is your database layer. You’ve got your way in and can build
something onto it just as you would have if it were on your own server.
Well, at least to the extent that the API will allow you to (I really hope
they add time tracking to the API!)

8. Instead of Web 2.0, I like to use ‘Software as a Service’. That being
the case what do you think the future of that industry is?

Yes, that is a much better term. I think the future is very bright for
the SaaS model, especially in the areas of professional applications where
the ROI calculation is literally this simple: “If I pay $25/month for this
and can track my projects easier while communicating better with the
client and also capture 4 hours a month in support phone calls in the time
tracker that might have gone unbilled, then it more than pays for itself.”

The biggest hurdle I see is gaining the user’s trust with regard to
storing sensitive data. Right now we have to trust these SaaS vendors
(Project Detail included!) not to misuse or mishandle the data we’re
storing in their systems — but who’s to say what’s really going on behind
the scenes? Time builds trust, so I’m optimistic that it will all work
out.

9. Along the same lines your company provides a unique service by adding
value to existing services. What would you categorize yourself like? And
do you envision companies like yourself to be a solid growth area?

Absolutely it is a growth area. If businesses move to SaaS for their
applications, then the same need to build onto them exists as when
businesses used in-house client/server or n-tier apps. The fact that
every business is different and no one solution is going to cover all
their needs still hasn’t changed.

Take a look at Crystal Reports – there’s a product that was built entirely
to display and report on data from other systems. I can’t wait for the
day when the Web 2.0 business apps have mature enough APIs (and
standardized data) that there can be a Crystal Reports equivalent to work
with them.

10. What’s the future hold for your team? Are you planning any other
value-added integration services?

We’re actually planning on something pretty big. Something that should be
able to be used by almost every user of Basecamp and will fill in what we
see as a pretty big gap in the system with an ROI that will be obvious and
immediate. While we’re working on that we’ll also be releasing additional
specialized add-ons.

Right now there are no plans for Project Detail Systems to release any
products that are not built on Basecamp, but you never know…

11. Aside from basecamp, what are your team’s favorite web services?

Between Project Detail Systems and our consulting practice we use
Webmail.us, Google Analytics, CampaignMonitor.com, Typepad, Feedburner,
QuickBooks Online (though I wouldn’t really call that a “favorite”), and
GotVMail.com 800-number service forwarded to Vonage lines at our home
offices. The last two are of course phone services but they have useful
web based control panels.

With all that, we can run our business from anywhere with a high speed
internet connection. If we want to rent a beach house for a month we can
just take our Vonage routers with us and our clients will be none the
wiser.

I have been forwarding my email to GMail for about two months now to
experiment with applying the labeling to my workflow, and that’s going
pretty well.

Also, personally I think making photo books from Flickr using Qoop to be
about the coolest thing since sliced bread.

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If you are interested in learning more about Project Detail Systems, visit their website or their blog. And I’m sure you could contact Chris and he’d give you a quick response.

Project Detail Basecamp support ticket add-on

Project Detail Systems: Crafting Add-ons for Basecamp

tags: web 2.0, web development, internet, business, web

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