Yesterday, I listened to the IT Conversations interview with Jason Fried from 37signals. I loved the energy with which Jason described how they developed Basecamp.

One specific bit that sticked out from the interview was Jason telling how they prioritized their work before the launch. A few weeks before go-live, they hadn't implemented billing. In other words, they didn't have the capability to actually charge their subscribers for the service. Well, it turns out that they didn't dive head-on to implementing PayPal integration or something like that. Instead, they put all their effort into the user experience.

The catch is that they had a 30-day trial period. That translates to 30 days of time after go-live to get the billing implemented. In other words, spending resources on the billing stuff before launch would've been waste. At that time, the most important thing was to make the application as pretty and usable as possible.

Try to picture yourself in the situation Jason and David were in. Would you have spent your remaining time before the launch on the user experience or the billing? I'm pretty sure I would've spent mine on the billing stuff. After listening to the interview, I realize that I would've likely picked the wrong horse.