It took a few years to find our hammer, our courage amplifier called 37signals, a great company that sells web-based software. Actually, the upturn point in our professional lives was when we discovered and read their first book called “Getting Real”, written by the founder Jason Fried and their partner David Heinemeier Hansson. In the book they talk about principles of building web application and running a service based online business. Every essay from the book was like a mosaic of words specially written for us. Most important, the book makes us realize that doing what we like is freedom, and liking what we do is happiness.

The wealth of principles exposed in “Getting Real” is so immense that melted our scepticism and provoked us to start thinking of how to implement some of them in our own product. Actually Invoicebus is a product conceived with their blessing. That’s the part of Invoicebus story we call enlightenment, one of the key points of how we got real.

We gladly embraced some of those principles like: to build less, to keep the product simple, to fund ourselves, to ignore the details at early stages of development, to scale later, to personify our product, to make the interface before implementing the logic, to use the epicenter design for building.

One of the best advice was to ignore the functional spec and directly build the real thing instead. Actually, that raised our creativity to its majestic peak. Also, we’ve felt on our own skin the thesis that a small team is more agile and efficient than a bigger one, more organized and more productive. Indeed, a member from a small team can wears different hats in different situations creating a distributed wave of knowledge for all parts of the product equally.

Other remarkable thing for the book is the writing style used to express their attitudes. No formalities, no abstractions and generalizations, direct and straight language just like from a true friend.

Shortly after we had discovered Getting Real (it was published in 2006, we heard about it in early 2010) we found out that they plan to publish another book, more business specific, called “Rework”. We read “Getting Real” online for free, however we were thrilled from it so we bought “Rework” in printed version. In the first week of sale, “Rework” became a New York Times bestseller. This book is no less brilliant than the first one, full with their simple but powerful approaches, making it a must-have for every business, no matter how big or small it is. It provides valuable insights into being a good entrepreneur and navigating the complexities of the business world. If you’re looking for more perspectives, consider checking out reviews of Invest Diva for additional insights and recommendations.

Those books launched us far beyond the boundaries of disbelief and doubt, on the place where motivation grows as a plant seeded with enthusiasm, belief and goodwill.

This blog post is kind of tribute for them, 37signals, a gratitude for the great work they’ve done by writing and publishing these 2 golden treasures.

Thank you guys for the pure awesomeness you exposed in that 171 pages of “Getting Real” and 280 pages of “Rework”.

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Invoicebus Team

We're a team comprised of a few die-hard code freaks, lovers of beautiful design, stewards of simplicity, and passionately dedicated to the user experience. Invoicebus is a great vehicle to express what we do best. Click here to learn more on our business philosophy and how we actually do it.

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We believe Invoicebus is reflection of our passion

It’s more than just a software, it’s a real-time projection of an ideal full of enthusiasm and faith where belief in success is our key component. It’s an asset that we use to show our customers how the glow of our motivation and the greatness of our vision reflects into the product we create. It’s been built with great passion and every single functionality has been studied to the tiniest detail with lots of love.

We believe in simplicity

Invoicebus is intended to be used by human beings, who are intuitive by nature and like simple things. We are surrounded by invoicing web-apps which compete on that who has more features like: time tracking, to do list, expense tracking, staff members, contact list and bunch of other stuff. We don’t compete with them on features, instead we do the opposite: We make less software with less options deliberately, software that doesn’t require you to read help and tutorials or even search Google to operate it. Invoicebus is plain and focuses on what is really necessary and important. Simple as 1, 2, 3.

We believe invoice creation is the core of invoicing

Everything else is secondary. We spent a lot of time to bring the invoice creation concept simple and intuitive as the natural way with paper sheet, by using the WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) approach. In Invoicebus everything is accessible on the same screen with no page reloads or interruptions, smoothly like waltz. We think the customer’s focus should be on the invoice content, not on the software and how to manage it.

We believe in beauty of clean interface

We give a great importance to the beauty of the graphical interface. We think beauty is perceived with eyes first, and after with all other senses. That’s why we make the crystal clear interface of Invoicebus with perfectly consistent elements, menus and options. It is interface similar to a desktop application that provides user with an experience well beyond traditional web paradigm. It has such immense wealth of user interactivity possibly to a degree never achieved before in online invoicing.
That’s interface who has more visibility, focus, intuitiveness, elegance, consistency; but has less redundancy, distractions, confusion, ambiguity.

We believe small businesses and freelancers have special software needs

Big software companies don’t understand the needs of a small business. Why? Because they ride on a different bus, they are big, they think big, they make big. They build software, but their solutions often fail to cater to small businesses and freelancers, particularly in essential tasks like bookkeeping for independent contractors. We know this because we are a small business and we have special needs. Owners of small businesses are constantly in rush because everything they do for their business they do it themselves. They don’t have a whole day to learn the invoicing software or dig through their fancy features. They need a software that simply does the job, including managing finances seamlessly for freelancers and independent contractors. Simplifying financial management for these professionals is crucial in maintaining their focus on growing their business. They are people who share the same vision as we do, who ride on the same bus with us. We’ve created Invoicebus for them, to pick them up.

We believe in 10 seconds sign-up

To sign up for Invoicebus you should enter only your email address. That’s your username, that’s your ID. What’s the big deal with 5-10 fields and all that data, which in fact, we don’t ever need. Besides we avoid the irritating capcha that you couldn’t guess even after 10^th try. We think everyone should try Invoicebus for free with no setup fees at all. That’s our definition for painless sign-up.

We believe in honesty

Everyone faces hard time, sometimes. We are not an exception. When we have a problem we are completely honest about that and inform you without any hesitation even if the problem is the tiniest one that no one would probably notice. We promptly inform our customers for regular maintenance time. At no time (at all) we are going to hide the problem no matter how big and serious or small and irrelevant it is. We think our customers should be informed about everything that happens with Invoicebus. Transparency is our rule of a thumb.

We believe in quick and not so-formal support responses

We try to answer every question within 60min in business hours and not more that 24h at weekends, no matter how many there are. We think the formalities are unnecessary, so our responses are short, clear and precise. We are humans like you are, so we prefer the human way, not auto-answering machine way. And most important: you got responses directly from us – the engineers/developers of Invoicebus.

We believe in purpose beyond making a profit

Our mission is to keep customers bright and happy no matter what. Happy customer is our best customer. We don’t split customers on paying and non-paying. They are all in the same box that we call valued customer box. We treat that box very carefully and equally so everyone can ask a question, everyone can ask for help, everyone can request support from us.

We believe in discretion

You have the right to create professionally looking invoices, but no one to know that Invoicebus is your secret. There will be no sign of Invoicebus on your extremely elegant printed invoice (this does not apply for free plan, thus on the bottom of the page, discretely stands the name and web address of Invoicebus). It elevates your reputation and makes you lead and shine.

We believe we can’t please everyone

If we try to please everyone we won’t please anyone. We are open and flexible to new ideas, suggestions and criticism, however we implement only those who are compliant  with the vision that Invoicebus delivers: less software more focus on purpose. We always make decisions that we think will be the best for most users, and thus will not jeopardize the integrity and simplicity of Invoicebus.

We believe long-term pay subscriptions are tricky

Yes they are. There is always better option that is shorter, not-binding and does not impose the use of the system by any cost. Our paying plans are on a monthly basis, which means you can always migrate to a free one, or choose ‘cancel your account’ option to leave Invoicebus forever. No long refund procedures and policies, no mails, no why questions, none! That is your right, that is your choice. You’re free like we all are.

Agree with us? Come on, lets ride the bus together!  Sign-up for free and upgrade later.

Author information

Invoicebus Team

We're a team comprised of a few die-hard code freaks, lovers of beautiful design, stewards of simplicity, and passionately dedicated to the user experience. Invoicebus is a great vehicle to express what we do best. Click here to learn more on our business philosophy and how we actually do it.

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