Email to DHH from Rebbeca
Created: June 22, 2023 writer: Rebbeca
Title: CloudOps startup MegaEase seeks potential tie-up with 37Signals
From： renjingxi@pingwest.com
To：dhh@hey.com
CC：atom.x@megaease.com
Time：2023.6.23 (Friday) 9:55am
Dear David,
I hope this email finds you well. I’m Jingxi Ren, an English reporter from PingWest, a leading Chinese tech media outlet.
I am writing to you to explore the possibility of a collaboration between MegaEase, a startup focused on lowering cloud expenses and providing cost-effective CloudOps services to SMEs, and 37Signals.
There is a heartbreaking story behind my bold move: Hao Chen, founder of MegaEase, wrote you an email back in February sharing some thoughts on how to cut cloud expenses and on your article “Why we are leaving the cloud”. When he heard back from you, he immediately shared the screenshot of the email as well as his excitement with me. (I’ve attached the screenshot)
I did a story on his company earlier this year. During our talks, he spoke highly of you and looked up to you as a role model in many ways. He drew inspiration from your entrepreneurial journey and admired the transparent, healthy work environment you had created for your employees.
To say he was building a 37Signals-like company in China wouldn’t be an exaggeration: he focuses on a few core areas where MegaEase excels, hires top engineers, values his employees, is always cautious about expansion, and creates a transparent and healthy work environment.
Sadly, Hao passed away from a sudden heart attack in May at the age of 47. Like what you have been doing, Hao inspired many young programmers in China through his tech blog CoolShell (https://coolshell.cn/haoel), as well as his Twitter.
Although the company’s business in China is growing steadily, Hao’s passing has put overseas expansion plans on hold as all overseas marketing efforts had been on his shoulders. Therefore, his colleague Atom reached out to me to see if we could help MegaEase with overseas marketing and we thought it might be great to seek a partnership with 37Signals because Hao really admired you and your philosophy of running the company.
Our proposal may sound unconventional and a little bit crazy, but we thought we should give it a shot. At least we should do something for Hao, exploring a partnership with you and 37Signals is something he had been looking forward to while he was with us. We believe MegaEase could provide a strong complementary service to MRSK and wonder if this might be of interest to you.
I’ve also listed some background info about Hao and his company below:
Hao’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/haoel?lang=en
Hao’s tech blog: https://coolshell.cn/haoel
My story about Hao’s startup MegaEase: https://en.pingwest.com/a/11384
MegaEase’s website: https://megaease.com/
MegaEase on GitHub: https://github.com/orgs/megaease/repositories)
Looking forward to hearing from you.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
Sincerely,
Rebbeca
Attachment: Hao Chen-DHH-email.jpg, 555.31k