[Case Study] Once's Writing Strategy

That is the last paragraph of Once.com ‘s landing page.

It sets the tone for the company and tells you what they’re about.

Once is a line of Saas Products by 37Signals. A software company created by Jason Fried, Carlos Segura, and Ernest Kim.

They have other products:

• Basecamp: Project management software, online collaboration

• HEY — A delightfully fresh take on email

• ONCE — Writebook

• ONCE — Campfire

But their landing page for Once is 1st class business writing. They use 1 technique in this landing page from German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel:

Thesis- Anthesis-Synthesis:

Let’s break it down.

The Thesis: What I believe

Most SaaS companies share what their product is about but Once takes a different approach.

Instead, they give their stance on the entire industry. This hook — something happened to business software— grabs your attention. You have to ask “what’s wrong”?

But the opening doesn’t tell you about the product, it gives a thesis instead. It creates an idea you can get behind rather than a product to buy. And by buying the product it’s a vote for a better SaaS world.

The metaphor of the landlord-tenant grounds the story into something everyone can relate to. Everyone understands what it’s like to have a bad landlord and Once compares it to the current Saas industry of monthly recurring subscription revenue.

From just the opening,

• It sets the stage

• What makes them different

• Makes you hate how SaaS is today.

Perfect way to make you want to read more.

Antithesis: But the world is the opposite

Here they describe the opposite of their vision—in this case, it’s the current world.

How the chain of subscription services benefits the landlords but not the tenants. You’ve never owned anything. They keep the landlord-tenant metaphor going which is key. Mixing metaphors confuses the reader.

Once they’ve described the antithesis, subscription services, they dive into their synthesis.

Synthesis: How we can do Better

This is the last section of the landing page.

And they do a great job with repetition of the word Once. They use it to set the stage but also describe their company. It’s called Once because you pay once and it’s referencing a time decades ago where you paid once for software and kept it for life.

Remember this is the bottom half of their landing page.

They bet their money that you’d read this far because of how well everything was written before. This is the only spot where you learn about their product. By this point, they’ve positioned their product as a new wave of SaaS products that you buy once.

By the end, you’re either bought into their idea of “Buy once” SaaS products or not.

How can I use this?

Following a simple structure of Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis works well if you’re introducing an idea most people don’t know or don’t agree with it.

Good for long-form writing like essays, legal documents, or email sequences.