An Open Letter to Peldi Guilizzoni of Balsamiq | Hacker News Reader

An Open Letter to Peldi Guilizzoni of Balsamiq

blog.quipol.com

191 pointsmyoder72 comments

I admit that I'm relieved that this open letter was not another public bashing. I love stories like this and, most importantly, I really love balsamiq. I didn't know anything about its creator/founder, but I'm glad he's as upstanding as the product he produces.

Peldi has been a long time HN user(balsamiq). Most at HN (including me) have nothing but great things to say about him and his company.

He sure is! Thank you for taking the time to read the story!

Peldi is a class act.

What's admirable here is not that he provided a free $79 license (that's relatively easy). What's admirable is that he responded personally, and irrationally selflessly.

Knowing Peldi, I know exactly why he does such things. In every software entrepreneur, he sees a peer and the potential for someone to build something great.

:) He has a long-term vision, which is a trait that you don't see a ton of in a quarter-by-quarter society. I think that's changing, though.

I met Peldi a couple of years ago at SXSW and was impressed by his humility. He's personally answered all of the emails I've sent him. Usually really quickly. When I first me him, I was an Omnigraffle user and had paid for Michael Angeles (Konigi)'s UX templates for Omnigraffle.

Peldi hired Mike as the UX Director for Balsamiq. At that point, I knew I should make the switch.

When I heard they were building myBalsamiq, a collaborative tool for wireframes, they solved the problem of versioning wireframes and centralizing the repository. This is a team truly committed to building an opinionated wireframing product. Yes you have to make trade-offs. But you'll build better products. It's worth it.

It's one of very few products I bring up in conversation. Balsamiq is a company of which I'm proud to be a customer. Balsamiq, for everything your team has done, and everything you will do for the UX community and software development, I thank you.

Well said. The whole team has been pure class every time I've digitally interacted with them. That's not an easy feat considering that everyone has bad days.

About a year ago my wife and I were working on a project together and we had a complete miscommunication about some feature that I was supposed to build. At the time I was doing all of our UI design, so I was the only one who had a copy of Balsamiq. The entire miscommunication could have been avoided if my wife had been able to mockup a couple of wireframes really quickly. She emailed Balsamiq, told them what happened, and asked if they would give us a discount on a second license. They gave us a free one instead. What an amazing team. Peldi's interview on Mixergy was one of my all-time favorite - http://mixergy.com/balsamiq-peldi-guilizzoni-interview/

BTW, I've seen several other sites that do social polling like this. I've never had any interest in using any of them, but I just went through every one of your polls. Fantastic design, it sucked me right in. Congrats on your launch!

Thank you for the kind words about Quipol and the great story. I think we're seeing a trend here: if you give, people don't forget (and they pay it forward). Thank you, August!

I'm also a huge fan of Peldi - I love that he personally responds to emails and tweets and seems to actually give a shit about his customers. (Very refreshing after my stint at Google, which is severely lacking in that department :).

I also love Balsamiq - I use it both to prototype web/mobile apps and also for diagrams in presentations (http://client-side-apis.appspot.com/). The sketchy feel makes the prototypes feel more flexible, perfect for encouraging iteration.

I've been using myBalsamiq (the online version) for a while, and though it is Flash-based, and Flash is the devil, it works pretty well and I recommend it.

Agreed all the way. The fact that you can email him and expect to hear back is too cool.

I've used Balsamiq for design projects, too. It just feels authentic.

FWIW, I think you guys did a pretty good job at the maps team (I think I remember your name from your responses on a bunch of issues on the boards?).

Congrats on launching!

One small UI suggestion: put thumbs-up on the right and thumbs-down on the left. About 90% of the population is right handed and the word "sinister" originates from the Latin word for "left" [1]. Generally speaking, people associate the right side with good and the left side with bad. :)

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-handedness

I've never heard the sinister meaning! Truth be told, we originally had the buttons reversed, but our customer development group consistently said it should be on the left. I have two theories for why:

My far out theory: Microsoft's dialog boxes always had the OK button on the left and Cancel on the right.

My sane theory: People read left to right, and they think "Yes or No." You rarely hear people say, "No or Yes."

Oh, forgot one important thing: thank you for the kind words!

I came here to say this. Thumbs up on right, thumbs down on left. And, nice work!! The site looks great.

Peldi is a great guy and Balsamiq is turning into a reference example on how to run a successful software business with integrity.

Couldn't agree more. He makes it look easy.

Hey all: I'm shocked by (and so appreciative of) the responses to this. Thanks for directing the much-deserved love toward Peldi, too! He's seriously my entrepreneurial hero.

Aww shucks everyone, what a nice day to start the week. :)

OK, back to work! :)

Peldi

:) Good luck!

I had a very similar experience with the Balsamiq crew. Early on I didn't have much to offer other than this budding Web testing service I was working on. As it turns out, they have a Web site and saw value in it and accepted my barter offer. I was completely shocked. The outcome was two fortified notions: it never hurts to ask and the Balsamiq guys are great.

Yeah, the Do-Gooder notion was the thing that gave the the guts to even consider asking for something free. I think every company should have a Do-Gooder policy!

Great design. And it's nice to take time to thanks Peldi.

But why would a mockup software be so important to one's business?

Anyone could do a mockup with PowerPoint and yet I see mockup softwares popping up every week.

I respect Peldi for everything he has done in the entrepreneur community so I am not after him, I just feel I am missing out on something.

Thanks.

Uh. He didn't say that. He said that getting Balsamiq gratis meant something important to him, and that and Balsamiq itself (which is so much more awesome when you actually use it than you'd think a mockup tool could be) kept him from getting discouraged while building something.

This post put such a smile on my face, but then I read the comments and it's like, here's the guy who doesn't believe the letter, and here's the guy who sees this as an opportunity to harp on Adobe AIR, and I'm afraid to see what the next nasty comment is going to be.

"had you not been so gracious, Quipol might have never happened"

I think this "open letter" is a little disingenuous. A nice heartwarming letter of thanks by a poster that signed up to HN 4 days ago. Maybe I'm cynical, but this seems like astro-turfing.

Oh man, that's hard to hear. I'm sorry that it comes off that way. While building Quipol, I was more of an onlooker. Maybe I should have been more active earlier.

It shouldn't be hard to hear. If it's not true then who cares what I think. Like I said, I probably just be cynical.

What a nasty thing to say. Can you take a second and consider what might prompt you to go out of your way to write this?

Actually it appears he's correct.

Hey Paul, that's harsh. What gives?

Why, because he mentioned the name of his startup three times, without once even saying what it does?

What a discouraging thread.

It might be because I asked my 3 roommates to vote up on the link for me. That was clearly a very stupid and selfish idea, and I'm sorry for doing so. Like I said to BigCanofTuna, I'll learn (fast) to be a better community member. I apologize.

Because among other things both these comments are from the same IP address:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3232690

I feel really bad for you having to deal with stuff like huge voting rings and people making sockpuppet accounts but sometimes I wish you'd just keep stuff like this behind the scenes.

He's astroturfing... a thank-you note?

There's real manipulation on HN. This wasn't it. Look at the comment thread you jumped into more carefully.

This place just gets more and more frustrating. It must be 10x worse to own it, but still.

Settle down man.

Definitely wasn't a scheme or evil plan, just my roommate who happens to be my loving girlfriend. Even so, I understand your frustration, and I'm sorry about that, Paul. Lesson learned.

I don't see it as nasty, just an observation of various facts that lead me to believe (perhaps incorrectly) that the post has ulterior motives. But since you ask, this is what lead me to comment how I did.

- HN is about sharing and opinions, so I decide to share mine.

- The poster opened an HN account 4 days ago and the startup was launched 5 days ago.

- "Open Letter" titled posts almost always leads to someone bashing a product or individual. Imagine how relieved HN will be when they see that it is indeed a "heart warming" thank you letter...did you feel good reading this?

- Without the product the startup wouldn't be here. All credit goes to Balsamiq while conveniently encouraging you to view the startup.

- And, as a software developer (who has one more than once been NOT paid for services rendered) this one really raises my suspicion. The poster received the software 8 monts ago and will get the $79 to Balsamic ASAP.

Anyway, right or wrong, that is how I came to my original comment. I'll take my down votes if necessary.

edit: formatting

If he wanted to pump his startup, he'd have pumped his startup. As it stands, the only thing he had to say about it was his name. The post was about Peldi.

HN needs a lot of policing, but much, much less of this bogus fake kind.

You shouldn't get down votes. I totally get where you're coming from, BigCanOfTuna. I'm not perfect, and maybe I shouldn't have linked to Quipol at all. When I said I'll get you the $79 ASAP, I thought it would make people laugh. I meant it, but I also thought it would be funny. Also, I didn't know that open letters were notoriously rude. I just thought they were open to everyone instead of on a one-to-one basis (the openness was my way of giving back to Peldi by giving him a glowing, deserved review). Anyhow, you're good. I appreciate you explaining your rationale, and I'll try to do better in the future. If I violated any written or unwritten codes of conduct on HN, please accept my apologies. Thanks, BigCanofTuna.

@tptacek nailed it on the head. It wasn't a rational thing. It was emotional. All I'm trying to say is that Peldi's generosity affected me in a huge way. It was a tonic—a positive starting point that I've cherished ever since.

@myoder, I understand you being grateful to him, and I would be too. And it is great that you wrote the letter.

My question is more about "had you not been so gracious, Quipol might have never happened".

A mockup software doesn't seem to solve any important pain that can't be solved without and yet I see a lot of mockup softwares being created.

So my question is more about, why is a mockup software so important to you? What did it help you do that you couldn't have done without?

>It wasn't a rational thing. It was emotional. All I'm trying to say is that Peldi's generosity affected me in a huge way.

What is it that you don't understand about that? As several posters have already pointed out, the letter isn't about what the software did for him, it's about what the act of generosity did for him.

Peldi's gracious gesture made myoder feel great and gave him drive that helped him finish his product. You're focussing on the wrong thing.

I clearly didn't do a great job writing my post—my apologies. I was simply saying that Peldi and Balsamiq helped me get the ball rolling on a positive note. Who knows what would have happened had I waited to act on Quipol—there's a real possibility that I wouldn't have ever done so. Sometimes, inspiration and ideas pass, and, for better or worse, they never come back.

The same reason analytics software is cropping up - it's easy for geeks to write. So lots pops up.

Mockups with PowerPoint are just not effective. Also, with apps that are more than just a couple pages, it quickly becomes cumbersome, even inside Photoshop or Illustrator.

With Balsamiq, you're able to think out loud and get more decisions made faster. Also, when you're working in a team and not 100% clear on what the solution you're building will end up becoming, it helps a lot with the communication.

Lastly, when you know what you're building, it takes a lot less time building it (at least for me it does.)

For example, we're about to build and launch a new product in the next couple weeks. By spending some time creating a wireframe prototype that the whole team can click around in (https://volcanic.mybalsamiq.com/projects/customerloyalty/gri...) we've been able to tweak what we want version 1 to be and narrow our scope quiet a bit to just the essentials.

I'd say wireframing, particularly with myBalsamiq, is very beneficial for web app development.

Agreed. It helped me get Quipol pared down to just the must-haves in a very short time.

Thanks for taking the time to answer. I see better how it can be useful for teams.

Good luck with your project.

I've played with many different mockup applications (I've got a blog post about them I'm working on currently). I got started playing with them due to a free license I got from Peldi in return for blogging about it.

The short answer is that the tools are efficient. A good mockup tool bridges the gap between providing enough information that you can communicate ideas and being able to do so very quickly. PowerPoint doesn't communicate the ideas as well as other tools; and it is definitely slower than other tools.

Today, Balsamiq is still my tool of choice on my laptop. iMockups is my tool of choice on my iPad. One of the primary reasons is that I can export BMML files back to Balsamiq.

Balsamiq is a good piece of software but I wouldn't put an effort to ask for a free copy of especially when I'm broke. Instead, I would rather use pen and paper.

If you feel you really really need the software to aid you in building your product then be a good customer and pay the license.

Fair enough!

Congrats on the launch of Quipol!

Peldi started Balsamiq on nights and weekends, and now it's supporting half a dozen families. If that is not a real, tangible definition of a successful business is, I don't know what is.

Also, one of my favorite product names (shows the founder's background/personality).

Yeah, I think that's the coolest thing about starting a tech business: you get the opportunity to support other people through both software and jobs. Peldi gets to go home at night and know that people are eating well because of a little idea that he turned into a great product.

This was a heartwarming story. Peldi sets a very high standard. I am excited to check out Quipol and use it.

Completely agreed! Thank you for checking out Quipol :)

What a beautiful design on your site Quipol!

Thank you! The early design of it can be found here: http://blog.quipol.com/post/9624246432/prototyping

My how things change!

This was a nice read, congrats to the author, and I always had a good feeling about the balsamiq creator.

Thank you!

Sounds like a great story and a great guy.

But damn, I hate to see anything popularize AIR apps. Also consider OmniGraffle if you are looking for prototyping :)

Really don’t want to rain on parades. Just want to make sure people know there are (IMO better) alternatives.

If you're anti-AIR, check out their MyBalsamiq :)

http://www.balsamiq.com/products/mockups/mybalsamiq

Thanks.

The page is not forthcoming in terms of tech. It's "hosted." What do I interact with? Flash? Native?

It's Flash.

Good question. Thanks for the help, jdale27.

It's Flash for the mockup part and plain html for the rest of the app.

If one is on Android, i made an app called Edgy which is a bare-bones directed graph creation tool with DOT and PNG export.

OmniGraffle isn't remotely as good at what Balsamiq does as Balsamiq itself. You might just as productively compare Adobe InDesign to Emacs.

I disagree. You can make and download and share stencils. There are great sets for different UI systems...

What am I missing?

This is the kind of comment you write when you've never actually used Balsamiq. I use and adore OmniGraffle (though I'm back to doing more technical illustration in Illustrator), and it is nothing like Balsamiq. It's not a difference of stencils or downloading or anything like that; they are simply very different applications altogether.

You don't know that.

I have used both. Though I only used the Flash version of Balsamiq, since my AIR installation refused to work.

I'm inclined not to believe you, if you need someone to argue with you that OmniGraffle has a similar approach to UI mockups.

Perhaps you downloaded it, dragged some things onto a canvas, and then never picked it up again. You missed a lot of great stuff. It's a thoughtfully designed (and very nerdy) app.

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