balsamiq

Thanks for sharing this @janpio. I'm around if anyone has any questions. - Peldi (Balsamiq founder)

Notably absent from the list: Ireland.

That sounds stressful! ;) We're not here for growth, but for longevity. I aim for 2% year on year growth, but for 100+ years. :)

Ehm...why all the past tense? We still ARE very much around...we just had our best year yet [1], and are on track to do even better. Don't count us out just yet! :)

[1] https://blog.balsamiq.com/looking-back-2019/

Brajeshwar! It's good to come across you on the internet again, it's been a while! I hope you're doing great, and thanks for the kind words.

Geez @cheez ;) thanks for the kind words. I do still believe there was a fair amount of luck involved, but I'm glad my writing was useful to you.

Since we have a lot of customers like you, we have been investing more and more in educational content about UX for non-designers. Check it out if you're interested [1]. It's all fairly new so we'd love feedback on it.

[1] https://balsamiq.com/learn/

Thank you! About a super minimal web CMS... I wouldn't build one. We can discuss more over email if you'd like, so we don't highjack the thread: peldi@balsamiq.com

Yes, we're mostly remote.

We (Balsamiq) look up to Basecamp quite a bit, and people have compared our culture to theirs. Check out our blog for some of our policies and other stuff. Any questions, I'm here.

Peldi

We've been using https://swiftype.com/site-search for a couple of years. It's great.

We use Convox at Balsamiq as well.

whoa that's no good! Can you please send some more details to support@balsamiq.com? It definitely shouldn't do that. Thanks!

Not for long... ;)

I think if someone would be crushing us, we'd find out pretty quickly, as our sales would decline.

So far, they've done just the opposite. Here's my latest yearly status update: https://blogs.balsamiq.com/team/2016/02/05/looking-back-at-2... - with revenue charts! :)

Hi there! Peldi from Balsamiq here. The profit sharing program is one of our most successful policies. The only update it required since 2011 is that we raised the percentage of profits to be shared from 10 to 15%, and we might raise it again in the future as we have more and more employees.

David! I met you at Better Software in Florence a few years ago, not long after I had finished scrounging up 2,500 euros to start Balsamiq SRL (I had to give my mother 1% of the company, otherwise I would have to deposit 10,000 euros, which I didn't have at the time).

I remember thinking "I hope this guys is successful" when I talked to you, and when the new law came into effect, I remember thinking "I wonder if that guy had anything to do with this awesome change". :)

As an Italian entrepreneur, thank you. I meet with lots of wannapreneurs, and I alyways tell them "it's cheaper now!". Now I can tell them "thank David Walton!" too. :)

I do? I don't remember saying that.

I don't really want to get into this debate, but I've been running Balsamiq from Italy since 2008, and it's been just fine. Then again, YMMV...we're just a little mom-and-pop software shop, not a "startup" in the paulg sense of the word.

Here's a subreddit full of resources about this topic: http://www.reddit.com/r/flatmanagement

I'm a mod of it...we're pretty flat at Balsamiq, too.

Working on it, we have a native iPad app currently in private alpha. We're experimenting different things, we want it to be "just right". :)

As a first step, the next big feature on our list is to make the Symbol Libraries on https://mockupstogo.mybalsamiq.com/projects easy to import from within the editor. It should help some, then we'll see. Mobile widgets have been changing very rapidly, I hesitate baking in any set as part of the default ones.

I should have called it Balsamiq Wireframes, but I figured it out when it was too late to change it...oh well. :)

Let's just say we're paying careful attention for now...

Hi mattyfo, Peldi from balsamiq here. We have not really attacked the commenting feature in myBalsamiq yet, what we have in regards to commenting is really MVP at this point. We'll do it right, stick with us! ;)

Hey thanks for using my post as an example! ;)

I agree, we'll make that better (already have plans for it). We punted on that for MVP, stay tuned!

Totally agree. We're working with the SE peeps to make this workflow smoother. We just punted about it for MVP. :)

We're not too worried about it, I have found that the old "the more you give the more you get" adage really has some truth to it. I also fundamentally believe in the goodness of people. Those who want to take advantage of you always will, but the vast majority of people do not live to take advantage of other's hard work, or at least I like to believe so.

That said, there's one thing we did to prevent people from using the UX.SE.COM integration as a non-nagging web version: you cannot export from the editor, just Import. You can only save the BMML from the publicly posted image of the mockup on the UX question page. So if you want to save your work, you have to do it in public. Not a huge step, but we think it's enough.

Peldi

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

OK, back to work! :)

Peldi

Wow thanks so much Brandon!

Regarding your improvements: 1.Now they're at 10Mb per file. How big would you want it? 2.Sync is our end goal: http://support.balsamiq.com/customer/portal/articles/232919#... 3.That's allowed, upload your BMMLs in your site assets and they'll work as global Symbols. Symbols support is not done yet, we're actively working on it. http://support.balsamiq.com/customer/portal/articles/234139

We'll get there! :)