

Podcast Interview with Peldi of Balsamiq (500K of revenue in only 10 months) - jayro
http://techzinglive.com/?p=46

======
MattF
For those who don't have an hour or so to listen, here are my notes. I think a
lot of this stuff is also covered in Peldis blog.

The motivation for starting Balsamiq was to learn all about the business side
of things. Being a sole founder was hard, but it forced him to learn
everything. He doesn't recommend this for people who need to launch quickly.

Mockups solved his own problem. He suggests to look for a problem that you're
happy to work on for the next 10 years, and the products will come from that.
This also means that you will identify with the community who also has these
problems, ie customers. If you don't have a specific problem, try partnering
with someone who does.

He doesn't like the typical freemium model as he thinks the free version can
give a bad impression of the premium version. He prefers a useful but
inconvenient demo - it gives people a taste.

He didn't seem to give a lot of thought to setting the price of Mockups, but
did say that it is important because it indicates quality and a commitment to
being in for the long haul. He suggests thinking of how much time the product
will save customers, what other products sell for, and the accepted pricing
tiers.

His launch was completely informal, and he keeps that attitude to marketing.
He says be interesting and you'll be written about, so focus on the product
and making your customers happy. Have a good website, and send the message
that you understand the problem and are committed to solving it. Transparency
is also important - you can't hide on the web these days so why try?

Gets most feedback from Get Satisfaction, and likes it because it puts
customers and company on the same level. He gets a lot of feature requests but
tries hard to keep with his vision of Mockups. He won't compromise on anything
that reduces his competitive advantage. He does whatever he can to reduce the
number of support requests, but those he does get he handles in a way that
reflects his committment to customers.

Other miscellaneous thoughts: \- the two things that matter most are user
experience and customer service \- paid to get rid of ads on Get Satisfaction
\- stayed with GS because he liked and trusted the people behind it \- would
rather pay for software because it's more likely the company will continue to
exist

He also wanted to stress that his recent success was 10 years in the making.

The podcast was pretty good listening, although maybe a bit too long. I'll
definitely be checking out the other interviews.

~~~
phr
Nice summary.

On finding a problem you'd be happy working on for a few years, he said "fall
in love with the problem". I like that.

One of the interviewers asked what source control he used, and admitted that
he himself just makes directory tree backups periodically. Peldi spent some
time explaining why you should use source control. He himself started with
Perforce since that's what he knew, then switched to svn because he's a boring
old fart. The cool kids use git or hg.

~~~
drawkbox
I am using hg (distributed is better than centralized) now but it is so funny
because svn just barely took hold in 2004-5 and 4 years later you are a boring
old fart for using it. Git and hg should be boring old fart tools in abut 2
years then.

