
An Open Letter to Peldi Guilizzoni of Balsamiq - myoder
http://blog.quipol.com/post/12769866834/an-open-letter-to-peldi-guilizzoni-of-balsamiq
======
danielha
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.

~~~
dshah
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.

~~~
myoder
:) 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.

------
sudonim
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.

~~~
myoder
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.

------
augustflanagan
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!

~~~
myoder
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!

------
pamelafox
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.

~~~
myoder
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.

------
tansey
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>

~~~
myoder
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."

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

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

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

------
myoder
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.

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

OK, back to work! :)

Peldi

~~~
myoder
:) Good luck!

------
nirvdrum
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.

~~~
myoder
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!

------
aymeric
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.

~~~
melvinram
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...](https://volcanic.mybalsamiq.com/projects/customerloyalty/grid))
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.

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

------
bodegajed
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.

~~~
myoder
Fair enough!

------
wallflower
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).

~~~
myoder
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.

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

~~~
myoder
Completely agreed! Thank you for checking out Quipol :)

------
sidwyn
What a beautiful design on your site Quipol!

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

My how things change!

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

~~~
myoder
Thank you!

------
alanh
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.

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

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

What am I missing?

~~~
tptacek
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.

~~~
alanh
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.

~~~
tptacek
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.

