Podcast Interview with Peldi of Balsamiq (500K of revenue in only 10 months)
techzinglive.com
techzinglive.com
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.
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.