Balsamiq Blog

Balsamiq is a tool you don't think about needing, but when you find it, it fits like a glove and you wonder how things ever got done before it. Moreover, Peldi's blog is frequently featured here on HN, and he writes cogently and about interesting things. These posts, in particular, struck a chord with me: http://blogs.balsamiq.com/peldi/2011/09/07/policies/

I'm trying to dig into Marketing and really figure out how to hack it. I've found patio11 extremely helpful, and also some of Peldi's posts on the Balsamiq blog: http://blogs.balsamiq.com/product/2008/08/05/startup-marketing-advice-… I will definitely check out some of the recommendations here. Does anyone have any other actionable suggestions for reading? I've picked up a few books but I'm looking to really dig in and get better at selling SaaS stuff online.

One of the best sources, brought up here every now and then is from Peldi at Balsamiq: http://blogs.balsamiq.com/peldi/2008/08/05/startup-marketing-advice-fr… This was essential reading for me on a couple of launches. As to Mashable in particular, they have a startup coverage series 'Spark Of Genius.' Was a dead simple pitch (it is a form) and coverage for me there really got the ball rolling. For other bloggers find someone how covers your niche and pitch them --- never pitch the general email address of the publication. And one last thing - it might be worth it to pick one primary target of the big tech news sites. Once one covers you they usually all jump to follow (ie weeks old emails suddenly returned requesting interview ASAP)

Yes, we had a launch party and predicted a flood of people banging on our door to use our product. For some reason it didn't quite go that way. We launched on 1/11/11 to add a coolness factor to it but to no avail. Here are two great links discussing it by Jason Baptise and the Balsamiq guys...guess you're a little past this phase though: http://jasonlbaptiste.com/featured-articles/if-you-build-it-they-wont-… http://blogs.balsamiq.com/peldi/2008/04/18/preparing-for-launch/

Best way to promote your web app: http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=341138 Getting PR for your startup: http://www.businessinsider.com/2008/8/jason-calacanis-on-how-to-get-pr… Preparing for launch: http://blogs.balsamiq.com/product/2008/04/18/preparing-for-launch/ Startup marketing advice: http://blogs.balsamiq.com/product/2008/08/05/startup-marketing-advice-…

I've been thinking through the same problem recently, and while I don't have any good suggestions myself, I did find the following particularly helpful, perhaps you will too: http://blogs.balsamiq.com/product/2008/08/05/startup-marketing-advice-… (hacker news discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=267639)

Nice work! Do you plan to make money from this? As you said, it is a very crowded market and I would suggest you to be ready for a long PR campaign. Peldi from balsamiq has great advice: http://blogs.balsamiq.com/product/2008/08/05/startup-marketing-advice-… If you choose the freemium route, you could give away to bloggers and alike, free premium accounts for them and for their readers. It is a great promotion tactic.

Let me share my experience, I've read this blog post: http://blogs.balsamiq.com/product/2008/08/05/startup-marketing-advice-… and will strongly recommend it. After reading it, I went to the google, spotted a couple of competitors, entered their urls respectively in Bing Link explorer for webmasters to discover who wrote about them, I then went to create a list and retrieve some bloggers names and emails in a spreadsheet , wrote a short pitch template inspired from the balsamiq pitch, and got the got the software http://www.bulkmailapp.com and a Lite sendgrid account (a Free account is enought if you send ~200 emails per day or less) , I then proceed to send a personalized batch email to all the prospects on my list. The response rate is over 25% so far, when they don't cover me, they at least reply and ask a couple of questions. The second approach: set a blog and go to http://www.fiverr.com , have some descents writers (look for journalists) write blog entries about keywords you actively researched and somehow relevant to your startup, set your blog at www.yourdomain/yourblog/ and publish the stories on a regular basis, start blogging on a regular basis. For your main webpage: Do your SEO Abc... create a twitter account and search queries relevant to your startup and start tracking/monitoring them and engage in the conversation when it's possible. That's what I've been doing so far, I will write a blog entry about it. I hope this could help for a…

Just an FYI: This is not the mental model of people who actually pay money for software. I've been at the table where Balsamiq has been purchased before. Here's a conversation I've had three times. Me: So here's my concept for a redesign of the $FOO page. You'll notice that I moved the conversion buttons to ... Engineer: Oh that's cool. What did you do that in? Me: Balsamiq Mockups. It is a design tool written by a buddy of mine which... Engineer: How much? (and/or Why not just use Photoshop? and/or You didn't pay for that, did you? You can do it in Excel.) Decisionmaker: Doesn't matter. Get a copy for everyone, put it on the company card. You were saying, Patrick? [Addendum regarding strategic use of freebies: Peldi emailed me a license key when asking for a review way back in like 2007. I don't think I ever actually blogged a formal review, but that email has been a big win for both of us over the years. He's got a Marketing For Startups blog post where he discusses that technique in detail. It's still one of the best actionable posts I've ever read. http://blogs.balsamiq.com/product/2008/08/05/startup-marketing-advice-… ]

Hi all. It was three and a half years ago that I posted a "review my startup" message about Balsamiq Mockups to the old Business of Software forums[1], but it sure feels like a few lifetimes ago. I have grown a lot, our company has grown, the Internet has grown. The bar is definitely higher now. One thing that hasn't changed is my thirst for honest, qualified feedback from smart, technical people. So, if you have a little time today or this weekend, it would be great if you could take a look at what we built and tells us where we could improve. We put a lot of love into it, but we know there are some rough edges and can take the criticism. I wrote a little announcement post too that gives a little more info.[2] Thanks so much HN crowd! I'll be checking in here in the next few days...unless everything crashes of course... :) Peldi for the Balsamiq team. [1] http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?biz.5.643216.22 [2] http://blogs.balsamiq.com/product/2011/11/10/mybalsamiq/

There's no dislike; there's thousands of apps and app authors out there; the tech blogs are overrun with people pitching their apps; you need to stand above the crowd - and not by trying to shout more, but by being outstanding in some way; as for the marketing part, here's a classic article: http://blogs.balsamiq.com/product/2008/08/05/startup-marketing-advice-… There's a number of ways you can market your app: submit to app directories, use AdMob and other ad platforms, "sell" a compelling story involving your app (see kreci's series of "independent developer progress update" articles, he posts them regularly), etc. Sorry if this is a bit harsh, but: you seem to think venture funding is a way to raise your visibility - which is partly true, but if you can't get the blogs to write about you, how do you plan to get people to write you cheques? Also, unless your app is truly groundbreaking and has potential to grow into something much more (eg what Rovio did with Angry Birds), is there really a point in trying to get funding?

I'm considering that as well. Peldi from Balsamic has written about it https://blogs.balsamiq.com/team/2011/09/12/profitsharing/ Edit: I don't know about an update, but there was discussion on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2986673

I remember two firms from previous HN posts that stuck with me, Fog Creek and Balsamiq. Joel's methodology might be a little complex, but it makes sense. http://blogs.balsamiq.com/team/2011/09/12/salary/ http://joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000038.html

Another example is http://blogs.balsamiq.com/team/2011/09/12/salary/

http://blogs.balsamiq.com/peldi/ http://www.kalzumeus.com/blog/

That I can possibly agree with, when it is ourselves we are challenging with the deadlines and when we are talking about a launch or not situation. For teams I think that mentality more often than not leads to poor results and quality. Rushing without taking the time needed to do something "right" (I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to determine what's "right" for them) just isn't sustainable long term. Take Balsamiq which takes the exact opposite stance here: http://blogs.balsamiq.com/team/2011/09/07/pace/ I think that is a far more realistic and sustainable guideline to work from.

> "Cut me a break. I spent 3 weeks overtime getting that thing done, and Fred gets all the credit (and money!)" http://blogs.balsamiq.com/team/2011/09/07/pace/ tl;dr Don't work overtime, work sustainably. All your other issues are with differences in pay, which is exactly what the article is advocating against.

On the other hand, you seem to use cost of living comparison for profit sharing. Quote from: http://blogs.balsamiq.com/team/2011/09/12/profitsharing/ "9. then all weighed by the cost of living in each location: this is important because it's fair. The fact that we're using cost of living instead of average wages is even more fair (i.e. Italy has low wages relative to the cost of living)." The last sentence, regarding Italy, corresponds to the situation I described. So, if it is fair for profit sharing, then it also seems logical to treat it as fair for salaries as well.

The salary is dependent, its in another post: http://blogs.balsamiq.com/team/2011/09/12/salary/

Check Peldi's talk from Business of Software 2010 http://blogs.balsamiq.com/peldi/2011/03/13/bos2010/ tl;dr Stop worrying , start developing.

This was posted on HN earlier: Donating Your Software: A Whole Lot of WIN! http://blogs.balsamiq.com/product/2009/08/13/donating/

How about some good old promotion? Contact bloggers and try to get some PR. Here's a few good articles that have been mentioned in HN: http://blogs.balsamiq.com/product//2008/08/05/startup-marketing-advice… http://blog.zferral.com/post/972974853/startup-marketing-getting-your-… http://jasonlbaptiste.com/featured-articles/how-i-pitched-techcrunch-a… http://blog.traindom.com/places-where-to-submit-your-startup-for-cover…

I agree, but it's probably up to the founders and pg how much information they make public, more so from the founders. It'd be interesting to see someone publish their quarterly earnings akin to what balsamiq did awhile back (http://blogs.balsamiq.com/product//2010/01/03/a-look-back-at-2009/). This list is a good start, but far from up to date; just see, this (http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&safe=off&q=site… for YC 10.

your personal blog @ http://blogs.balsamiq.com/peldi/ asked me for a login...screenshot here http://imgur.com/FInKN.jpg