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An Open Letter to Peldi Guilizzoni of Balsamiq
- arkitaip 15y agoPeldi is a great guy and Balsamiq is turning into a reference example on how to run a successful software business with integrity.
- myoder 15y agoCouldn't agree more. He makes it look easy.
- alanh 15y agoSounds 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.
- myoder 15y agoIf you're anti-AIR, check out their MyBalsamiq :) http://www.balsamiq.com/products/mockups/mybalsamiq http://www.balsamiq.com/products/mockups/mybalsamiq
- th0ma5 15y agoIf one is on Android, i made an app called Edgy which is a bare-bones directed graph creation tool with DOT and PNG export.
- tptacek 15y agoOmniGraffle isn't remotely as good at what Balsamiq does as Balsamiq itself. You might just as productively compare Adobe InDesign to Emacs.
- alanh 15y agoI disagree. You can make and download and share stencils. There are great sets for different UI systems... What am I missing?
- tptacek 15y agoThis 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 15y agoYou 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 15y agoI'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.
- losethos 15y agoIn 1996, I gave away everything when I was converted from atheism because I was terrified. ---------------- The Rich and the Kingdom of God 18 A certain ruler asked him, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” 19 “Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone. 20 You know the commandments: ‘You shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, honor your father and mother.’[a]” 21 “All these I have kept since I was a boy,” he said. 22 When Jesus heard this, he said to him, “You still lack one thing. Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” 23 When he heard this, he became very sad, because he was very wealthy. 24 Jesus looked at him and said, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God! 25 Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” 26 Those who heard this asked, “Who then can be saved?” 27 Jesus replied, “What is impossible with man is possible with God.” 28 Peter said to him, “We have left all we had to follow you!” 29 “Truly I tell you,” Jesus said to them, “no one who has left home or wife or brothers or sisters or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God 30 will fail to receive many times as much in this age, and in the age to come eternal life.” ----------------- God says... C:\LoseThos\www.losethos.com\text\WEALTH.TXT same coach. A service of plate in the same manner, may last more than a century. It is certainly-easier for the consumer to pay five shillings a-year for every hundred ounces of plate, near one per cent. of the value, than to redeem this long annuity at five-and-twenty or thirty years purchase, which would enhance the price at least five-and-twenty or thirty per cent. The different taxes which affect houses, are certainly more conveniently paid by moderate annual payments, than by a heavy tax of equ -------------- The Rich and the Kingdom of God 16 Just then a man came up to Jesus and asked, “Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?” 17 “Why do you ask me about what is good?” Jesus replied. “There is only One who is good. If you want to enter life, keep the commandments.” 18 “Which ones?” he inquired. Jesus replied, “‘You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, 19 honor your father and mother,’[c] and ‘love your neighbor as yourself.’[d]” 20 “All these I have kept,” the young man said. “What do I still lack?” 21 Jesus answered, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” 22 When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth. 23 Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Truly I tell you, it is hard for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven. 24 Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” 25 When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished and asked, “Who then can be saved?” 26 Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” 27 Peter answered him, “We have left everything to follow you! What then will there be for us?” 28 Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, at the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man sits on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. 29 And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife[e] or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life. 30 But many who are first will be last, and many who are last will be first. ------------------------ God says... C:\LoseThos\www.losethos.com\text\2CITIES.TXT heatre-doors, to one of the city gates. Soldiers with lanterns, at the guard-house there. "Your papers, travellers!" "See here then, Monsieur the Officer," said Defarge, getting down, and taking him gravely apart, "these are the papers of monsieur inside, with the white head. They were consigned to me, with him, at the--" He dropped his voice, there was a flutter among the military lanterns, and one of them being handed into the coach by an arm in uniform, the eyes connected with the arm looked,
- sudonim 15y agoI 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 15y agoWell 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.
- booga 15y agoThis was a heartwarming story. Peldi sets a very high standard. I am excited to check out Quipol and use it.
- myoder 15y agoCompletely agreed! Thank you for checking out Quipol :)
- aymeric 15y agoGreat 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.
- tptacek 15y agoUh. He didn't say that. He said that getting Balsamiq gratis meant something important to him, and that and Balsamiq itself (which is so much more awesome when you actually use it than you'd think a mockup tool could be) kept him from getting discouraged while building something. This post put such a smile on my face, but then I read the comments and it's like, here's the guy who doesn't believe the letter, and here's the guy who sees this as an opportunity to harp on Adobe AIR, and I'm afraid to see what the next nasty comment is going to be.
- aymeric 15y ago"had you not been so gracious, Quipol might have never happened"
- BigCanOfTuna 15y agoI think this "open letter" is a little disingenuous. A nice heartwarming letter of thanks by a poster that signed up to HN 4 days ago. Maybe I'm cynical, but this seems like astro-turfing.
- myoder 15y agoOh man, that's hard to hear. I'm sorry that it comes off that way. While building Quipol, I was more of an onlooker. Maybe I should have been more active earlier.
- BigCanOfTuna 15y agoIt shouldn't be hard to hear. If it's not true then who cares what I think. Like I said, I probably just be cynical.
- pamelafox 15y agoI'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/ 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 15y agoAgreed 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.
- ericd 15y agoFWIW, I think you guys did a pretty good job at the maps team (I think I remember your name from your responses on a bunch of issues on the boards?).
- nirvdrum 15y agoI 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 15y agoYeah, 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!
- myoder 15y agoHey 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.
- augustflanagan 15y agoAbout 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/ 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 15y agoThank 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!
- danielha 15y agoI 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.
- prpon 15y agoPeldi has been a long time HN user(balsamiq). Most at HN (including me) have nothing but great things to say about him and his company.
- myoder 15y agoHe sure is! Thank you for taking the time to read the story!
- dshah 15y agoPeldi 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 15y ago:) 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.
- sidwyn 15y agoWhat a beautiful design on your site Quipol!
- myoder 15y agoThank you! The early design of it can be found here: http://blog.quipol.com/post/9624246432/prototyping http://blog.quipol.com/post/9624246432/prototyping My how things change!
- wallflower 15y agoCongrats 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 15y agoYeah, 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.
- tansey 15y agoCongrats 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 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-handedness
- myoder 15y agoI'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 15y agoOh, forgot one important thing: thank you for the kind words!
- par 15y agoI came here to say this. Thumbs up on right, thumbs down on left. And, nice work!! The site looks great.
- bodegajed 15y agoBalsamiq 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 15y agoFair enough!
- josscrowcroft 15y agoThis was a nice read, congrats to the author, and I always had a good feeling about the balsamiq creator.
- myoder 15y agoThank you!
- balsamiq 15y agoAww shucks everyone, what a nice day to start the week. :) OK, back to work! :) Peldi
- myoder 15y ago:) Good luck!