Balsamiq Blog

Bootstrapping a Micro-ISV, Exposed

Balsamiq: Week One Recap

by Peldi Guilizzoni. June 26th, 2008 under Company / Business — 1 Comment

Hi everyone. It’s been now a full week since my official launch, and my what a ride it has been! I know the adventure is just getting started, but I wanted to put together and share some quick stats from Balsamiq’s 1st week in business.

You can see a full list of anything that I run across that mentions Balsamiq here: http://del.icio.us/peldi/balsamiq_press

7 Product and Company Reviews

4 Other blog mentions

D.Y.I.StartupNews (just my pitch)
Social Interaction (mention)
SocialMedia.jp (short review)
Webware (mention)

22 Twitter mentions

Here’s a Summize Twitter search for Balsamiq

Some of my favorites Tweets:

alucking: Used Balsamiq’s Mockup application to throw together some layouts for a web app I’m cooking up. Its pretty awesome.

geechee_girl: @balsamiq can’t stop playing with your software long enough to finish my review. Love it. It’s coming…. lol

doubletough: Balsamiq Mockups is a freakin’ great Adobe AIR application.

ninjamonk: mocks ups is the best AIR App I have seen http://www.balsamiq.com/products/mockups/desktop I might actually buy this.

2,300+ Site visitors

2,362 visitors came from 81 countries/territories and saw 9,316 pages
11 people subscribed to the newsletter
11 people downloaded the JAR (there could be more here I’m not tracking)
over 235 people downloaded the Desktop demo version (again, I’m not tracking everything here yet)
over 700 people watched my quick YouTube demo (the number is higher since this is the new, cleaned up version) and over 300 watched the Mockups for Conluence demo video.

Feedback received:

I got incredible feedback, as always, from the awesome software entrepeneurs on the Business Of Software forums. If you are thinking of starting a software company, you MUST subscribe to the BoS feed. Here’s my post with the feedback below it.
I also got direct email feedback from a few people. I am so touched that you took the time to write me such long and detailed emails with your thoughts about Mockups. Thank you so much, you know who you are.
GetSatisfaction has also been a good source of feedback and ideas, it seems like the conversation there is starting to take off. I’m excited for more.

I received one complaint that both GetSatisfaction and my JIRA bugbase require registation in order to post. I wasn’t aware of that and I apologize. I updated my support pages to mention that you can always email me with any feedback or bug report you might have.

22 Free Licenses Handed Out

8 given to do-gooders (desktop version).
1 Confluence Plugin given to an open source project.
5 given as a thank you for feedback or other valuable input.
8 given to bloggers, journalists and other mavens: I’m looking forward to reading these reviews!

11 copies sold

Balsamiq Mockups for Desktop: 10 copies
Balsamiq Mockups for Confluence: 1 copy (team edition)

Total revenue (net of Paypal fees): US$1,339.60 – this is way, way above what I expected.

See my customers page for some names of customers and do-gooders.

Steps taken this week

I quickly released a new build two days after shipping to fix the biggest bugs and incorporate the most pressing issues: details here.
I spent some time answering emails of potential customers – I really enjoyed doing this, as it gives me an invaluable insight on people’s needs, problems and expectations.
I started tracking “UI prototyping” related discussions on the web and adding comments advertising Mockups whenever it fits with the conversation (I hate blog comment spamming as much as the next guy).
I investigated and addressed issues with the Linux build: new installation instructions for linux can be found here.
I added to and reorganized my TODO list – it’s a lot longer now!

My General Mood

I am ecstatic with the amount of feedback received. This makes me think that I somehow managed to ship just at the right time in the development cycle: good enough that people like it (and some buy it), but early enough that it elicits feedback which helps with the product’s future direction. That was lucky!

I’m happy about the generally positive reviews, though I was naively hoping for more coverage on Thursday (I had contacted maybe 20-25 bloggers in preparation for the launch).

In general, things are off to a good start, word of mouth is starting to happen, and I have enough work planned for the next two months (at least). I am quite amazed with the sales so far and very much looking forward to the next week, and the one after, and the one after!

Next Steps

I plan on releasing a 1.1 release in a month or so, with one or two of the most requested features in it, plus fixes to anything else that comes up.

You can follow my progress here via RSS or on Twitter for updates along the way – I tweet more than I blog these days, but I have a couple of blog posts in mind so stay tuned.

Onward!

— 1 Comment

One Response to “Balsamiq: Week One Recap”

David Says:
June 28th, 2008 at 5:12 am
Where do I get the Mockups T-shirt and other schwag? Las Vegas Balsamiq conference? Keep up the great work!

Hi this is Peldi from Balsamiq. This blog is a mixture of product updates, company updates and posts about my experiences as a programmer-turned-entrepreneur. If you're into 37Signals and A Smart Bear, this blog is for you.