Life at Balsamiq

Office Space

by val. July 26th, 2010 under Company, Fun, Uncategorized — 3 Comments

If you follow our company blogs, you already read about our first-ever team meeting. A highlight for us was on a Lake Como ferry to Bellagio, where we had our first-ever chance encounter with a customer!

Jonathan from altogether digital, talking features with balsamiqMarco.

When the retreat (or, as I called it, the advance) ended, we temporarily went separate ways. Marco and Peldi took Natalie to Bologna, Luis returned to Paris, and Mike, Malcolm, and I took some vacation days before returning to work.

You know what? We missed each other.

Our little Teeming Space

The Breakroom, with coved ceilings, where we discuss our TPS reports

The dictionary defines the word teeming as “full of or swarming with” and I think that perfectly describes our brand-spanking new office space in Bologna. (Note: For the coming weeks, I will be working in Italy. This means some calls and email may have delayed responses.) For Balsamiq Studios to really be brick-and-mortar is an enormous step for our little company: until now, we have all worked from our homes. While it’s far from a “corporate headquarters,” it certainly feels a lot more grown up. In addition, it allows Peldi, Marco and Natalie to spread out, with room to focus, while allowing the personalization of our desks.

With this, we encounter a new challenge: we want a shared work space while maintaining without interruption the feeling that we can work from home just as effectively as working from “the office.” Having an office became necessary by virtue of the huge amount of paperwork that goes along with having employees in a couple of different countries, and we had simply outgrown the second bedroom in Peldi & Mariah’s home. While Peldi likes to think of it as “just a little space we rent out,” I am still struck by the cool factor.

How refreshingly different it is to be in the same room with my colleagues! I haven’t been in an office setting for nearly two years, and it’s been three since I worked next to an engineer. I forgot how quiet coders are! Natalie and I frequently break into song and dance, and we gleefully jump up to show each other tricks and tips, and all the while, Marco quietly codes, building out the Mockups Components feature.

This may be a good time to mention a favorite joke I cracked often at Macromedia: How can you tell an extroverted software engineer? He looks at MY shoes when he’s talking to me.

Porta San Donato, at the end of our block. Note the midrise building to the rear left. That’s University of Bologna Department of Mathematics, where Marco and Peldi studied Computer Science.

Another aspect of having office space is that it forces commute time. Lance Armstrong once talked about the zen of biking, how you can’t really do anything but focus on your ride while making your way through urban streets. He’s right: I adore my bike commute through Bologna, a city where streets traverse the walled section of town (and some seem to change names, almost randomly). Traffic seems virtually ruled by two-wheelers, and so far, cars and busses have been downright polite and deferential. The dedicated and well-marked bike paths seem to be respected by pedestrians and cars, and often are located on the wide sidewalks. While Natalie and I have had some interesting drive-by conversations with the locals, most seem to be helping us best understand the rules of the road. At the tops of their lungs and with both hands.

Working side by side to onboard Natalie has proven essential, since she and I will basically job share. We will manage the same tasks (responding to customer mails, freemails, and some of the financials), while I focus on the US business and she is dedicated to the Italian/European requirements. We had met once in California, and while we instantly liked each other, we have been cultivating a great esprit de corps here. Being in the same room means we can check in with each other at every turn, when questions arise and procedures need to be articulated and refined.

We went to great expense (both time and money) to bring our team together this month, but we all agree that it was extremely well spent. We gained trust and genuine affection for each other. I know companies (and you probably do, too) that dismiss these values, claiming that a job is just a job, but at a start-up, you must genuinely like your team. There is just too much to do, too many hats to wear, and too much overlap, especially when distributed around time zones. Working at a startup is like entering a marriage: you can’t each give 50%, hoping it adds up to 100%, you must both give 100%. Lucky for each of us, Peldi has put together a team where each member hits the ground running, working hard, playing hard, and grabbing all we can with both hands.

It’s fun times here at Balsamiq Studios. Thanks for coming on this adventure with us. Keep in touch and let us hear how we are doing from your vantage point. With all this travel and activity, we don’t want to lose site of our main goal: to compete on product usability and customer service.

Do well, be well,
balsamiqVal

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Our First Company Retreat

by natalie. July 19th, 2010 under Company — 1 Comment

Being a Balsamiq employee for just over two weeks, I wasn’t sure my perspective of the staff retreat would be of much value. After all, I don’t yet have a complete grasp of all elements that make up our little company.

But in thinking of what I could write with just a few weeks behind me, I realized it wasn’t detailed how-tos of Balsamiq Mockups, or the long-term plans for the company that needed to be shared.  More important was the custom ingredient that makes Balsamiq a rich and flavorful software company:  the individuals behind our software tool.

Being so new, I feel very much like the baby sister within the Balsamiq family, but I have felt like a sister to Peldi since we first met about 10 years ago.  What I can say about him, and I am pretty darn certain my fellow Balsamiqers will agree, is that he is a person of immeasurable amazing-ness.  Peldi is an individual of such integrity, kindness, and vision, mixed with downright brilliant brainpower, that it has been an honor to have him as one of my closest friends.

Was it an honor to have him ask me to join the Balsamiq team as well?  You bet.

That amazing vision I so value in him was one of the clearest things I took away from the 10 days that our team gathered in a small town outside of Lago di Como in Italy.

Ok, ok, who wouldn’t want to spend 10 days in Lago di Como you say? What kind of special vision does that take? Point taken, but there was something more subtly present. If you’ve followed interviews or blogs about Peldi, you’ve probably heard him describe Balsamiq as a cozy family restaurant on the web.

That vision, being a multinational company, while maintaining a neighborhood feel, is what I discovered at our retreat. How is it that you can create something like a cozy neighborhood family restaurant when your customers AND your staff are spread around the world?

Well, first have a great passion and love for what you do, and then gather a few others who feel the same. Peldi has been gathering our little staff over the last year or so, to bring together a community of people who have technical expertise as well as joyful and artistic spirits.

But would the experiment work?  The true test would be bringing these individuals together, with their spouses and children all to one house to live together for 10 days. Such an experiment, if successful, would either show how a thoughtful selection of human resources can create a cohesive work community, or if it didn’t go so well, might at least be sent off as a pilot for a new reality TV show.

Luckily, for our customers (and for us) Peldi is a master chef and has selected a great team of very cool people, each with varying, but complementary skills and attributes.

The location was an amazing place to gather! We were all (and I mean all eight Balsamiq staff plus their immediate families, 21 people total!) able to stay in a family estate home circa 1600, complete with gardens, swimming pool, soccer field, and tennis court.

Choosing to bring staff and their families to the retreat in Italy was not an inexpensive option for the company, but the decision to do so highlighted to me the value and commitment Balsamiq has to the “neighborhood.”

I saw very clearly the ethos of my co-workers individually, and with each day my pride (and humility too at being asked to join such a great team!) grew.  I saw from being with them, both in “official” work time, and side by side in the kitchen as we cooked our meals, or enjoyed being with our families poolside, that they have determination and passion to always strive for excellence, and balance and wisdom to take time to enjoy every step and moment along the way.  And though this in no way means we are without faults, these were just the kind of people I wanted to work with.

Our time together was rather informal.  We worked some.

We played some.

We ate A LOT.

We were in a location that was really inconceivably fantastic.

But I’d have to say, even with such experiences like the magnificent boat trip on Lago di Como, the outstanding food and wine (including a trip to Switzerland for dinner), and the many moments of ridiculous laughter, my favorite experience was just a simple afternoon when the staff gathered in a small, hot, and stuffy dining room we had converted into an office.

Peldi asked us each to present to the others some of our personal heroes.

The few hours that followed in that unassuming (and did I mention HOT?) room were amazing.  The heroes we shared were various: celebrities, filmmakers, artists, musicians, social activists, politicians, family members, and some software folks too.

It was inspiring to hear who my new co-workers admired, and their reasons.

I had been learning throughout the retreat about this new team of people I was joining. That afternoon in the dining room, I knew that I had a lot to look forward to at Balsamiq.

I could see that the best ingredient behind our great software was a group of people dedicated to making the best product possible, while having a lot of fun doing it. That, combined with uncommon hearts full of generosity, compassion, thoughtfulness, and integrity makes for a delicious recipe.

I look forward to working with my new family at our little restaurant, and greeting and getting to know all the customers that make up our Balsamiq neighborhood.

Natalie

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Bringing a little Balsamiq to Atlassian’s #Summit2010

by val. May 31st, 2010 under Conferences — No Comment

I’m doing some creative visualization about the upcoming Atlassian Summit in San Francisco on June 6. We are sponsoring, and I’ll be managing a booth all by myself for most of the time (I might get a surprise visit from @balsamiqMike if we can swing it).

Our team spent some time “brainSkyping” about our booth space recently, and picked what we wanted to show and give away.

Here’s a mockup of the brochure we’re planning on giving out this year. It’s similar to last year’s, but updated with new company stats and includes some of my favorite SF spots that are good for travelers and locals alike (click to enlarge).

Since this will be my first Summit, I had a lot of questions for veteran-attendee Peldi.

I had been to AtlasCamp (smaller, and mostly for developers) in Half Moon Bay last October. It went well. I was even named Governor of the great State of California there!

Our Goodie Bag: use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without.

I am putting together a little goodie bag for folks who drop by and let me record a video testimonial about their experience with our product and company.

I used some first generation balsamiq stickers that honestly, didn’t wear so well. They were scuffing so quickly, I didn’t want to hand them out anymore, so I am using them to decorate lunch bags to hold a nice little bottle of balsamiC vinegar.

I am also throwing in my recipe for Balsamiq Bread Salad that I hope our company will make when we all meet in Italy in July – more on this later.

The whole package is, then: vinegar, new long-lasting bumper-sticker-quality laptop adornment, restaurant recommendations, and finally, a coupon for a discount on upcoming Balsamiq Mockups purchases.

The discount coupon was a bit of a personal triumph. You see, I just learned how to set up a discount correctly. I mistakenly set up a code that automatically applied to *all* new transactions a few weeks ago, and all of a sudden, all our purchases were coming in for $0. Licenses were getting sent as if payment had been made, but, haha, no payments were being processed. Every order was getting a $600 credit off the bottom line. That’s a lot for a little company with a $79 product.  That was an extra fun mess I got to mop up from a vacation beach house on the Mendocino Coast.

Note to team Balsamiq: the process describing how to create, apply and distribute a discount code is now posted on our Confluence wiki.

Finally, enough about bread salad and mops. My next post should be about the gender discussions started by Peldi’s tweet about “Lady Speakers” but honestly, who knows what I’ll write about. It might be about my new sandals!

Hope to meet some of my real and virtual pals at booth 12 at the Summit.

Be well, do well.
balsamiqVal

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I tink, therefore, I am. (Sorry, Descartes)

by val. May 19th, 2010 under Conferences, Fun, Values — No Comment

We love people who get stuff done. We are, therefore, extremely proud to sponsor one of the puzzles concocted by Tinkering School at this weekend’s Maker Faire.

Tinkering School, founded and run by Gever Tulley & Julie Spiegler, is a marvelous sleep-away camp providing kids an environment of invention, with full access to power tools! This is a place where wild ideas, crazy notions, and intuitive leaps of imagination are encouraged and fertilized. They’ve just published a great handbook called “Fifty Dangerous Things You Should Let Your Children Do” for parents who want to roll their own tinkering at home.

This was easy and wonderful for us to do: it is a match for our values of playful experimentation, making stuff and helping folks create. While I can’t be volunteering in the booth this year, I am glad to be there in spirit and support.

If you are attending Maker Faire, a great place to see the latest in fire technology, robotics, crafting guilds and all manner of creativity, swing by the “Tinker Your Way Out of This” booth 174 in the Expo Hall, solve a hands-on puzzle, and say hi to our friends.

[Update: the Maker Faire was an enormous success, and by all accounts, folks loved all the games, including the one we sponsored. Since we are all waiting for the release of myBalsamiq, our game was aptly named, Suspense!]

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Refresh! My blog, reborn

by val. May 17th, 2010 under Fun, Personal, Values — No Comment

Ahh, the best-laid plans of mice and bloggers… I had such grand ideas about waxing poetic every day, chronicling what we are learning as a company and my growth in transitioning from working at a company of a few thousand employees to our little bootstrap.

As published here, we all blog. Or at least that is the stated goal.

Unfortunately, the reality of my days sort of got In the way of my writing. Actually getting my work done (I love an empty inbox), along with the volume and complexity of what we are doing (ever dance with buying medical insurance or changing payroll companies?) left me trying to blog at the end of the day, when I was too tired to be coherent, let alone publishable, insightful or compelling.

But everyone has a full plate. As I used to say, “Raise your hand if you’re not busy.” No one ever did. So beyond the completely indefensible excuse of not having time, what was really keeping me from meeting this Balsamiq goal?

I struggle with writers block (is any of my job really interesting to others?) but feel a real pressure to support our clearly articulated value of what I call “radical transparency.”

This led to some honest and uplifting conversations with Peldi. He is infuriatingly fluent in blogging (which I consider his fourth language, after Italian, English and French.) He thinks I just need to do it and do it and do it. He is a great and convincing cheerleader.

I am restarting this blog as a diary. I have a couple of ideas on hand that I will get out this week, but starting Monday, I hope to post weekly about one or two little lessons or projects that I learn or do. Initially the benefit will most likely be mine, but hopefully others will get some value by peeking through the window, too.

These blog posts will include:

• What did I do this week?
• What was hard? How did I solve it / cope?
• What was wonderful and unexpected?

Phew. Lots to do, and while Peldi hit Inbox-Zero today (see below), my day is just beginning.

I better hit it. Have a great week, everybody!

Val

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Employees define company values by designating Matching Funds

by val. March 31st, 2010 under Employee Handbook — 2 Comments

Hello everybody, thanks for visiting. I am delighted with our little company’s growth, and we have quickly settled into a comfortable rhythm in 3 time zones. Now that we have a US team in place, I am reviewing our policies and benefits.

The question of the day is this: how we can best direct money on behalf of employees to non-profits?

Can Balsamiq support employees in Quality of Life programs?

I have just finished setting up our 401ks and Medical Insurance for US employees. This was molto complicato and time consuming, but it’s all in place. Watch for future posts about these.

I was new to shopping for benefits. I quickly dismissed those frivolous allowances that are the fodder of burn-rate horror stories. Valuable ones, like transportation vouchers, are unnecessary, since we all work from our homes.

We support do-gooder values, so I am researching the way companies handle employee-directed philanthropy.

I believe that Matching Funds are a brilliantly simple way to let employees define corporate values. If I support my local public schools with a check, my employer supports my local public schools with a check. If I support the Positive Coaching Alliance, my employer supports Positive Coaching Alliance. If sponsor my friends in a walk to stamp out Alzheimer’s, my employer sponsors them, too.

Matching funds provide a bond between and employee, employer, and community, creating a 3-legged stool where each supports the other. In the current financial climate, companies may not be worried about employee retention, but a manager should never underestimate the benefits of a team who values loyalty, character and sincerity.

By matching charitable donations, employees are empowered with a sense of ownership. Each gets a seat on the board of directors, and the company supports charities that are in-house designated.

In contrast, I used to live near the world headquarters of a large company. When I approached them to support a school fundraiser, I was told that their policy was to designate one specific charity annually, and no other contributions were considered. The upside here is that a very large donation gets made to one needy organization. Employees vote to pick the charity, creating a unified cause, and it certainly keeps down the overhead accounting of managing all the requests, reporting, and check processing.

I was struck by this narrow this approach. That policy wouldn’t work for Balsamiq Studios, but it did make me wonder how other companies handle philanthropy.

What are other companies doing?

As a reader of this blog, you are already important to me, and I would like to hear what you think. Does your company match the charitable contributions employees make? Even if the answer is no, we want to hear that, too! If your company offers matching funds, are there annual caps? How many employees work for your company? What industry are you in? Is there a web site I should know about for this kind of benchmarking? Do employees appreciate and value this benefit? Let’s hear it: I am reviewing the whole charity enchilada.

Please add your comments!  (We will, of course, consult our accountants for logistics, too.)

Thanks for being part of our community,

Val

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And the UXLx Winner is…

by val. March 9th, 2010 under Fun — 1 Comment

The upcoming UXLx Conference (May 12-14 in Lisbon) is a wonderful chance for Usability folks to hear some of our favorite speakers and meet like-minded experts who believe, like we do, that “Life’s too short for bad software.”

Balsamiq Studios is proud to support conferences focused on ridding the world of bad UI, and when we can’t attend ourselves, we sometimes spread a bit of the UX joy by giving away our entrance passes to our user community.

The UXLx Silver pass (valued at €295.00) was raffled today, and out of the 56 entrants, and we are proud to announce our winner in this little video:

We know this will be a fantastic conference and can’t wait to hear about it from our Balsamiq envoy. We’d love it if attendees share your experiences with the rest of us via facebook!

For those who didn’t win but would still like to attend, we are happy to offer a discount for passes still available. Use the code BALSAMIQ2010 to get 10% off! To register for UXLs, go here.

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Happy Birthday, BalsamiqMarco!

by val. February 22nd, 2010 under Fun — 4 Comments

I woke up to the news that today was Marco’s birthday. He’s already logged off for dinner, so we decided to throw him a little virtual surprise party, complete with decorations by Mariah and Guidio Jack, and a ukulele soundtrack for your enjoyment.

(No laughing at my accent.)

Tanti aguri, caro BalsamiqMarco!

BalsamiqVal

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My seat at the Chef's Table

by val. February 2nd, 2010 under Personal — 8 Comments

Since college, my job title has gone from Administrative Assistant to Chief Operating Officer. I have seen and learned a great deal, and not just about technology. It’s been a wild ride, through expansions and contractions, and I have been up close and personal to some great management, as well as some also-rans. Luckily, growing up in a large family, I got the message early that I can learn what NOT to do from others.

This blog attempts to share lessons learned, as well as spark discussions around challenges I face today. Running a µISV is a little like being invited to dine at the Chef’s Table of a great restaurant. I am able to see “up close and personal” some delicious experiments!

Sitting at the Chef’s Table can sometimes be a little too close to the hot kitchen. I can relate to Jason Cohen who admits that sometimes, even he feels like fraud.

So I need help finding this community of Admin turned COO.  I know it’s there, but I can’t find it. I even used the tools suggested by Marshall Kirkpatrick here.

A great admin is sometimes invisible, but you can spot a disinterested admin from a mile away. A star is the backbone that creates and maintains an esprit de corps, allowing teams to focus on what they do best. We are helpers, or Connectors as Malcolm Gladwell calls us in the Tipping Point. We bring a special sauce to the table.

One of the greatest parts about being in larger company is camaraderie available. At Macromedia, engineering teams called the Executive Admins “The Goddesses.” (We even dressed up as superheroes one Halloween.) Those were the days when our jobs could have been summed in one line, “Other duties as needed.”

So where are the smart admins who love technology and are indispensible team members? Any of you working in startups already? Is there anyone just like me out there? Let’s hear from you!  Rather than pining away for the benefit of a team of admins in a larger company, let’s grow a community of engaged, techno-curious “Admin-agers” to do what we do best: share, lead and learn.

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