The corner bistro you'll be returning to for years.
Small Company
A cozy restaurant on the Web
Clear Focus
We bite off what we can chew
Profitable
We're in this for the long haul
Genuinely Caring
Life's too short for bad software
Outstanding Advisers
We are so lucky
Contagious Passion
We absolutely love this
Company
Company Overview#
Founded in March 2008, Balsamiq Studios aims to make the world a better place by helping people create software that is easier to use. Read our Manifesto!
Balsamiq is a fast-growing but still-very-personable software company. We like to compete on usability and customer service.
Our product is Balsamiq Mockups. Launched in June 2008, Mockups helps software designers and developers build great software by letting them easily sketch out their ideas, then quickly collaborate and iterate over them.
Balsamiq Mockups has netted over $9,000,000 in sales in first 3 years of business and is gathering rave reviews.
We are trying to build a company we’d like to do business with ourselves. We aim to WOW you through our support and outstanding user experiences, and be a company that’s human, respectful, transparent, inclusive, socially and environmentally conscious.
You can rest assured that you won’t find anyone more passionate about your success in our space. We are proud to play our part in the wonderful ecosystem we play in.
Contact us, we’re friendly people#
| Lost your license key? Retrieve it here! | |
| Sales & Licensing | sales@balsamiq.com (it’s Val and Natalie) |
| Technical Support | Start from our support portal, as most questions are already answered there. You can also try our GetSatisfaction forums: you can search, submit, vote, and get a very quick response. You can also email us via this simple form. |
| Phone | +1 (415) 367-3531 |
| Fax | +1 (888) 349-8816 |
| Skype | balsamiq (best for sales-related questions) |
| Post | Balsamiq Studios, LLC PO Box 1138 Sacramento, CA 95812 |
Join the conversation!
| Our blogs | Get to know us! |
| @balsamiq or follow our team’s Twitter list | |
| facebook.com/mockups | |
| YouTube | youtube.com/user/balsamiq |
| Balsamiq Lovers | |
| Subscribe to our RSS feeds. | |
Team#
Giacomo ‘Peldi’ Guilizzoni
Founder and CEO
You can read about Peldi in these interviews, in this blog post about his story, listen to some of his talks or take a look at his LinkedIn profile.
Marco Botton
Super-duper Coder
Email Blog
Follow @balsamiqMarco
Marco is Balsamiq’s 1st employee, and the lead developer of the Mockups editor. Editable groups, Symbols, Zooming…if it’s a really hard feature, we give it to Marco.
Valerie Liberty
Head Chef, Wow! Division
Email Blog
Follow @balsamiqVal
Valerie is Balsamiq’s #2 employee, helping with sales inquiries, support questions and in charge of donating our software as much as possible. She’s also our resident chef!
Luis Arias
Web programmer extraordinaire
Email Blog
Follow @balsamiqLuis
Luis is our server-side guru: Java, Grails, Linux server administration, he can do it all. He’s in the lead developer of myBalsamiq, our web app.
Mike Angeles
Designicorn
Email Blog
Follow @balsamiqMike
Mike is our User Experience guy: educator via our UX Blog, Product Manager, Interface Designer, Front End Developer, Webmaster, and of course, the Konigi guy.
Natalie Gould
CFO & Wow! Division, Bologna Office
Email Blog
Follow @balsamiqNat
Natalie is the master bean-counter, in charge of keeping our finances healthy. Based in Italy, she also handles sales and support for our European customers.
Paolo Ottanà
All-around Coder
Email Blog
Follow @balsamiqPaolo
Paolo is in charge of the internal tools that keep us humming along, as well as being the lead coder for the plugin versions of Mockups.
Louanne Poisson
Regina della Qualità
Louanne keeps us honest by finding lots of bugs in our products so that you won’t have to. She is also able to answer any technical support question you might have. Read her story.
Joy McCrea
COO, Balsamiq LLC
Joy makes sure our distributed team is well taken care of: payroll, benefits, taxes, accounting, dealing with the bank — she does it all!
Kyle Dinh
DevOps
Kyle is a developer, sysadmin and plugin product manager all rolled into one. He loves racing motorbikes.
Mariah Maclachlan
Better Half
Mariah is Peldi’s wife, best friend and in “the hand” behind all of Mockups’ UI controls and icons.
Malcolm Maclachlan
Malcolm is Mariah’s big brother. In his day job, he’s a reporter for The Capitol Weekly. At night-time, he helps out with logistics for our US branch.
Keeping It Small and Real
I know, it sounds iffy: how can such as small team create, test, maintain, market, sell and support a software company? Well, that remains to be seen. Here’s how we are attempting to do it:
Focus, Focus, Focus
We maintain a laser-like focus on solving a single problem at the time, and solving it really well. That’s why we chose to build small simple tools that solve a small problem really well. Focus.
Surrounding ourselves with outstanding advisers
We are extremely lucky to be associated with some outstanding professionals who guide us along the way in this entrepreneurship journey. See our full Board of Advisers list.
Web 2.0 really does make you hyper-productive
By leveraging web-native, usable software for everything from this website to our back-office infrastructure, we are able to run a lean mean software-development machine.
Giving it all we’ve got
We are truly passionate about building great software that solves real problems in an elegant, unobtrusive way. We have a proven track record of doing so at our previous companies (Macromedia, Adobe Systems, Think3).
Frequently Asked Questions
What if you go belly-up next year?
We realize that you are taking a risk by buying software from a small company like ours, and we thank you for considering it in the first place.
Know this:
- you can start with a small license and see how you feel
- we are well funded, have low expenses, we became profitable 3 weeks after launching, reached $10,000 in revenue in less than six weeks, $100,000 in less than 5 months, $800,000 in our first year and 1.6MM in 2009. Sales are growing steadily.
- Our current 30,000+ customers aren’t worried, so why should you be? :)
How can you provide great customer support?
If there’s one thing we hate it is bad customer support. We take pride in providing personal, dedicated customer support. So far, we seem to be doing ok. We are a support-heavy organization, and we like it that way.
We are also experimenting with a new kind of customer service, one that’s more open and collaborative. Check out Balsamiq’s forums on Get Satisfaction and join the conversation!
Why “balsamiq?”#
Balsamic vinegar, the high-end, aged for 25+ year kind, has a lot in common with what we want our software to be: rich, smooth, pleasurable, expensive. Ok our software is actually pretty affordable but we still want it to feel like a treat! :)
Like a fine balsamic vinegar, our software adds flavor to something else (in our case Web Office apps), requires craftmanship and is made in Italy!
What are your “green” credentials?
We do everything we can to reduce Balsamiq’s environmental impact. Here’s a small sample:
- We work from home (no polluting commutes for us)
- We hold all our meetings online, reducing polluting travel.
- We all try to bike, walk, take the bus or car-share as much as possible.
- We give free licenses to non-profits and other do-gooders, many of which are doing good things for the environment. Here’s a partial list.
Just like everyone else, we could do better in this area. Just know that we care and reducing our impact on the environment is always on our minds.
© 2012 Balsamiq Studios, LLC · Federal EIN 26-2200095 (W9 Form)
