Life at Balsamiq

Launching a new brand, a new website, and a new UI for our wireframing tool! A design update that doesn’t change our focus: speed and clarity for product teams.

In 2024 we pruned to grow, we focused on clarity, and we adapted to embrace data analysis. Read about all the improvements and new features, too!

We have people in the USA (in California and Illinois), and Europe. This allows us to provide top-notch customer support and gives us a diverse and global culture.

A detailed recap of what we did in 2023 and a peek into our plans for 2024.

We wrote a book to help everyone participate in the design process! It’s about better ways to make wireframes and use them with your team. Order your copy now.

We've changed a lot in the last year! Here's our traditional recap of what we did in 2022 and our plans for 2023.

The Balsamiq team is growing! Join us in welcoming two new team members, JR and Arielle, in new roles.

Even if you tend to do marketing projects internally, sometimes you could consider hiring outside contractors. This is how we do it - and some lessons learned.

Product roadmaps vary a lot depending on the size of your company. We try to keep ours simple.

Our traditional recap of what we did in 2021, and our plans for 2022!

Quarterly roadmap meetings are great for making big plans, but how can we make much-needed smaller, everyday decisions? We use PRBs!

After two years, our Office Hours program is still going great. Several new Balsamiq mentors are now available for a chat. Come meet us online!

A detailed recap of what we achieved in 2020, and a quick look at what's to come in 2021!

In November, we met for a 3-day mini virtual retreat dedicated to social time and fun. Here is how we planned the event and what we learned.

A behind-the-scenes look at some of the tools we built to help Balsamiq run smoothly, and the motivations behind building them. It’s educational and fun!

Features, bugs, chores: a behind-the-scenes look at how we decide to work on. Because no matter how big your product team is, there’s only so much you can push.

Like many other companies, we had to change plans for our annual company retreat. Here are the challenges we faced and the solutions we adopted for 2020.

The big rewrite is finally complete. Revenue grew over 11%. Read the recap of 2019, and take a quick look at what's to come in 2020!

Beta programs are a common way to reduce risk when shipping new software. We like to take it a step further and run Gammas, as well! Less stress, more quality.

Gathering together in May for our annual retreat in our new Bologna office, 'The Nest,' echoed the journey we've been on as a company over the past year.

Have you ever wanted to talk to us in person? Would you like advice on your career, or software company? We are running a new program, which we're calling... the Balsamiq Office Hours!

A look back at Balsamiq's 2018 achievements and results.

The Balsamiq family keeps on growing! Join us in welcoming our 3 new team members Amanda, Kendra, and Billy.

Balsamiq turned 10! To celebrate the milestone we gathered all together, with families and friends, for six amazing days in The Dominican Republic.

Welcome two new employees to the Balsamiq family: Laura Lei and Julia DeBari. Laura Lei is our Digital Artist and Julia is our first Design Educator.

The 5 most common questions or comments we've received about working from home. 'How does your boss know that you're actually working?' is the first one 😊

We have donated more than 10,000 licenses over the last 8 years. Here is why, and a kind invitation to other software companies to do the same.

It’s that time of the year when we recap the past year and share with you our plans for the next 12 months. Subscribe to the newsletter for more info!

We're excited to introduce to you the two newest members of the Balsamiq family, Ali Servet Donmez and Alasdair Manson!

“Revenue, head count, PR, and quality--if one gets ahead of the others, you’re screwed.” An oldie, but goodie we have referred to since 2008!

It is with great pleasure that we introduce to you four new members of the Balsamiq family! We are also hiring 4 more people over the next few months!

Every company has a natural size. Answer this question and you’ll find out what kind of company you should build and how to grow it.

We keep on growing, and this brings new challenges for our company retreats, too. Read how we plan our retreats and what happened in April 2017!

Our vacation policy was: Take some. But we noticed that some employees weren’t taking enough. Now our policy is: Take at least 20 days off a year.

We continue to truck along nicely, executing on our vision. 2016 was yet another record year for us, with sales almost reaching $6.6 million.

Hello friends! We're excited to introduce to you the two newest members of the Balsamiq family, Stefano Gozzi and Philip Nittenberg!

More and more companies are embracing remote working. For those who are considering it or have just made the leap, there are a lot of resources to learn from, such as the Zapier's Guide to Remote Work. Here are some of...

Hello, friends of Balsamiq! Our not-so-little-anymore team keeps on growing! Today I would like to introduce to you our two new team members: Drew Lafferty and Liz Green! Drew Lafferty Drew is a jack-of-all-trades Deve...

Annual retreats have become an essential part of working together at Balsamiq. From our first gathering as an entire company in 2010, we realized seeing each other face to face is an essential part of building awesome re...

Hello, friends! I am Jessica, and I've just become the 21st member of the Balsamiq team as a Community Manager. How I landed here is a mix of timing, location and -maybe- luck. My love for Italy and my newly formed fami...

Hello again friends of Balsamiq! Peldi here with our traditional 'state of the union' end-of-year report. You can find previous editions here: 2008, 2009, 2013, and 2014. As usual, this is going to be a very long pos...

Hello friends of Balsamiq! It is my great pleasure to introduce to you three new members of the Balsamiq family today. Brendan Saricks Brendan is the guy in your family that everyone calls when their computer doesn'...

Instead of paying for someone's gym, which not everyone has access to or needs, we give our employees a more precious resource: time. Balsamiq's exercise policy Exercising has TONS of benefits. It prevents burnout,...

Since we are a remote, distributed team (9 from Italy, 5 from California, 1 from France, 1 from Germany, 1 from Netherlands, so far - and more are coming!), usually we see each other as two-dimensional people via webcam...

This post is part of a series about our VERY FEW company policies. Read this intro post for some context. We have become hesitant about sharing our company policies because they are, and they should be, forever in evol...

Hello again friends of Balsamiq! Peldi here with our traditional 'state of the union' end-of-year report. You can find previous editions here: 2008, 2009 and 2013. As usual, this is going to be a very long post. Summa...

Hello friends of Balsamiq! I'm Francesca, the seventeenth member of the Balsamiq family. What can we expect from you? My primary role at Balsamiq is to be the Community Manager; you can meet me on all the major Socia...

Ride pride Friends, I can't believe it's October. Before summer becomes a distant memory, I want to tell some stories from this year's Retreat. If you've been following our company, you'll recall that our little team ha...

Hello friends of Balsamiq! As 2013 comes to an end, it's time to revive an old tradition (2008, 2009) and look back at all that we have achieved this year. TL;DR: We continue to truck along nicely, growing organically....

With the SuperMoon shining upon us, the friends who make up Balsamiq met in San Francisco to celebrate our company's 5th birthday. Our team is scattered around Europe and the States, so being together is rare and deliber...

Hello friends of Balsamiq! Our little team is growing again! This time I'd like you to join me in welcoming my good friend and old college buddy Salvatore 'Sax' Cammarata to the Balsamiq family. Sax will take on the...

Hello friends of Balsamiq! It is my great pleasure to introduce to you Andrea Serra, the latest member of the Balsamiq family. Andrea is a client-side developer who will be focussing on our myBalsamiq wireframe edito...

Hello friends of Balsamiq! Another week, another piece of good news. No, two! 🙂 We hired a new team member to speed up our software development, and we partnered with a long term friend's company to improve our softwa...

Hello friends of Balsamiq! It is with great pleasure that I can announce today that Balsamiq has entered a long-term partnership with Aramis B.V., a Dutch software development company owned by my long-time friend Stefan...

It is my great pleasure to introduce to you Anna Mariotti, the latest addition to the Balsamiq family. Anna's main job is to ensure that our growing Italian company runs smoothly. She's going to work on purchasing, m...

My suitcases are not yet unpacked because I have Balsamiq Jetlag Syndrome (BJS). Luis defines that as 'A complication of ordinary jetlag, where the subject is kept awake by the steady stream of inspiration resulting from...

Hello friends. For the second time in the history of Balsamiq, I write you today to apologize for our mistakes. This morning we started what was supposed to be a routine myBalsamiq update. We couldn't do a zero-downtim...

Hello friends of Balsamiq! It is my great pleasure to introduce to you the newest member of the Balsamiq family: Florian Brauer! We first met Florian in July last year, when he posted quite a few detailed and accurat...

Giving back to our communities is a big part of our culture, from day one. We started with giving away our software, but in 2011 we decided to do more. These were our goals at the time: Make donations in an amount...

Since we have no plan on ever selling the company or going public, employee stock option programs never made sense to us. Instead, we set up a quarterly profit sharing program, so that employees could benefit from the...

This post is part of a series about our VERY FEW company policies. Read this intro post for some context. Given that we have different people all around the world and that we are 100% open books internally (i.e. everyo...

This post is part of a series about our VERY FEW company policies. Read this intro post for some context. At Balsamiq, we don't have deadlines. Ever. It seems so natural to me, but I sometimes get reminded of how unco...

I'm not a fan of policies. In fact, the tiny little essay on how policies are bad from Rework is my favorite of the whole book. It's called 'Don’t scar on the first cut' - worth buying the book just for that four-paragra...

Would you trust your software to these people? You bet What is it like when a small, dynamic, distributed software company gets together for a week-long sleepover at the CEO's villa in Italy? How can such a retreat boo...

One of the hardest things about working with my beloved distributed team (aka balsamici*) is our not being able to see each other in person more often. Just once a year are we together in the same time zone, in the same...

Hello everyone! I know it's been a while since our last blog post, my apologies. We've been crazy busy with lots and lots of new customers and working on our web app. It's all fun, but the blogs have been suffering a bi...

It is my great pleasure to introduce to you Paolo Ottanà, the newest member of team Balsamiq. Paolo will be working out of our Bologna office, helping us with lots and lots of different programming tasks. His main re...

Hello friends, long time no see! So sorry for not keeping you in the loop more about what's going on in Balsamiq-land. Although it might seem like we're not doing anything from the outside, the last few weeks have been...

I'm on a boat! 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...

I can barely contain my excitement as I type this, so I'll get right to it: Michael Angeles, the man behind Konigi and one of the people I look up to the most in our industry, has agreed to join Balsamiq. His job tit...

Wow. Just wow. It's hard for me to believe how much has happened in Balsamiq-land in 2009. I feel like a completely different person than when I wrote the 'A Look back at 2008' post, just 12 months ago. In a way, I am...

This is part two of a two-part post about what happened in 2009 and our plans for 2010. We did this last year as well, it's becoming somewhat of a tradition! 😉 By the way, thanks so much for all the support and nice wo...

Hi friends. So I made a big mistake today. No, I made a few. I was so excited about the new pan feature that I decided to release it without testing it properly. Not only, I also ran out the door right after the build...

Last week we participated in the Atlassian Summit, Atlassian's first worldwide conference and Balsamiq's first foray in being a conference sponsor. Below is an account on what happened and what we learned from the exper...

Feeling a great mixture of excitement, pride and trepidation, it is my pleasure to introduce to you Marco Botton, Balsamiq's first full time employee. How did this happen? A little bit of history Warning: the following...

Hi there, just a quick post to record the fact that today marked the 2000th customer of Balsamiq Mockups. That's 2000 monetary transactions, the number of Mockups users could easily be double that - lots of people buy v...

This is part one of a two-part post about what happened in 2008 and my plans for 2009. First, a few numbers about 2008: days in business: 196 - that's 6 months and 13 days, or 28 weeks. See my June 19th launch post her...

This is part two of a two-part post about what happened in 2008 and my plans for 2009. So 2008 was great, no, it was beyond great. I quit my job, moved to Italy and started Balsamiq Studios LLC, my first company. It wen...

I feel a bit sheepish posting this since I don't want to come across as bragging, but a promise is a promise, so here it goes... I just recently surpassed $100,000 of revenue. Balsamiq has been in business for less than...

The following is a story that I told many people already, but didn't think was interesting enough to put on my blog until a certain Tamales Princess I know practically forced me to write to 😉 so here it is. A little bac...

I just sold a license to my 500th customer! That's a much bigger number that I expected to reach in such a short time (it's been less than 3 and 1/2 months since I launched), but so far I don't feel that it has impacted...

The huge amount of attention that my 'Profitable, in 3 weeks!' post has received so far tells me that there's a thirst for financial results of small bootstrapped startups in the interweb, so here's another milestone rep...

Sorry for tooting my own horn here but I think my current and potential customers will be happy to hear that business is going well, so here it goes. Exactly 3 weeks after launching, Balsamiq Studios LLC is now profitab...

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 w...

What's happening: Balsamiq Studios LLC is launching today. What it means to you: Balsamiq Mockups 1.0 is now officially for sale, both as a Confluence plugin and as a desktop application. The website copy has been tw...

So I uploaded Mockups for Desktop to the Adobe AIR marketplace on Monday, and already it's showing 102 downloads of the demo app, plus my entry page is generating a bunch of traffic for my site. Not bad for a product th...

One of the reasons I have this blog is to help others like me who might be starting a software company on their own (micro-ISV-ers?). So if you are like me and know nothing about legal matters and get a knot in your stom...

I have sent a link to an alpha build of Balsamiq Mockups to two of my most trusted advisors. I am so nervous, this will be the first time someone other than me and my wife see the product and get to play with it. It's e...

So no-one liked WOPStudio, I was never really in love with it either. Plus someone pointed out that WOP doesn't really have very good connotations, given that I'm Italian and all. I had no idea! Anyways, after much thin...

I decided on a company name today: WopStudio. Wop is for Web Office Plugins, but you don't have to remember that...just remember wopstudio, or wopstudio.com! 🙂 I like the word 'studio' for a number of reasons: it has a...