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$10,000 in Revenue in the First 6 Weeks

· Posted by Peldi in Company · 20 Comments

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 report:

Less than 6 weeks from launch, Balsamiq Studios reached USD 10,000 in revenue.

Here's the breakdown, week by week:

You see 7 columns there because I launched on a Thursday, but the chart shows weeks as starting on Monday.

Mockups for Desktop accounts for 98% of my sales and 89% of the revenue. Hopefully after yesterday's licensing change sales of Mockups for Confluence will pick up some and contribute more.

Saying I am happy with this milestone is a big understatement, the feeling I have is more one of incredulity than anything else...if it's a dream, don't wake me up. 🙂

I'll post another financial update here if I reach $100,000 in revenue (I wish) or if things go dramatically south. I sure hope it's the former! 🙂

I have a very long TODO list for Mockups and for Balsamiq in general, so I'd better get back to work and keep the momentum going!

P.S. Some people asked me why I share my financial data so openly on the web. My short answer is: why not? The long answer could be the subject of another blog post: it has to do with gaining the trust of prospective customers by making Balsamiq Studios an open, honest and approachable company you'd want to do business with.

UPDATE: I wrote this post yesterday, but today was another record day, with 2 Team licenses of Mockups for Confluence and 4 licenses of Mockups for Desktop sold. So now the revenue is at $11,488. Also, I had an exciting thought: could Mockups be the highest grossing Adobe AIR app to date? That'd be cool.

Peldi for the Balsamiq Team

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Comments (20)

  1. Pingback: Sales Record – 3 Months In | OhBoard

  2. Good luck, its amazing to hear a success story like this!

    Patent Application
  3. Peldi, all I can say: congratulations!

  4. Congratulations.
    I am sure you will achieve that goal. You deserve it.
    Great idea on a long neglected but essential area!

  5. I can’t remind how I worked without your software. You deserve your success.

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  8. Pingback: Balsamiq, a Mockup Creator in AIR, is on Fire | Enetlive.net- Rich Internet Applications Blog

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  10. Pingback: Ryan Stewart - Rich Internet Application Mountaineer » Blog Archive » Balsamiq AIR Application - $10,000 in Revenue in 6 Weeks

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  12. I love your story 😉
    Good job!

    I will definitely buy balsamiq if I need it!

    D.

  13. I noticed on the Read/Write post someone suggested you adding the ability to do iPhone mockups and you asked about images, etc.

    I while ago I found a set of graphics to just that at: http://daniel.room52.net/dev/iPhonePicKit/

    Still a big fan of Balsamiq (not a purchaser yet but will be) since mentioning it way back on June 19th on my other blog at http://socialinteraction.wordpress.com/2008/06/19/some-aha-moment-tools/.

    Keep up the great work, as an independent developer it’s great to read a success story, especially when the product is something useful and needed. While it’s great for internal and external development EVERY company doing internal enterprise development should have this tool! In fact I have been recommending it to everyone I know doing this type of work.

    To often developers create mockups that get rolled out to users and end up being horid (especially common in internal enterprise development) pieces of software. I’ve seen it myself, a user gets their hands on a “running” mockup made in VB or quickly hacked in Java, etc. and figures they have a complete program and they deploy it (see tears) rather than using it for what it is a use-case mockup. It’s one reason for such high fail rates in enterprise development… Mockups being deployed!

    Anyway…

    Cheers,

    Christopher

  14. Well done. I rarely comment on blogs, but I wanted to thank you for your courage in posting this info and congratulate you on a great start. You built a solid product, and then you tagged it with a rational price which allows you to keep growing efficiently. I think a lot of people are uncomfortable when pricing newly created software as they are looking to scale and get more users, but by pricing it, you automatically enhance the perceived value.

    Rock on.

    Rick Rodgers
  15. A little update: this post has sparked another interesting conversation on Hacker News: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=262258

    Thanks everyone for the nice words of encouragement!

    Peldi Guilizzoni
  16. Fantastic news! Now, can you keep the income on an upwards path each week/month, or at least keep it steady?

    Good luck, its amazing to hear a success story like this!

  17. Ok, snotty comments aside, this did totally knock my socks off. Wrote a post about it at http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/balsamiq_mockup_creator_is_on_fire.php

  18. Congratulations! Your progress has been a lot of fun to watch via this blog. Fwiw, though, if these guys have sold almost any of their software, they are probably making more revenue from an AIR app so far http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/structure_data_and_air.php

  19. Congratulations!

    I think it’s great of you to share the results. I think there’s always the fear that people will copy you if you’re successful, but success is more about marketing anyway, and that’s not so easy to copy. Since the people interested in your numbers are also your potential customers, it should work well.

  20. No reason to be skeptical about $100,000: You’ve nailed a long-neglected niche with a cross-platform product that pretty much sells itself through word-of-mouth. Nearly anyone working in app design sees the appeal immediately and wants Mockups in their toolbox.

    Congratulations, and best of wishes for that other $90,000. It’s one thing to have a great idea, but it’s quite another to get execution so right, and so early in the game.

    Michael Matti