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A comment on I wrote a SaaS product because the internet made me believe it'd make me rich. Parent comment

Re:I wrote a SaaS product because the internet made me belie... by cheez on Thursday May 28, 2020 @08:26PM (#23344873)
The best indie launch I've seen was the initial launch of Balsamiq.

It was played off as "meh" by Peldi but it was masterful. I had launched a product 2 years before and until then, I couldn't understand what I did wrong.

I obsessed over what he did. Every single thing. Trying to find where he got "lucky". There was no luck.

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Re:I wrote a SaaS product because the internet made me belie... by Brajeshwar on Friday May 29, 2020 @02:39AM (#23346909)
Peldi is just super friendly and a superhero with customer support. I believe that played a big role in the beginning, and perhaps later.

I knew Peldi from the Flash days. Met him once or twice in SFO, and he has an infectious smile and was super friendly.

Once, one of our team was showing me Balsamiq and they all liked it. I tried and it was super easy to use. I went to buy the license or I went to ask how to buy it, and Peldi replied back, something in the lines of, "Free for you buddy. You did enough for the community, this is the least I can do." That was also the time when I realized Peldi was behind Balsamiq.

I had had various interactions with him, not just about Balsamiq but asking him stupid questions, advice, and networking introductions.

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Re:I wrote a SaaS product because the internet made me belie... by stets on Friday May 29, 2020 @02:50AM (#23346961)
They are still a pretty damn awesome company. Gave me a bit of free credit and a shirt for tweeting about them. I'm wearing it in my tweet about this post making front page :-)

https://twitter.com/stets_10/status/1266158608024305664

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Re:I wrote a SaaS product because the internet made me belie... by balsamiq on Saturday May 30, 2020 @07:24AM (#23360348)
Brajeshwar! It's good to come across you on the internet again, it's been a while! I hope you're doing great, and thanks for the kind words.
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Re:I wrote a SaaS product because the internet made me belie... by cheez on Friday May 29, 2020 @08:12AM (#23349009)
That's a nice story! In my opinion, customer service/etc was irrelevant early on.
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Re:I wrote a SaaS product because the internet made me belie... by dvt on Thursday May 28, 2020 @08:39PM (#23344966)
Can I get some insight into this? What did Balsamiq do? I'm not familiar.
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Re:I wrote a SaaS product because the internet made me belie... by onion2k on Friday May 29, 2020 @02:50AM (#23346965)
It was an early wire framing tool for prototyping UIs. The clever bit (that seems obvious now) was that it looked intentionally rough so that clients would focus on the overall UI layout instead of the minor details. It was a great app.
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Re:I wrote a SaaS product because the internet made me belie... by balsamiq on Saturday May 30, 2020 @11:55AM (#23362009)
Ehm...why all the past tense? We still ARE very much around...we just had our best year yet [1], and are on track to do even better. Don't count us out just yet! :)

[1] https://blog.balsamiq.com/looking-back-2019/

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Re:I wrote a SaaS product because the internet made me belie... by cheez on Saturday May 30, 2020 @12:59PM (#23362580)
Ok Peldi, now don't make me a liar. It wasn't luck. Double it in 3 years :-)
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Re:I wrote a SaaS product because the internet made me belie... by balsamiq on Sunday May 31, 2020 @05:45AM (#23368385)
That sounds stressful! ;) We're not here for growth, but for longevity. I aim for 2% year on year growth, but for 100+ years. :)
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Re:I wrote a SaaS product because the internet made me belie... by cheez on Sunday May 31, 2020 @10:54AM (#23369941)
Excellent. Whatever works for you man, you are my hero.
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Re:I wrote a SaaS product because the internet made me belie... by cercatrova on Friday May 29, 2020 @04:02AM (#23347458)
That's funny because the actual value proposition of using Balsamiq to create apps is that they themselves are intentionally rough. So it looks like the founders used Balsamiq to create and pitch Balsamiq. Very cool example of dogfooding.
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Re:I wrote a SaaS product because the internet made me belie... by cheez on Thursday May 28, 2020 @09:10PM (#23345194)
hard to really say, most of the stuff will be bitrotted.

But, he networked VERY hard.

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Re:I wrote a SaaS product because the internet made me belie... by Sophistifunk on Thursday May 28, 2020 @10:34PM (#23345732)
He was all over various Flex dev spaces, IIRC. Not only was Balsamiq written in Flex, we were all building the kinds of things it was perfectly suited for, too.
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Re:I wrote a SaaS product because the internet made me belie... by mettamage on Friday May 29, 2020 @02:26AM (#23346829)
Is it in here? I just Google searched it, but the article is too big for me to read at the moment.

https://blog.balsamiq.com/startup-marketing-advice-from-bals...

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Re:I wrote a SaaS product because the internet made me belie... by cheez on Friday May 29, 2020 @10:12AM (#23350155)
This is probably a good start.
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Re:I wrote a SaaS product because the internet made me belie... by balsamiq on Saturday May 30, 2020 @07:22AM (#23360341)
Geez @cheez ;) thanks for the kind words. I do still believe there was a fair amount of luck involved, but I'm glad my writing was useful to you.
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Re:I wrote a SaaS product because the internet made me belie... by cheez on Saturday May 30, 2020 @10:40AM (#23361505)
You're welcome. I still use Mockups :-)

As for luck, you made your own luck. Congrats on your success!

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