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A comment on Balsamiq hits $100,000 in revenue. Parent comment

Re:Balsamiq hits $100,000 in revenue by swombat on Friday November 14, 2008 @02:37PM (#364688)
put your head down and focus on making a great product, everything else will follow

And market the hell out of it.

The Balsamiq approach to marketing (market the success story) is quite similar to that of 37Signals, actually, and both essential and very effective.

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Re:Balsamiq hits $100,000 in revenue by webwright on Friday November 14, 2008 @06:14PM (#364923)
Absolutely.

The "build a great product and they will come" myth is bullshit 99% of the time (unless you have a built in marketing engine-- SEO or viral). Balsamiq won the same reason that 37s did (and JoelonSoftware for that matter)... They had a great story, told it well, and the story happened to resonate/be interesting to their exact target market (web geeks / entrepreneurs).

Bravo!

But try to build great software for supply chain management, or managing a beauty parlor and let me know how "everything else will follow" there. There's a reason that SalesForce.com (which, arguably, has/had a great product) has spent 60-70% of their topline on sales and marketing.

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