The Next Web

Balsamiq Mockups Makes Big Impression on Hacker Community

Written on August 7, 2008 – 12:03 pm
Steven Carrol, Next Web WebTipr France

Balsamiq Mockups is a new product launched on the Adobe AIR platform which allows developers to make mockups of their designs in no time. Think MSWord for hackers. Since its launch a few short months ago Balsamiq mockups has taken the hacker community by storm. Why? This is one of those rags to riches stories that inspire us all.

Developed by Peldi Guilizzoni (a one man band) working out of Bologna (Italy) who was inspired by 37signals mantras and Paul Graham (HN) to ‘create something people want’. Balsamiq Mockups is now following in the footsteps of past masters and amazingly has gone into profitability from almost the get go. And what’s more this self funded project is now turning over thousands of dollars each month.

The beauty of this product is its elegance, it solves the pain of hackers who have long since forgotten where the pen and paper is located (bottom draw guys), it allows quick and editable drafts to be created of potential design ideas. The user interface is completely intuitive (no instructions needed) and results are quickly achieved.

When so many large companies with millions of dollars in VC backing are chasing the elusive Web2.0 biz model, hunting down huge numbers of users who they intend spamming later, this makes a very refreshing change. The execution of this plan is perfect. Peldi has managed to capture the attention of his target market (hackers and developers) with stories of his progress, which in turn have initiated interesting debates on Hacker News.

So far Balsamiq Mockups has been covered by over 100 blogs (this is the 101th blog post!) yet still absent from this entourage is any mention from TechCrunch. This is one of those products that will make it onto the stage of the foremost Tech startup blog, it’s a good human story and more inspiring than the news bites that so and so has just been granted another round of X. Come on TC, show this man some luv.

Way to go Peldi, have a bottle of Chianti for me.

A quick demonstration of Balsamiq Mockups: building an iTunes-like UI in two minutes:

I hope you like that post!

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adobe air, Balsamiq Mockups, business model, hackers, Peldi Guilizzoni