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Researched profile. Starter Story's AI research system compiled this page from 126 public sources — the founder didn't write it. Automated research can misread or misattribute a source, so treat figures as best-effort. How this works →
How Balsamiq Grew
Wireframing tool that simplifies product design.
How did Balsamiq grow?
Summary of the sourced claims below
Balsamiq grew through a combination of early exposure on relevant blogs and forums, which generated word of mouth and traffic. The founder actively reached out to bloggers and communities interested in wireframing and user experience to promote the product before launch. Automation in releasing updates rapidly helped improve the app and contributed to its growth.
Channels
14 channels · grouped by how Balsamiq grows
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Word of mouth
· 5 mentions · 5 sources“some friends and families started telling people about it. And then the software kind of has a viral component on its own...when you see a mockup made with mockups, immediately you're going to ask, how did you make that? That's interesting. And so it kind of sells itself. It does word of mouth by...”
highShow 4 more quotes
“So it’s really hard to build really good software and that’s actually why we’re building software to help people build good software because we think that usability is, you know, “Life is too short for bad software” is our motto. We really want to try to help rid the world of that software, but a...”
medium“As soon as anybody saw a wireframe made with Balsamiq, they would immediately ask, hey, how did you make that?”
high“The growth was entirely organic, driven by word of mouth and product quality.”
medium“See if you can make the product better so that they love it more and they tell their friends.”
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Guest posts
· 3 mentions · 3 sources“I started this program where I said, if you're a blogger, I'll give you a free license just so that you can write a blog post about my tool to give me some good feedback and to spread the word at the same time. And that was very successful.”
highShow 2 more quotes
“I do have a very popular blog post called startup-marketing-advice. It basically outlines all the emails that I sent to some bloggers and all the other steps that I did.”
high“So what I decided to do was to donate the software to bloggers in exchange for an honest review. ... I had a ton of reviews and they were mostly favorable. And they link back to my site, which generated a good SEO.”
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Organic social media
· 3 mentions · 3 sources“So we have a collection on Delicious ... For instance, earlier you Tweeted about our Twitter background, right? That’s a puzzle piece. ... pictures of other people’s Tweets that are positive about Balsamic. ... That’s what I’m talking about. Like if everything you do is remarkable and you do a lo...”
highShow 2 more quotes
“I made an image by taking a lot of snapshots of little tweets about us, you know, a little testimonials, I call them, tweet, tweet, testimonials. And I did it, like I made this collage of all these different tweets. And I use that as the Twitter background, right? I get a message from Evan, the i...”
medium“Peldi actively blogged between 2007 - 2009 about what he was doing, not really for marketing purposes, but because he was honestly looking for community input and wanted to share what he was learning.”
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SEO
· 2 mentions · 2 sources“it was somebody who had Googled it up. The website was live, just I hadn't told anybody about it. But I guess Google had picked it up. And somebody had Googled wireframing tools. They found my website and they just bought it. So that sort of started like that just by itself.”
highShow 1 more quote
“And they link back to my site, which generated a good SEO. In hindsight, it was a genius move. ... you were the number one result on Google searches ... I imagine that this blogging strategy really paid off. You had tons of searches coming in from Google.”
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Press
· 2 mentions · 2 sources“Outreach through his community and blogging had a major impact on the successful launch of Mockups. He was* transparent and open, and willing to listen to ideas,* and I think that was something that people identified with. It even got him a mention in the New York Times.”
mediumShow 1 more quote
“So we have a collection on Delicious ... of puzzle pieces. ... Even when we screw up, somehow it becomes more press and stuff like that.”
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Online Community
· 2 mentions · 2 sources“I posted on The Business of Software forum, which is like a pre-after [?] news I didn’t know that existed until we first went…you know, I got this massive spike in traffic. But so I posted these little forums or places then I got some word of mouth started that way”
highShow 1 more quote
“Peldi actively blogged between 2007 - 2009 about what he was doing, not really for marketing purposes, but because he was honestly looking for community input and wanted to share what he was learning. He also had developed many friendships through the investment of time working at Macromedia and ...”
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Viral growth
· 1 mention“The product was good and was unique. It had a viral component inside the product. ... As soon as anybody saw a wireframe made with Balsamiq, they would immediately ask, hey, how did you make that? That's very unique. So the software itself was its own marketing.”
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Pay Per Click Advertising
· 1 mention“One thing that I started doing once I started having some more money, I caved in and I signed up for AdWords. Because at the beginning, I didn't want to... I didn't have any AdWords. But 8 months in, Google sent me the $50 free and I tried it out. And it seemed to work. And so now we do that. And...”
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Branded Merchandise
· 1 mention“At the beginning, the swag step it was just me and I was sending a little bottle of balsamic vinegar to a few people, the handwritten letters. I did that for the first few months, and then it became impossible, because I wanted to do more, we had too many customers to thank and to appreciate. In ...”
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Sponsorship
· 1 mention“The other thing that I started doing is as I had more cash, I started sponsoring more user experience related events. And this was an advice that Sarah Allen, one of my advisors gave me saying, now there's other companies competing with you, but you seem to be becoming the leader. Now you have to...”
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Free Samples
· 1 mention“We love giving our software away. The vast majority of the software we give out for free is to what we call ‘do gooders.’ Non-profits, anyone who’s really sent us an email and tell us why they’re doing good. ... We also donate to bloggers if they want to give a review and we donate to open-source...”
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Building in public
· 1 mention“He famously started blogging about his adventures as a solo founder, and what he was working on, and even exactly how much money he was making way back in 2008, when it seemed like pretty much nobody else was doing this except for a small handful of others.”
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Community Contributions
· 1 mention“I would much rather spend an hour doing a usability study with a customer, listening to their feature requests, doing a Skype chat with a customer. After an hour of that I have twenty things that I know I must do today.”
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Speaking at conferences
· 1 mention“I do it whenever we are at a conference I always drive people to try the software… we had a booth at this conference and so people would come by and I was like ‘Hey, do you want to use it for a little while’ and that’s where I got some brilliant ideas there.”
high
How 3,289 businesses grow
Of businesses with mapped growth channels, the share using each —
Balsamiq’s highlighted.
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Social media64% ◀
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Referral/Word-of-mouth64% ◀
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Search/SEO58% ◀
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Email47%
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Community37% ◀
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Content/Inbound35% ◀
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Partnerships32% ◀
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Events24% ◀
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Paid ads23% ◀
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Outbound/Sales19%
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Press/PR17% ◀
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Marketplaces/App stores12%
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Podcasting4%
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Influencer partnerships3%
