Balsamiq hires 2nd empoyee

[trickjarrett]

Balsamiq is continually a great example for other entrepreneurs as well as an example for a small independent web business. Another great post welcoming the new employee and updating us on how it will change and improve the business further!

[sachmanb]

i meant to upvote you, clicked downvote by accident, seems to be no undo -- sorry about that

[mattjaynes]

Impressive example of welcoming an employee on board - Valerie must be glowing.

What a great tone to set for the culture of a fledgling company.

[staunch]

Why not just get a couple support couple people at a low salary and put all that profit away? If sales keep going the way they're going for the next couple years you'll have more money than you'll ever need. And you can always sell it off for a lump sum whenever you want. If you take the risk of trying to build a bigger company you could end up walking away with much less.

I'm definitely not opposed to sharing slices of a bigger pie, but in this case it seems unnecessary.

[kneath]

I've found a lot of startups seem to think that support is a lower level task and should be outsourced to the lowest bidder. The thing is, your customer support is your company. It's how your customers interact with you as a company, and it's how they form opinions of whether they like you or not.

In my experience, great customer support is often far more valuable than a bug-free product. Bugs happen, but if a customer runs into a bug and then gets great support from your support staff -- they switch from a skeptic to a passionate customer who tells everyone about your product.

[dshah]

As it turns out, startups are not just about what you can walk away with (though that's certainly a plus).

It's nice to be able to share the experience with others that you like and respect.

[vaksel]

Congrats, you should do a year wrap up post(I'm pretty sure you haven't done one yet, and you hit the 1 year milestone recently) and list all the accomplishments for Balsamiq from start to finish.

[balsamiq]

Hi vaskel, thanks for the idea. I consider launch date (6/19) to be the yearly milestone, so we're not quite there yet. I already have something planned for that day, but I probably will do a yearly summary at the end of 2009, just like I did for 2008: http://www.balsamiq.com/blog/?p=531

[tsally]

I think he mentioned it somewhere on his blog before, but does anyone know what financial software he uses/used to generate the charts and graphics for his earning posts?

[balsamiq]

I use Excel 2008 for Mac - old school huh? ;)

[nraynaud]

It's a normal company now, with big titles, offices and support :)

The fun is gone.

[balsamiq]

Actually, I think the fun is just starting! We still don't have offices, and our titles are made up and meant to be fun.

But in a sense I do hope that we transition to a more "standard" small business, that was the goal from the beginning. :)