Balsamiq

Florian Brauer joins Balsamiq

Hello friends of Balsamiq!

It is my great pleasure to introduce to you the newest member of the Balsamiq family: Florian Brauer!

We first met Florian in July last year, whene he posted quite a few detailed and accurate bug reports on our GetSatisfaction forums (here are some examples).

Almost right away, Florian started answering other people's questions there before we could even get to them. We were so pleased with his help that we sent him a limited edition Life's too short for bad software! T-Shirt! :)

Then, at the end of September, while we were looking for Kyle, Florian wrote me:

Hello Peldi,

Best greetings,
Florian

Because of its timing and of all the respect Florian had already earned from us over the summer, I couldn't have been happier to receive such an email, and jumped at the opportunity.

Florian has been working full-time for us as an external contractor since the beginning of November.

In the last five months, he has helped us tremendously in our effort to pay back the technical debt that we had accumulated since we launched in 2008: he has devised ways to automate the testing of our Mockups editor (which is written in Flash, a notoriously hard technology to test programmatically), and has already written over 500 unit and integration tests. He's caught some bugs, and even fixed some himself. All with minimal supervision.

In short, he's a machine. A German-engineered machine. :)

Florian starts today. His job title (not that we care much about job titles) is "developer in testing", and his focus will continue to be writing and maintaining our testing harnesses, helping the devs write unit, integration and scenario tests, and answering your questions in GetSatisfaction and via Desk.com while Lou and Mike are sleeping in the US.

Florian is based in Bremen, Germany. His email is florian@balsamiq.com and his Twitter handle is @balsamiqFlo.

We updated the company page with Florian's bio and added a very northern pin to the employees map.

We all look forward to meeting Florian in person at our next retreat in NYC in June.

Please join us in welcoming Florian to the Balsamiq family! :)
Peldi for the Balsamiq Team

Our Donation Policy

This post is part of a series about our VERY FEW company policies. Read this intro post for some context.

While we're not quite big enough yet to sponsor NOVA or Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me!, we're still committed to trying to be good citizens. :)

We've been giving out software since day one to "do-gooders" and have made some other donations along the way, but this year during out retreat, we met to discuss how we could more fully meet our commitment in our manifesto.

After a lively and wonderful discussion, we developed a little donation policy, below.

It's not quite perfect yet: we'd love to be able to have the hours in the day to make donations to many more organizations, and of course giving MORE money will be awesome. And Marco's dream for the entire team spread out in three countries being involved on the same project, giving our time as well as money? Hopefully we'll get there someday! ;)

For now our goals reached are:

1. Make donations in an amount that should have a significant impact on an organization.
2. Make donations personal, so that the choices represent the unique make up of the cares and concerns of our little Balsamiq family.

Here's our current donation policy:

Each year, every full-time employee can chose one non-profit organization for the company
to make a contribution. The amount of the contribution will be 2% percent of the prior year
profits divided by the number of full-time employees.


That 2% might not seem much, but it resulted in 9 donations of roughly $3,000 each this year, and it will be bigger in 2012.

And what fun it has been for Joy and I as the Balsamiq bean counters to curate this process! It has been a pleasure for me to see each choice made by my fellow team member. It has been an honor to be able to help make the donations, and helps us feel closer to our colleagues spread around the globe.

Here are the organizations we donated to this year, with a quick message from each of us:

Joy - 7th Grade class, Sacramento, CA
I decided to pick my daughters class. The money will be used so that all the kids can go on all the field trips together even if their parents can't afford to contribute to the class fund.

Louanne - The Pet Rescue Center, Mission Viejo, CA
I recently moved to Southern California with my two elderly Maine Coon cats. I knew there would come a time soon when I would need a competent, kind and gentle vet to help help me care for my dear, sweet Sune. Sune and I arrived at the exact right place at the exact right time. As a way of thanking the staff at the Alicia Pet Care Center, I made my donation to The Pet Rescue Center they run.

Luis - ARAA, Rueil, France
ARAA is a non-profit that helps pets, mainly stray cats, by feeding them, sterlizing them and helping them to find a home. I learned about ARAA one day when we first had our dog Zoé, and looking for someone reliable who could keep her while we were in the US on vacation. I saw how devoted they are to their cause and I wanted to reach out and say thanks.

Marco - CEFA, Bologna, Italy
I chose an organization here in Bologna that does development work in nations around the globe.

Mike - Nature Conservancy, Plant a Billion Trees, Arlington, VA
This year I let my son pick the beneficiary for my donation, and he chose The Nature Conservancy. Since the end of the summer he has been trying to get the word out about their Plant a Billion Trees drive, whose goal is to plant a billion trees in the Atlantic Forest of Brazil. We have hopes that this donation helps reach that goal.

Natalie - California 4-H Foundation, Merced County, CA
4-H has made a huge impact on me and many members of my family. My uncle is about to retire after running the program in Merced County for decades. He has particularly spearheaded curricula in science and technology, so I thought this was the perfect mix for Balsamiq and me. The donation will go towards scholarships for low-income 4-H members in his county.

Paolo - CBM, Italy
My wife and I have always had sight problems since we were kids, and my father also had eye surgery last year. We decided to donate to this organization that helps to prevent and cure blindness in young people all over the world.

Peldi - UNICEF, Italy
After much deliberation I decided to donate to UNICEF this year after listening to the head of the UNICEF Bologna chapter talk about the various programs they are working on. Although it's a big organization, I feel that a large enough part of my donation is going towards helping children in need around the world.

Val - Peninsula Temple Sholom, Burlingame, CA
Last year, my daughter asked if a friend could come home with her after school, and maybe spend the night. She had lost her home that weekend. Her dad was scrambling for a place. She ended up staying with us for a few weeks, and my family was the first Jewish family she had ever met. A few weeks later, I was at our Temple one evening when they were providing emergency shelter to homeless families, and I found she was there, with her dad. The Temple does so many good things for so many people, Jewish or not. I am proud to be associated with them.

Happy New Year everyone!
Natalie for the Balsamiq team

Kyle Dinh Joins Balsamiq

Hello friends of Balsamiq!

I am thrilled today to announce that Kyle Dinh has joined the Balsamiq team as full-time employee #10 - double-digits baby! :)

Kyle, who's based in San Francisco, starts off with the following three jobs:

• myBalsamiq devops: he'll help us make sure myBalsamiq becomes known for its reliability. Step one is to keep the servers running smoothly while the rest of the dev team sleeps in Europe.
• myBalsamiq developer: he'll help us make myBalsamiq better, faster.
• plugin-meister: Kyle will help us make the plugin versions more robust, and build new integrations as well!

See the job posting for more details. It's a lot of work, but I'm absolutely confident that Kyle can hack it, and then some.

We interviewed quite a few candidates for this position - thanks to all who applied! - and Kyle knocked our socks off every step of the way. I know that his great communication skills and proven sysadmin and development abilities will delight you as well.

Please join us in welcoming Kyle to the Balsamiq family. His email is kyle@balsamiq.com and he's @balsamiqKyle on Twitter.

Onward!
Peldi and the Balsamiq Team

Looking for an Outgoing DevOps in California

Nov 1st UPDATE: the position has been filled! Go Kyle! :)

Hi this is Peldi from Balsamiq. We are a three-year old, bootstrapped and very profitable little company. In order to help rid the world of bad software, we make a sketch-quality wireframing tool called Balsamiq Mockups. We sell it as a Desktop application, as a plugin to various wikis and bug trackers and as a SaaS web app. We have nine full-time employees, and are looking for #10. The job description is below. Enjoy! :)

About the job

As with all jobs at a small startup, this is a very broad job.

We need help in three areas:

1. Maintain, support and improve our existing plugins, and develop new ones: this is a fun job if you like to work with different technologies. The Mockups editor is done in Actionscript/Flex, while the back-end of our plugins is done in Java and C#/.NET. Plus there's some HTML+CSS+JS integration code sprinkled in there as well. The job here is to bring our plugin versions to parity with the Desktop version and myBalsamiq, adding linking and symbols support for instance. Beyond that, the sky is the limit. Our existing plugins need to be supported, maintained and improved. Plus we develop new ones! This means working directly with some of the best companies in our industry to take the new plugin from idea to reality. This is where your great communication skills will come in handy. :)
2. Help us make myBalsamiq - our web-app - known for its reliability: at minimum, this is the sysadmin side of the job. Luis, the main myBalsamiq dev, is in Paris, France. While he sleeps, we need someone to monitor the servers and respond to emergencies. Hopefully you'll be able to contribute a lot more than that though, helping us design and implement the best server architecture for our SaaS app as it grows over the years. Improving our build processes, helping Louanne design and implement load and stress tests, all that good stuff. There is a ton of fun stuff to build here... I'd love for us to have a little version of a Chaos Monkey like Netflix for instance! :)
3. Improve myBalsamiq with new features and bug fixes: this would mean becoming a Grails + JS guru over time, helping Luis and the rest of the team improve myBalsamiq with new features as it grows. This is a great time to get in, since myBalsamiq is just about to launch, you'll really be able to make an impact here. An area we would love help with for instance is in turning our SaaS app into an enterprise-ready WAR: this means adding LDAP integration, creating an installer and lots more fun stuff.

About you

This is a job for a multi-talented person: you need to be a server-side developer, a system administrator, a middle-ware developer, a product manager and a tech support agent, all at once.

• You already live in California or are willing to move there, and can legally work there.*
• The idea of jumping between different languages and technology stacks on a daily basis excites you.
• You have real-world experience as a SysAdmin of a SaaS product.
• You know what most of these terms mean: AWS (EC2, S3, RDS, ELB, EBS, etc), LDAP, API, REST, SSL, MemCache, Hibernate, GORM... you get the idea.
• You stand out among your peers for your communication skills. Past experiences speaking in public, writing technical books and/or doing direct customer support are a BIG plus.
• You're looking for a job that will let you use ALL of your talents, and develop new ones.
• You are self-motivated and able to set your own schedule.
• You are able to work from home productively and have done so in the past.
• You have an unquenchable thirst for learning.
• You'd never admit this publicly, but deep down inside you know we'd be lucky to get you. ;)
• You're not scared by this list: you know that you can rise to the occasion and fill the gaps if given the chance and time.

*The job is in California because we want someone in PST to assure 24h coverage, and we're all setup to do business in California already (we're registered, reporting sales, etc), so it's easier for us to hire someone there rather than Oregon, Washington, Alaska (not to mention Canada). If you live in one of these states and really really want the job, apply anyways, but know that you'll start off at a disadvantage.

IMPORTANT: if you've read so far and are thinking: this isn't for me, please think for a moment about someone else you know who'd be perfect for this job and pass them this link! Even if you're not totally sure, we'd be super-grateful if you could send out an email or two, or even a Tweet! Heck, if we hire based on your recommendation we'd be totally happy to send you an iPad or an AR.Drone or whatever other fancy toy in that price range you want, or make a donation in your name! :)

About us

Balsamiq is a bit different from many other companies. We are trying to build a little top-quality restaurant on the web, which is not how most tech startups operate. If you don't know us, our manifesto should give you a pretty good idea of what we're about.

We look up to companies like FogCreek, the Omni Group, 37 Signals, Red Gate, Atlassian, Panic... bootstrapped, independent, profitable, small-ish and thinking long-term.

This is a sweet gig.

Let me tell you why:

• You will help us in our mission to rid the world of bad software.
• You will be working on stuff customers love and competitors routinely try to copy.
• You will be surrounded by a diverse group of extremely talented and yet humble individuals.
• You will be respected as the expert you are.
• You will be paid better than your peers.
• You will participate in our generous quarterly profit-sharing program.
• You will make a large impact within our company.
• Slowly but surely, you will make an impact within the industry.
• You will participate and speak at conferences / hackathons / user groups / you name it.
• You will be flown out somewhere in the world once a year for a week-long company retreat.
• You will not have deadlines.
• You will have the best hardware available (both computers and desk/chair setup).
• We are a ROWE environment: there are no set working hours.
• We don't like policies, but we have a few. For instance, our vacation policy is take some.
• You will be free to make mistakes as long as you learn from them and fix them quickly.
• We treat our own like family. If all goes well, you won't have a different job for many years to come.
• We offer great medical benefits, 401k, dental, vision and all that stuff.
• We are genuinely good people (here's a couple of blog posts that should give you a hint: one on donating our software and one on software piracy).
• You will work in an environment where the CEO asks "what do you need?" rather than bossing you around.

Downsides

• Working from home, with your colleagues spread around the World, can be lonely and distracting.
• Working on so many different things all the time can be a bit disconcerting.
• We're growing fast, but the goal is to stay as small as humanly possible while maintaining excellent customer support and a healthy work schedule. So if you're looking for a chance to grow into being a middle-manager, this is not for you.
• We're in the limelight once in a while, but don't seek it. We care WAY more about doing good work than getting press mentions. If you value your self worth by how many times your company is mentioned on Hacker News, you might not be super-happy here.
• There's no exit strategy. In fact, those words disgust us a little bit.
• Peldi really doesn't like braggers, whiners, bigots and dishonest people. So if you're like that, please don't apply.

How to apply

This is the first time we publish a job posting like this, so forgive us if our process is not as smooth as it should be, we're learning here.

Here's what I expect will happen:

1. We will spend two or three weeks collecting applications (but we're ready for extend this period if the right person doesn't come along).
2. We will review them internally and pick a few people to interview over Skype (this will be a four-hour interview with different team members).
3. We will hire one or two people for a short and well-paid contract to work on a single feature or quick project (something that can be done on the side / at night time in a week or two - so if you already have a full-time job, don't worry it will be quick. We might even skip this step for the right person).
4. I suspect at this point we'll have a pretty good idea of each other and will be able to decide whether to move forward or not. We might do a trial period as full-time employee as well.

Have questions? Suggestions on how to improve our search for the perfect candidate? Are we asking too much? Thinking this is too good to be true and want to apply NOW? Just email me! peldi@balsamiq.com

We can't wait to work with you.
Peldi and the Balsamiq team

Devising a Profit Sharing Program for Micro-Multinationals

This post is part of a series about our VERY FEW company policies. Read this intro post for some context.

When I was at Adobe we had complicated employee stock options purchase program, as well as even more complex (to me at least) bonuses that were tied to "us making our numbers". They all seemed a bit mysterious to me, but I remember liking getting those checks once in a while! :)

When I started Balsamiq, I knew that I would want to put some sort of profit sharing program in place.

Our books are 100% available to all employees, everyone knows how well we're doing and what we're spending money on, including how much everyone else makes (having a fair and clear salary policy helps here).

In other words, we're all in this together.

When Marco (employee #1) started, I came up with a simple rule: he would get 1% of revenue as a bonus every quarter. This was a NET value, POST-tax, which means that it was really about 2% for the company. One percent might not seem much, but it quickly became more than his base salary.

When Valerie started, she got the same deal. As we grew more and more, it became obvious that this was not a sustainable expense.

Being tied to revenue instead of profits didn't encourage people to watch expenses. Also, differences in purchase parity between Italy and the US meant that what was a large bonus for Marco in Italy was not proportionally large to Valerie, in the US.

When we got to six employees, Natalie, Valerie and I sat down to come up with something that would still be generous, would still reflect our values, but would be more fair and most importantly could scale as the company grew.

Note that I'm always operating under the assumption that customers could go to ZERO tomorrow. If that happens, I want to have as much money in the bank as possible to have one or two years of runway, so that we can come up with something new as a team. That's why having a great team is the single most important thing: if that day comes, I wouldn't want to be surrounded by any other group of people. :)

We are very happy with the little formula we came up with, so we'd like to share it with you in case it's useful to other micro-multinationals like ours.

As always, we'd love your feedback on it! :)

Our Profit Sharing Program

Our quarterly bonus program allocates 10% of profits* to full-time employees: 25% is split
equally and 75% is split based on seniority, then all weighed by the cost of living in each location.

*: this is Earnings - Regular Operating Expenses. Regular expenses do not include dividends and "crazy one-off expenses" such as staff gifts or the annual retreat.

Let's break it down:

1. Our quarterly: we pay out bonuses 4 times a year, at the end of January (for Q4 of the previous year), April (for Q1), July (for Q2) and October (for Q3).
2. bonus program: it's a bonus program, meaning that it can change or stop in the future depending on how we do. Basically, it's gravy (you should be happy enough with your base salary anyways).
3. allocates 10%: ten percent of profits is generous while still responsible for the financial well-being of the company.
4. of profits: this is better than earnings (like we used to do) because it encourages all of us to limit our expenses.
5. *: excluding "crazy costs" and owner dividends from the expense calculation is good because then we can have these expenses without worrying about their impact on bonuses.
6. to full-time employees: bonuses are for full-time employees only. However, part-time employees and contract workers later hired as full-timers will receive seniority points for the days worked (see below).
7. 25% is split equally: this is good because it promotes a team spirit: while the majority of the bonus is weighted towards time spent in the company, this portion of the bonus is equally shared by all members of the family. This gives a nice intentive for everyone to be fully part of the team, even when they are just starting with Balsamiq. It will also be good down the line for a new employee who will take much longer to to even out with the seniority of current staff.
8. and 75% is split based on seniority: this is good because is it smooths out the impact of new employees, and evens out over time. Also to note how this is NOT based on salary / skills. We're all members of the same family here, we're all equally responsible for the success of Balsamiq. Also, nothing forbids us to also give out other merit-based bonuses as well.
9. then all weighed by the cost of living in each location: this is important because it's fair. The fact that we're using cost of living instead of average wages is even more fair (i.e. Italy has low wages relative to the cost of living).

---

OK so that's the program and the philosophy behind it. Here's some more details:

How we calculate Profits*

We take the gross revenue and remove all the "normal" expenses: operating costs, taxes, previous bonuses given out as part of this bonus program...basically everything EXCEPT:

• owner dividends - so that if Peldi takes some money out it won't impact the amount of the bonuses
• extra one-off expenses - for instance the cost of the employee retreat or the one-time big bonus handed out in Sep 2010. Or even smaller costs like Christmas gifts. This is again so that we can have these "extravagant" expenses without impacting the amount of the bonuses.

How we calculate seniority

This is the number of days worked at Balsamiq since starting full-time on the payroll, with possible addition of days from previous contract or part-time work.

Over time the difference in seniority goes down as we all become senior. This means that in the long run, bonuses will even out for everyone. It also means that the addition of a new employee does not dramatically reduce everyone else's bonus right away.

How we calculate the cost of living

This is a fun one.

We get the relative cost of living in USA, France and Italy from the OECD Consumer Prices tables.

We get the relative Consumer Price Index for the US from the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Consumer Price Index tables.

We take the latest data available from each and combine them, coming out with a score for each of the following regions: Italy, USA West, France and USA North East.

We use this regional score to weigh the seniority amounts.

---

That's it! We've been using this formula for over a year now, and everyone seems happy with it. It certainly helps that our profits have been growing this whole time as well... :)

What do you think? Do you have a profit sharing program at your company? How is it calculated? How would you improve ours?

Hope this helps,
Peldi for the Balsamiq team

Our Simple Salary Policy

This post is part of a series about our VERY FEW company policies. Read this intro post for some context.

Given that we have different people all around the world and that we are 100% open books internally (i.e. everyone knows how much everyone else makes), it helped to come up with a salary policy that was both simple and fair.

Here's what I came up with:

You are paid a little better than someone with your same job in your geographical area.

The goal of this policy is to remove salary as a something employees think about. Basically, people at Balsamiq should know that they are paid well compared to their peers. In other words, Balsamiq employees are not going to find a better paying job somewhere else, unless they are willing to move. And if they are, we're open to that and we'll adjust their salary accordingly (both up and down).

Once a year or so, I review the local averages from sites like careers.stackoverflow.com, salary.com as well as the Italian contracts and look at how much each employee could get if they got a similar job in their same geographical location now, and we adjust each person's salary accordingly. It's subjective, but we discuss it together one-on-one and come up with a figure that makes both of us happy (my dad tought me that it's only a good deal if both parties walk away happy about it).

I agree with Dan Pink that carrots and sticks don't work for a company like us. I want salary to not be part of the equation, people should do their best work not for a raise, but because they want to. Again, see Dan Pink's book: people want Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose, all things I try to provide as an employer.

This is the base salary. To participate in the company's profits, we also have a generous profit sharing program as well.

That's it! What do you think? What's your company's salary policy? How would you improve ours?

Hope this helps,
Peldi for the Balsamiq Team

Our Vacation Policy: Take Some!

This post is part of a series about our VERY FEW company policies. Read this intro post for some context.

Our vacation policy is this:

Take some!

That's it!

OK, not quite. Of course we follow labor laws specific to the employee's home base, so if we were to state our "real/full" policy it would have a lot more legalese in it, but that's not the point of these blog posts, the point is to capture the spirit of each policy.

For instance, in the US we don't actually have vacation time, but employees are salaried and do set their own schedules. We don't deduct salary for a "missed day," because we don't have "missed days!" Each employee is free to set their schedule and their work hours to get their job done.

In general, I don't care when you work or even how much you work*. What I care about is that you do your best work, at a good pace, sustainably.

Sustainably is why we created the policy, to make sure everyone DOES take time to relax every few months, to disconnect and recharge. Burnout is the last thing I want from my employees.

Since we don't have deadlines, I encourage people to set their own schedule spending time with family, pursing hobbies, or just plain relaxing when it's most convenient to them. We'll adjust around it.

One of the lessons I remember more vividly from working for Jon Gay is when he told me: "it's never a good time to take vacation, so take it when it's most convenient for you".

Totally agree. Sure it would be great if you made sure support was covered while you're out, but worse comes to worse, that's something that I (as the CEO and former single-founder) can cover, I'm rarely totally on vacation.

I'm also not worried about people taking too much time away from work all at once, as being gone for 4 weeks straight impacts their pace quite a bit. :) But people are totally encouraged to go work from a vacation spot and only work half-days for a while, that's what I do every summer!

So that's it, take some time away once in a while!

Hope this helps,
Peldi for the Balsamiq team

* I have heard some people refer to this as ROWE (Results Only Work Environment). I just like it because I'm a programmer and because our team is spread around the world.

Pace, not Deadlines

This post is part of a series about our VERY FEW company policies. Read this intro post for some context.

At Balsamiq, we don't have deadlines. Ever.

It seems so natural to me, but I sometimes get reminded of how uncommon this is for software companies.

It may be because we're small and it might change in the future, but the few times I've tried to set a deadline so far, things quickly started to go south.

We started stressing out, not enjoying our work as much and, ultimately, not doing our best work.

Since we're bootstrapped, profitable and independent, our only pressure comes from our customers, and from our own urge to do great stuff (we don't really look at what the competition is doing, so they're not really a factor, at least for now).

I also value work/life balance immensely, and believe employee burnout is a one of the worst things that can happen to a small business.

So ever since I started, I have been talking internally about pace.

The metaphor I use is about driving a stick-shift car: sometimes we go in 4th gear, sometimes in 5th, but sometimes we have to go in 2nd or 1st, it's just the way it is.

In general, we should strive to hum along in 4th gear. If 5th gear happens, that's awesome. If 3rd gear happens, that's fine too. If it's August and the whole dev team is on holiday at the same time and we spend a week in 1st gear, so be it. It's just temporary.

Being in 5th gear all the time is dangerous, and being stuck on the highway in 2nd gear sucks.

Another metaphor is of a huge holiday meal: it's all good, and there's lots and lots of it. If you eat too much at first, you won't have room for the rest. Slow down a bit and save some for tomorrow and the next day!

We could hire more developers or outside contractors to build our features faster, but that would mean that

1. someone other than us works on the stuff we love to do and
2. we'll get a ton done right away and then have nothing fun left to do next year, and all these people sitting around.

"Founders at Work" taught me that first-to-market is totally overrated. In fact, most successful companies were 2nd or 3rd to their market, learning from their precursor's mistakes. Mockups wasn't the first wireframing tool out there.

What do you think? Am I being naive? Why do people set deadlines? I'm genuinely curious about it. Let's discuss in the comments! :)

Hope this helps,
Peldi for the Balsamiq team

Avoiding the Circumlocution Office

A few weeks ago, I finally received my "permesso di soggiorno," my permission to stay in Italy. As an American citizen I knew the process for getting my paperwork to work in the Bologna office would be slow, but I don't know if either Peldi or I expected it to take quite as long as it did! One year, six international flights, a heap of paperwork and countless hours spent waiting in Italian government offices later, I have my full permission (at least, for the present moment!).

Wading through paperwork and government offices made us a bit crazy, but all that waiting gave me a lot of time to reflect on why frustrating bureaucracy comes about in the first place.

Though the Italians have excelled at creating legendary levels of bureaucracy, they are not alone! I remember standing hopelessly for hours in the government offices in Bologna looking at the workers surrounded by heaps and heaps of papers. I found it hard not to think of Charles Dicken's Little Dorrit, and his Mr. Barnacle (aptly named for some one who slows down a process) in the Circumlocution Office. Requests go into the Circumlocution Office, but they rarely make their way out.

(BBC's 2008 version of Little Dorrit)

Having found ourselves sent on journeys to collect multiple documents, which later we found served no purpose, having stood for hours in line unsure if we'd ever see a person who might know an answer to our question, and finding answers were often in absolute contradiction of each other, we were left a bit hopeless that we would ever find our way successfully through our 21st Century version of what Dickens obviously was poking fun of in the 19th.

Why do we battle bureaucracy?

Well, bureaucracy is created in reality, not to slow us down, but to manage and organize things efficiently as they become larger. Bureaucracy is created to try to help us scale growth.

Our experience of bureaucracy, however, often feels the opposite. We feel lost in a system, going in circles on an automated customer service line, or filling out paperwork, forms or surveys we can't see relate to our case or problem, just trying to get to a person who can help.

Creating bureaucracy that works: Communication

No one really likes the word bureaucracy, so let's just say systems. How do you create these systems, that can successfully manage and scale growth, while still meeting the mission of the organization, and not getting weighed down with, well, bureaucracy?

Our friendly little company is finding we are not quite so little any more. We're growing up! Our revenue and number of customers continue to grow, as has our staff. As we looked at this growth last fall, we knew in order to manage that growth, we were going to need grownup uber-efficient systems as well. But how do we manage this growth while still staying the personable company we want to be?

For us the answer is all about communication: improving communication with our customers and improving communication on our team.

The experience of dealing with a Circumlocution Office is maddening because of bad communication: time wasted jumping through unnecessary hoops, confusion from finding multiple or incorrect answers, difficulty of finding information, and just plain slow response times as the office staff tries to get through a pile of requests.

We've been working on a lot of things internally to make sure that doesn't happen here at Balsamiq.

The Problem

We pride ourselves in our response time to customers, and also that we are a small personable company, but if we continue to increase customers as we have, and continue on with our operations as they are, we'll have to greatly increase our staff to keep up with the pace.

Some Solutions

1. Keep our response time, but reduce the number questions: We realized a lot of the things people were asking us probably could be dealt with if we provided better information to our customers from the start. So to keep our email, phone and Skype manageable with a small team, the answer for us is make the information clearer and more available to our customers.

To do this, we're very excited about our recent transition to Assistly for customer support, which will help us centralize our support and make sure that no one falls through the cracks in email. It also helped make our existing documentation clearer and more searchable on the website. Check out our brand new support portal, launched today!

On the sales side we put together the new Licensing and Purchasing FAQ to make answers directly available to both the customer and to our sales team for the first time.

2. Improve our staff's ability to answer and deal with inquiries: As we have grown, so have our number of products, and therefore the potential issues that may come up. There are more of us now on the Balsamiq team, and our company is a bit more complex. But information on how to do something or how to solve a problem was either in multiple places (email, our wiki, or just in different people's brains) or we really didn't have an answer and just winged it each time. This meant that it made it harder or took longer to solve some problems than it needed to, or that incorrect information was sometimes given.

To solve this, we've spent a lot of time codifying and documenting our internal procedures for sales, administration and bookkeeping on our wiki, so every member of the team has access to the same information in a clear and searchable way.

3. Improve the way we manage and store information: As the amount of information we are managing grows, we want to make sure we have access and use of it, rather than it having control and swamping us!

Paolo and Peldi have continued to develop Olio, our internal application for managing customers and licenses, which is helping us to centralize and organize our customer records, and more easily be able to track our sales.

A lovable bureaucracy

We hope all our systems enable, rather than detract from our mission. And know, these new systems are still a work in progress!

Our goal is serve you, the customer easily and quickly. Providing you with what you need in the quickest amount of time. We hope we are growing up the systems and streamlining in just the right sort of way: putting the information you need right at your fingertips, while still providing you with the friendly voice at the end of the phone or the real human being at the other end of an email if you get stuck.

Sometimes this streamlining means we may move a little too fast, so If you ever feel we're missing the mark, or that a ghost of the unhelpful Mr. Barnacle has unfortunately somehow become our newest staff member, let us know.

We're always open to hear your thoughts!

Natalie

Company Retreat Powers Balsamiq Quality Boost

Would you trust your software to these people? You bet I would.

What is it like when a small, dynamic, distributed software company gets together for a week-long sleepover at the CEO's villa in Italy? How can such a retreat boost quality? Read on to see how Balsamiq did it.

Balsamiq Telecommuting

As a full-time consultant for 20 years, the vast majority of my engagements were with single-location teams. When I joined Balsamiq in January of 2011, it was my first real experience working full-time on a distributed team. After working with the team for six months, I can tell you that Balsamiq telecommunications are enormously effective. I know these team members at least as well as any with which I've worked face-to-face.

Balsamiq Face-to-Face

When we all met at the villa, everyone felt strangely familiar. Most I had chatted with once, many are my daily friends. Michael is the UX Designer and we both do technical support so we interact daily. Luis is the Lead myBalsamiq developer, and not a day goes by we don't chat about the status of the product. Val and I don't chat often, but when we do we usually go all out audio/video because we like to celebrate our friendship and actually see each other when we catch up. (What a thrill it was to meet Val in Italy. :)

So what about the retreat gave Balsamiq a quality boost?

The Beauty :)

Every morning it was the same surreal picture out the windows. It was like waking up inside an Italian countryside painting. It was an entire week of pinch-me-I-think-I'm-dreaming.

The Beach :)

Joy takes in the sheer beauty of the view.

Our first day, Peldi took us down to the water. The pictures say it all. Relax team! Didn't take us long to follow that suggestion.

The Food :)

We dined on the beach that evening. None of us had any idea how much dining and celebrating we would be doing over the course of the week! This was a grand start--Mariah's favorite restaurant!

The Camaraderie :)

Good food, good wine, good company, and a spirit of friendly good-fellowship. (Entertainment provide by The Three Italians Comedy Troupe!)

The Dancing :)

Did you know Luis can Salsa? We had a Salsa party one night after dinner. Luis led in the instruction with Val (a dark-haired Ginger Rogers--va va voom!). The rest of us paired up and learned the first step. Before long, we were switching partners left and right and having a blast. Want to get close to your team members? Have a team Tango. Trust me on this one.

The Laughs :)

So we each picked a video to contribute to the list we would watch one night. Most were relatively short funny videos. Mine was the Pug singing Batman. Nothing feels better than laughing yourself silly with a bunch of friends.

Then there are the spontaneous laughs that make you spit your food out. They are the best kind! We had lots of those.

The Work :)

We had lots of group sessions to discuss things we would normally discuss via telecom. Michael discussed fonts, skins, icons and things of that nature. I discussed the Balsamiq quality criteria and process.

Michael with his signature smile.

The Edification :)

Peldi invited a cheesemaker to demonstrate how Italian cheese of all kinds is made. Needless to say, we were in awe--or at least Luis and Val were. :)

We then proceeded to have a magnificent 6 course meal.

The Pool :)

Look Ma! I can code standing on my head! Paolo won the prize for being able to do tricks under water for the longest duration. We sometimes wondered if he would ever come up! That's Val in the lower right. She was the only gal up for the pool games. Go Val!

The Farm :)

Our next destination was The Flying Pig organic farm and restaurant.

We walked the entire farm and worked up our appetites.

The Restaurant :)

We were invited into the kitchen to observe the preparation of our lunch. Many of us love to cook, so this was a fabulous chance to see a real professional ply his trade.

Then, of course, we did what? That's right. We sat down for a 4 star Italian lunch!

The Friends :)

We all made new friends at The Flying Pig, and Peldi discovered a restaurant to which he will return time and time again.

Natalie made several special friends that day.

The Pizza :)

Marco (The Jester) manned the oven.

Of course, not just any pizza but wood-fired pizza.

Paolo cooked up his outstanding pizza sauce.

More Pizza :)

Hey, anyone want some Balsamiq pizza? Step right up.

The Love :)

The Moral of the Story :)

We love telecommunications at Balsamiq because this team could not exist otherwise. We love the opportunity to work with smart people from all around the world. We love living our day-to-day lives together in our virtual Balsamiq world. We love that the company values team fellowship, and makes sure we have that in our lives at all times.

We love that we got to spend an unforgettable week together in an unforgettable place. We are an enriched team for having spent this time together face-to-face. To the extent the team has been enriched, Balsamiq has received a fundamental quality boost. As the saying goes 'A rising tide raises all boats'. Balsamiq will long reap quality benefits across the board, and ultimately in product quality.

The End :)