![]() ![]() The market moves, and once again, we have to follow it or be left behind. I’m not saying I personally love this new world of subscription-only, web-only software: unfortunately, what we like or don’t like is almost irrelevant. ![]() OK, now think about this: what would the answers be for a Gen Z person? Think about this: how often do you look for desktop software to install these days? If you’re on a Mac, when was the last time you launched the Mac App Store? Share of revenueĪs a general industry trend, it seems pretty clear that installed desktop software is on the way out. Gradually, we saw the share of revenue coming from desktop start to decline, in favor of our web versions (SaaS and Integrations). The big makers of desktop software (Microsoft, Adobe, Autodesk) all started shipping web versions of their most popular tools.Ĭonferences for desktop app development became rarer and rarer.Īnd mobile stole the show! Apps for iOS and Android became the norm, and for a few years tablets were all the rage, remember? In the meantime, the world seemed to finally really move to the web. Sadly, it’s much more complex and expensive to build than our old Adobe Air stack. But it worked, we’re still using this strategy for our desktop apps today. We had to figure out how to run our own embedded Javascript virtual machine inside our desktop apps. This was HARD to do: Electron didn’t exist and React Native didn’t exist. We wanted to continue to share our code between web and desktop versions but also have best-in-class desktop apps, with the most native-feeling UX. We also embarked on a giant 5-year effort to fully rewrite our codebase, because Flash was dying. So we added our own standalone hosted version-what’s now called Balsamiq Cloud. In 2011, the company had grown and we once again decided to give in to customer requests. The world was very much moving to the web, but it was doing it much more slowly than I had anticipated.īut the trend was clear: I remember that I used to go to conferences and tell people “I’m a shareware guy! In 2012!” just to see the shocked look on their faces. The desktop version immediately became our #1 seller and is what kept us in business for the first 5 years. It was almost an afterthought, done one month before launch, something that I thought would “tide us over” for a couple of years until the world fully moved to the web.Īgain, how wrong I was. ![]() Because the technology I was using at the time (Adobe Air) made it very easy for me to create a desktop version of my web app, I gave in and decided to sell it. I kept refusing, but they begged me for it!ĭo you know the Steve Blanks quote that says “No business plan survives first impact with customers”? Yep, that was my first impact moment. Surely desktop software was a thing of the past, but I didn’t want to invest in it.īoy, how wrong I was! During the private beta, I heard over and over that people wanted to use my software, but as a downloadable version. We were in the middle of Web 2.0, the browser wars were almost over, and Google Suite had launched in 2006: everything was moving to the web! I didn’t want to host my own SaaS version - too stressful! - and I certainly didn’t want to make a desktop version. In the beginning, I was focused on building Balsamiq as a plugin for platforms like Atlassian Confluence. Here's the note Peldi sent our Inner Circle a few weeks ago: One of those decisions has to do with Balsamiq Wireframes for Desktop, a product we started to explore as the world changed and we began pruning. Years later, Balsamiq today looks very different than Peldi's initial vision - in a good way! We have a helpful, well-loved wireframing tool, lots of fantastic customers, 35 team members, and more decisions to make as we grow. ![]() Peldi was trying to build a one-man company and going the plugin route seemed like the best approach: the platforms would do the marketing, and Peldi would only have a few large customers to support. Our most die-hard fans know that when Peldi started Balsamiq back in 2007, he decided to make a wireframing tool that would only run as a plugin for Atlassian Confluence and other online platforms. Posted by Arielle in Products and tagged Balsamiq Cloud, Balsamiq Desktop, Cloud, Desktop, Product. ![]()
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