Throwback: Building a Business Meant to Last with Peldi Guilizzoni of Balsamiq

What's up, everyone? This is Cortland from ndhackers.com, and you're listening to the n d hackers podcast. Podcast. On this show, I talk to the founders of profitable Internet businesses, and I try to get a sense of what it's like to be in their shoes. How did they get to where they are today? How did they make decisions at their companies and in their personal lives? And what exactly makes their companies tick? And the goal here, as always, is so that the rest of us can learn from their examples and go on to build our own successful online businesses. Joining me in today's episode is Pheldi, the founder of a company called Balsamiq Wireframes. Balsamiq is a graphical tool that you can use to sketch out user interface or pretty much anything. So if you're building a website or a web app, a mobile app, or even a desktop app, it doesn't really matter. No matter what it is, you can use Balsamiq to quickly put together a wireframe for what the interface should look like. On top of that, Haldi was also one of my earliest inspirations as an indie hacker. 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. So it's safe to say that NDHackers itself would not be here if not for the efforts of Pelti and people like him. So, Pelti, welcome to the show. I am stoked to have you on here. Thanks for having me, Cortland. You're too kind. You started Balsamiq in 2008, so that means the company turned 10 years old last year. And to the best of my knowledge, you guys are generating something like 6 or $7,000,000 in revenue annually. Is that right? Yeah. About around 6. More 6 than 7. What I wanna talk to you about the most today is Balsamiq's longevity. How exactly do you bootstrap a company as a solo founder that ends up growing and staying healthy for over a decade? So that's it. That's my only question. The rest is just gonna be fifty minutes of you answering that question. No problem. I got I got when it luck is the the answer. No. I don't know. I don't know. Yeah. Interview over. My goal here is really just to ask questions that date you and make you feel as old as possible this entire episode. I did the same thing to Rob Walling. Yeah. You know, I, I, I was looking at all the other previous, guests on this podcast, and I was like, oh, man. You know, the all these people are all younger, better looking, more interesting than me. I feel like an old guy now, but that's alright. I I'll take it. Well, I don't know …