The Balsamiq playbook
Here’s how we keep things simple, happy, and productive at Balsamiq. From taking care of our people to building products that matter, it's the stuff that's worked for us—all in one place.
Our mission and values
At Balsamiq, our mission is to help people create great user experiences, no matter their background or training. We live by these core values:
- Be so good they can’t ignore you.
- Be a great teammate.
- Give (and earn) trust and respect.
- Aim for longevity.
- We’re good people, and we care.
- Always be kaizening (continuous improvement).
Our values guide every decision we make and keep us grounded in what truly matters.
How we work together
We've been globally distributed and fully remote since the beginning. Here's how:
Golden hour
No matter where we're working from, we overlap for at least one hour every day. 5-6 pm in Italy, 8-9 am in California.
Async communication
We design/visualize in Balsamiq and document everything in Confluence (our wiki). But most of our conversations happen in Slack.
- Social channel to keep up with "watercooler" chats
- Project-specific channels to keep things organized
- Learning channels so we keep growing
- Standard naming conventions (like #p_ = project)
Standard workflows
High-level project management happens in a tool we built called Acetaia. Project leads update and review statuses weekly. Meanwhile, specific engineering tasks live in Jira—which we review weekly too.
How we care for our team
Building a strong team starts with a strong set of company values and continues with policies that support, protect, and nurture. Here are a few that stood the test of time:
How we create great user experiences
We’re building the kind of company we’d love to do business with: customer-focused, delivering great products, and making every interaction a delight. We believe great UX comes from smart user research and clear product principles:
How we give back
We believe nonprofits, educators, students, and other do-gooders should focus their resources on making a difference, not on software costs. That’s why we’ve donated tens of thousands of licenses and subscriptions over the years, alongside a portion of our profits:
