The latest news from Balsamiq:
An interview with Andy Brice, an inspiring solopreneur.

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What do you call a solitary entrepreneur?
A solopreneur, of course!

When I started Balsamiq in 2008, my two biggest role models were Patrick McKenzie and Andy Brice.

What they had in common was that they were solopreneurs, running their μISV (micro-independent-software-vendor) companies completely on their own.

One of my main goals with Balsamiq was to learn everything about going from a software idea to a successful software product. The best way to learn it all, in my mind, was to do it alone.

I ended up having to hire over 30 people, but Andy is still doing it all on his own!

Andy started as a programmer, working as an employee for 20 years developing software for operational research, satellite image processing, computer-aided manufacturing, nuclear safety, and the .com boom, before striking out on his own as a solopreneur.

I’ve asked him a few questions about his business, and his latest product.

What's it like to be a solopreneur?

It is a bit scary to start with, as you don't know if you are going to be able to make enough money to support yourself and your family.

But, if you get past that, it is pretty great. No bosses or investors to tell me what to do. Just me and my customers. And no-one else to share the profits with, apart from the tax man.

The downside is that you don't always have someone to bounce ideas off and it can be a little isolating at times. Nothing is perfect. If a job was 100% perfect, no-one would pay you to do it!

How did you manage to NOT grow the company?

I've tried to create a job around my strengths and interests.

I had some experience being a manager and I didn't like it much. I wasn't very good at delegating and I found hiring tedious and firing people very stressful. I hated commuting, having to set an alarm, and wearing a tie.

I like creating products. So I created a job around that, with a conscious decision not to take on any employees. A 'lifestyle' business. I admire people who can create great jobs for others, but it isn't for me.

I have hired contractors to do some of the stuff I can't do and don't want to learn (such as CSS) but I do most stuff myself: programming, documentation, support, marketing, and sales.

Of course, that limits company growth. But, as long as I make enough to have a good lifestyle, I am fine with that. I have enough and I value my freedom and stress-free life.

Tell us about Easy Data Transform. Why should our readers know about it?

My first product was PerfectTablePlan, which is a table planner for events. Galas, business dinners, weddings, etc. As part of running that business, I had to do quite a bit of data wrangling of CSV and Excel files. For example find a list of emails for customers who bought version 1, but haven't yet upgraded to v2 and haven't opted out of emails and remove any duplicate emails. Trying to do this sort of stuff in Excel is hopeless. And SQL seemed overkill.

So I tried creating a product to do it. I came up with a prototype, but I didn't like it and I never released it. A few years later I had the idea to do it as a directed graph (boxes and arrows) of transformations and that worked much better. I found out that other companies had this idea before me. But their products were expensive, complex, and aimed at professional data scientists. So I decided to create something aimed at non-data scientists who needed to do data wrangling, but didn't want to learn R, Pandas, or SQL and didn't want to spend a fortune.

I released v1 of Easy Data Transform in December 2019 and have been improving it ever since. It is quite an ambitious product for one person, but I am pretty pleased with how it has turned out so far. It supports a wide range of input and output file formats and 59 different transformations, including filter, join, pivot and de-duplicate. It is pretty much all point and click with no syntax to remember. And it can handle millions of rows.

If you have some tabular data you need to bash into shape, you can download a free trial for Windows or Mac.

I’ve also created a special 25% off voucher for Balsamiq’s newsletter readers, valid until the end of August.

Happy customer of the month

Gave @balsamiq a go instead of Figma and it's bloody brilliant! So much quicker to do wireframes! Try it: https://balsamiq.cloud – Becki Floyd, UX Developer

Product news

We added a major new feature! It’s the ability to specify icons inside any text string, in any control!

It’s so easy to use and powerful. You’re going to love it.

We’re working on a bunch of other features, including a major update to our icons set, upgrading it from Font Awesome v3 to v6!

Wireframing Academy news

Editing work on our book continues. It’s exciting to see it starting to take shape! Meanwhile, we just launched a new page to announce our book, and, of course, we’re sharing it with you first 😊. Visit https://balsamiq.com/learn/wireframing-book/ to learn more about the book and sign up to get notified about updates. We’d love for you to spread the word, so please share the link with anyone you think would be interested!

As for our Wireframing Academy, we added 2 new items recently. An article called Wireframing Tips Every Design Agency Should Know and we moved our old UX Apprentice course over, which we’ve renamed Introduction to User Experience Design.

Lastly, check out the recording of Billy’s recent webinar on A Hands-On Introduction to UI Design with Wireframes.

UX/UI links for July

How To Research So PMs Will Listen — by Lindsey Wallace
Resolving Conflicts Between Designers And Engineers — by Scott Himmer
Taxonomy 101: Definition, Best Practices, and How It Complements Other IA Work — by Page Laubheimer
Using Grids in Interface Designs — by Kelley Gordon
Be a Cultivator of Ideas to Achieve Trust, Buy-in, and Design Excellence — by Matthew T Rader

Company news

We’re slowing down a bit for the summer, and hope you all can do the same! 😊

Our business manager position is filled, and we can’t wait to introduce you to our newest employee next month!

Help us make Balsamiq Better! Are you new to Balsamiq? Join the Balsamiq research program and help us make Balsamiq better for you.
Sponsorships and raffles: this month we sponsored DesignOps Summit, REFACTR.TECH, SmashingConf Freiburg, and many more!
Notable recipients of our Free Software Program:
- 365give inspires people to create a better, happier you and a happier world by developing a daily giving habit — one person, one give, one day at a time.
- CDISC creates clarity in clinical research by bringing together a global community of experts to develop and advance data standards of the highest quality.
- Voice 21 is on a mission to transform the learning and life chances of young people through talk so that all children can use their voice for success in school and in life.

That's it for this month!

I want to thank Andy for his time, and for the special discount for our inner circle.

Are you a solopreneur? We want to support you! Reply to this email and tell us all about you and your business!

Until next month, with more behind-the-scenes news from your friends at Balsamiq!

Peldi for the Balsamiq Team

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Balsamiq’s Spotlight on “Solopreneur” Andy Brice

What's it like to be a solopreneur?

How did you manage to NOT grow the company?

Tell us about Easy Data Transform. Why should our readers know about it?

Happy customer of the month

Product news

Wireframing Academy news

UX/UI links for July

Company news

That's it for this month!

Most new customers find Balsamiq via recommendation...

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