I was thinking about whether the GTM should be a figma plugin vs. a desktop app. Would love to know the founder's thought process on choosing the desktop app route.
For the future, we're looking at web-based version with real-time collaboration. But for now, we decided to start with desktop. We were also influenced by the "file over app" philosophy of Obsidian's founder: https://stephango.com/file-over-app.
I haven't heard that name in literally forever. I used to use it and love it like fifteen years ago when I fancied myself a designer and not just a backend dev.
I remember was using an old version around the time just before the recent Pandemic. Balsamiq went with the current trend and is focusing on subscription/saas model targeting businesses. Peldi also seem to have retired or is semi-retired.
I've not heard that nickname in 20 years! I went to his same highschool (liceo), he's two years older, and I was always pretty amazed by the guy - including how he took what was effectively an offensive slur against him ("carrot hair", pel di carota) and claimed it as his nickname. Doing that as a teenager takes balls. Great to know he's sorted for good, I wish I was (lol)...
I am still using Balsamiq for low-fi wireframes and low-fi prototyping. Mostly for desktop application development these days. Absolutely love it. Desktop version is still mostly on par with its subscription model counterpart, only major difference being collaboration thingies.
Figma, penpot etc, aren't for me. I often need something in the phase where we're deciding on "what's on the page at all. And what screens do we have". Way before there's need for styling and layout, which I'll leave to skilled designers.
I need something with libraries. "This is where a map goes" and "we have a modal here", and I can just plop in a thing that communicates "this is a map of some country" or "a large modal". Again, without styling, shadows, animations or even proper layout .
And I need something that I can share with coworkers.
A pen and paper (with grids), or whiteboard works best for me, but has no libs and is hard to collaborate on (in a remote, hybrid environment).
I'm a Business Analyst, so I find your tool quite interesting. I'll definitely give it a try. However, I would like to ask if your product includes sufficient notation to draw according to BPMN standards.
I always liked Balsamiq, it really forces you not to obsess about the pixels too much, but it was so slow/bloated/buggy, like something from the Java on desktop era. This is much smoother!
This is a collaborative tool. So you cannot say "only 5% of the audience is Linux users", but instead you'll rule out any team where at least one member is Linux user. Which is a far larger group.
If I discount myself, that's 8 of 9 teams and startups I worked in last years where we needed wireframing.
But I hope the Konty team has better numbers on this. I presume they know more than my anecdotal numbers.
In the meantime, wireframesketcher[1] seems to do the same than Konty and runs on linux. I'm not related to them in any way but use this solution for years and I'm very happy with it (paying customer).
Hi,
Balsamiq is one of my favorite products, I have already downloaded konty and I stress it a lot. Congratulations for the idea and for the product, how did you come up with it? After the beta will it be paid?
I will give you some feedback soon.
Thanks
Thank you for your feedback. I'm thinking of the paid version. I would like to offer it much cheaper than balsamiq, probably. Additionally, we'll be offering strong discounts for early users.
Balsamiq is already so cheap. We use it for our business and every time it renews I just think they could be getting 5-10x what they are. That in turn helps drive a better business and product.
Balsamiq is a per month subscrtiption isn't it? Personally, I need a tool like this once per year or sometimes even less. So if Konty was a one off payment of $20-30 I'd be more inclined to purchase.
You should consider a one time, lifetime payment. As a solo dev working on occasional side projects I just wouldn't even consider something on a subscription, and $140 (balsamiq's one time fee) is about $100 more than I'd pay. My alternative is a graphics app I already own.
Follow what Affinity did (cheap and one-time) and you'll sell to a lot of people like me who would otherwise give it a miss. Save your subscription tiers for businesses needing more collaboration, SSO, etc.
With that strategy as well you'll build brand awareness which will probably ultimately lead to more sales as those solo devs advocate for its use in teams in their day jobs.
I wonder if there's a way to combine a simple tool like yours (or Balsamiq, which I've used for many years) with generative AI to create plain HTML/CSS pages from mockups/wireframes. Figma seems bloated, v0 is React/Tailwind only.
TLDraw Make Real - which was initially thrown together by a Figma engineer who added GPT vision to an open source whiteboard app - is remarkably good at this.
Looks really cool & easy to use. In Mac, we cannot delete a frame or other objects with "Delete" key after selecting it. We have to right click & select "delete".
I like it, it's better than other apps. Reason is it present you a list of all components of left sidebar so we don't have to think of creating it from scratch. Just drag and drop and your work is done.
This is cool, fan of Balsamiq. What I would really like is some alignment/snap feature similar to what you have in MS power point when you put some shapes together and it overlays some lines to help with spacing and gaps.
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[ 5.7 ms ] story [ 241 ms ] threadAnd the name sounds like "butty" in Dutch, so that will be hard for me to recommend out loud for my Dutch IT students.
I was thinking about whether the GTM should be a figma plugin vs. a desktop app. Would love to know the founder's thought process on choosing the desktop app route.
I haven't heard that name in literally forever. I used to use it and love it like fifteen years ago when I fancied myself a designer and not just a backend dev.
Figma, penpot etc, aren't for me. I often need something in the phase where we're deciding on "what's on the page at all. And what screens do we have". Way before there's need for styling and layout, which I'll leave to skilled designers.
I need something with libraries. "This is where a map goes" and "we have a modal here", and I can just plop in a thing that communicates "this is a map of some country" or "a large modal". Again, without styling, shadows, animations or even proper layout .
And I need something that I can share with coworkers.
A pen and paper (with grids), or whiteboard works best for me, but has no libs and is hard to collaborate on (in a remote, hybrid environment).
I always liked Balsamiq, it really forces you not to obsess about the pixels too much, but it was so slow/bloated/buggy, like something from the Java on desktop era. This is much smoother!
I've seen the founder, /pketh answer questions here on HN.
Update/Edit: The other open-source alternative to Balsamiq-ish tool is https://excalidraw.com
This is a collaborative tool. So you cannot say "only 5% of the audience is Linux users", but instead you'll rule out any team where at least one member is Linux user. Which is a far larger group.
If I discount myself, that's 8 of 9 teams and startups I worked in last years where we needed wireframing.
But I hope the Konty team has better numbers on this. I presume they know more than my anecdotal numbers.
[1] https://wireframesketcher.com/
Follow what Affinity did (cheap and one-time) and you'll sell to a lot of people like me who would otherwise give it a miss. Save your subscription tiers for businesses needing more collaboration, SSO, etc.
With that strategy as well you'll build brand awareness which will probably ultimately lead to more sales as those solo devs advocate for its use in teams in their day jobs.
I wonder if there's a way to combine a simple tool like yours (or Balsamiq, which I've used for many years) with generative AI to create plain HTML/CSS pages from mockups/wireframes. Figma seems bloated, v0 is React/Tailwind only.
You can find it at https://makereal.tldraw.com/ but the guide there doesn't explain how to get the best out of it. I recommend this article by the TLDraw team which goes into some of the remarkable tricks you can use, and what people have done with it: https://tldraw.substack.com/p/make-real-the-story-so-far
EDIT: No linux support :(
It has a non-standard UX itself, because of the small screen.
Do you have an iOS version?
Are you supposed to draw the UI with your finger or something?
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