I'm starting a regular newsletter 📰 🎉
My goal with a newsletter is to give you insight into how I operate while building a long term, independent, profitable business with big ambitions. You'll be able to tap into what I'm reading, highlighting, and thinking about as I work
Some Buffer company news to share: We've spent $3.3 million buying out our main VC investors.
This is something I've been eager (and nervous) to share publicly. Here are all the details, including process and numbers.
I often think of Silicon Valley culture as product building rather than company building. So much focus is around growing fast and selling.
You know what's really hard/rewarding? Crafting great culture. Growing long-term. Going through market changes that require reinvention.
Wow, we did it!! Delighted to share that
@Buffer
has officially surpassed $20m in ARR.
May 2019 numbers (see table for more):
MRR: $1.68m
ARR: $20.13m
Customers: 77k
Rev/employee: $234k
⬇️ Thread below with my reflections on this milestone and May numbers.
Happy to share that to end 2018, Buffer is doing a profit share with our team of $394,997. We're also committing to doing charitable contributions matching 20% of this amount, so $78,999.
Thread with details around our methodology for profit share and charitable contributions 👇
To any founder going through a hard time, now or in the future: I’m happy to chat and be a sounding board.
Things I’ve struggled through: doing layoffs, co-founder issues, unhappy investors, a security breach…
I wish I’d asked for help more. I want to encourage it. Talk soon!
Fun fact:
@buffer
has generated over $50m in total revenue (since late 2010).
What I find even more interesting, is to contrast that number with the funding we've raised: $4m.
I'm grateful for our investors, they helped us a lot. But we'd be nowhere without our customers.
People are starting to really care about companies having heart. The mentality of maximizing growth at any cost will in fact no longer maximize growth. Customers and the community see through it. They want companies that do good in the world and do right by their team.
Buffer will be closed for the last week of 2017. Many are already done for the year.
I've been at this 7+ years. At times I've worked over Christmas. It's short-sighted and it creates burnout and debt.
It's key that as leaders we encourage rest and mental wellness in our teams.
Whatever you’re hustling for, take note: most people/companies are shut down until ‘18. That means you get 2 extra weeks to outwork your competition. That’s 3.8% more time. For perspective: Usain Bolt won his gold medals running 1.2% faster. These 2 weeks are a gift. Get to work.
Our high level metrics for
@buffer
for December 2017:
- MRR: $1,396,138
- ARR: $16,753,656
- 78,153 paying customers
- 4.94% churn rate
- $239,299 revenue per employee
- $5,293,484 cash in bank
- 87.74% gross margin
I'll thread a few Tweets to share some 2017/2018 reflections.
I've been focused on getting Buffer through this period as unscathed as possible.
One debt I believe is building in companies right now is burnout.
To lessen that impact at Buffer, we'll try a 4-day workweek (at full pay) for May.
More details here:
It may be worth noting: Buffer has been fully remote for almost 10 years, and..
Our worlds feel turned upside down as a result of the pandemic, too. This is not normal remote working!
We know remote, and eager to help others, but also adapting to the new reality ourselves.
13 years ago today, I launched Buffer.
It’s hard to believe my little side project turned startup turned business is now a teenager. In recent years, I’ve reflected a lot on how to build Buffer to exist and thrive long-term.
With that in mind, I thought it could be fun to share
Here are the
@buffer
metrics for March. Notable this month:
- Highest monthly growth in over a year 👌
- Churn rate has gone down 📉
- Broke past $250k revenue per team member 💁♀️
- Our first month with EBITDA margin over 30% 🎉
- 7.5 years in, still just getting started ✊
I’m happy to share that we’ve established a long-term goal that
@Buffer
salaries will not be based on location.
We took a first step towards this last year by consolidating 4 location bands to 2, raising 55 of 85 teammate salaries by $10,265 on average.
Read on for details 🧵⬇️
On this day in 2010, I launched
@Buffer
. 10 years ago! 😮
I could never have imagined where we’d be by now. Buffer is an 87 person team, serving 70,000 paying customers and doing $21m in annual revenue.
Here are my reflections on the journey:
Big remote work fail today in a meeting with our design team.
I was about to sneeze, so I quickly muted to avoid disrupting the discussion and giving folks an earful of sneeze.
Except, I was already muted! So I ended up specifically un-muting to sneeze in everyone's ears 🤧
There's so much to learn from
@ConvertKit
:
- A company doing $15m in ARR 📈
- A team of only 38 ($400k ARR per team member!) 💰
- Zero funding 😮
Take a read of
@nathanbarry
's "15 lessons from our first $15 million":
What are the best places today to find remote jobs?
If you have open roles, what channels have given you the best results?
If you're looking for remote work, which websites or job boards have been most useful?
Here are the
@Buffer
financials / metrics for October 2019.
- We crossed a key milestone of $22m in ARR 👌
- Our highest monthly growth rate in around 1.5 years 🚀
Thread with more thoughts ⬇️
"Don't do things that you know are morally wrong. Not because someone is watching, but because you are. Self-esteem is just the reputation that you have with yourself. You'll always know." -
@naval
Something you may not know about Buffer:
We've raised just $4M in total funding over our almost 14-year journey, and generated over $170M in total lifetime revenue. Our last round was almost a decade ago in 2014.
For 8 of our 13 years, we’ve been profitable. And since 2017, we
Here are the April 2019 metrics for
@Buffer
. Summary:
- MRR: $1,637,323
- ARR: $19,647,876
- Customers: 76,446
- Rev per customer: $21.42
- Team size: 83
- Rev per team member: $236,721
See image for the full numbers + monthly / annual comparison.
Thread with reflections ⬇️
Here are the
@buffer
August 2018 numbers:
- $18.4m ARR
- $1.53m MRR
- 78,499 paying customers
- 79 people in the team
- $232k revenue per team member
- $4.8m in the bank
- 30.28% EBITDA margin
I'll share a few further thoughts in attached Tweets.
What if we strive to create a company where the goal isn't an exit or to raise a ton of money? Where the goal is to be sustainable long-term.
For these companies, what can we celebrate and share widely? What should we value? How can we get those companies in the spotlight?
Here are
@buffer
's April 2018 metrics, which we sent to investors + shareholders yesterday. Some of the key / interesting metrics right now:
- $17.8m Annual Run Rate
- Over 80,000 paying customers
- 4.86% churn rate
- $257k revenue per team member
Reply with any questions 👋
Today was one of those days as a ceo that I woke up feeling very heavy. Many tasks and challenges had piled up and I felt overwhelmed.
Luckily, today was a day I'd previously scheduled time with my therapist. The session helped me dissect it all, have realizations + move ahead.
It's probably not for everyone, but trying to make Buffer a sustainable, real business, has been perhaps the most challenging but also most fulfilling part of the journey so far.
A few thoughts on this ⬇️
Back in 2011, Buffer applied to YCombinator and was rejected. If you want to take a look at our full application including the questions and answers, we shared it here. We had $280 in monthly revenue at the time, very early days.
Talking about burnout is something I feel is really important. Two years ago I hit a difficult patch of burnout and took a 6-week break to recover. I hope this article with my experience and advice can help others. Let’s take better care of ourselves 💚
Here are
@buffer
's key numbers for end of October. These are the very numbers I emailed investors yesterday. Excited to share with our whole community - all invested in different ways!
Key metrics:
- $16.1m ARR
- 77,579 customers
- 5.34% churn rate
- $227k rev per employee
“Raising a bunch of money, raising way more than you need, it ends up stunting growth. It destroys businesses. It’s like, you plant a seed, it needs some water, but if you just pour a whole fucking bucket of water on it’s going to kill it.” -
@jasonfried
In the last couple of months, I've really got back into RSS.
There's something refreshing about curating a small list of blog subscriptions from folks with consistently high quality content.
It feels more intentional than haphazard discovery of content through social feeds.
"People always say that the CEO's job is not to run out of money, and what they usually mean by that is fundraising. But the other way you can do that is to make money." -
@sama
☀️ So excited to share that we've introduced Sabbaticals in the Buffer team.
It's pretty simple:
🏖 After every 5 years of working at Buffer, we’re inviting teammates to take a 6-week break, fully paid.
Full details from
@courtneyseiter
:
Today we’re introducing Buffer’s Salary Formula 3.0 – a fresh, remote-first approach to our transparent salaries!
Read about it:
Salary Calculator:
See
@buffer
salaries:
Kudos to
@westcoasthubb
@jntrry
🙏
Tomorrow at
@buffer
we start our first ever company-wide mid-year break (W-F off) 🏖
Company-wide time off for global remote teams is powerful: there's no catchup afterwards 📨⛔️
Excited about how we're trying to create fulfilling long-term work that doesn't cause burnout 🧠💚
For the first time, we're closing Buffer for a mid-year holiday (Wed-Fri). Here's a lil' thread on holidays and time off on our distributed team. Maybe it'll help others in
#remotework
!
At Buffer, we allow, even encourage, side projects / businesses. It's been beautiful to observe the positive impact of this non-zero-sum mentality.
Great example is
@tiggreen
(has side project making $1k/mo!). Interesting thoughts from him on the subject:
Today, we released our 2020 State of Remote Work with
@AngelList
. We had over 3,500 remote worker participants in the questions.
The question the most people said yes to was around working remotely for the rest of their careers, it had some incredible results:
Now that remote is gaining more mainstream traction, I have a feeling the "next remote" will be fully distributed, completely location agnostic companies.
There are many many companies popping up that are "remote but within these time zones". Much harder to give full freedom.
I’ve been on a reading binge of business strategy books recently.
Do you have any favorites you’d recommend I add to my list?
I’ve enjoyed both well researched books with case studies and frameworks, as well as autobiographies that touch on strategic decisions.
This is in part why we moved away from OKRs at
@buffer
: “You can turn them into short-term thinkers by setting impossible goals and making them play catch-up. Or, set modest and unambitious goals, and let your team truly do their best work.” -
@brendan
I love that our revenue dashboard () has led to a very interesting discussion here. A few things to note:
Transparency isn't a marketing strategy or tactic at Buffer. Transparency is a core value we've had for our entire existence.
🆕 I'm excited to share the new
@Buffer
brand identity! It's live now on our website and social accounts.
So proud of the team and all the creativity and hard work that has gone into this over the last few months 👏 🎉
Check it out ➡️➡️
I've just had a few weeks vacation and feel super refreshed and excited to dive back into
@buffer
🤙 Can't imagine operating without regular time off anymore.
Also,
@jesszliu
and I are in the process of moving to Boulder, Colorado! Very excited to settle in here. 🌄
We’ve been working to turn around a decline for a few years now at Buffer.
Last year everything finally came together, in 2023 we had our least decline in the past 4 years, and we’re now growing in 2024.
How did we do it? Here are some of our learnings:
We've been gradually transforming Buffer into a fundamentally different company.
While we’ve traditionally been solely in the social media space, we now have three products and are expanding into brand building. 🎉
More on this evolution ⬇️
This is how the peak of the darkest period of
@buffer
felt for me.
It's been a journey to recover. Time off, seeing a therapist, eventually also a coach (they're different!), much introspection. And in time, fundamental changes to my role and how I structure the team around me.
It’s my first Father’s Day, wow. The fact I’m a Dad has certainly not fully sunk in yet! These early weeks have been humbling. It’s been such a joy to see
@jesszliu
’s love and care for our little Milo. I feel so lucky to be on this new adventure together 😁
I need to do more with my white privilege and leadership position to fight racism and support the Black community. I’m complicit through my actions and vow to educate myself and act more. As a first step, the next 5 books I read will be on systemic racism and being a better ally.
"You can't get promoted over Zoom"
Wow, really? In 2020? Pretty much every single promotion at Buffer happened over a remote video call, for the past decade. And we have many folks who have grown a ton. It can happen, it does happen, it will happen more and more.
Here's a very simple way of describing why I'm so long on SF/Bay Area, and why I think even more ambitious young people are going to keep moving here to replace all the FAANG employees leaving for Montana
"You can't get promoted over Zoom"
Here are
@Buffer
's November 2018 results which were emailed to shareholders yesterday. Current metrics:
MRR: $1,599,028
ARR: $19,188,336
MoM growth: 0.74%
YoY growth: 14.79%
Customers: 77,806
Revenue per customer: $20.55
Team size: 83
Revenue per team member: $231,185
How our profit share works: 50% is based on tenure (to celebrate the compounding impact of long-term team members + align with being a sustainable co), 25% based on salary (to account for varying pressure and responsibility), 25% shared evenly (to show how this is a team effort).
Alongside building
@buffer
, in the last 3 years I've become a (small time) startup investor.
I've invested in 9 companies and see being an investor as an opportunity to help and influence startups for the better.
How and why I started angel investing:
Totally agree with
@wadefoster
on a key benefit of being a distributed team:
"Your retention is going to be much stronger. Give them the opportunity to live in a place they love, to stay with their family, treat them well, pay them well and they're going to stick around."
I love the idea of a /now page to share what I'm up to and working on currently, so I've gone ahead and created one :)
Check out my /now page here and read update on what I'm currently up to personally and professionally:
Wow,
@1Password
raising $200m is big news. I love them and I'm rooting for it to work out.
I can't help but have a tinge of disappointment to see a sustainably grown, beautiful (privacy focused) product take on that pressure and growth expectation.
“You have to over-communicate. And it feels really painful to be a leader like, ‘Oh my God, I have to say this again? Why are we doing this thing?’ And it turns out, yeah, you do, because people can’t read your mind.” -
@ryancarson
(via
@clairejlew
)
📊 Here are the
@buffer
month-end numbers for January 2018.
We have many exciting product initiatives in the works for 2018 - I am looking forward to tracking and sharing these numbers as they evolve.
Reply if you have any questions or thoughts 👋
"Founders must increasingly be aware that going the VC way might not be the best solution for them and that bootstrapping 100% or finding alternative ways of financing their company can be healthier." -
@clemnt
Very insightful thread into the journey as a
@Buffer
shareholder for
@awilkinson
/ Tiny, and their original thesis for making the investment 4+ years ago.
Thread to add a few of my thoughts to this awesome information:
In 2015, Tiny invested in
@Buffer
. Since then, we have bought up every fairly-priced share we can get our hands on and doubled our position.
It was one of the most obvious, no-brainer investments we've seen.
You may have been wondering about this, or it may be exciting news to hear…
Instagram direct scheduling is coming soon to
@buffer
! 📸🎉
We're delighted to be an Instagram Marketing Partner and are hard at work building this functionality.
Read more:
Here's a look at our net profit over the years:
2015: $17k
2016: loss
2017: $2.41m
2018: $3.29m (forecasted)
We went from net profit in the low thousands to millions in just a couple of years. And we've grown net profit 36.5% from 2017 to 2018. 👌
Big update! You can now post Videos to Instagram using Buffer! 📸 🎉
No reminders or manual posting required anymore - we work directly with the Instagram API to post on your behalf. 🙌
Available to all Buffer users (all plans) ✅
We've been building Buffer for coming up to ten years now. After a great decade with many accomplishments and interesting challenges, I'm looking for a VP of Product to partner with me to shape the future of Buffer. Thread 🧵⬇️
Here are
@Buffer
's profit sharing numbers for comparison alongside
@ConvertKit
(who are very inspiring for us!)
A couple of interesting differences:
- We distribute annually rather than twice annually
- We have a larger team relative to ARR (we're at $22m)
Now that our 8th
@ConvertKit
team retreat is wrapped up, we often get questions about profit sharing.
By running with a relatively small team for our revenue ($20M ARR & 48 people) we are able to distribute profits in addition to the equity grants.
We're over $1.8M total now!
For many years I've dreamed of
@buffer
being in a position to give back. Many in the team already do it, through time and/or donations.
Last year, we were profitable enough to do it! We set aside $50k and have donated to 7 causes. All the details here:
Often hear from VCs, “oh they can’t be doing well, they haven’t raised since 2016-17.” Maybe, or:
1.) Profitable business, scaling on revs.
2.) Building deep tech product w/ small team on sweat equity, no sales team.
3.) Super lean approach + extremely cap efficient.
👍
A few months since moving to Boulder, I'm finally hitting a good exercise routine again (and better than I ever did in NYC) 😀
In the past couple of weeks:
🏃🏻♂️ 1 run
🏋🏻♂️ 2 gym workouts
🧗🏻♂️ 3 climbing sessions
🚶🏻♂️ 1 hike
I'm enjoying the variety, aiming for balanced fitness 💚 💪
Here are November's
@buffer
numbers, sharing transparently as I do each month. Feel free to reply with any questions.
Super excited about the foundation we have and all the things that are coming together. 2018 is going to be a very fun year!