Something I've always found interesting: people have ups and downs, we all go through different seasons in life. But we don't let companies go through seasons. A flat year or even a slow quarter can often mean the CEO is out and the company is turned upside down, and it usually doesn't make the company stronger.

I'm happy to announce Buffer Commit, our first community build contest for building on top of the Buffer API 🧱 🚀

You might not know this, but I launched Buffer almost 16 years ago during "November Startup Sprint", a friendly challenge on Hacker News for people to build and launch something they'd been working on or thinking about. That thread was just the nudge and deadline I needed to build something that would go on to grow beyond my wildest dreams.

For years, we've supported entrepreneurs and small businesses in getting off the ground and growing through social. Earlier this year we launched our Public API, and it feels like the perfect opportunity to support people and commit to our mission in a new way.

If you've had an idea sitting in your notes, Buffer Commit is the perfect excuse to build it! First and foremost we're offering a deadline, support, and camaraderie. Registration is open, the build and submission window runs October 28 to November 13, and our engineers will be in Discord and hosting office hours throughout. Anyone 18 or over with a Buffer account is welcome to take part where eligible, solo or as a team!

Buffer isn't a hypergrowth funded rocketship, so we've chosen to do something meaningful to us for the most impressive builds. The prize pool is $25,600 which equates to just over 10% of our August net profit ($251,102). Since we're coming up on 16 years in business, we'll split the prize pool between 16 winners, each will take $1,600. Our hope is to help get some new ideas off the ground, we'll be on hand to advise and support.

We'd love for you to join us in what we're planning to be our first annual Buffer Commit!

Register here: https://buffer.com/api/commit?utm_source=joelis&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=buffer_commit&utm_content=joel

What @Ismail has built with Proto quickly became one of our most important tooling and workflow changes at @Buffer during this chapter of AI-driven transformation. We now regularly discuss both big ideas and the fine details of implementation by looking at thoughtfully crafted prototypes vs design mockups.

It's fascinating to me how much effort is going into making AI that can't be distinguished from humans.

I'm super excited about AI, I use it very extensively, I can't believe I get to live through this moment. And yet, this isn't the AI I'm energized by.

What are the

This is a great example of when people will rebuild with AI instead of continue using your product.

How do you avoid this happening to your SaaS? I don't have all the answers, but my approach right now with Buffer is that we need to eliminate as much friction as possible, and add as much flexibility and customizability as possible (which includes the existing API, MCP, CLI).

Going forward, when customers feel friction they won't just wait for you to improve it, and they won't even just look at competitors. They'll wonder whether they can build something better for themselves. And if they can add something your product couldn't do, then it is by definition better for them, even if it's missing a lot of other features your product has.

Moved to Chicago with the family this summer.

Who should I know here? I'm looking to get plugged into the community - especially founders, builders, and people who write online.

We don't do quarterly planning at Buffer. We've tried it in the past, and I always found it felt forced. These days, we revisit strategy in an area when it feels needed. It turns out to be about every six months, but never on a schedule.

Companies often take a lagging metric and make it the KPI they're shooting for. The problem is that lagging metrics by definition can only be observed after the fact, so you're kind of chasing your tail.

We all have a choice to make right now: build your own tooling around AI, or wait to adopt tooling someone else builds. I often discover and build a workflow that eventually someone does better (and then I upgrade to theirs). It can feel wasteful, but I'd rather be at the forefront than behind.

I've been auto-exporting my Apple Health data to a SQLite database on my Mac mini for the past year via a custom iOS app Claude built. Can highly recommend!

After being a cmux user for months, I'm now a herdr convert (herdr in Ghostty). Shifted everything to run on my mac mini rather than laptop, it's amazing. Using moshi to access on iPhone. Spaces for projects and tabs for agents by repo (sometimes multiple) works super well.

What do you think it could do for a business to have your team consistently feel energized about their work on a Monday morning, over a long timeframe?

This is one of the questions I spend time reflecting on and an ideal I strive for. Alongside many elements of the culture, I believe our 4-day workweek is one of the most significant contributors to achieving that goal.

Here's Iggy's take on it, someone who joined Buffer in the last few months:

Many companies say they're mission-driven. I think most are actually growth-driven.

During a growth season it's easy to tout a mission alongside a great trajectory and everyone's happy. Whether you stay mission-driven through a hard season comes down to who controls the company.

I believe the aversion to hiring and having a team holds successful indie hackers back. You can take on much more ambitious dreams with others, and it's fun to grow a team too.

And as a friendly competitor, I'm enjoying seeing Nevo and Postiz become a strong player in the space.

One of my favorite side effects of AI is that it's making the web much more open again. For over a decade we've seen platforms increasingly become walled gardens. AI has created pressure for interoperability and we're finally seeing open standards and APIs being embraced again.

This feels about right. I'd add one I find myself doing a lot:

- challenge everyone to think bigger

I've been practicing Japanese again (I lived there as a kid and picked it up again during university, but have lost a lot of it since). I've found out a formula I'm enjoying: daily flash cards (WaniKani is awesome) combined with a show in Japanese with English subtitles I watch a few nights a week.

We've recently shifted our AI strategy at Buffer. Rather than packing AI features into the product, our focus is making Buffer great to use with AI. It's about flexibility, interoperability and extensibility. We're making Buffer delightful to use and build upon.

For most of my time building Buffer, I've felt called to be generous in the product, pricing, and our customer service. I simply believed it was the right thing to do, and in many ways that's enough of a reason. Over time, I've realized that not only does generosity feel great, it's also a strong strategy.

Freemium was perhaps our original expression of generosity, and is one I've enjoyed doubling down on in the past few years. Giving away a meaningful part of your product for free is an inherently generous act: you give up revenue you could collect today. But it's also a strong strategy and for us has led to long-term sustainable growth. A great free plan leads to more overall users, which drives word of mouth, builds a stronger brand, and steadily grows a pool of users who reach our free plan limits over time and upgrade.

One of my favorite acts of generosity happened in 2025, when we proactively cancelled the subscriptions of customers who hadn't been using Buffer. Recently, we launched our API on every plan, including free.

Another way to think about a strategy of generosity is taking an approach of under-extraction. One of the ways I sometimes think about it is: if Buffer was acquired by a Private Equity firm (don't worry, that won't happen), how many immediate changes would they make to extract more revenue? The longer that list, the more differentiated we are from purely growth-focused competitors. I love how Tobi Lütke from Shopify put it: "Your customers notice if you're going into value extraction." The way he describes his job is inspiring: "adding as many levers as possible to the room and then not pulling any of them."

Our ability to be generous is directly connected to our ownership structure. We do not have pressure for short term growth and results. We can utilize this advantage to lean further into generosity. Many of our acts of generosity are decisions that would never enter competitors' minds, and would almost certainly never get board sign-off. This is also why I'm comfortable sharing this aspect of our strategy: it's very challenging for others to encroach on this position. And ultimately, if more businesses felt pressure to be more generous, I'd see that as a great contribution for Buffer to make.

The more comfortable you feel sharing your strategy openly, the stronger it likely is. If you feel worried about competitors knowing your strategy, it's probably weak.

Buffer's API is here. Whether you want to build workflows and agents for your social, build social sharing into your product, or a tool on top of the Buffer platform and userbase, we've got you covered.

We're building the API to become the primary layer of the product rather than an afterthought. We believe that going forward, people want to work with Buffer through many interfaces: MCP, CLI, our official apps, and 3rd party apps. Our launch today is a major commitment to this direction.

When we chose to invest in a platform a year and a half ago, we knew we wanted to get it right. We use the same GraphQL API to power our web and mobile apps, so you'll get the reliability benefits of our testing, monitoring, partner relations, and infrastructure, which already handles significant scale.

The Buffer API is available on all plans, including free, and includes MCP and a CLI. It's easy to get started, just head to your account (or create one for free) and go to API in your settings. You can create a personal token or OAuth app right away and make your first API call instantly.

We can't wait to see what you build with the Buffer API!

https://buffer.com/api

Within 6 to 12 months, every software product will need an API, MCP, and CLI. More and more, people expect to be able to interact with your product through automation, AI and agents. Historically, platform was a later stage of maturity play. Going forward, you won't really thrive in this new world without a platform.

Today we crossed $25M in ARR at Buffer, a significant milestone for us 🎉

This one has extra meaning for me because now that we're above $25M we're closer to $30M than we are to $20M. This comes after spending literally ~8 years around that $20M number.

You see, at Buffer we've had a very unconventional path to this $25M milestone. This isn't your typical up-and-to-the-right success story. Our path from $20M to $25M included a detour of declining back to $18M while we found ourselves and recommitted to our mission, customers, and values. Here's the journey we've been on:

It took us 5.5 years to reach $10M
Another 3 years to reach $20M
Another 6 years to reach $20M.. again 🎢 😅
Just 15 months to reach $25M 🎉

It's been a wild and at times very challenging journey, but I wouldn't change a thing, because we've never felt stronger as a company and this is reflected in our trajectory to $25M. If fact we only just crossed $24M two months ago.

We have a ton of good stuff coming to existing and new customers in the coming months. We're using our growth and success to make Buffer the most simple, powerful and generous product we can.

I just got home from the 13th Buffer retreat in Barcelona, and what an incredible week it was.

We've been working remotely for most of our 15+ year journey, and we've found that our company retreats are an essential part of the recipe for working effectively together and forming bonds that lead to a strong culture and results.

This year getting together in person felt particularly well-timed, as we've had 15 new folks start at Buffer in the past year and 6 start just in the past month, and almost all of them were able to attend retreat. A couple of people even attended the retreat prior to their official start date!

This year was also a reminder of how powerful it can be to be intentional about the format. The choices we make on how we structure the week can impact everyone's energy levels and what we get out of the week collectively.

We have some important annual events: a Monday morning keynote I give to set up the week and get us all inspired about the year ahead, small-group dinners on Monday and Tuesday evenings where we each share our personal story, a Wednesday team dinner which leads to partying and karaoke, Thursday day off to recharge, and a Friday afternoon gratitude session to round out the week.

This year we shaped the rest of the time to be more team-driven: an unconference format for our afternoons where anyone could submit a session and folks chose which sessions to attend, and AI Lightning Talks on Wednesday morning where anyone could give a 5-10 minute presentation. I also made time for office hours and made a point of having meaningful 1:1 moments with as much of the team as I could.

All in all, this was my favorite retreat yet. Our annual time in person is where we can all feel the more subtle aspects of our connection with each other. I can generally sense tension and friction that exists in the team, and this year the culture feels the strongest it's been in a long time. Just a couple of days in, it felt like the new folks had been part of our weird and wonderful group for years. And we're all leaving feeling a strong bond, clarity on our strategy, and excitement for the opportunity ahead for the company.

People see growth and profitability as a tradeoff: when you dial one up, you turn the dial down on the other. In my experience, the times we've grown the fastest have also been the times we've been the most profitable.

A healthy freemium base is a growth savings account. Every month a portion upgrades. Remove the free plan and you get a one-time cash-out that looks like growth, but you're really just stealing from your future.

I've spent a lot of time thinking about interfaces recently. What is the value of a great user interface in a world with AI-assisted and agent-driven work? Since ChatGPT, Claude and other chat-based AI assistants were introduced, some have suggested that UIs are not necessary or optimal anymore. I have a slightly different take.

I believe what's really going on is that chat-based AI assistants give you so much power and flexibility that generally isn't available in most UIs, and due to this fact, we would often choose a chat-based interface over something else.

I think that graphical UIs are going to catch up pretty fast to become a vital companion to chat-based UIs. In fact, there's something really delightful about using a great graphical UI in combination with a chat-based AI assistant.

We've been thinking about this a lot at Buffer. To make Buffer feel awesome to use in this new world, I think a few things are vital:

- That you can do everything you can do in the web and apps via chat-based AI assistants. This means a solid API, MCP, CLI.
- That the graphical UI is truly real-time. You want to be able to work with a chat-based assistant while having the graphical UI open, and see changes happen immediately. This is going to be a big one for us to tackle at Buffer soon.
- The product is geared around flexibility, interoperability and customization. If you can personalize the UI to your needs, and you build on it easily, you'll feel great about it. If you can connect the product easily with other platforms, you will feel in control of your workflows.
- The ability to interact with the product in a back and forth manner towards great outcomes. This is really what chat-based AI assistants excel at, but there’s no reason the general paradigm can’t apply to many different user experiences.

I continue to think that great UIs are a big part of the future, even with the advent of chat-based AI assistants and voice control. I think they won't be utilized 100% of the time in the way they have for the past decades, they will be one of many interfaces to products. I personally still want that interface, and my expectations for the graphical user interface have actually increased.

I feel like there needs to be an iOS ssh client that has voice-first input. I'd love to keep my Claude Code sessions going via mobile just by talking. Does this exist yet?

For many years at Buffer, any time someone moved on we'd backfill their role by default. About 5 years ago I changed my approach: by default don't backfill.

I found that defaulting to backfilling roles meant that the team remained in a maintenance mindset rather than being in a builder mindset. Backfilling means assuming that we should keep things as they are, rather than allowing ourselves to reflect on whether there's another way.

It's always worth seeing how the team adapts to a gap and whether a better way to organize the team emerges. Especially when leaders move on it's worth letting people who are hungry step up before immediately denying them that opportunity.

I'm not saying never backfill, but to give it some time. There may be a more creative way forward. Or a little time may quickly determine that the role in it's existing form is absolutely needed.

If you decide you need more help again, treat it as a new hire, not a re-hire or a backfill. Everyone is different and the organizational structure should always be evolving and adapting to the unique group of people involved.

Michael Porter's productivity frontier concept is playing out in real-time. We have 1-2 years where the frontier is getting pushed out by AI before it settles. We get to decide: wait for best practices to emerge, or engage in rebuilding? At Buffer we're choosing to be in the mess of the frontier.

I'm happy to share that the brand new Buffer API is in Public Beta 🎉

It's ready to use for personal automations and to create enhancements for your Buffer account. Use it via MCP with your favorite AI, use it with n8n, or start developing on top of it via Claude Code or Codex (or even hand-written code!)

Note: this really is a beta, we have limited functionality exposed via the API right now, with much more to come.

To play with the beta of the Buffer API:

1️⃣ Enable beta features for yourself: https://publish.buffer.com/settings/beta
2️⃣ Create an API key: https://publish.buffer.com/settings/api
3️⃣ View documentation: https://developers.buffer.com/guides/getting-started.html