Being a strong team of around 80

Up: § 2023 Shareholder Letter Index

I've challenged myself to think about the team size from first principles. In other words, reflecting on: what it really takes to support Buffer as a product, with the breadth of the product and the number of customers we have, the choice to service them with fast and accurate responses, as well as our desire to grow further from where we are, and the requirement to maintain, expand, innovate what we already have. I’ve come to the clear conclusion that 75-85 people is the appropriate size for Buffer currently.

Furthermore, as we have work towards seeing consistent growth, lowering our burn rate and achieving profitability, we do not want to grow the team (i.e. employee / salary expenses) at the same pace as our revenue is growing. We want our revenue to start outpacing the team growth. We will likely want to grow over time in order to support more revenue, MAU, customers, just not exactly in proportion. This is what will enable us to grow our profit margin over time, which we'd like to do until we reach a really healthy profit margin, say 10%.

While I believe around 80 is the right size for us, this is a small number for the revenue we have, and the number of active users and paying customers we have. Our revenue (ARR) per employee at the end of 2023 was $233K, a high number compared to most tech companies. It's a testament to how much we achieve with the team we are, and our above market salaries reflect that compensate in line with, and need people who are achieving a high level of performance. Every person really matters, great output from everyone in the team is vital if we're going to pull this all off. Therefore, we will make tough calls if needed where we don't see the level of performance we need to make the whole equation work.