Here's a reflection on Buffer's Q3 which I recently sent to shareholders:
We ended Q3 2024 with $1,602,052 in MRR or $19,224,628 in ARR. This represents 3.46% growth from Q2, which is our strongest quarterly growth in almost 5 years. We also grew paying customers by 2.89% to 57,666, our strongest growth in over 6 years. We continued our trend from Q2 of profitability in each month of Q3, and achieved a net income of $125,289 for the quarter.
If I were to rebrand Founder Mode, I would suggest Back To Basics Mode or First Principles Mode.
What strikes me about Founder Mode is that what it's really about, is cutting through the cruft of process and structure in a company, and getting back to the core of what made it exist in the first place.
We recently crossed $19M in ARR at Buffer… for the second time.
It's been a journey, to say the least. We first crossed $19M in ARR in September 2018. It's hard to believe that's six years ago.
We've fallen into a habit at Buffer of collaborating primarily through recurring group and 1:1 meetings. As an organization, we have many docs filled with agenda items for these 1:1 and group status meetings.
It's something I've been reflecting on for a while, and I had a theory that if we could transfer all of those agenda items to be individual discussion topics in an async, transparent collaboration space, we would benefit immensely.
I've been reflecting on working in, vs working on the business. Many will advise you to get out of the business, and work "on the business" instead of "in the business".
My experience of achieving the best outcomes has been different. No doubt, you need to ensure you are spending enough time working on the business at a higher level, setting the vision and strategy, and spotting new opportunities. But I've found the best way to do that is to be in the business enough to have the context to arrive at great high level conclusions and decisions.
If as a founder of a growing company you’re not working with a coach (even better, a therapist too), you’re most likely not uncovering your own flaws and ingrained issues that will ultimately hold back the business sooner or later.
Here are Buffer's August 2024 results:
This is part of the update I sent out yesterday to alumni and investor shareholders of Buffer (80 people on the list).
I'm tinkering today with my personal website, and in particular my Posts page. This page is my own implementation of the POSSE concept (Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere).
The big upgrade I've made for myself today is that it's now bi-directional. In that, I can create a post from my notes (Obsidian) and easily push it out to all networks, or (this is the new part) I can post something natively (e.g. on Threads) and then easily pull it into my notes and publish it to my website. It's semi-manual in that I need to run a script, but it's working nicely!
The web is feeling really fun again right now, in a way I haven't felt in probably over a decade.
It's the resurgence of open standards with the open social web (Fediverse, AT Protocol), and I also feel like I'm seeing a rise in personal blogs and writing again, too. There's a lot more tinkering going on again, it's inspiring.
I'm excited to share that 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 towards building Buffer to the next level. Every newsletter will be packed with value and I'm sure you'll find one or two nuggets that make you think.
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.
After many years of wondering whether I should invest more in video content creation, I've decided that for a while I am going to primarily focus on writing. I like James Gill's comments on writing vs audio or video:
"A wonderful thing about writing is it tends to last a lot longer than audio or video. It’s easier to find via search, and can more easily be edited to bring it up to date." – James Gill
I love this approach to leadership and sharing the culture and strategy from Jørgen Vig Knudstorp, the CEO of Lego:
"The culture I’m trying to create is one where every year when we celebrate another record result, I get up on the beer box and I say, “Thank you for doing all of the things I never asked you to do.” I don’t want to control. I want to create context. I want to create clarity of culture and strategic choice, but then I want people to surprise me. I don’t want a place where people are doing what they’ve been told to do, because that stifles, that creates bureaucracy, that creates fear."
It’s a good idea to aim to progress in other dimensions of life throughout the duration building a company.
I have a belief that while working on a company, in my case Buffer, you should be progressing in other dimensions of your life. Generally, any sort of progress is not linear. Meaning that sometimes you’re going through a flat patch, sometimes you’re seeing significant growth and progress, and other times you’re even declining or going backwards.
My personal opinion: once you see a business offering incentives for customer research (e.g. a starbucks voucher), it's a sign that a few things have gone wrong. And ironically, it likely means they're not very good at genuinely listening to customers.
I've found that there are much better ways to drive engagement and excitement to connect with us as a business, than gift cards or financial rewards. For this reason, at Buffer we have generally not offered any of these sorts of incentives for providing feedback.
Buffer has now existed for almost 14 years, and throughout that time I've seen a lot change in social media, and in our space of tools to support people and businesses with social. We're an outlier as a product and company that has existed for that kind of timeframe with our mission and values left in tact. We've been fortunate to be able to scale to 56,000 paying customers and over $18M in annual revenue while taking our own unique path. We've maintained control of the company and our ability to go boldly in the direction we believe is best for customers and the team.
This is why, as a business, we feel so philosophically aligned with rising new decentralized social media networks, such as Bluesky, Mastodon and Threads. These networks have been started with a belief that individuals should maintain ownership over their content and the connection to their audience. They have data portability baked in from the beginning. When you use these networks, you are much more likely to be able to maintain control over your content and audience than if you use social networks owned by large corporations with complex ownership structures of their own, and often with public markets to answer to.
I just sent the monthly shareholder update for June 2024. This goes to all of our investor and alumni shareholders (75 people on the list) and I share it publicly as part of our value of transparency. Here are the highlights:
Buffer's metrics for June 2024:
Today, we added Bluesky to Buffer!
Bluesky is an important new social network pushing forward an era of decentralized social media. Bluesky puts a focus on individuals maintaining ownership over their content, the connection to their audience, and control over the algorithm and experience.
It's here - Buffer now supports Threads! 🆕
Head to your account or sign up for a new one to connect your Meta Threads profile and enable planning, scheduling, posting and analytics. ✨
This week I'm starting to ease back into working on Buffer after 12 weeks of family leave. It's been wonderful to be able to focus on mama, our baby boy and his big brother, and I'm also feeling mentally energized to dive back in. 2024 is a big year for Buffer and we have some significant announcements on the way, starting with one very soon today 🎉
Are you in or near Boulder, Colorado? My wife is hosting Outer Range Brewing at her cafe, Creature Comforts this Friday, 4-7pm. Great beer in a great setting.
Would be fun to see you there!
How should CEO salary be determined?
I recently reflected on this from first principles, and this is what I arrived at:
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.
I spent this week reflecting on 2023 to write Buffer’s first annual shareholder letter, and I’ve decided to share it publicly.
We ended the year with $17,950,440 in ARR and 55,975 paying customers. 2023 was a turnaround year for Buffer by a variety of measures, and we are set up for growth and profitability in 2024.
For over a decade, all Buffer salaries have been transparent.
That said, over the years, our salary formula has been stretched and needed to adapt. At times, we have fallen short of our true level of commitment to transparency.
Do you need to put the link in the comments instead of the post on LinkedIn?
→ It’s critical
→ It depends on your goal
→ It doesn’t matter at all
I just finished a super valuable and fun Buffer marketing leadership meetup here in Boulder with Hailley and Simon. We were also fortunate to have Maria join us for a day to discuss product strategy overlap and go to market.
I’m always reminded of the intangible impact of the casual conversations and getting to know each other as humans that mostly happens over lunches, dinners and walking between places.
2023 was a transformative year for the Buffer product. We launched countless improvements and have made commitments to modernize the product, add flexibility, and always be on top of new networks to help you navigate fluidly and win in the shifting landscape of social media.
Here are the 11 most popular improvements we shipped last year:
Buffer AI Assistant 🤖
→ Generate new posts, repurpose existing posts, and come up with endless new ideas.
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.
Today we’ve launched Tags 🏷️ in Buffer!
→ Use Tags for Posts, Sent Posts and Ideas
→ Filter Ideas in the Create space by Tag
→ Add Tags in workflows, e.g. content added via Zapier
→ Available on all plans, limit of 3 on the Free plan
A great strategy should lead to strong differentiation and lasting results. Ensuring the strategy and culture are aligned can enhance execution and enable you to create something really special.
I think about strategy as, what are the key puzzle pieces that describe approaches or actions you can take in pursuit of the mission, that are uniquely yours to take. What are the things that you can do, that others cannot do?
🌶️ Spicy comment from a recent NPS promoter (score 10) customer:
"Amazing! I hope that you continue to have free plan which is great for small businesses (and don't stab us in the back in a few years like Hootsuite)."
Hi everyone - we’re looking for Senior Product Designer to join Buffer and be part of taking our UX to the next level. This is a fun opportunity, here are a few details:
On the role:
→ You’ll jump into a team with a focus on delivering world-class user experiences
→ Buffer has always been known for being simple and intuitive whilst having a ton of power baked in too, and we’ve recently made an investment in paying down our tech and UX debt to maintain this position
→ Work on a product used by 150K monthly active users and 57K paying customers
→ Earn an annual salary between $140K - 172K USD based on experience and location
For many years, I felt that work on maintenance, organizing or tending to the garden of a system, was not a great use of my time. I always felt I’d rather be working on the actual project, product, initiative, whatever it might be.
Recently, however, I have felt the immense value of doing regular maintenance activities, such as ‘digital gardening’; the act of perusing notes and finding connections between them to add as backlinks, expanding upon points, reading and saving quotes and insights. Another example is maintenance of my project and todo list and ensuring I have clear next actions in place. Energy I put into this pays dividends as it helps me be more productive on the projects themselves. I easily win back more time than I put in on these types of activities.
“People remember the exciting moments. People get excited for the shiniest things. But often, success comes from the boring: being consistent, executing relentlessly, not letting things slip.” – James Gill
I agree with this, and in recent years have found myself being very motivated by diligent consistency and execution. To me, Apple are inspiring in that they don’t drastically change their products in terms of form factor or functionality, but chisel away over the long-term towards a clear vision they’ve thought hard about. Small improvements made regularly, and maintaining pace over a long time horizon can really start to add up to great results.
Context is crucial when it comes to whether advice is right for you or not. There’s so much dogmatic advice floating around these days, it’s easy to be sent down the wrong path.
Here are a couple of great quotes that can serve as a reminder to be mindful and do your own thinking when taking on advice:
My admiration for long-term companies has grown significantly. I find myself fascinated by companies that exist for decades and even more so by founders who find a way to keep evolving, increasing their ambition, and remaining energized.
I wrote that almost 3 years ago, and only feel it more today.
https://joel.is/10-years/
“One of my lessons relearned is the profound problem-solving power of the walk. I used to be world-class. I’d get stuck on some writing question, feel the subtlest hitch in my flow, and, SPROING, I’d be up out of my chair, spring-loaded, already halfway around the block.” – Robin Sloan
https://www.robinsloan.com/newsletters/what-would-a-wizard-read/
Regular walks have been a key part the way I work for the best part of a decade now, though I’ve also had periods of time where I’ve let the habit slide. These days, I have a similar response to my mind feeling clouded, or feeling stuck on a problem or a deliverable: I get up and go for a walk, and usually I’ve resolved it by the time I’m back at my desk.
As an $18M ARR business, I found the latest SaaS Growth Report from ChartMogul on how SaaS businesses grow from Zero to $30M ARR interesting and useful.
My favorite insight: “After even 10 years in existence, only 13% of startups are able to reach the $10M ARR mark. It’s hard.”
https://chartmogul.com/reports/saas-growth-report/2023/
“Imagine that instead of blogging and tweeting your experience you wiki’d it. And over time the wiki became a representation of things you knew, connected to other people’s wikis about things they knew.” – Mike Caulfield
https://hapgood.us/2015/10/17/the-garden-and-the-stream-a-technopastoral/
“Increasingly, founders are seeking freedom from the risk and control of the perpetual pursuit of venture capital. Instead, they’re ready to reroute their time, efforts, and attention to building enduring companies on their own terms.” – Terrence Rohan
https://trohan.com/2023/08/20/raise-less-build-more/
Managers are individual contributors too. They contribute process changes, documentation, strategic plans, lead by example, and jump in as a partner when it’s necessary.
I have a bit of an issue with the term individual contributor. It can make managers feel like they shouldn’t be “doing” anything. But being a great manager means making stuff happen.
We recently strengthened the concept of an Alpha phase at Buffer. Alpha is our internal testing phase, where we make new functionality available very early, exclusively to the Buffer team.
Here are some of the details and benefits:
“If you have an idea you’re excited about and you don’t bring it to life, it’s not uncommon for the idea to find its voice through another maker. This isn’t because the other artist stole your idea, but because the idea’s time has come.” – Rick Rubin
I’ve observed and experienced this. Generally, when you have an idea, if it’s a good idea then others are having it at the same time. For me, this leads to two conclusions:
Hi everyone - I’ve just updated my /now page with what I’m currently up to, including being a toddler parent, my wife opening her cafe, current strategy for Buffer, and my journey with note taking systems and digital gardens: https://joel.is/now/
"Our vision is that Threads will enable you to communicate with people on other fediverse platforms we don’t own or control."
I find this a very interesting aspect of the new Meta social network. I'm looking forward to hearing more about their steps to incorporate open standards.
https://thenewstack.io/threads-adopting-activitypub-makes-sense-but-wont-be-easy/
"Good businesses have margin. Profit margin? Yes. But also margin for your time, your emotional and physical health, your relationships, your sanity, and your integrity. You're a human, and humans need breathing room." – Justin Jackson
https://justinjackson.ca/margin
Around a year and a half ago, I established a broader leadership group beyond our executive team at Buffer, including anyone who is a manager or a senior individual contributor. It's been helpful in a number of ways.
In the early stages of a company, until around 50 people, a leadership team of adequate size can handle the most important decisions and have enough context into the organization.
