Join us as we share what we’re learning as we build a company that approaches work from a fresh perspective. We write about workplace culture, our finances, and our business decisions and strategies.
Buffer Marketing Report January 2017 * Last month’s report * All marketing reports * All Buffer reports Buffer signups 18,922 +26% Buffer for Business trials 1,732 +16% Social blog sessions 1,321,003 +27% Email subscribers 89,424 -4% NPS 45 +10% Kicking off 2017 with a new strategy for content At the start of 2017, we launched a new approach to our content s
Buffer Product Report January 2017 * Last month’s report * All Product reports * All Buffer reports Weekly active Awesome + Individual plan users 175,751 +13% Weekly active Buffer for Business users 4,905 +6.8% Buffer for Business Monthly Recurring Revenue $534,828 +2.1% Social updates sent by Buffer for Business users 4,247,699 +11.7% Users starting Buffer for Business trials 7,581 +23% Converted Buffer for Business trials 314 +6.4% Users starting Awesome t
We’ve always done things differently at Buffer. For me, this has always come from a natural desire to question things. Why base your company and team in a single location? Why is it customary to keep salary information private? Why can’t someone exercise during their day and work unusual hours, as long as it’s a productive way for them to work? Asking these questions – and seeking their answers – has taken us down an interesting path. It’s been a rollercoaster of a journey so far. We’ve made
In the past when our marketing team was only two or three people, it was easy to work on projects together. Finding time to meet and discuss was also easy, as we only had to coordinate between a few people and we were in fairly close timezones. In the past year, our marketing team has grown from a team of four to a team of eight (yay!). Timezones are mildly more of a challenge now that we are based all around the world — from the West Coast in the US to the East Coast in the US to Canada, to th
Public relations can mean a variety of things, especially at a startup where many people wear any number of hats. My first job out of university was as an intern at a startup doing public relations (PR) for them. I cold-called reporters with pitches, wrote press releases and even did some ghost writing. I was the first PR person they had ever hired, and have since been the first person to be hired in a full-time public relations role at three other startups. I completely adore PR (and social m
On Friday, President Trump banned entry into the United States for migrants from seven Muslim-majority countries and instated a 120-day halt to resettlement of refugees from around the world. As the founder of a global team , I believe this ban is fundamentally wrong and directly opposed to Buffer’s values of inclusion, diversity and openness. Buffer is a company founded
During early startup days, everyone pitches into everything and just does what needs doing. The focus is on building a product: getting it out the door and delivering something great for our users. A small, flat team, a cluster of passionate engineers doing whatever it takes each day, works just fine. More than fine – it’s brilliant. It’s what got Buffer to where we are today, passing $12M in ARR with a team of 81 Bufferoos spread across the world, serving over 4 million users who send more tha
Thinking through our very first family leave policy at Buffer was a new and exciting thing for our young company. I personally was honored to be the first teammate to take a leave and put this “into practice ” and most recently, I got the chance to help with crafting our more inclusive leave policy. And yet, for all our pla
What does a family leave policy look like for the workplace of the future? What if your workplace is remote? And global? What about leave types that aren’t related to having children: like bereavement leave, taking care of parents or aging loved ones… How do these fit into the workplace of the future? These were some of the questions we considered as we dove deeper into our old (and fairly standard for most tech companies) family leave policy of 16 weeks paid time off. Part of our company vi
Buffer People Report December 2016 * Last month’s report * All People reports * All Buffer reports Applicants 360-24% Open blog posts published 15 no change Open blog visitors 120,065-7.3% Bimonthly team NPS score 60% Launching our new family leave recommend
Buffer Marketing Report December 2016 * Last month’s report * All marketing reports * All Buffer reports Buffer signups 14,943 +5% Buffer for Business trials 1,497 +63%* Social blog sessions 1,041,679 -16% Email subscribers 93,232 -2% NPS 41 -4% * Trial starts in December were up in such an enormous way because of a change our growth team made to the upgrade flow. One of the things I enjoy most about working at a startup is that I’ll often have the chance to take on
Buffer Product Report December 2016 * Last month’s report * All Product reports * All Buffer reports Weekly active Awesome + Individual plan users 155,013-6% Weekly active Buffer for Business users 4,594-6% Buffer for Business Monthly Recurring Revenue $523,973+2.9% Social updates sent by Buffer for Business users 3,801,986-0.3% Users starting Buffer for Busine
Buffer People Ops Report December 2016 * * All People Ops reports * All Buffer reports Team members 78 Revenue in cash receipts $1.023m +2.9% MRR $1.058m +2.6% ARR $12.7m +2.3% Expenses $922k +0.6% Madrid: Here we come! Great news! We’ve decided on Madrid for our annual retreat in late February. In addition to our 80 team members, we’re also expecting many significant others, and could see a total of 120 people descending upon Madrid! We will be working from t
Buffer Reply Report December 2016 * Last month’s report * All Buffer Reply reports * All Buffer reports MoM: +25% Paying customers 87(+8%) Bugs fixed 75+ As 2016 comes to a close, it’s a great time for us at Buffer Reply to look back on the past 12 months and reflect on what we’ve accomplished as both a new team and a new product within Buffer. And of course, to begin thinking about our plans for
Buffer Engineering Report December 2016 * Last month’s report * All Engineering reports * All Buffer reports Requests for buffer.com 189 m -7.8% Avg. response for buffer.com 254 ms -4.2% Requests for api.bufferapp.com 288 m -33.9%* Avg. response for api.bufferapp.com 269 ms -33.9% Code reviews given 51% of pull requests -12% Buffer Kubernetes Cluster * 9 nodes in cluster * 149 pods * 652million requests handled * Serving 58% of total traffic Bugs and Quality *
Buffer Happiness Report December 2016 * Last month’s report * All Happiness reports * All Buffer reports Responses within 1 hour 35% -16.6% Customer satisfaction score 91-0% Email conversations 12,215-.4% Twitter conversations 5099-3.9% Avg. Twitter response time 11 hr 58 min +200% Webinars hosted 10 Changing how we work as a Happiness team On the last day
Tech startups are known for their fast pace; big changes can happen in days or even hours. How much would change if you walked away from one for a month–or even longer? Would you be left behind? Would you be able to catch up? Would you even have a job at the end of it? In 2016, I had the opportunity to find out the answers to these questions for myself when I took a six-week sabbatical to study and complete my undergraduate degree. I’d love to share everything about this experience — how I pl
I recently celebrated a whole year at Buffer and, looking back, what a crazy year it was. One thing that continually surprises me is the open and transparent culture . Giving feedback and experimenting with the process is all part of the journey. Over my time at Buffer, I’ve had the fortunate experience of working on a few “ startups within a startup [https://buffer.com/resources/from-startup-to-scaleup-what-were-changing-as-we-make-the-transition
Sleep is one of my favorite things. I adore it. I’ve never been one for alarms though. Potentially because they mark the end of my sleeping. I started working remotely a fews years ago, and intermittently went between working from home and working at an office. Having a more flexible schedule meant I didn’t need to wake up at a certain time unless there was a meeting. Because of this, I’ve experimented with eliminating my morning alarm from my life. Here is how I went about it and how you can
Here at Buffer, we love to read. A lot. In fact, we gifted 1,366 Kindle books to our team members and their family members this year alone! This is 27% more than our 2015 total of 1074 and 108% more than our 2014 total of 656 ! One of our most avid readers, Amy , is in four book clubs currently, and she cites this Kindle perk as enabling her to do so and also set n
How do you work best throughout the day? For some of us on the Buffer team, it’s about the right morning routine to set the day right. For others, the right evening routine is what it takes to get ahead for the next day. We’ve found there’s no one way to organize your work day — and that the best fit looks different for every person. Here are a few examples from our team to help inspire some different ideas to arrange your workday for optimal productivity and creativity. Structure doesn’t h
One of the most difficult parts about interviewing with a new company can be negotiating salary. There are tons of tips out there, and one of the most helpful is to know what someone in that position might earn before going into the negotiation. It may seem like a small detail, but negotiating on the front end can have an exponential effect on your earnings over time. One calculation shows that with an average annual pay increase of five percent, an employee whose starting annual salary was $5
A while back, an awesome group of women in tech in Hamburg, Germany reached out to Buffer. They explained that they wanted to support women in being more confident about the money they make and negotiating, and asked if we would we be interested in talking about our journey with transparent salaries. And that’s how I, with a track record of literally never negotiating and a mostly hilarious salary history that looks like this: 1st job, NYC: Conde Nast editorial asst: $26K 7 yrs @Tennessean/G
Editor’s Note: Every month we share an update with all of Buffer’s investors. We also publish that note in full for our Buffer Open audience in keeping with our value of transparency . Buffer Investor Report November 2016 * Last month’s report * All Investor reports * All Buffer reports MRR $1.05m ARR $12.6m MoM 1.9% from Octobe