
Baremetrics for Buffer - zrail
https://buffer.baremetrics.io/dashboard
======
kyro
I'm not a huge user of Buffer, but I really like them because they've given us
great insight into running a startup that's not a smash-hit-media-darling. VCs
weren't knocking down their doors with truckloads of cold cash, they weren't
beating journalists off their backs, etc, you get my point. They've had to
stick to business fundamentals from day 1, methodically approaching issues
like profitability, marketing, business development, growth, with only $500k
of investment. They've been up and running for a few years now with a team of
~17 who're being paid competitive salaries. They've no doubt learned a lot and
have been open about it. And this is just another example of their strategic
biz dev, marketing and transparency they've become pretty masterful at.

I should add that this is also a great move by Baremetrics, who are likely to
gain much more out of this.

~~~
muratmutlu
It's been a great insight for me and helped with putting together the deck and
approach that landed us some Angel funding.

The other part of it is now we want to help people too, so we've written a few
posts about our own spending and metrics. Great to be able to shed some light
on early stage questions.

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huhtenberg
I would gladly pay for this dashboard if it were an installable product, but
there's no way I would ever share our vital financial stats with some random
company in exchange for pretty graphs. This is just so out there, it's beyond
any discussion.

If you are reading this, Baremetrics guys, do consider making an installable
version, e.g. in a form of a VM appliance. Feel free to charge monthly, but it
should be in a form that allows retaining full and close control over all data
your dashboard pulls off Stripe servers. Just look at what AeroFS did if you
need some inspiration and validation.

~~~
Shpigford
Thanks for the feedback! Sounds like Baremetrics might not be the right
product for you. :)

~~~
huhtenberg
Buffer is an exception. Their openness is a part of their marketing strategy
in tech circles.

I am genuinely curious whom you think Baremetrics is a right product for.
Excluding companies run by your friends and acquaintances, who either trust
you implicitly or just want to be supportive.

~~~
aculver
Buffer really isn't the exception. They're an exception in that they've made
all their data _public_ , but my experience on both sides of the fence as
someone who both _runs_ Stripe Connect services and also manages the
technology for companies who _use_ Stripe Connect services tells me that most
companies are not concerned about sharing their financials with trusted
parties in exchange for a major operational benefits, whether that's analytics
and reporting or automation of customer service operations.

As a Stripe Connect service operator (at
[http://churnbuster.io/](http://churnbuster.io/)) I've only once had someone
in the onboarding process express any concern that all their financials would
be available to our service, and in that case they were a developer who wanted
to double check with their CEO that it was OK, which it was.

Your question really isn't for Josh, it's for Stripe with regard to the entire
Stripe Connect ecosystem. Sure, some people may be really concerned about
sharing financial information with a third-party service, and that's totally
fine, but I'm pretty sure they're the ones missing out. Speaking now as a
technology consultant, I can say that the ability to plug-and-play all sorts
of different and very valuable third-party services is allowing the rest of us
to build businesses in record time with minimal investment and part-time
resources.

------
zrail
I just wanna say congratulations both to Baremetrics and Buffer. You're both
an inspiration to bootstrappers like me.

~~~
joelgascoigne
Thank you Peter! Let me know if I can ever help you with anything :-)

------
alooPotato
Doesn't this expose who their customers are (in the live stream)? I'm all for
transparency, but it doesn't seem like the customer list is theirs to share.

~~~
brandon272
The customer names have been changed.

> Note: The transactions you see throughout the dashboard are real, but we've
> used fake customer names to keep them private.

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xpose2000
This is an absolutely brilliant move for both companies. I imagine baremetrics
will double or triple their revenue by the end of summer because of this.

Well done.

~~~
nathanbarry
Agreed. It's brilliant. The great thing is you can see if that happens by just
watching this page: [http://demo.baremetrics.io](http://demo.baremetrics.io)

~~~
nodesocket
The link is [https://demo.baremetrics.io](https://demo.baremetrics.io) :)

~~~
nathanbarry
Oops. Fixed.

------
nodesocket
Kuddos. Honestly I didn't even you could pay for Buffer. It is really
impressive they are willing to be so transparent with their financials. It
probably helps that they haven't raised any institutional investment[1] and
thus don't have any external pressures about releasing these details.

[1] [https://angel.co/buffer](https://angel.co/buffer)

~~~
rememberlenny
Buffer raised $500,000

Link: [http://onstartups.com/tabid/3339/bid/98034/The-Pitch-Deck-
We...](http://onstartups.com/tabid/3339/bid/98034/The-Pitch-Deck-We-Used-To-
Raise-500-000-For-Our-Startup.aspx)

~~~
nodesocket
> ..in the end, we closed a $450k seed round from 18 investors.

As I said, they did a distributed Angel round, not a traditional investment
from an institution (VC).

~~~
joelgascoigne
Indeed, we haven't raised a large single round from an institution, though we
did have 3 firms put in $50k each as part of that $450k round. The board is
just myself and Leo.

------
zaroth
Thank you guys for sharing this.

I noticed 30,000 _failed charges_ in one year. I'm not sure if that's
interactive failures, as in users actively trying to complete a transaction,
which is much less important than the recurring failed charges, as in money
you thought you were going to get but didn't, for no other reason than the
payment network.

I hate seeing those failed charge notifications that go out every morning when
you try to bill that day's batch for the next month of service. And then
wondering how much that's pushing up your churn rate, how much effort should
you spend trying to get updated billing info, etc. Buffer is mostly $10/mo, so
I would imagine not much chasing is going on beyond a few automated emails...
but it's enough to make you want to switch to ACH!

Does Stripe handle auto-updating credit card details when a card expires like
some companies seem to be able to do? With the massive leaks lately, and so
many card numbers getting cycled, it definitely hits the bottom line.

~~~
rsobers
I don't think Stripe auto-updates. There's a service called Churnbuster whose
sole purpose is to deal with this issue:
[http://churnbuster.io/](http://churnbuster.io/)

~~~
zaroth
Interesting service. Attacking the problem by trying to optimize within the
constraints of the current system.

It's a problem you wish you could eliminate instead of just trying to optimize
around.

------
nodesocket
The 6 month recurring revenue graph is interesting:

[https://buffer.baremetrics.io/stats/mrr?start_date=2013-10-2...](https://buffer.baremetrics.io/stats/mrr?start_date=2013-10-28&end_date=2014-04-28)

Gotta love 75% growth, and 199% yearly growth.

------
brianbreslin
I'm curious how big their staff is, what their burn rate is, etc. I also am
curious if they have 22k paying customers, how many are free tier?

That seems like a very healthy business right there, which might be able to
squeeze a bit more growth out of its free tier.

~~~
vardy
You can see their staff costs as of Dec 2013 here:
[http://open.bufferapp.com/introducing-open-salaries-at-
buffe...](http://open.bufferapp.com/introducing-open-salaries-at-buffer-
including-our-transparent-formula-and-all-individual-salaries/)

~~~
brianbreslin
so some quick back of napkin math makes their annual burn rate around $1.6M in
salaries.

~~~
joelgascoigne
That's around the right ballpark. If you want to do the actual calculation,
feel free to take a look at our spreadsheet of salaries here:
[https://docs.google.com/a/bufferapp.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=...](https://docs.google.com/a/bufferapp.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AgrWVeoG5divdE81a2wzcHYxV1pacWE1UjM3V0w0MUE&usp=drive_web#gid=1)

------
buro9
Great dashboard.

Would love to see it work for more than just Stripe.

Perhaps for a variety of backends, or an aggregate one like Xero so that it
can get insight into payments coming in from sources like PayPal and direct
bank transfers too.

~~~
Shpigford
Right now we're focused squarely on Stripe. They make it stupid easy to build
on top of (thanks to Stripe Connect). May expand way down the road, but that's
waaayyyy down the road.

------
alanmeaney
This is a great partnership and I can't wait to see what comes next.

I've watched and enjoyed reading the Buffer story since the early days. In
fact it probably played a small part in my path towards quitting work last
summer and starting my own thing.

I'm considering doing an 'Open blog' for our enterprise start-up
[http://www.fundrecs.com](http://www.fundrecs.com) like the guys did with
Buffer.

Trying to weigh up whether it would limit us or enable us to do more. My gut
is saying go for it but my co-founders aren't convinced.

------
joewee
I stopped using buffer, but I think I will start using it again. I plan to run
my next startup with as much transparency as they do.

------
latraveler
You have to respect a company thats not afraid to open up their numbers like
this. I love this trend of financial transparency for startups. Numbers are
the clearest way for me to crystallize things as an entrepreneur.

------
jpdlla
Blog post for some more info about this [http://open.bufferapp.com/buffer-
public-revenue-dashboard/](http://open.bufferapp.com/buffer-public-revenue-
dashboard/)

------
brandon272
Is their revenue entirely from the "Buffer for Business" plans?

~~~
joelgascoigne
Hi Brandon!

Out of our total March revenue of $246,000 [1], 79% came from our $10/mo
Awesome Plan and the other 21% came from Buffer for Business [2].

Let me know if you have any other questions :-)

[1] [http://open.bufferapp.com/buffer-update-
march-2014/](http://open.bufferapp.com/buffer-update-march-2014/) [2]
[http://open.bufferapp.com/buffer-revenue-growth-
report-2/](http://open.bufferapp.com/buffer-revenue-growth-report-2/)

------
dosh
This is really helpful.

\+ I've been using Buffer for few weeks now and it's really a pain killer.
Hope they can make 'locale/language' setting available for Facebook Pages tho.

------
Major_Grooves
This looks stunning! When I clicked through the first time it said the MRR was
about $250k which surprised me. On refresh it went back down to $9k.

~~~
rsobers
No, Buffer's MRR _is_ 250K. Baremetrics' own MRR is $9K. Both dashboards are
public. You might've been toggling between them.

~~~
Major_Grooves
ah - wow. Then I am very impressed by the $250k. You're right - I was toggling
between them. Thanks for clarifying.

------
shravan
This is a great marketing move. Honestly, this is the first time I've signed
up for a service immediately after seeing how it works live.

~~~
Shpigford
Wooohooo! Happy to have you on board. Shoot me an email if you need anything!
josh@baremetrics.io

------
presty
$140k in refunds the past year

do you know what are the main reasons?

~~~
mtrimpe
They focus very hard on customer service so I guess that plays a part.

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coreyallen
Looks like George uses Buffer [http://d.pr/i/bgAS](http://d.pr/i/bgAS)

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ghiculescu
Baremetrics looks awesome, but it's Stripe only. Does anyone know of an
equivalent for Braintree?

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loceng
Edited. I didn't read the fine print.. :)

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mtnboy
This is pretty neat.

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axelbouaziz
Huge congratulations Josh and Baremetrics ! It's a great app and it's good to
see you growing well.

The brief conversations we've had with you have been great and we think you're
a really nice guy.

We've built a similar app but hope to compete with slightly different features
(more details to come).

We launched our private beta today, and it's either good or bad timing ;)

Axel, designer at SaaS Metrics [http://saas-metrics.com](http://saas-
metrics.com)

~~~
Major_Grooves
can't deny this also looks nice! Good luck with it. Hope to evaluate you vs OP
in the not too distant future.

