
Change at Buffer: The Next Phase, and Why Our Co-Founder and CTO Are Moving On - colinscape
https://open.buffer.com/change-at-buffer/
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jpeg_hero
My guess at what happened: the natural hyper growth engine ran out, they tried
a bunch of things to jump start it, none of them worked, so now they are on
the slow growth path.

If they were not remote-only maybe they could have pulled off the CTO's plan
of hiring a bunch of traditional managers and "pushing" the company forward
(probably enterprise sales), but they'd have restructure the bones of the
company at great expense. The great expense part probably doesn't work,
because since the sizzle is off the growth, the next VC round would be tough
if not impossible to do. It would be very "term-y" and founders are already
underwater enough on investor preference.

They probably made the right call of not shooting for the moon, and slowing
down into a remote-only company that takes its time. Skype and boxer shorts.

But now the COO and CTO are faced with the decision of A) sitting around and
riding it out at $185,000 and $182,089 per year respectively (healthy money no
doubt but not DHH buy-a-racing-team like earn outs) or B) move on to the next
thing while the market for vc funding is still hot and they can still get some
juice from their association with buffer.

Rational decisions all around.

Oh, and Twitter launched scheduled tweets.

~~~
hkarthik
The logical exit for these smaller tools companies as growth slows is to get
acqui-hired by the Twitters, Facebooks, and LinkedIns of the world.

However when your entire team is remote, that makes these companies steer
clear of acquiring you since you won't fit into their culture. So they will go
for your competitors with a crappier product, but a local team that they can
quickly bring in onsite within a few months.

~~~
the_watcher
Or, given that they've now been profitable for 7 months, they could continue
to exist without an exit strategy.

~~~
shostack
How does that work in the VC-funded world?

If a company's growth has dramatically slowed, but they are still profitable
(even with a down year here or there), are VC's ok letting them chug along
without an exit? My guess would be no and they'd push for some sort of private
sale.

~~~
argigg
A company that accumulated enough cash could, in theory, buy out its
investors. This would allow an impatient VC fund to return cash without
involving any other party. Not sure if a VC-backed startup has ever done this.

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CPLX
Summary: the cofounders disagreed so two of them left.

Maybe I'm an old guy but I don't really understand why this blog post exists,
it's like hundreds of words of emotive rambling and vague talk of journeys and
values and euphemisms for simple concepts.

Would it like have ruined anything to write something like "A couple key early
people are moving on but we're doing pretty good, we make social media
software and have revenue ok hey thanks for listening I'm going to get back to
that now have a great Friday" and then hit save?

~~~
ethank
Buffer is similar to a lot of companies that are obsessed with being companies
rather than about the products they make.

~~~
neogodless
I thought similar things after reading this:

"We will be a long-term, sustainable, fully remote team that works hard on
mission-driven work. We will be the most reliable social media tool in the
market. And we will continue to push the boundaries of transparency, culture
and freedom in the team."

The first and last sentence has nothing to do with the product, and the
product statement doesn't even hint at what it does... just that it does it
well!

~~~
aub3bhat
Yeah after a while it seems like the classic case of taking themselves too
seriously. I was like "Chill" you guys are developing tools to tweet later not
saving lives or anything.

~~~
baby
Not every company has to disrupt, revolutionize, save the US/world (ok the
last one was a rant about super hero movies)

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deedubaya
You'll likely never get full transparency from a post like this. All parties
involved have a shared interest -- to paint the best picture possible to
maintain the value of the company. Everyone cordially agrees to disagree,
saying this is just a personal growth thing, then everyone hugs and gives
high-fives on the way out the door....

Take these posts with a grain of salt. If everything were hunky-dory, there
wouldn't be a senior level departure at all.

~~~
ceejayoz
If you're going to get transparency from a company, Buffer's gonna be it.
Their Baremetrics install is publicly available. Their salaries are published
on their website. They run on a "radically open" platform of management.

~~~
jethro_tell
When I read this I wondered it he is being fully transparent with himself. It
may be a post full of the truth from one angle but everyone knows the truth
doesn't exist in 2 dimensions.

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mladenkovacevic
I use Buffer as a marketer and I think I can see what keeps them from growing
the number of their paid users.

I have a free plan and I'm completely OK with keeping it that way. It helps me
schedule posts 10 per network at a time and not knowing any better I'm
perfectly happy with this little convenience it offers and they are doing very
little to break me out of this routine.

There is very little messaging to the user in terms of missed opportunities
that a paid plan opens up. Actually even with a free plan they could do more
messaging to bring me back to their product outside of my "go to schedule some
tweets" routine. How about sending me an email when a Twitter account with
more than 10K followers re-tweets me. Perhaps it's worth something to me to
know that this has in fact happened and suggest some follow-up actions that
might maximize this opportunity.

That's just a small example but there are tons of other growth tactics that
would communicate to marketers that Buffer can help them become not just "more
efficient" marketers, but better marketers overall. I think that's where the
true value of most marketing technology lies.

This stage of their company evolution is notably harder and perhaps arguably
more boring so it's not surprising to see people leaving. After working on the
core product for a while and squeezing out all the potential growth from that,
it takes hundreds if not thousands of tactics adjustments, product
optimizations and management changes to fine-tune the company engine for
slower but steadier growth from then on. And even then it's not an exciting
roller-coaster ride anymore but a slow long-haul freight train journey. It
takes a markedly different kind of employee to thrive in that kind of
environment and this is what they have to optimize for going forward.

ADDENDUM: There's also the added risk of Buffer's success being tied to all
the individual social networks, some of which are thriving, others which may
not be here tomorrow, so it would be in Buffer's interest to develop their
relationships with their users outside of their interaction with those
platforms they have no control over. I mean marketers will always have to find
the best way to do their job regardless of whether Twitter exists or not. This
is probably pretty common sense advice considering how many times we've seen
the rug pulled out from under smaller tech companies who built their business
around some platform created by Google, Facebook, Microsoft or one of the
other big companies.

~~~
Aaronn
I understand it is just an example but Buffer actually does have emails
similar to this already. I got an email last week that said "We wanted to take
a minute to celebrate you because, check it out, your tweet is doing
amazingly!" and then it tells you the potential audience of the tweet and has
a little animated gif with a Buffer employee giving you a high five. Not sure
what the limit is to get this kind of email and I don't think it is
configurable. My most recent one was a potential audience of "165,962 happy
Twitter users, courtesy of 2 retweets".

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minimaxir
The cofounder's perspective: [https://medium.com/@leowid/after-6-incredible-
years-at-buffe...](https://medium.com/@leowid/after-6-incredible-years-at-
buffer-im-moving-on-to-something-else-e06ec40c3f16)

~~~
wj
off topic:

I took a look at his new
project([https://www.matterapp.io/](https://www.matterapp.io/)) and wonder
what people think about the method of social proof he is using by showing
logos of companies that are not customers but that are transparent about their
diversity. Seems like a great shortcut but feels slightly misleading to me.

~~~
cdelb
It fooled me initially, until I saw the pricing. $299 a month for what the
simplest of spreadsheets could track.

~~~
tomredman
People had the same arguments against Dropbox (just use rsync) and Buffer
itself (just use a cronjob).

~~~
minimaxir
This argument is inherently a fallacy. Sometimes ideas are inherently bad.
(Also, you're an engineer at Buffer)

~~~
tomredman
Yup I am. My point though is that that argument is largely underestimating the
value delivered by these products. And the apparent lack of P/M fit for
spreadsheets managing diversity at large companies.

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nickswan
These people need to have some kids, and realise not to take themselves so
seriously.

I've just been in intensive care with my 4 week old son for 3 days while he
has been on a ventilator. Watching the doctors and nurses work does make you
realise how unimportant all this social media and startup stuff mostly is.

~~~
borsisa
Is it not possible to learn this lesson with a parent, sibling, or some other
loved in intensive care?

~~~
kisstheblade
Not exactly, kids are different. Speaking from experience.

~~~
borsisa
I would have to disagree. Also speaking from experience.

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tedmiston
To me Buffer has always occupied a very unique space between a SMB in the
style of 37signals / Basecamp and a high-growth venture-backed startup.

Today I was surprised to look at Crunchbase and see Buffer's total raised is
just $3.9M between a Seed and Series A. Very few startups could make that
money last 5+ years, but very few startups also occupy this unique space of
being profitable so early.

I imagine choosing between the two paths was difficult and it's great to see
clarity around the decision and future direction.

~~~
erdojo
Maybe Crunchbase is not up to date? The CEO's post says they have 71
investors, and Crunchbase lists 29.

But you're absolutely right. If they've only raised $3.9, it's an impressive
run.

~~~
tedmiston
I agree that it's quite impressive.

It's definitely possible that Crunchbase is out of date but companies are also
generally pretty incomplete in listing investors past the leads for each
round. People don't list so and so's dad that put $50k in, etc. I'm thinking
the dollar amount is right since the lead for the A matches what Joel wrote.

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nnd
Prorating salary based on your location always seemed unfair to me. According
to it the value of the work I produce would change if I travel to another
location, which doesn't make any sense to me.

~~~
x1798DE
I think it basically comes down to practicality. If you don't adjust pay for
location in a remote company, you either pay the market rate for the most
expensive market or you price yourself out of that market. If you pay the
rates of the most expensive market _everywhere_ , you are essentially leaving
money on the table, since your competitors can potentially hire two people in
Nashville, TN for every 1 person you hire (though you obviously get your pick
of the litter by paying above-market rates) - or they can afford a bigger
advertising buy, or any of the other competitive advantages you get by saving
money. Not only that, but if you're not a remote-only company and are actually
_based_ in one of the expensive locations, you're basically offering your in-
person staff a huge bonus if they leave and become remote.

Honestly, anything other than paying market salaries +/\- some relatively
small error term is probably not sustainable in the long run.

~~~
imsofuture
And like every other time people say this, it just breezes by the fact your
remote employees can get _other_ remote jobs. The market is not you-the-one-
company-in-the-world-that-hires-remotely vs their-local-market.

~~~
x1798DE
True, but the fact of the matter is that even if you had no idea where your
employees lived, the location adjustment would likely come out in a
competitive market because people from other low-cost areas can bid down the
price, and you'll only drop out of the bidding when it reaches below your
cost-of-living adjusted salary. The only reason the expensive markets can
compete at all is because a lot of the top talent is concentrated there.

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hodgesrm
Maybe I'm old and cynical but this blog article really seems to be
overthinking a basic company change.

------
jarcoal
If anyone is interested, you can see Buffer's revenue numbers, etc here:
[https://buffer.baremetrics.com/](https://buffer.baremetrics.com/)

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mypalmike
TL;DR: They want car doors that open like this: | | not like this: - -

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apricot
Group therapy for tech C-suite, in blog form.

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Taylor_OD
This is a bummer. I'm a buffer user and really enjoy the product. I still
think they could gain a huge market by offering their platform to reddit
users. I ran a small subreddit for a while that I would have loved to buffer
posts for so their would be regular content updates.

------
debt
Buffer needs to provide business value beyond post scheduling. Tell me when
the best time of day to post is or other analytics around posts. Provide a
marketplace where people who want to sell products/brands can connect with
influencers etc. I don't know.

~~~
codinghorror
I think it's AMAZING that a company offering nothing but scheduling posts on
social media got to $13 million per year in revenue. Amazing. And kind of
weird.

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alberth
People here are speculating a lot about what Buffer revenue are and it's
growth.

No need to speculate.

Buffer publically posts their actual revenue.

[https://buffer.baremetrics.com](https://buffer.baremetrics.com)

You can review their sales performance and come to your own conclusion.

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zump
Can't believe people buy whatever this is.

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peter_retief
Hey that's my hometown Cape Town :)

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jwildeboer
"Look at all the good times we kids had burning VC money at wonderful places
knowing nobody cares about us running something sustainable."

