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.
I’m pleased to announce that Michael Erasmus has completed his 45-day Buffer Bootcamp and is now on board full time as our backend/full-stack developer focused on growth at Buffer!Michael has been such a pleasure to work with. His recent passion lies in data science, and he’s been leading the exploratory analysis that our growth team is doing at Buffer. He also built out what we call ’seamless’ experiments. Seamless is a way for us to conduct A/B tests
I’ve realized I am very much in a bubble. Everyone I know is building a company. Amongst my circle of friends, that is the norm. This, however, is mostly out of choice: I believe, in agreement with Seth Godin , that to be an outlier is an inefficient way to make progress: The easiest way to thrive as an outlier is to avoid being one. At least among your most treasured peers. Surround yourself with p
I know you don’t want to take a break right now. Why? Because you’re too busy. This post is probably one of more than a few tabs you have open on your browser or phone. Your to-do list is likely close by and packed with tasks. Sometimes we know there’s a better way to do things, but we’re just so busy we don’t even think we have the time to find it—so we keep going like we always have. That’s how I saw things, too. And then I discovered the power of taking breaks at work. They made me happier
I’m pleased to announce that Tom Redman has completed his 45-day Buffer Bootcamp and is joining us full-time as Buffer’s Android Developer! And I’m super pumped to announce that this means we are now 100% focused on building out our Android app! For the longest time, our Android app was on the back burner as I would switch between Android and backend development. Tom has been the man to bring Android to the forefront!In the short time that Tom has been on b
“Here I am, standing in the middle of nowhere in Poland holding a sign to hitch a ride…sweat dripping, car after car rushing by.. rain is coming in too. What the hell am I doing here…” Things didn’t look too good then. But let me tell you this story from the start: In April 2012, I bought tickets to Poland so that I could explore the country by myself, couchsurfing and hitchhiking for 10 days. Couchsurfing is the largest travel community online, allowing you to “surf” members’ couches. By th
I’ve gradually realized that my day is not occupied only by tasks from my to-do list . Often, there are lots of other tasks that deserve time in my day just as much as those I have in my to-do list. Previously, I found that these extra tasks detracted massively from my feeling of productivity and happiness [https://buffer.com/resources/happiness-hacks-une
I have a lot of ideas in my head. And for the most part, that’s where they used to stay. In my head. Where other people couldn’t see them, interact with them or build upon them. Where they were safe and untested and uncriticized. All mine. Sure, I’ve created some . Some might say I’ve created plenty. But that’s only because they can’t see what I’m not creating. For example, this very post sat dormant for at least a month while I pondered, waited and
July was a month filled with sunshine, life changes, vacations, and yes, Inbox Zeroes, too! Most of the Heroes took a few days here and there to welcome family, rest and recharge, or travel. Their well-deserved days off did have an impact on the stats, but they scheduled around each other and worked extra hard to hit zero in the inbox every day. As of this writing, we’ve hit 10 straight weeks of zeroes, at least one per day. I’m super proud of them for achieving this milestone, especially whil
We love happiness at Buffer. We’ve renamed customer support as customer happiness. Happiness is baked into our culture and values and the DNA of every person who works on the team. If there’s a smile to be had or a positive outlook to take, we’ll do our best to find it. As such, we’re always keen to test out new ways to improve on this value of happiness at work, at play, and at home. We’ve tried science-backed ways to be happier, productive ways to be happier, and lessons from historians, w
July was a month of big changes and big growth for Buffer’s small but mighty team of Content Crafters. Our blogs got a fresh new redesign that allows each post to shine a bit brighter and load faster, and the changes resulted in a big increase in traffic across the board. A few milestones: On the Buffer Social blog, we reached 35,000 total email subscribers, while Buffer Open saw pageviews topping 100,000 for the first time. Let’s take a closer look with a dive into the numbers! July stats fo
The very first time my Jawbone UP24 vibrated on my wrist, signaling that it was time to get ready for bed, I laughed out loud. I was standing in a pub in central London, beer in hand, and in practical terms, 2 hours from home. Bed time?! Ridiculous! This is the thing, though. If you want to get 8 hours of sleep , and you want to get up and start your day at an early hour [https://blog.bufferapp.com/your-bodys-bes
“The brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out; the brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. The brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough. They are there to stop the other people!” –Randy Pausch I’ve had a few email exchanges in the past with startup founders struggling with an idea [https://blog.bufferapp.com/how-to-produce-more-great-ideas-according-
As a CEO, I often ponder how I can help the team be as productive and happy as possible. As part of our decision to be a distributed team at Buffer, there have been a number of amazing advantages this has brought as well as it making a fun team to be part of due to the many different cultures and loca
“Customer support” is something of a magic phrase at Buffer. Say it to anyone—from Happiness Heroes to Hackers and beyond—and watch eyes light up. Simply put, it’s one of our very favorite things to talk about and improve upon every day. Customer support is baked into everything we do—Buffer’s vision is to build a super-useful social media management tool with amazing support for everyone we come into contact with. So what does Buffer’s Happiness team do, exactly? And how do we keep customer
How many browser tabs do you have open right now? While writing this post, I had 18 tabs open. I’d like to say they were all for research, although I’m pretty sure one or two slipped down a YouTube wormhole. Does this sound familiar? It seems like my multi-tab madness is right in line with the status quo. We all love to have multiple tabs open at once, adding more and more as we find new articles to click and sites to visit. Pretty soon, it’s likely we’ve forgotten what we were online for in
A question I hear from time to time when I introduce myself and my title here at Buffer is, “What is a community champion?” Well, that’s a great question! My immediate response is, “I send out love to our customers all day.” But it’s so much more than that. The typical community manager role (though this role truly varies from company to company) often includes social media management and engagement, content marketing and networking and connecting with customers. At smaller companies, the com
Last year I decided to sail across the Atlantic. I previously had spent 3 months learning how to sail in South Africa and figured that learning should be put to good use–otherwise there’s no point, is there? After some quick research, I decided to join the 270 boats crossing the Atlantic with the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers (ARC) in November 2013: “Every November since 1986 the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers (ARC) has set sail from Las Palmas, bound 2,700 nautical miles westward across the Atlan
When I look back on the times I’ve done the most productive work on my startup, it has always been when I’ve had a great balance of work and rest . It has also been at times when I have genuinely been enjoying the moment . Steve Jobs suggests that in order to do great work, we should love doing t
We’ve talked in the past about how often exercise and reading pop up on our self-improvement lists at Buffer. Another element you’ll almost always spot on our goals list is sleep—getting more sleep, getting to sleep earlier or getting into a better sleep routine are a few popular variations on the theme. Curious why sleep matters so m
Most companies have meetings of some sort. Many startups have daily standups . As a fully remote and distributed team with members in a variety of countries, continents and time zones , Buffer meetings have to be a bit diff
My first post on my personal blog was one where I pondered whether exercise is a requirement for sleep . The post was actually triggered by my inability to sleep, and I wrote it in the middle of the night. Since then, I have made a number of adjustments and I now sleep much better, so I’d like to share what I’ve changed. Why create a
June was a great month, here’s the latest: Traction update * New users: 60,530 (Total: 1,598,049, from 1,537,519: +3.9%) * Daily active users: 39,752 (up from 39,559: +0.5%) * Monthly active users: 158,894 (down from 160,241: -0.8%) * Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR): $303,000 (Annual: $3,636,000 up from $3,396,000: +7.0%) * Cash in bank: $715,000 (last month: $653,000) * Team size: 25 people across 5 continents We’ve been super happy to keep up consistent MRR growth, with 7% growth ag
I have a lot of stuff. That’s not really meant to be a brag—far from it. More just a statement of fact. Amazon deliveries arrive all the time. Knickknacks and little gifts and random tchotzkes take over spaces. I can’t stop buying art. And plants. And why do I have so many nail polishes? It’s one of life’s mysteries. You probably have a lot of stuff, too. When did life start to feel so overstuffed? When I discovered The Minimalists recently via an interview
Whether you’re a morning person or a night owl, we all start our day at some point. And we all seem to start it differently. Some of us hop online to check social media, others dive in to email, still others eat breakfast, exercise, or pack lunches for the kids. There’re a million different ways a morning could go. Which morning routine might be best? While there’s probably not an ideal morning routine that fits everyone, we can learn a lot from the morning routines of successful people as we