Joel Gascoigne
CEO and co-founder @ Buffer
A collection of 130 posts by Joel Gascoigne - Page 3
October was an unusual month for us, numbers-wise, as a result of us moving from 7-day to 30- day trials of Buffer for Business. Here’s more about that and everything else going on at Buffer in our October 2015 investors’ report. Key metrics * 2,841,519 total registered users (+3.0%) * 226,445 monthly active users (+3.0%) * 55,460 average daily active users (+2.0%) * $650,478 monthly recurring revenue (+1.0%) * $7.81M annual recurring revenue (+1.0%) * $2,546,589 cash in bank * 56 team
In the world of weight training, it’s well known that having a partner can lead to seeing gains more quickly. And research has shown that those who switch from training alone to using a personal trainer see many improvements. Similarly, pair programming has been shown to improve quality of code, as well as keep both developers in “flow” state for a more sustained p
While building Buffer , there have been times when things have started to go a little crazy. It might be being featured in a big blog, seeing lots of tweets about us , or noticing a big influx of signups or upgrades . When this happens, it is very easy for my thoughts to drift off and to start thinking of the big-picture possibilities for us, long into the future. It may
We reached the 50 team members mark in September! This feels like a big milestone and a special moment to reflect on. For me, the most exciting part of this is that 50 people are able to join our journey of working as a fully distributed team, where you choose to live and work from the place which makes you happiest and most productive. We’ve had several examples of teammates moving or traveling to find their happy place, or being able to move easily to help and be with their significant other
“Perhaps the CEO’s most important operational responsibility is designing and implementing the communication architecture for her company.” — Ben Horowitz Buffer has recently grown to more than 50 people during our fastest 2 months of growth ever. I’ve found that a lot changes when you grow to this size, and any time the team grows quickly. There are a bunch of challenges and it’s also invigorating. It might be the most exciting and toughest phase of build
There is a myth in entrepreneurship that many newcomers believe, and it could be a key reason why many others don’t even “try.” The myth is that you need to know how to do everything, and you need to do everything perfectly. When you look at successful startups, it’s easy to believe that they did all the right things. The reality is often far from that. In fact, I think it’s very healthy to have a good dose of naivety while building something new. The scale anticipation fallacy One prime ex
We’re delighted to hit almost $7.5M in annual recurring revenue and be fast moving towards the big $10M ARR milestone. As a company, we’re starting to feel that some of our recent team growth and structure adjustments in the last few months are starting to take effect. Here are all the latest numbers and updates from all corners of what’s going on in the Buffer team! Key August metrics * 2,673,418 total registered users (+3.1%) * 211,520 monthly active users (+1.4%) * 50,489 average daily
We’ve been lucky at Buffer to receive a number of acquisition offers along our journey so far. When I mention this to people, a key question that often comes up is “how did you decide not to sell?” The earliest offer we had for Buffer was not long after we had started, and it felt fairly easy for us to say no, simply because we felt we wanted to see where further our current path leads. In many ways, the reason we haven’t accepted an acquisition offer is in order to continue on our path. How
A prevalent concept is the idea that as a CEO or executive of a company, you need to shield your team from bad news, the risks of a startup, and other negative aspects that are inevitable on the startup journey. I believe this concept could actually be quite dangerous. One of our core values at Buffer is to default to transparency. This means absolutely everything in the company is shared knowledge. It was scary at first, not least because the idea goes very much against the grain. I found m
At the start of July, we had our 6th team retreat! Despite the substantial cost of this and growing the team faster than ever, we are still profitable and the bank balance has gone up since last month. We are very happy with this slack we have and the health of the business, and at the same time we would like to grow the team faster and continue filling validated roles. I’m excited to share the latest update of everything going on at Buffer: Key metrics * 2,592,194 total registered users (
We’re officially halfway through the year. Very excited to share the latest update for Buffer: Key metrics 2,511,292 total registered users (+3.2%) 206,464 monthly active users (+1.5%) 52,229 average daily active users (+6.2%) $550,529 monthly recurring revenue (+3.4%) $6.61m annual recurring revenue (+3.4%) $2,578,881 cash in bank 34 team members across the world 25 cities, 10 countries, 4 continents Here’s a graph of our MRR growth over the last 3.5 years: The change in trajectory around
One of my favorite things to do is to help others who are at an earlier stage of the startup journey. I had a lot of false starts before Buffer. I enjoy sharing my lessons from those failed attempts, and I also enjoy getting my mind back into those early days challenges, now that Buffer is almost 5 years old. In the past few weeks, I’ve had 5 sessions (typically around 30 minutes, in person or via Hangouts) where I’ve tried to help someone. I was surprised to hear the same challenge came up in
In May, we continued our strong revenue growth, and we’re also growing the team faster than ever before. Here are the latest insights and numbers about Buffer: Current Buffer metrics * 2,432,382 total registered users (+3.4%) * 203,449 monthly active users (+1.7%) * 49,202 average daily active users (-1.1%) * $532,350 monthly recurring revenue (+4.6%) * $6.39m annual recurring revenue (+4.6%) * $2,267,067 cash in bank * 34 team members across the world * 25 cities, 10 countries, 4 co
In December, my friend and co-worker Brian casually mentioned to me that he would love to explore Asia. I love Asia. I lived in Japan as a kid for 3.5 years, and I lived in Hong Kong for 6 months in 2012. It was a no-brainer for me to jump on the opportunity and travel around Asia with Brian. I had been in San Francisco about a year and was craving exploring again, having done a lot of travel in the 4.5 years since starting Buffer (which even contributed to us becoming a distributed team). I
April was a fun month for the Buffer team, with Buffer for Pinterest being a key big task and milestone for us as a company. Here are the latest numbers: Buffer metrics in April 2,351,405 total registered users (+3.6%) 200,125 monthly active users (-3.3%) 49,728 average daily active users (-1.6%) $509,161 monthly recurring revenue (+4.0%) $6.11M annual recurring revenue (+4.0%) $2,165,528 cash in bank 32 team members across the world 23 cities, 9 countries, 4 continents The big news in terms o
February at Buffer saw our biggest team retreat yet, the launch of a new mini-product and some big news about buffer.com. Here is the latest: The latest Buffer metrics * 2,171,877 total registered users (+3.9%) * 189,216 monthly active users (+3.0%) * 47,937 average daily active users (+7.0%) * $462,236 monthly recurring revenue (+4.8%) * $5.55m annual revenue run-rate (+4.8%) * $1,827,750 cash in bank * 29 team members across the world * 22 cities, 11 countries, 6 continents It’s aw
In my recent travels around Asia, I’ve had the great opportunity to meet a lot of local founders and aspiring entrepreneurs. A few themes that seemed to come up many times are questions like “What triggered you to become passionate about company culture and transparency?” or “How did you know you wanted to build Buffer to what it is today?” One of the most memorable moments for me was talking to a super smart lady who is having a lot of success at a large company and longs to work on something
In January at Buffer, we grew the team, made big progress on upcoming new features, launched a new Transparency Dashboard, and started sharing feedback transparently amongst the team. Here’s a quick update on what’s been going on: The latest Buffer metrics * 2,090,805 total registered users (+4.4%) * 183,638 monthly active users (+9.0%) * 44,790 average daily active users (+10.8%) * $441,108 monthly recurring revenue (+4.6%) * $5.29m annual revenue run-rate (+4.6%) * $2,084,935 cash in
A while back, I met with a great founder who’s really hustling. We spent some time discussing his idea and I shared some of my experiences with Buffer. When we’d almost finished our 30-minute meeting, he had one last question: “Plan vs build. Where do you stand?” I thought it was a fantastic question. Clearly it’s not a binary choice, yet I think it’s also good to ponder which of the two you should focus on. What does it mean to plan? I believe planning is an essential part of making progre
As a teenager I had a period of many years where I stopped reading books completely. I even remember a time where I couldn’t imagine reading books at all. After I graduated and started to be interested in business and startups, I realized the immense power and knowledge contained within books, and I started reading more and more. Today, I can’t imagine even a couple of days passing by without some time spent reading. As an introvert, I’m a reflective person. Sometimes that can be a challenge, s
I’m excited to write the very first Buffer update of 2015, which is also going to our new Series A investors following our transparent funding round. Welcome to our new investors, and thank you so much once again for joining us on this journey! The latest Buffer metrics: * 2,002,495 total registered users (+3.5%) * 168,455 monthly active users (-1.4%) * 40,430 average daily active users (-0.40%) * $421,787 monthly recurring revenue (+3.0%) * $5.06m annual revenue run-rate (+3.0%) * $2,0
One of the things we’re incredibly excited about at Buffer is transparency. A big part of that is because being transparent simply feels like the right thing to do, intuitively. That by itself, seems reason enough to pursue it. We’ve seen some incredible things happen since we started to focus more on transparency in the last few years. Transparency breeds trust, and trust is the foundation of great teamwork. To put things into perspective, here are a number of things that we’ve made transpare
“Those that get up at 5 a.m. rule the world.” – Robin Sharma Those who know me, know that I love my morning routine. I’m always making adjustments to it, and at its core it revolves around waking up early (before sunrise), working on something important for 90 minutes, and then hitting the gym. I recently shared my most recent routine in a blog post about creating new habits. Today, I want to share a couple of things about my routine that I’ve neglected to mention in previous articles. These t
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” – Aristotle I’ve been obsessed with thinking about, adjusting and building upon my habits for a long time now, and working on good habits is probably one of the things that’s helped me the most to make progress with my startup. In addition, it seems like habits are now becoming popular again. This is a great thing, and books like The Power of Habit are helping lots of people. Perhaps one of the things that is rarely