Joel Gascoigne
CEO and co-founder @ Buffer
A collection of 130 posts by Joel Gascoigne - Page 4
Since the beginning of Buffer, we’ve always shared all of our learnings and failures. Over time this developed into a more defined goal and principle as part of the values of the company. Since we defined our value of transparency within the culture, we have found many things within the company that we weren’t being completely open about, and we put them out there for the world to see. We’ve generally found that we are sharing a lot of things that are somewhat taboo or at least unusual to be sh
For as long as we’ve run Buffer, we’ve had to send new team members some form of employment agreement. We’re currently in the middle of raising $3.5m in new funding and, as part of the due diligence in this funding round, we’ve been revisited these agreements. We’ve never felt completely comfortable about the agreements we send out, and it can often be a shock and in stark contrast to the style of the rest of our hiring process, where we try to take extra steps to show that we truly care about
In October, Buffer announced a new funding round, launched the new Buffer for iOS 8 and iPad, and laid the groundwork to hire for many new positions! Here are our latest numbers as of the end of October: * New users: 76,973 (Total: 1,861,443 from 1,784,516: +4.3%) * Daily active users: 43,231 (up from 41,647: +3.8%) * Monthly active users: 174,121 (up from 166,511: +4.6%) * Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR): $390,752 (ARR: $4,689,024: +6.9%) * Cash in bank: $1,004,862 (last month: $846,145)
A while back, my co-founder Leo gave me an interesting suggestion: he said I should try disabling all notifications on my iPhone. I find this suggestion especially interesting because it is one that goes against the normal phone setup. It’s so usual to stick to how things are, and with iPhone apps the easiest thing to do is to “allow” all those notifications. It seems almost odd to even consider doing things any other way. I chose to go along with Leo’s suggestion, although I was admittedly q
In August I think we really found our stride in a lot of ways, and hitting $4M is a huge milestone. At the same time, our MRR growth the last two months has been a lot lower than we’d like – 5% or 6% is not ideal for us. I’m confident with our hard work and new teams set up we can pull that up. (I also want to share some of July’s numbers—I went on vacation right at the start of the month and let the update slip by.) Traction update July * New users: 65,712 (Total: 1,663,761, from 1,598,049
I feel incredibly lucky that I managed to jump on board the path of building a startup. Having hit upon a product that solved a key pain for many people, Buffer has grown rather fast. The team is now 25 people and we’ve just crossed $4M ARR. When I reflect on how quickly things happened and what it has required of me, the first thing that comes to mind is Paul Graham‘s essay entitled How to Make Wealth. In particular, this part resonates with me: You can think of a startup as a way to compress
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’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
“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
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
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 just booked a flight for a vacation to Cancún, Mexico, and it got me pondering the relationship between work and rest in a startup. One reason I’m building a startup is to gain control over many aspects of my life. I like to hack my productivity, and I’ve found I don’t necessarily thrive by followingnormal working hours or only working from an office [https://buffer.com/resources/distrib
When I meet with outstanding first-time entrepreneurs, I can really feel the passion and determination they have, and I know that if they will just continue there is every chance that eventually they will be very successful. Often a topic that comes up in these conversations is the timing of raising funding as a first time founder. I’ve had entrepreneurs often talk to me with just an idea or a very early prototype with no traction and tell me that they want to raise funding. We closed our $450K
I believe that when you’re building a startup, it is as much about developing yourself as it is about developing your startup. Recently I’ve realised that “feeling uncomfortable” is just what I need. Why is it a good thing to feel uncomfortable? Seth Godin describes why we should feel uncomfortable using the following chart: Godin argues that most
I’ve had a few different experiences in my past that made me reach a big realisation. What I’ve discovered is that the context of any situation is very important. Hiten Shah clearly already understands this very well. This Tweet from him is what tipped me over the edge to share some of my further thinking around context: Get context before you give advice. — Hiten Shah (@hnshah) August 30, 2012 [https://twitt
I’m excited to share the details for Buffer’s progress in May. If you want to read our update from April, you can take a look here . I’ll keep it short this month, just wanted to give you an update on our latest progress. Traction update • New users: 60,000 (Total: 1,537,000, from 1,477,000: +4.1%) • Daily active users: 40,000 (last month also 40,000) • Monthly active users: 156,000 (down from 157,000: -0.6%) • Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR): $283,00
During the journey of building Buffer , I’ve had some truly fantastic moments. I’ve reached some defining milestones. New doors have opened for me, and it has been great. Looking back to when I started Buffer , even though I had learned a lot from my past startup experiences, I truly didn’t know what I was doing and I approached everything with that mindset. I was out there to learn an
“You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.” – Dale Carnegie Once in Hong Kong I took a trip to the barber, since my hair was getting a little long. It ended up being one of the most fascinating times I’ve had my hair cut. The last few times I’ve been to this barber, they’ve always washed my hair in the sink before I’ve had my hair cut. The way they did it was to turn the chair arou
Often if I give a talk or I speak with someone about getting their idea off the ground, the topic of how solid the product should be comes up. In particular, people very frequently wait far too long before launching . One of the key learnings for me with Buffer was that the impact of problems people have and downtime they experience are directly tied to how we, as a startup, choose to handle it. In fact, downtim
One of the most important differences for me personally in how I run Buffer compared to the last one I founded has been how I treat the product at each stage of the process. With ideas such as the Lean Startup, there is a huge amount of pressure to ship very early, and rightly so—the sooner we can validate our assumptions and gain more understanding about how our users react to our product, the better. However, quotes such as the following can make us feel like we should believe our product is
“The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.” – Thomas Jefferson Around two years ago I stopped watching and reading mainstream news. I don’t read a single newspaper, offline or online, and I don’t watch any TV at all. I mentioned this on Twitter and Facebook , and it created a lot of discussion, so I wanted to expand on m
I’m excited to share the details for Buffer’s progress in April. Last month was an incredible time for Buffer with our third Buffer retreat, some huge product announcements, and continued MRR growth. Here is the update I just sent to our investors. If I can answer any questions or if something comes to mind, please share in the comments. :-) If you want to read our update from March, you can take a look here . Traction update * New users