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.
One of the most difficult parts about interviewing with a new company can be negotiating salary. There are tons of tips out there, and one of the most helpful is to know what someone in that position might earn before going into the negotiation. It may seem like a small detail, but negotiating on the front end can have an exponential effect on your earnings over time. One calculation shows that with an average annual pay increase of five percent, an employee whose starting annual salary was $5
A while back, an awesome group of women in tech in Hamburg, Germany reached out to Buffer. They explained that they wanted to support women in being more confident about the money they make and negotiating, and asked if we would we be interested in talking about our journey with transparent salaries. And that’s how I, with a track record of literally never negotiating and a mostly hilarious salary history that looks like this: 1st job, NYC: Conde Nast editorial asst: $26K 7 yrs @Tennessean/G
Editor’s Note: Every month we share an update with all of Buffer’s investors. We also publish that note in full for our Buffer Open audience in keeping with our value of transparency . Buffer Investor Report November 2016 * Last month’s report * All Investor reports * All Buffer reports MRR $1.05m ARR $12.6m MoM 1.9% from Octobe
Can you believe that 2017 is around the corner? The end of a year always has me excited for a fresh year with new goals and exciting projects. Plus of course, looking back at the past year for learnings, takeaways, smiles and memories. This year at Buffer we decided to put together something we’ve never done before, and invite you to take a look back at a few of our favorite moments of 2016 to celebrate the year we’ve had. Check out Buffer’s End of Year Report : 2016 from A – Z ! Why share a
Buffer Marketing Report November 2016 * Last month’s report * All marketing reports * All Buffer reports Buffer signups 14,943-15% Buffer for Business trials 918-30% Social blog sessions 1,252,131 +2% Email subscribers 93,232-3% NPS for Buffer for Business 44 +1.7% What makes for a great community event? We’ve been eager to explore that question for our Buff
Buffer Happiness Report November 2016 * Last month’s report * All Happiness reports * All Buffer reports Responses within 1 hour 42% -6.6% Customer satisfaction score 91-3.2% Email conversations 12,270-2% Twitter conversations 5296+1% Avg. Twitter response time 4 hr 1 min-.9% Webinars hosted 9 Deepening our team’s social media knowledge with training We beli
Buffer People Report November 2016 * Last month’s report * All People reports * All Buffer reports Applicants 360-24% Open blog posts published 15-4 Open blog visitors 129,472-.6% Bimonthly team NPS score 60% Welcoming friends and family! As we build the futu
Buffer People Ops Report November 2016 * All People Ops reports * All Buffer reports Team members 78 Revenue in cash receipts $993k-3% MRR $1.03m+1.17% ARR $12.4m +1.6% Expenses $916k +14% After a tricky 2016 , we’re headed to a more stable financial position with a bit more visibility on how 2017 will shape up. We’re also working hard on our skeleton model [https://buffer.com/resources/people-ops-re
Respond Report November 2016 * Last month’s report * All Respond reports * All Buffer reports MoM: +25% (+1,350%) Paying customers 80 (+1.2%) Bugs fixed 100+ November has been a huge month for Respond and our incredible customers! Though the holidays are just around the corner we’re continuing to improve the product and experience at a blistering pace. Working smarter: Automation features in Resp
Buffer Engineering Report November 2016 * Last month’s report * All Engineering reports * All Buffer reports Requests for buffer.com 203 m -1.9% Avg. response for buffer.com 265 ms -5.4% Requests for api.bufferapp.com 430 m -59.8%* Avg. response for api.bufferapp.com 196 ms +100% Code reviews given 63% of pull requests -3% *We offloaded nearly 60% of requests to api.bufferapp.com onto the Kubernetes cluster with the new links service! The links service was heavily cac
Buffer Product Report November 2016 * Last month’s report * All Product reports * All Buffer reports Weekly active Awesome + Individual plan users 164,945-1.8% Weekly active Buffer for Business users 4,887-1.1% Buffer for Business Monthly Recurring Revenue $509,313+1.8% Social updates sent by Buffer for Business users 3,815,321+15% Users starting Buffer for Busi
(Our Chief Happiness Officer, Carolyn, shared this note with our Happiness team after some deep auditing and reflection on our communications with our customers. If Carolyn’s note inspires or resonates with you, we’d love to hear from you in the comments!) Hey Heroes. :) I need to start this note with an apology. Instead of creating an environment where you’ve felt entirely free to speak and write and care for customers in your own unique and special way, I fear that we’ve created some misconc
Some people might be surprised to hear that we didn’t used to get time off for Christmas at Buffer—or for Hanukkah, Canadian Thanksgiving, Chinese New Year or any specific holiday at all! Instead, we had unlimited time off and the full trust of our teammates to make great decisions about how to use this privilege. Great in theory, but as it turns out, challenging in practice. Over time, we learned that unlimited vacation policies statistically
Editor’s note: This is a multi-part series chronicling the journey of Buffer’s data analyst, Matt, as he and his wife and two dogs journey across America in an RV while remote working. Check out part one here! Hello from the road! I shared a bit in Part One about how a random “what if” question over a bottle of wine on the porch of our home in Boulder, Colorado spawned a total uprooting of our suburban life. Now myself, my wife, Jenna, and our two dogs are out on the road, traveling the Unite
In Buffer’s past six years, we’ve experimented with product and culture and had some successes and some flops. And yet there have been some breakthroughs that evolved naturally, some intentionally. On the flip side, we’ve had some failures that have been outside our control and also fully within our control. Each up and down has shaped us as a company, as a product and me as an individual. Here are a few of those breakthroughs and failures. Breakthrough #1 – Living and working transparency
The remote work movement is a growing global phenomenon. 79 percent of knowledge workers worldwide said they work from home, and 80-90% of the U.S. workforce would like to work remotely at least part time. And while no two remote work situations are identical, there are some common themes when it comes to the tools and accessories for success. Of course, the most crucial element is wifi. But after that, there’s still plenty to consider: the desk setup, the commuter bag, the headphones, the tr
Editor’s Note: Every month we share an update with all of Buffer’s investors. We also publish that note in full for our Buffer Open audience in keeping with our value of transparency . Buffer Investor Report October 2016 * Last month’s report * All Investor reports * All Buffer reports MRR $1.03m ARR $12.36m MoM 4.4% from Sept
We all want to be more productive and fulfilled in our day-to-day. Even the words that we use to describe productive people and actions are filled with aspiration: ship, create, code, get things done, make things happen. A quick search of Google for the phrase “increasing productivity” returns nearly half a million results. There are countless books, blog posts, tips, and tools designed to help us maximize our ability to get things done. There’s also a real danger of becoming unbalanced. I’
A business is nothing without its customers. And yet as businesses grow and team members become more specialized, it’s easy to get further and further from the customer. Buffer is no exception – in the course of our journey, there have been multiple times when we’ve felt a much larger distance than we’d like between us and our customers. What’s interesting is that every time that distance starts to make itself felt, something amazing happens to close the gap. Sometimes it’s a deliberate chang
Buffer People Ops Report October 2016 * All People Ops reports * All Buffer reports Team members 79 Revenue in cash receipts $1.02m +2.7% MRR $1.02m +3.3% ARR $12.2m +3.4% Debits $822k +3.8% Profit $192k +57% Organizing our next retreat: Location, location, location As we continue organizing our next retreat, we’re excited to bring the team together in one of the three following locations: Lisbon, Madrid or San Diego! We find that taking a “best out of 3 approach”
Buffer Marketing Report October 2016 * Last month’s report * All marketing reports * All Buffer reports Key Stats Buffer signups 17,106 +37% Buffer for Business trials 1,394 +34% Social blog sessions 1,225,754 -.1% Email subscribers 96,613 -.6% NPS for Buffer for Business 43 -1.7% As we’ve thought of ways to grow our Buffer Social blog traffic, we’ve enjoyed thinking outside the box with growth. It’s fun to go big with ideas, and to a certain extent, content marketi
Buffer Engineering Report October 2016 * Last month’s report * All Engineering reports * All Buffer reports Requests for buffer.com 206 m +4% Avg. response for buffer.com 280 ms +4.8% Requests for api.bufferapp.com 1.06 b +1.9% Avg. response for api.bufferapp.com 98 ms +12.7% Code reviews given 66% of pull requests -2% Bugs & Quality * 13 S1 (severity 1) bugs: 2 opened, 11 closed (84% smashed) * 16 S2 (severity 2) bugs: 5 opened, 11 closed (68% smashed) Buffer
Buffer Product Report October 2016 * Last month’s report * All Product reports * All Buffer reports Weekly active Awesome + Individual plan users 167,987+1.7% Weekly active Buffer for Business users 4,945+1.8% Buffer for Business Monthly Recurring Revenue $500,161+5.6% Social updates sent by Buffer for Business users 3,273,927 +9.2% Users starting Buffer for B
Respond Report October 2016 * Last month’s report * All Respond reports * All Buffer reports Businesses using Respond have helped: nearly 500,000 customers Improvements shipped in October ? 400 Average Respond business sends reply to customer under 3 hours In October, we started rolling out Respond 2 to customers, shipped lots of product improvements and kicked off our trans