From:Joel Gascoigne
To:Shareholders
Subject:February 2023 Shareholder Update
Date:March 10, 2023

February 2023 Shareholder Update

ℹ️ Sent to shareholders on March 10, 2023

Hi,

I’m happy to share Buffer’s February 2023 update. See below for our numbers, updates, and what’s coming up. As always, hit reply with comments or questions.

Key numbers

MRR
$1,495,452 -0.60%
ARR
$17,945,424 -0.60%
Customers
58,228 -0.53%
MAU
152,121 +5.68%
ARPU
$25.68 -0.08%
Team Size
78 -1 person
Net Income
-$7,955 -162.28%
Bank Balance
$4,811,058 +1.29%
Runway
45 months 3 years, 9 months
  • It’s been great to see our pace of MRR decline slow very consistently over the past 3 months since we introduced our self-serve legacy migration hub.
  • MRR decline was -1.87% in December, -1.38% in January and now -0.60% in February.
  • As a reminder, the migration hub allows our legacy customers to easily switch over to our new pricing, and for many of them this has been a price decrease, which is why we’ve seen an overall MRR decline, while the New Buffer segment has been growing healthily.
  • We’re very happy to see continued strong growth of Monthly Active Users. Note: there was an error in the numbers last month, where I shared a -3.26% change in MAU. The actual change was +5.56%.
  • We’ve also seen our runway increase by a few months. We’re very glad to have a solid runway while we work back to growth and profitability.

Note-worthy updates and reflections

Our banking position

Buffer does not have any significant exposure to Silicon Valley Bank. Many years ago we moved over to Bridge Bank (part of Western Alliance Bank). The only potential minor impact to us of the events around SVB is that our UK bank account is with them. This is used purely for payroll and is kept at under $200K, only around 3.5% of our cash. We’re keeping an eye on the situation and whether there is any further fallout, as well as generally considering how we can best insulate ourselves from these types of outcomes.

Buffer’s AI Assistant

We launched our AI assistant in early February, and it has been very well received. So far, we’ve integrated this into our Ideas section, and we plan to add it to the main composer soon. We’ve already followed up with an improvement that enables specific options for rephrasing, expanding and summarizing content. We’re also planning to add an AI Assistant feature to generate new content ideas based on your existing content. More here.

Integrations in Ideas area

We’re continuing to improve the Ideas composer, and have added a variety of integrations to our existing Canva integration. Our complete list is now: Canva, Dropbox, Google Drive, One Drive, Google Photos, Giphy and Unsplash.

Post previews

We’ve launched post previews for Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn. This is a new recent feature we added, and it’s incredibly useful for customers, removes friction and builds trust and confidence in Buffer, as they can see exactly what their posts will look like when they share them to the networks. More here.

What’s coming up

Twitter API changes

After some intense negotiations, calculations and strategic decision making during February, Twitter pushed back the date multiple times and then shared they would be taking a few more weeks to make the planned changes. We’re in a holding pattern currently as we wait for more information, however we expect that things will go as planned and we will see a fairly significant increase of our Twitter costs which will directly increase our COGS. We are in a position to be able to absorb this.

YouTube as a channel

We’re working hard to prepare to launch YouTube as a channel within Buffer. We will be starting out with YouTube shorts, which are the closest to existing content formats we already support (TikTok and Instagram Reels), and will allow us to get something out sooner and then iterate. We plan to support full YouTube videos in the future, too.

Ideas area tagging & organization

We’re working on adding organizational features in the Ideas section of Buffer. The key functionality we’re planning to add is tagging and filtering of ideas based on tags. We’re also revisiting our campaigns functionality and will likely align this with tagging, so that it flows from ideas to drafts to published content to analytics. Idea Created has recently surpassed Comment Replied (use of engagement) and Start Page Published (use of Start Page) as a contributor to our Monthly Active Usage (see chart). AI was a key contributor of this, and we believe that adding organizational features will further increase usage of Ideas. Our overall hypothesis is to move earlier in the creation process, where we believe that people will have an order of magnitude more ideas than published posts, and we are confident that connecting these tasks can streamline the overall workflow for users.

That’s a wrap for our February update. Thanks for your continued support!

More Updates

September and Q3 2024

Crossing $19M in ARR, Threaded posts for Mastodon, Notify Me scheduling for TikTok and YouTube Shorts, Q3 2024 Reflection

August 2024

Signups, Twitter/ 𝕏 long-form posts, Threaded posts and content warnings for Mastodon

October 2024

Record month for signups, Support for 20 images in Threads posts, Deep Work Quarter

July 2024

Bluesky Launch, LinkedIn Personal Profile Analytics, SOC2 Compliance

June 2024

Threads Launch, Duplicate Action, Profitability, Q2 Reflection

May 2024

Facebook Stories Scheduling, Improved Channel Connection Flow, Performance Reviews, Team Wide Support Time (TWST), Profitability

April 2024

Create Launch, Facebook Group Reminders, Marketing, Profitability

March 2024

Retreat, Growth & Q1 Results, Mobile Apps Growth, New Board View, Launch of Instagram Universal Publishing

January 2024

LinkedIn Documents and First Comment, Reorder Images in a Scheduled Post, Paste Images and Videos into the Composer, 100k Signups

February 2024

Positive year-over-year growth rate, More flexibility in link shortening, Various UX and conversion rate improvements, Preparing for retreat, and working towards larger updates

2023 Annual Shareholder Letter

2023 was a turnaround year for Buffer by a variety of measures. Read our annual letter to shareholders with 2023 results, current strategy, the progress and changes we’ve made, and what to expect for 2024.

October 2023

AI Assistant becomes Social Media Smart, Tags and upgraded organization features, New Buffer crossed $1M MRR, Exec Team meetup, Operating Principles

September 2023

Notes, Quick navigator, Q3 reflection

August 2023

Facebook Reels Scheduling, Mailchimp email capture from your Start Page, Start Page Incident with Meta

July 2023

Buffer Build Week 2023, Buffer Suggestions, Open Beta, Referral Program

June 2023

YouTube Shorts, Revamped Post Analytics, Q2 Reflection

April + May 2023

Revamped Zapier Integration, Stripe checkout and Stripe tax, AI in the main composer + post suggestions, Instagram Stories scheduling

March 2023

AI for highlighted text and new prompts, Keeping Buffer free campaign, Stripe Checkout to facilitate tax collection

February 2023

Our banking position, Buffer’s AI assistant, Integrations in ideas area, Post previews

January 2023

Leading indicator growth, Mastodon as a channel, Twitter API changes