Joel Gascoigne
CEO and co-founder @ Buffer
A collection of 131 posts by Joel Gascoigne - Page 5
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
Recently, I religiously tried to follow a new routine I created for myself: a 7-day work week routine. The idea was quite simple: I would work 7 days a week, rest 7 days a week, go to the gym 7 days a week, reflect 7 days a week. This was less about working lots, much more about feeling fulfilled every day, feeling stretched during the day but also rested. I aimed to work less each day, and replace two hours of work with a long break in the middle of the day. The biggest thing I wanted to do
Hi there! This is an older post that we’ve kept around for transparency but that means that sometimes the information is no longer accurate. Head to our homepage to view our most recent posts. For me, one of the most exciting parts of the culture we’ve developed at Buffer is our international retreats. Three times a year (for now) we gather the whole company together. Previously, we took a team of 10 to Thailand and we’ve just returned fr
Ever since we established the Buffer values that are at the heart of our company culture, we’ve been continuously on the lookout for new ways to live those values every day – particularly our important value of defaulting to transparency. Last year, Buffer shared all of our salaries and the formulas behind them. We
March was a really amazing month for us at Buffer: 10% MRR growth and awesome increases in daily and monthly active users, too! I’m happy to share with you our update for March that I just sent to Buffer investors. Let me know if I can answer any questions about this. :-) If you want to read our update from February, you can take a look here . Traction update * New users: 71,000 (Total: 1,407,000, fro
We recently realized that we have been miscalculating our true monthly and annual recurring revenue. I wanted to write up some of the details around this and also apologize for accidentally misleading as a result of getting it wrong. With our commitment to transparency (and the fact we’re rare in sharing our revenue numbers at all) I felt it’s even more important to share our error. We’ve always reported “Annual revenue run rate” and “Revenue” for the month in our investor updates [https://buff
When Buffer was in its very early stages, just a couple months after the product launched, we applied to be part of the prestigious Y Combinator accelerator program. We were rejected. Since then, we’ve been keenly aware that this experience is one that many fellow startups have encountered and one that many more will eventually face. When Karen Cheng, CEO of GiveIt100, shared the story of her Y Combinator rejection, it struck a chord with readers. Rejection stories don’t get told nearly often
I’m happy to share our update for February which I just sent to Buffer investors. I hope the insights into our progress and processes are useful. Just leave a comment if you have any questions :-) If you want to read our update from January, you can take a look here . Traction update * New users: 62,000 (Total: 1,383,000, from 1,321,000: +4.7%) * Daily active users: 36,000 (up from 35,000: +2.9%) * Monthly a
The other day I was listening to Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People and and I found it amazing how this book, which has now sold over 15 million copies, originally started: “I prepared a short talk. I called it ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People.’ I say ‘short.’ It was short in the beginning, but it soon expanded to a lecture that consumed one hour and thirty minutes.” After giving this talk for some time, Carnegie found that the attendees started discussing their e
“We live in a vague world. And it gets vaguer all the time. In this environment, the power of the specific, measurable and useful promise made and kept is difficult to overstate.” – Seth Godin It’s easy to be vague, broad, and to never commit to a particular direction. It’s frightening to be specific. One of the key things I’ve learned in the last two years of doing startups is that to make real prog
I have some really exciting news to share: Brian has become our Product Manager. He’s been in this role for 2 weeks now and even after 1 week he was doing a better job running Product than I ever managed to do. It’s been incredibly fun to work with him and help him thrive in the role, and now it’s time to make things official. How the idea of stepping away from Product came about During our retreat in Thailand I had a chance to spend some time thinking on a hig
I’m delighted to share a strong update for our first month of the new year. I wanted to take a second and publish the email I just sent to our investors this morning. I hope you enjoy the insights into what we’ve been working on at Buffer in the last month and the results we’re seeing. I’d love to hear from you in the comments if you have any thoughts or questions about what we’re up to! If you want to read about how December went, you can take a look here [https://buffer.com/resources/buffer-d
This is the 7th article in our new series with advice on building a business, company culture and life-hacking from Joel , CEO here at Buffer . You can grab all posts here . “Work harder on yourself than you do on your job.” – Jim Rohn A long time ago, I came across the amazing quote above, which was said often by Jim Rohn. It stook in my mind, and as the years have gone on, I feel
This is the sixth article in our new series with advice on building a business, company culture and life-hacking from Joel , CEO here at Buffer . You can grab all posts here . Choosing a name is one of the parts of a startup I find the most difficult. It’s also something you can easily get hung up on. We all know that the key thing is to move on to actually building [http://joel.is/post/28
This is the fifth article in our new series with advice on building a business, company culture and life-hacking from Joel, CEO here at Buffer. You can grab all posts here. I’ve written in the past about the evolution of our culture at Buffer. One of the things we started to do at around 6-7 people as part of the culture is that everyone has a 1:1 session with either myself or their team lead at least every 2 weeks. On top of that, I personally have a 1:1 session with Leo, Carolyn and Sunil (th
Another exciting month (and year!) has come to an end at Buffer and I wanted to take a moment to share the latest update I have just sent this evening to all our investors. I hope you enjoy reading the full details of our work on Buffer in the last month. I’m excited to hear from you in the comments if you have any questions about what we’re up to! If you want to know how November went, you can take a look here [https://buffer.com/resources/buffer-november-update-2347000
This is the fourth article in our new series with advice on building a business, company culture and life-hacking from Joel , CEO here at Buffer . You can grab all posts here . Something I’ve found difficult to completely embrace, but which understanding has been super important, is the idea that there is a ratio for everything. I’ve started to call this Ratio Thinking, and I’ve found
Hi there! We’ve updated our transparent salary formula since this post originally was published. Learn more about the latest formula and see all the team’s current salaries here. When we first established the Buffer values that we wanted to have as the center of our company culture, we knew that sticking to these ideas would be an incredible challenge. Especially since we’ve seen before that these values can easily end up being little more than a set of words written on a piece of paper. In ou
This is the third article in our new series with advice on building a business, company culture and life-hacking from Joel , CEO here at Buffer . You can grab all posts here . It’s a long time ago now, however I still remember it very well. When I first went about creating the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) for Buffer, there was some
I wanted to just write a brief post to share a team change we’ve decided to make here at Buffer. I chatted recently with Carolyn and Sunil and they both expressed that Åsa, Andy and Colin have crushed it in recent months and have been super loyal to Buffer during good times and tougher times. I completely agreed and think that Åsa, Andy and Colin have been incredible examples of the Buffer culture and of the volume of work which can be done. In addition, Andy and Colin have always upheld the c
This is the second article in our new series with advice on building a business, company culture and life-hacking from Joel, CEO here at Buffer. You can grab all posts here. Recently 37signals published an article titled Some advice from Jeff Bezos. This wasn’t your usual advice, and I found it interesting to read and how familiar it felt as I read each next line. The post was all about “changing your mind”. The way I would describe the overall theme, is “inconsistency”. Here’s the key part of
We’re starting a new series on the Buffer blog today with great tips and insights from Joel , CEO here at Buffer . Joel will share his ideas and insights about lifehacking, building a business and working on company culture. Here is #1: Today it’s a little over three years since I first had the idea for Buffer , and with the year and a half before that which I worked on my previous startup, I’ve started to notice a f
Below is the monthly update email I have just sent this morning to all our investors. I hope you enjoy taking a read about the full details of our work on Buffer in the last month. I’m excited to hear from you in the comments if you have any questions about what we’re up to! If you want to know how October went, you can take a look here . Traction update * New users: 66,000 (Total: 1,18
My co-founder Leo has had quite a few different roles throughout the lifetime of Buffer, and he’s had a large impact on lots of different areas. Until now Leo’s title has been CMO, however he’s working in the trenches of business, on marketing with Belle, as well as doing BD and also admin tasks (like organizing the retreat!). Looking backwards, his real strength has always been in getting things done and moving things forward, regardless of which area of Buffer. We