joelg87

Buffer (http://bufferapp.com) - Anywhere in the world (we're a distributed team of 11 people across the US, UK, Hong Kong and Sydney).

I'd love for you to come join Buffer for the fun ride. We have over 650,000 users and are on a $1.3m+ annual revenue run rate. There are some super interesting challenges ahead, as we are looking to pass a million users in 2013. We are expecting even faster growth in the coming months through our mobile efforts.

We need help on 2 areas right now:

1. Android:

    - Android is our second highest source of signups for Buffer, only
      trailing behind Web which was our original platform.
    - our users love the app, which has a 4.3 rating on Google Play.
    - the app has 100k+ total downloads and 3k daily active users.
    - we work with Google Play, Kindle and Blackberry stores.

    - we get 1,500-2,000 signups per day on the web
    - we have 160,000 weekly active users for our Chrome extension
    - 4,500 API clients. Most popular: Feedly, IFTTT, Pocket, Instapaper
    - we ship to production multiple times a day
    - we have a data-driven process, with Einstein, our custom
      built a/b testing framework
    - ideally, experience in: PHP (Codeigniter)/Python, MongoDB,
      Backbone.js Javascript, CSS, HTML

If you're interested in coming on board, you will:

    - work closely myself on Product and Sunil on technical
      architecture
    - ship to thousands of users and iterate quickly
    - work with our metrics team to make smart changes
    - be friendly and comfortable talking directly to customers
      on issues and features
    - be a happy, positive-minded and kind person who has a great
      approach in dealing with others
    - be a Buffer user (would be awesome, it’s cool if not)
    - be anywhere in the world, and if you'd like, you have help and
      support from us to move to where you want to be
    - have experience working with another startup before (would
      be awesome, it’s cool if not)

    - we are totally transparent. We raised $450k, we currently
      have 650k users and generate $110k/mo. Ask me anything else!
    - within the company, all salaries and equity are open and we
      have a formula for the distribution.
    - we're all very focused on self improvement - we have daily
      standups where we discuss our current improvements. This
      could be waking up earlier, starting public speaking, blogging,
      exercise, learning a language, etc.
    - culture deck: http://www.slideshare.net/joelg2/buffer-culture-01-16707113

Equity: 0.5-1%

If this sounds fun, let's chat. Send a note to Sunil (our CTO) about yourself, why you’re interested in Buffer, and any relevant links (Github profile, Android Apps, projects and background): thenexthacker@bufferapp.com

- Joel (Founder/CEO)

I would guess you've been through it many times or are lucky enough to have a great intuition with this. I've personally not been so lucky.

I can say that in my experience reading Four Steps or The Lean Startup and actually doing a startup are completely different things. I thought I had the whole lean startup thing down, but I've messed up so many times. And it's not a case of "now I've learned my lesson" either. I've had great experiences with sticking to lean, and then afterwards I've slipped up again. For me it seems to be a case of waves of being good, and not so good. Over time I'm definitely getting better.

Hey Charlie! We've been back and forth on this in the lifetime of the startup, but we're now doing all metrics ourselves, so it is internally built. I built an early version of the cohort analysis (which didn't scale, but that didn't matter) just a few months in and it was massively valuable. It's not too hard to knock something together.

This is neat. It's a key problem we've spent a lot of time thinking about (that posting the same thing in the exact same way to different networks is not the right thing to do). Good job, and good luck!

Indeed, that's exactly right!

I think for us, as soon as we saw that people were sticking around we knew we had to switch to "do a better job marketing". With retention, that was validation that there must be many more people out there who would find Buffer super useful, just like the people who were staying active. In essence, we needed to make more people aware of the value we were providing.

Thanks! That means a lot, really appreciate you mentioning it.

What an awesome question Adam.

Just had a look at our cohort analysis. Happy to let you know that 16% of the December 2010 cohort (those 100 people) are still using Buffer today (27 months later). It's actually fairly representative of what our retention stabilizes to after 4-5 months for almost every cohort, though 100 is not an ideal sample size!

We've certainly worked to improve retention over time, but in addition I think with Buffer I finally had hit upon a problem that was a real pain point. So, there was good retention right from the start.

In the whole first month of Buffer, we had less than 100 signups. For comparison, we now have 560,000 users (2.5 years later). We now sign up 100 people within a couple hours. It amazes me to think about it.

I had a previous startup that also started slow, but never really changed. The key difference between the two, was retention. So I would highly recommend anyone who's getting started to closely watch retention. Does anyone keep using the product into their second week after sign up? That's the first thing I'd focus on with what I know now.

Buffer (http://bufferapp.com) - Anywhere in the world (we're a distributed team of 10 people in the US, UK, Hong Kong and Sydney).

I'd love for you to come join Buffer for the fun ride. We have over 500,000 users and are on a $1M+ annual revenue run rate. There are some super interesting challenges ahead, as we are looking to hit the millions of users in 2013.

We've consistently grown 15% MoM for the last year and are expecting even faster growth in the coming months through our mobile efforts. That's where we are in need of some help.

    So, we're looking for an Android Developer to work on our app.
    This includes taking over most of the work of the app which has
    70,000 downloads and more in the Kindle and Blackberry stores too.
    If you've worked with Android before, that's great. If you're a great
    hacker and have developed in Java or other mobile platforms that's
    awesome also.

    - work primarily with myself and Sunil, who has lead development
      so far and is now taking a more general tech role
    - be a happy, positive-minded and kind person who has a great
      approach in dealing with others
    - be a Buffer user (would be awesome, it’s cool if not)
    - be friendly and comfortable helping our users
    - be anywhere in the world, and if you'd like, you have help and
      support from us to move to where you want to be
    - have experience working with another startup before (would
      be awesome, it’s cool if not)

Another key value we have is to "Have a focus on self improvement". The thing that we do which I don't know that any other startups do, is that we have a daily 'standup' Google Hangout between pairs of people in the team (the pairs cycle each 2 weeks). As part of the call we share a daily improvement. Something we're working on to improve ourselves. It can be related to Buffer, but usually it isn't. Some examples of improvements people have worked on: start blogging every 2 weeks, speak at first event, speak to a new person every day, wake up an hour earlier. We all encourage each other with our improvements, and this helps us push forward much faster than otherwise. It's a really positive environment and there is built in accountability. Everyone here seems to progress at an incredible pace, we want to do everything to make that happen for you as well. Whether you want to start speaking, blogging, learning marketing or have other areas of personal growth, you’ll have my personal support and the whole team as a resource too.

If you're interested in all our values, you can take a look at them here: http://www.slideshare.net/joelg2/buffer-culture-01-16707113

Since we have Open Salaries at Buffer, I can tell you right now that your salary will be between $88k and $110k depending on your location (living costs) and experience. You will also get equity in the 0.5-1.5% range.

If this sounds fun, let's have a chat. I'm looking forward to it! I'm Joel, drop me an email directly - joel@bufferapp.com.

I think this a great point. If you're in the habit of writing a TLDR for articles, maybe you can try writing the TLDR and then afterwards removing the 4 letters "TLDR" and leaving the sentence there. It's great to summarize in the first sentence.

For the MVP of Buffer, I implemented PayPal (no Stripe back then), but I avoided all the IPN hassles. The IPN is the part that would auto-upgrade people once they paid. The way I did it was to upgrade people manually as soon as I got the email from PayPal that they had paid for the Pro plan.

This turned out to be good for a number of reasons:

    1. I had no idea how long it'd be before the first person paid, so why optimize
       that flow? Instead I worked on things which would help me get to the first
       paying customer.
    2. The IPN was the hardest part of PayPal implementation, so it saved me
       a lot of time to avoid it. The rest of the implementation can even be done
       with their button implementation and no coding experience.
    3. Actually people having a slight delay, and my needing to personally email
       them, was a great thing. That built a lot of loyalty through the personal contact
       and those were some insightful conversations.

we're looking primarily for full-time help but definitely drop me a note anyway :-) joel@bufferapp.com

That's great advice Dharmesh, I think I can be much more specific there. Thanks for the heads up.

For anyone reading who's interested, I think this might be the best example of how seriously we take self-improvement at Buffer:

Each day we have a daily standup video call (Google Hangout) with the whole team. Each person has 3 minutes to talk. Like most standups, we talk about what we've done and what we're doing next. The thing that we do which I don't know that any other startups do, is that as part of that 3 minutes we also share a daily improvement. Something we're working on to improve ourselves. It can be related to Buffer, but usually it isn't. Some examples of improvements people have worked on: start blogging every 2 weeks, speak at first event, speak to a new person every day, learn japanese, wake up an hour earlier. We all encourage each other with our improvements, and this helps us push forward much faster than otherwise. It's a really positive environment and there is built in accountability.

Buffer (http://bufferapp.com) - Anywhere in the world (we're a distributed team)

I hope you are having a fantastic day. Happy new year :-)

I'd love for you to come join Buffer for the fun ride. We're a small team of 7, we have 450,000 users and are about to hit a $1M annual revenue run rate. There are some super interesting challenges ahead and just around the corner we're expecting even faster growth through our mobile efforts.

2 key areas we're looking for help with:

    - JavaScript (+HTML5, CSS, Backbone.js) to lead our webapp 
      and browser extension development
    - DevOps (we're PHP/MongoDB on AWS Elastic Beanstalk, and it's
      been put together by a couple of full stack hackers so there
      will be a lot that could be improved!)

    - work primarily with myself and my co-founders Leo and Tom
    - be a happy, positive-minded and kind person who has a great
      approach in dealing with others
    - be a Buffer user (would be awesome, it’s cool if not)
    - be friendly and comfortable helping our users
    - be anywhere in the world, and if you'd like, you have help and
      support from us to move to where you want to be
    - have experience working with another startup before (would
      be awesome, it’s cool if not)

Great salary and equity - $85k-$140k, 0.5-1.5%.

If this sounds fun, let's have a chat. I'm looking forward to it! I'm Joel, drop me an email directly - joel@bufferapp.com.

I know there are a lot of people who are very successful in those late quiet hours, rather than the early morning quiet hours. Tim Ferriss is a key person who comes to mind. However, the point I'm trying to make here is that in the case of the early morning risers, I find they are much more consistently doing incredible work in their lives.

To observe that early risers are consistently successful, it doesn't mean that late night workers aren't successful. I've just found anecdotally that if you were to take a sample of early risers vs late night workers, the first group seems to have a higher percentage of successful people.

Thanks. Indeed, we're a different company, and still going strong independently :-)

Buffer (http://bufferapp.com) - San Francisco

Hope you are having a fantastic weekend.

I'd love for you to come join Buffer for the fun ride. We're a small team of 7, we have over 400,000 users and are about to hit a $1M annual revenue run rate. There are some super interesting challenges ahead and just around the corner we're expecting even faster growth through some interesting things we're launching.

2 key areas we're looking for help with:

- JavaScript (+HTML5, CSS, Backbone.js) to lead our webapp and browser extension development

- DevOps (we're PHP/MongoDB on AWS Elastic Beanstalk, and it's been put together by a couple of full stack hackers so there will be a lot that could be improved!)

If you're interested in coming on board, you will:

- work primarily with myself and my co-founders Leo and Tom

- be a happy, positive-minded and kind person who has a great approach in dealing with others

- be a Buffer user (would be awesome, it’s cool if not)

- be friendly and comfortable helping our users

- be based in or willing to move to San Francisco

- have experience working with another startup before (would be awesome, it’s cool if not)

You’ll be amongst people who are striving for success and pushing themselves forward each and every day. Everyone here seems to progress at an incredible pace, we want to do everything to make that happen for you as well. Whether you want to start speaking, blogging, learning marketing or have other areas of personal growth, you’ll have my personal support and the whole team as a resource too.

Great salary and equity - $85k-$140k, 0.5-1.5%.

If this sounds fun, let's have a chat. I'm looking forward to it! I'm Joel, drop me an email directly - joel@bufferapp.com.

I'd be curious about the decision between freemium (free plan) vs free trial - what was the process for choosing to use freemium? That's something I talk about with lots of founders, and there are specific reasons freemium works well for us at Buffer.

Hey. I definitely encourage you to try Circular. If you want to try Buffer too, then if it helps then I'm happy to let you know we're funded and profitable, 7 in the team. Let me know if you have any other questions! :-)

Thanks for the kind words Roland, awesome to see you here.

Yep, you're right - I think what Julien is doing is really great. I've been in touch with him via email too, been great to talk a little and looking forward to more conversation :-)

I think it's great that there are multiple offerings out there, to raise awareness of this kind of service is really key right now as we gain traction and as more and more people find that something like Buffer can be super useful for them. We've had quite a few competitors come and go along our journey so far, and I expect to see more and more. I think it's only a good thing.

Good thinking on ways to work together, I think Julien and I will chat for sure :-)

I agree perhaps it's too much.

Interestingly, it looks rather nice, clean and readable (IMO) without everything else (here's a screenshot: http://joelg.cc/KJp5/o). Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure that have everything else there makes a big difference. I could probably remove the ad, but a lot of the rest definitely works, I have some data on it.

Thanks for the heads up though, I think maybe my incremental changes have meant I've gone too far on all this stuff without perhaps realising.

San Francisco, CA - JavaScript Engineers, PHP/MongoDB Engineers, Devops

We're looking for awesome engineers at Buffer (http://bufferapp.com). We're a team of 7, about to open an office in SF. We have strong growth and revenues and amazing investors/advisors on board. We also have a unique culture of helping each other every day with improvements such as sleep, exercise, blogging (anything!).

I would personally love to hear from you if you're interested. Email me directly - joel@bufferapp.com

Indeed. I actually try my best to find good research, and by my nature of reading many other blogs of founders much more successful than me, I often have great insights in my mind to include in my articles.

My intention with this point was to take away the pressure. I think a personal blog often can be more about the individual's thoughts than about solid studies with large sample sizes. Even just a thought that comes into your mind and you write down and publish within a couple of hours can be very interesting to others.

Completely understand how this point could come across, but it's much more about making it easier for a writer and showing that an article can be thoughts rather than solid "evidence".

Whilst there is a lot of truth here, as a founder I can say it's still very easy to "do things on other people's schedules". I think there is still a lot of discipline required to experiment with something like this, even if Steve has no "real boss".

Very cool :-) I just tried it for Buffer and the numbers were a little off, but love the thinking!

I can completely understand how it feels like fooling people, and I felt that too when I thought to use this approach for Buffer.

I think a "ask for forgiveness rather than permission" mindset can be the most beneficial here.

In my mind, there's no doubt that there is much more value in terms of validation that you can obtain through using this method rather than telling people up front that the product isn't ready yet (some people just love to try new things, and that's much worse validation for whether the product will work).

The key I found is communication. If you are very open and ask for feedback, and if you have a two way conversation with the person after they give you their email, then you can actually get them on your side even more since you've had personal contact.

Awesome to hear :-)

No issues at all, quite the opposite - I'm super happy it inspired this! Let me know if I can ever help with anything, more than happy to jump on a Skype call if it might be good. My email is in my profile ;)

Very cool to see this pop up. I think a hosted service for validating an idea could be very useful for many, especially the non-technical founders who could then get some better validated traction to share with a potential technical co-founder.

Great to see Buffer has been an inspiration. If anyone is interested, the screenshot comes from this post with the full details of how I used this method to go from idea to paying customers in 7 weeks: http://blog.bufferapp.com/idea-to-paying-customers-in-7-week...

I guess we just need to get widespread enough ;) We're working on that.

We certainly see some confusion from the "app" in our domain. We think of our name as "Buffer" rather than "Buffer app". So I think "an open source Buffer" would make a lot of sense, and might remove this confusion of whether it's something built as an app for Buffer. Love the thinking here, by the way :-)