6 ms·

My guess at what happened: the natural hyper growth engine ran out, they tried a bunch of things to jump start it, none of them worked, so now they are on the s

My guess at what happened: the natural hyper growth engine ran out, they tried a bunch of things to jump start it, none of them worked, so now they are on the slow growth path. If they were not remote-only maybe they could have pulled off the CTO's plan of hiring a bunch of traditional managers and "pushing" the company forward (probably enterprise sales), but they'd have restructure the bones of the company at great expense. The great expense part probably doesn't work, because since the sizzle is off the growth, the next VC round would be tough if not impossible to do. It would be very "term-y" and founders are already underwater enough on investor preference. They probably made the right call of not shooting for the moon, and slowing down into a remote-only company that takes its time. Skype and boxer shorts. But now the COO and CTO are faced with the decision of A) sitting around and riding it out at $185,000 and $182,089 per year respectively (healthy money no doubt but not DHH buy-a-racing-team like earn outs) or B) move on to the next thing while the market for vc funding is still hot and they can still get some juice from their association with buffer. Rational decisions all around. Oh, and Twitter launched scheduled tweets.

chx 10y ago
Hrm? Scheduled tweets were launched in 2013. https://blog.twitter.com/2013/now-available-scheduled-tweets https://blog.twitter.com/2013/now-available-scheduled-tweets
minimaxir 10y ago
Buffer flat-out admitted the existential concerns last June after layoffs: https://open.buffer.com/layoffs-and-moving-forward/ https://open.buffer.com/layoffs-and-moving-forward/ (HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11918553 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11918553) > We know that we have many untapped opportunities for growth. This time, however, we simply weren’t able to trigger growth fast enough.
Yabood 10y ago
> "Oh, and Twitter launched scheduled tweets." Tools like buffer would still exist even if every single social media network offered scheduling capabilities. The fact is, if you're a digital marketer, you're not going to waste your time jumping between networks and multiple accounts scheduling content manually.
- erdojo 10y ago
  Disagree. The very best digital/social marketers don't use these tools at all. Each channel has its own platform strengths, weaknesses, peculiarities, not to mention audience differences, trends, breaking news etc. If you're scheduling social posts without doing your due diligence on each and every platform within 2-4 hours of a post going live (preferably within 30 minutes before), you're doing it wrong. If you're using the same post across multiple channels, you're doing it wrong. If you're re-using the same post multiple times within a few weeks, you're doing it wrong. The only people I give a free pass too are solo marketers who really just don't have time to do things right and have to keep up a minimum level of noise on social.
  - ThePhysicist 10y ago
    Interesting, can you elaborate a bit more on this? Especially on the "due diligence" part: Do you mean depending on what happened on the network a few hours ago it's often wise to change stories or content?
    - mhoad 10y ago
      The wisdom in the marketing world when it comes to social media is that if you treat it purely as a self-promotional channel it will fail. If you come across as fake, overly corporate or robotic it will also fail. So due diligence in this scenario means if you are hoping to just load up a bunch of tweets for example, have them blast out are pre-defined intervals and think that is good enough you are in for a rude shock. You should instead be monitoring it to see what the reaction is and if there are any conversations that you should be a part of based on what you have shared. You need to come across as a real person who is sharing something that you genuinely feel people are going to find useful if you want to have any kind of real "success" with social.
    - erdojo 10y ago
      By due diligence I mean not only understanding each platform and how its audience differs, but understanding what's happening around the time that you post. What's the mood? There's a huge amount of value to be gained by participating in a larger conversation at any given moment (thinking mostly of Twitter here). It's not about just jumping on hashtags or Trends, though if relevant that's an opportunity. But if everyone is talking about a big topic, then customizing a post to add value to the conversation can have huge benefits. Or just interacting on a human level. I've seen my best gains and actual new customers when participating in hashtag chats for my industry. Not selling my product, just trading ideas and opinions. That's how we met some great influencers who have ended up being major magnifiers of our messaging. Also evaluating the overall tone on a social channel. Did your last post on FB a few hours ago result in a bunch of snarking by readers? Then maybe a humble tone is in order. It's also about knowing when not to post. An earthquake kills 25,000 people in the Yucatan? Your fluffy happy emoji-laden post looks really out of touch. Anyways, I just think it's very hard to pre-schedule content that's truly relevant. So instead, as someone mentioned above, people spray and pray with a mix of product/feature advertorials and rarely-clever memes. Noise.
hkarthik 10y ago
The logical exit for these smaller tools companies as growth slows is to get acqui-hired by the Twitters, Facebooks, and LinkedIns of the world. However when your entire team is remote, that makes these companies steer clear of acquiring you since you won't fit into their culture. So they will go for your competitors with a crappier product, but a local team that they can quickly bring in onsite within a few months.
- skrebbel 10y ago
  Acquihire? For a company that does $13M annual revenue?
  - erdojo 10y ago
    Depends what that $13M costs them. CAC and burn are critical factors in an acquisition.
- elsewhen 10y ago
  a company that offers as a primary feature its ability to post to _multiple_ networks, is unlikely to be able to sell to any of those networks. the acquirer would likely have to be some larger "tools" company.
  - koolba 10y ago
    Best bet would be to get someone who doesn't know what they're doing, will overpay, and bungle the post acquisition. What's Yahoo's M&A department's phone number?
- the_watcher 10y ago
  Or, given that they've now been profitable for 7 months, they could continue to exist without an exit strategy.
  - shostack 10y ago
    How does that work in the VC-funded world? If a company's growth has dramatically slowed, but they are still profitable (even with a down year here or there), are VC's ok letting them chug along without an exit? My guess would be no and they'd push for some sort of private sale.
simplehuman 10y ago
> Oh, and Twitter launched scheduled tweets. Scheduled tweets was launched like 4 years back - https://blog.twitter.com/2013/now-available-scheduled-tweets https://blog.twitter.com/2013/now-available-scheduled-tweets
- nilved 10y ago
  This is the first I've heard of them...
  - platz 10y ago
    I just enabled this, you have to create a campaign on ads.twitter.com and then add a credit card to enable the compose button; it looks like you can then schedule standard tweets that i don't think incur any cost
inthewoods 10y ago
Yup - reached the natural end of what they could get to organically, now they're faced with the realization that they likely have to move up market to focus on enterprise where companies like Oktopost live. I've also seen that remote companies make acquisition more difficult - unless the company is being bought for the product and they plan on dumping the team.
sah2ed 10y ago
> My guess at what happened: the natural hyper growth engine ran out, they tried a bunch of things to jump start it, none of them worked, so now they are on the slow growth path. Sigh. No need to guess, the other co-founder wrote his own account on Medium [0]. The relevant part: > Another reason emerged after Joel and I had a candid conversation on how we’re structured as CEO and COO over the last 6 months or so and recognized some challenges in it. Joel shared this article [1] with me, which I thought explains some of the struggles well of what’s been going on. [0] https://hackernoon.com/after-6-incredible-years-at-buffer-im-moving-on-to-something-else-e06ec40c3f16#.tj75o7aa4 https://hackernoon.com/after-6-incredible-years-at-buffer-im... [1] http://organizationalphysics.com/2015/02/18/organizational-design-why-you-should-not-have-a-president-and-coo/ http://organizationalphysics.com/2015/02/18/organizational-d...
baby 10y ago
I'm not saying that you're wrong, but this is bothering me. It's bothering me that a company has to constantly grow grow grow, or die. What happened to just making a profitable company and riding it for as long as possible while making the life of people around you better (employees, people you buy services and products from, customers, etc...) I just got back to Lyon after a year in Chicago, and it's refreshing to see more of these companies here. Sure the salaries are way lower, and life is not as crazy, but people seem to have good intentions. For example, a cafe I just stumbled upon: http://www.dunsiegealautre-lyon.fr/concept http://www.dunsiegealautre-lyon.fr/concept > Nous avons fait le choix de rejoindre le mouvement coopératif en créant une Scop. Cela signifie que nous sommes sociétaires de notre structure, que nous adoptons une gouvernance démocratique et que la répartition des résultats est prioritairement affectée à la pérennité des emplois et du projet. Which basically means that the goal of this place is to make employment and the place durable.
- adpoe 10y ago
  There's nothing wrong with slow growth--that's how most small to mid-size businesses operate, both in the US and abroad. But as a Silicon Valley tech investor, you're not incentivized to fund companies that grow slowly over time. You're incentivized to fund moonshots that rapidly explode, take over the world, and get you the highest ROI in the shortest period of time. So, if a company isn't growing exponentially every year--and as an investor--my salary/job-evaluations are dependent on successfully funding companies that grow exponentially, I'd have no incentive to invest. And as a result, if the company needs a constant cash-infusion to stay alive--it needs to grow exponentially. It's either: (A) get cash, grow fast; or (B) no need for new cash, grow slow. (A) is the SV way. (B) is more common in other industries/sectors, parts of the world. Neither is inherently/morally better (my opinion only), but both are a functional result of the systems and incentives in their respective professional ecosystems.

chx 10y ago

Hrm? Scheduled tweets were launched in 2013. https://blog.twitter.com/2013/now-available-scheduled-tweets https://blog.twitter.com/2013/now-available-scheduled-tweets

minimaxir 10y ago

Buffer flat-out admitted the existential concerns last June after layoffs: https://open.buffer.com/layoffs-and-moving-forward/ https://open.buffer.com/layoffs-and-moving-forward/ (HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11918553 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11918553) > We know that we have many untapped opportunities for growth. This time, however, we simply weren’t able to trigger growth fast enough.

Yabood 10y ago

> "Oh, and Twitter launched scheduled tweets." Tools like buffer would still exist even if every single social media network offered scheduling capabilities. The fact is, if you're a digital marketer, you're not going to waste your time jumping between networks and multiple accounts scheduling content manually.

erdojo 10y ago
Disagree. The very best digital/social marketers don't use these tools at all. Each channel has its own platform strengths, weaknesses, peculiarities, not to mention audience differences, trends, breaking news etc. If you're scheduling social posts without doing your due diligence on each and every platform within 2-4 hours of a post going live (preferably within 30 minutes before), you're doing it wrong. If you're using the same post across multiple channels, you're doing it wrong. If you're re-using the same post multiple times within a few weeks, you're doing it wrong. The only people I give a free pass too are solo marketers who really just don't have time to do things right and have to keep up a minimum level of noise on social.
- ThePhysicist 10y ago
  Interesting, can you elaborate a bit more on this? Especially on the "due diligence" part: Do you mean depending on what happened on the network a few hours ago it's often wise to change stories or content?
  - mhoad 10y ago
    The wisdom in the marketing world when it comes to social media is that if you treat it purely as a self-promotional channel it will fail. If you come across as fake, overly corporate or robotic it will also fail. So due diligence in this scenario means if you are hoping to just load up a bunch of tweets for example, have them blast out are pre-defined intervals and think that is good enough you are in for a rude shock. You should instead be monitoring it to see what the reaction is and if there are any conversations that you should be a part of based on what you have shared. You need to come across as a real person who is sharing something that you genuinely feel people are going to find useful if you want to have any kind of real "success" with social.
  - erdojo 10y ago
    By due diligence I mean not only understanding each platform and how its audience differs, but understanding what's happening around the time that you post. What's the mood? There's a huge amount of value to be gained by participating in a larger conversation at any given moment (thinking mostly of Twitter here). It's not about just jumping on hashtags or Trends, though if relevant that's an opportunity. But if everyone is talking about a big topic, then customizing a post to add value to the conversation can have huge benefits. Or just interacting on a human level. I've seen my best gains and actual new customers when participating in hashtag chats for my industry. Not selling my product, just trading ideas and opinions. That's how we met some great influencers who have ended up being major magnifiers of our messaging. Also evaluating the overall tone on a social channel. Did your last post on FB a few hours ago result in a bunch of snarking by readers? Then maybe a humble tone is in order. It's also about knowing when not to post. An earthquake kills 25,000 people in the Yucatan? Your fluffy happy emoji-laden post looks really out of touch. Anyways, I just think it's very hard to pre-schedule content that's truly relevant. So instead, as someone mentioned above, people spray and pray with a mix of product/feature advertorials and rarely-clever memes. Noise.

hkarthik 10y ago

The logical exit for these smaller tools companies as growth slows is to get acqui-hired by the Twitters, Facebooks, and LinkedIns of the world. However when your entire team is remote, that makes these companies steer clear of acquiring you since you won't fit into their culture. So they will go for your competitors with a crappier product, but a local team that they can quickly bring in onsite within a few months.

skrebbel 10y ago
Acquihire? For a company that does $13M annual revenue?
- erdojo 10y ago
  Depends what that $13M costs them. CAC and burn are critical factors in an acquisition.
elsewhen 10y ago
a company that offers as a primary feature its ability to post to _multiple_ networks, is unlikely to be able to sell to any of those networks. the acquirer would likely have to be some larger "tools" company.
- koolba 10y ago
  Best bet would be to get someone who doesn't know what they're doing, will overpay, and bungle the post acquisition. What's Yahoo's M&A department's phone number?
the_watcher 10y ago
Or, given that they've now been profitable for 7 months, they could continue to exist without an exit strategy.
- shostack 10y ago
  How does that work in the VC-funded world? If a company's growth has dramatically slowed, but they are still profitable (even with a down year here or there), are VC's ok letting them chug along without an exit? My guess would be no and they'd push for some sort of private sale.

simplehuman 10y ago

> Oh, and Twitter launched scheduled tweets. Scheduled tweets was launched like 4 years back - https://blog.twitter.com/2013/now-available-scheduled-tweets https://blog.twitter.com/2013/now-available-scheduled-tweets

nilved 10y ago
This is the first I've heard of them...
- platz 10y ago
  I just enabled this, you have to create a campaign on ads.twitter.com and then add a credit card to enable the compose button; it looks like you can then schedule standard tweets that i don't think incur any cost

inthewoods 10y ago

Yup - reached the natural end of what they could get to organically, now they're faced with the realization that they likely have to move up market to focus on enterprise where companies like Oktopost live. I've also seen that remote companies make acquisition more difficult - unless the company is being bought for the product and they plan on dumping the team.

sah2ed 10y ago

> My guess at what happened: the natural hyper growth engine ran out, they tried a bunch of things to jump start it, none of them worked, so now they are on the slow growth path. Sigh. No need to guess, the other co-founder wrote his own account on Medium [0]. The relevant part: > Another reason emerged after Joel and I had a candid conversation on how we’re structured as CEO and COO over the last 6 months or so and recognized some challenges in it. Joel shared this article [1] with me, which I thought explains some of the struggles well of what’s been going on. [0] https://hackernoon.com/after-6-incredible-years-at-buffer-im-moving-on-to-something-else-e06ec40c3f16#.tj75o7aa4 https://hackernoon.com/after-6-incredible-years-at-buffer-im... [1] http://organizationalphysics.com/2015/02/18/organizational-design-why-you-should-not-have-a-president-and-coo/ http://organizationalphysics.com/2015/02/18/organizational-d...

baby 10y ago

I'm not saying that you're wrong, but this is bothering me. It's bothering me that a company has to constantly grow grow grow, or die. What happened to just making a profitable company and riding it for as long as possible while making the life of people around you better (employees, people you buy services and products from, customers, etc...) I just got back to Lyon after a year in Chicago, and it's refreshing to see more of these companies here. Sure the salaries are way lower, and life is not as crazy, but people seem to have good intentions. For example, a cafe I just stumbled upon: http://www.dunsiegealautre-lyon.fr/concept http://www.dunsiegealautre-lyon.fr/concept > Nous avons fait le choix de rejoindre le mouvement coopératif en créant une Scop. Cela signifie que nous sommes sociétaires de notre structure, que nous adoptons une gouvernance démocratique et que la répartition des résultats est prioritairement affectée à la pérennité des emplois et du projet. Which basically means that the goal of this place is to make employment and the place durable.

adpoe 10y ago
There's nothing wrong with slow growth--that's how most small to mid-size businesses operate, both in the US and abroad. But as a Silicon Valley tech investor, you're not incentivized to fund companies that grow slowly over time. You're incentivized to fund moonshots that rapidly explode, take over the world, and get you the highest ROI in the shortest period of time. So, if a company isn't growing exponentially every year--and as an investor--my salary/job-evaluations are dependent on successfully funding companies that grow exponentially, I'd have no incentive to invest. And as a result, if the company needs a constant cash-infusion to stay alive--it needs to grow exponentially. It's either: (A) get cash, grow fast; or (B) no need for new cash, grow slow. (A) is the SV way. (B) is more common in other industries/sectors, parts of the world. Neither is inherently/morally better (my opinion only), but both are a functional result of the systems and incentives in their respective professional ecosystems.