It's easy to have 20/20 hindsight. The situation was different when Buffer was formed. There weren't as many examples of successful bootstrapped companies and J

It's easy to have 20/20 hindsight. The situation was different when Buffer was formed. There weren't as many examples of successful bootstrapped companies and Joel (the founder) was much less experienced. I don't want to say getting VC was a mistake for Buffer because I can see it might have had an upside of connections and advice for what was an inexperienced team, and I think at that time the management team was more bought into the VC model. Buffer has definitely transitioned away from the VC model, though, and buying out the investors now is the right decision IMO. A lot of comments in this thread are quite harsh. I applaud Joel for having the courage to honestly share his experiences so others can learn from them.