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Baremetrics for Buffer
- nodesocket 13y agoKuddos. Honestly I didn't even you could pay for Buffer. It is really impressive they are willing to be so transparent with their financials. It probably helps that they haven't raised any institutional investment[1] and thus don't have any external pressures about releasing these details. [1] https://angel.co/buffer https://angel.co/buffer
- rememberlenny 13y agoBuffer raised $500,000 Link: http://onstartups.com/tabid/3339/bid/98034/The-Pitch-Deck-We-Used-To-Raise-500-000-For-Our-Startup.aspx http://onstartups.com/tabid/3339/bid/98034/The-Pitch-Deck-We...
- nodesocket 13y ago> ..in the end, we closed a $450k seed round from 18 investors. As I said, they did a distributed Angel round, not a traditional investment from an institution (VC).
- joelgascoigne 13y agoIndeed, we haven't raised a large single round from an institution, though we did have 3 firms put in $50k each as part of that $450k round. The board is just myself and Leo.
- nodesocket 13y agoThe 6 month recurring revenue graph is interesting: https://buffer.baremetrics.io/stats/mrr?start_date=2013-10-28&end_date=2014-04-28 https://buffer.baremetrics.io/stats/mrr?start_date=2013-10-2... Gotta love 75% growth, and 199% yearly growth.
- brianbreslin 13y agoI'm curious how big their staff is, what their burn rate is, etc. I also am curious if they have 22k paying customers, how many are free tier? That seems like a very healthy business right there, which might be able to squeeze a bit more growth out of its free tier.
- vardy 13y agoYou can see their staff costs as of Dec 2013 here: http://open.bufferapp.com/introducing-open-salaries-at-buffer-including-our-transparent-formula-and-all-individual-salaries/ http://open.bufferapp.com/introducing-open-salaries-at-buffe...
- brianbreslin 13y agoso some quick back of napkin math makes their annual burn rate around $1.6M in salaries.
- joelgascoigne 13y agoThat's around the right ballpark. If you want to do the actual calculation, feel free to take a look at our spreadsheet of salaries here: https://docs.google.com/a/bufferapp.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AgrWVeoG5divdE81a2wzcHYxV1pacWE1UjM3V0w0MUE&usp=drive_web#gid=1 https://docs.google.com/a/bufferapp.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=...
- joelgascoigne 13y agoThanks for the help vardy! We're currently 22 full-time and will be 24-25 in a few weeks.
- xpose2000 13y agoThis is an absolutely brilliant move for both companies. I imagine baremetrics will double or triple their revenue by the end of summer because of this. Well done.
- nathanbarry 13y agoAgreed. It's brilliant. The great thing is you can see if that happens by just watching this page: http://demo.baremetrics.io http://demo.baremetrics.io
- nodesocket 13y agoThe link is https://demo.baremetrics.io https://demo.baremetrics.io :)
- nathanbarry 13y agoOops. Fixed.
- Shpigford 13y agoI'll be giddy if that happens. ;)
- jpdlla 13y agoBlog post for some more info about this http://open.bufferapp.com/buffer-public-revenue-dashboard/ http://open.bufferapp.com/buffer-public-revenue-dashboard/
- Major_Grooves 13y agoThis looks stunning! When I clicked through the first time it said the MRR was about $250k which surprised me. On refresh it went back down to $9k.
- rsobers 13y agoNo, Buffer's MRR is 250K. Baremetrics' own MRR is $9K. Both dashboards are public. You might've been toggling between them.
- Major_Grooves 13y agoah - wow. Then I am very impressed by the $250k. You're right - I was toggling between them. Thanks for clarifying.
- Shpigford 13y agoTwo different demos we've got going... https://buffer.baremetrics.io https://buffer.baremetrics.io - Buffer's metrics https://demo.baremetrics.io https://demo.baremetrics.io - Our metrics :)
- brandon272 13y agoIs their revenue entirely from the "Buffer for Business" plans?
- joelgascoigne 13y agoHi Brandon! Out of our total March revenue of $246,000 [1], 79% came from our $10/mo Awesome Plan and the other 21% came from Buffer for Business [2]. Let me know if you have any other questions :-) [1] http://open.bufferapp.com/buffer-update-march-2014/ http://open.bufferapp.com/buffer-update-march-2014/ [2] http://open.bufferapp.com/buffer-revenue-growth-report-2/ http://open.bufferapp.com/buffer-revenue-growth-report-2/
- alooPotato 13y agoDoesn't this expose who their customers are (in the live stream)? I'm all for transparency, but it doesn't seem like the customer list is theirs to share.
- brandon272 13y agoThe customer names have been changed. > Note: The transactions you see throughout the dashboard are real, but we've used fake customer names to keep them private.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- smileysteve 13y agoThis seems like a slightly faux concern considering that any post (Twitter / Facebook) made with Buffer says so.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- axelbouaziz 13y agoHuge congratulations Josh and Baremetrics ! It's a great app and it's good to see you growing well. The brief conversations we've had with you have been great and we think you're a really nice guy. We've built a similar app but hope to compete with slightly different features (more details to come). We launched our private beta today, and it's either good or bad timing ;) Axel, designer at SaaS Metrics http://saas-metrics.com http://saas-metrics.com
- Major_Grooves 13y agocan't deny this also looks nice! Good luck with it. Hope to evaluate you vs OP in the not too distant future.
- mtnboy 13y agoThis is pretty neat.
- kyro 13y agoI'm not a huge user of Buffer, but I really like them because they've given us great insight into running a startup that's not a smash-hit-media-darling. VCs weren't knocking down their doors with truckloads of cold cash, they weren't beating journalists off their backs, etc, you get my point. They've had to stick to business fundamentals from day 1, methodically approaching issues like profitability, marketing, business development, growth, with only $500k of investment. They've been up and running for a few years now with a team of ~17 who're being paid competitive salaries. They've no doubt learned a lot and have been open about it. And this is just another example of their strategic biz dev, marketing and transparency they've become pretty masterful at. I should add that this is also a great move by Baremetrics, who are likely to gain much more out of this.
- muratmutlu 13y agoIt's been a great insight for me and helped with putting together the deck and approach that landed us some Angel funding. The other part of it is now we want to help people too, so we've written a few posts about our own spending and metrics. Great to be able to shed some light on early stage questions.
- buro9 13y agoGreat dashboard. Would love to see it work for more than just Stripe. Perhaps for a variety of backends, or an aggregate one like Xero so that it can get insight into payments coming in from sources like PayPal and direct bank transfers too.
- Shpigford 13y agoRight now we're focused squarely on Stripe. They make it stupid easy to build on top of (thanks to Stripe Connect). May expand way down the road, but that's waaayyyy down the road.
- dosh 13y agoThis is really helpful. + I've been using Buffer for few weeks now and it's really a pain killer. Hope they can make 'locale/language' setting available for Facebook Pages tho.
- zrail 13y agoI just wanna say congratulations both to Baremetrics and Buffer. You're both an inspiration to bootstrappers like me.
- joelgascoigne 13y agoThank you Peter! Let me know if I can ever help you with anything :-)
- Shpigford 13y agoThanks Pete!
- alanmeaney 13y agoThis is a great partnership and I can't wait to see what comes next. I've watched and enjoyed reading the Buffer story since the early days. In fact it probably played a small part in my path towards quitting work last summer and starting my own thing. I'm considering doing an 'Open blog' for our enterprise start-up http://www.fundrecs.com http://www.fundrecs.com like the guys did with Buffer. Trying to weigh up whether it would limit us or enable us to do more. My gut is saying go for it but my co-founders aren't convinced.
- OGC 13y agoOkay, that is neat pretty neat.
- shravan 13y agoThis is a great marketing move. Honestly, this is the first time I've signed up for a service immediately after seeing how it works live.
- Shpigford 13y agoWooohooo! Happy to have you on board. Shoot me an email if you need anything! josh@baremetrics.io
- presty 13y ago$140k in refunds the past year do you know what are the main reasons?
- mtrimpe 13y agoThey focus very hard on customer service so I guess that plays a part.
- loceng 13y agoEdited. I didn't read the fine print.. :)
- joewee 13y agoI stopped using buffer, but I think I will start using it again. I plan to run my next startup with as much transparency as they do.
- latraveler 13y agoYou have to respect a company thats not afraid to open up their numbers like this. I love this trend of financial transparency for startups. Numbers are the clearest way for me to crystallize things as an entrepreneur.
- huhtenberg 13y agoI would gladly pay for this dashboard if it were an installable product, but there's no way I would ever share our vital financial stats with some random company in exchange for pretty graphs. This is just so out there, it's beyond any discussion. If you are reading this, Baremetrics guys, do consider making an installable version, e.g. in a form of a VM appliance. Feel free to charge monthly, but it should be in a form that allows retaining full and close control over all data your dashboard pulls off Stripe servers. Just look at what AeroFS did if you need some inspiration and validation.
- Shpigford 13y agoThanks for the feedback! Sounds like Baremetrics might not be the right product for you. :)
- huhtenberg 13y agoBuffer is an exception. Their openness is a part of their marketing strategy in tech circles. I am genuinely curious whom you think Baremetrics is a right product for. Excluding companies run by your friends and acquaintances, who either trust you implicitly or just want to be supportive.
- aculver 13y agoBuffer really isn't the exception. They're an exception in that they've made all their data public, but my experience on both sides of the fence as someone who both runs Stripe Connect services and also manages the technology for companies who use Stripe Connect services tells me that most companies are not concerned about sharing their financials with trusted parties in exchange for a major operational benefits, whether that's analytics and reporting or automation of customer service operations. As a Stripe Connect service operator (at http://churnbuster.io/ http://churnbuster.io/) I've only once had someone in the onboarding process express any concern that all their financials would be available to our service, and in that case they were a developer who wanted to double check with their CEO that it was OK, which it was. Your question really isn't for Josh, it's for Stripe with regard to the entire Stripe Connect ecosystem. Sure, some people may be really concerned about sharing financial information with a third-party service, and that's totally fine, but I'm pretty sure they're the ones missing out. Speaking now as a technology consultant, I can say that the ability to plug-and-play all sorts of different and very valuable third-party services is allowing the rest of us to build businesses in record time with minimal investment and part-time resources.
- ghiculescu 13y agoBaremetrics looks awesome, but it's Stripe only. Does anyone know of an equivalent for Braintree?
- coreyallen 13y agoLooks like George uses Buffer http://d.pr/i/bgAS http://d.pr/i/bgAS
- zaroth 13y agoThank you guys for sharing this. I noticed 30,000 failed charges in one year. I'm not sure if that's interactive failures, as in users actively trying to complete a transaction, which is much less important than the recurring failed charges, as in money you thought you were going to get but didn't, for no other reason than the payment network. I hate seeing those failed charge notifications that go out every morning when you try to bill that day's batch for the next month of service. And then wondering how much that's pushing up your churn rate, how much effort should you spend trying to get updated billing info, etc. Buffer is mostly $10/mo, so I would imagine not much chasing is going on beyond a few automated emails... but it's enough to make you want to switch to ACH! Does Stripe handle auto-updating credit card details when a card expires like some companies seem to be able to do? With the massive leaks lately, and so many card numbers getting cycled, it definitely hits the bottom line.
- rsobers 13y agoI don't think Stripe auto-updates. There's a service called Churnbuster whose sole purpose is to deal with this issue: http://churnbuster.io/ http://churnbuster.io/
- zaroth 13y agoInteresting service. Attacking the problem by trying to optimize within the constraints of the current system. It's a problem you wish you could eliminate instead of just trying to optimize around.