I'm delighted to share that 2025 was one of Buffer's strongest years in our 15-year history. Key results for the year: - $23.4M Annual Run Rate (+20%) - 69,764 Paying Customers (+22%) - 195,928 Monthly Active Users (+19%) - $2.51M Net Income (+1,142%)

A pattern I've noticed as a CEO is that people will sometimes try to save me time by presenting just the specific question or items they're hoping to get sign off on. 🧵 A few thoughts on this:

Buffer just turned 15 years old! And we're fortunate to be closing out our best year in the past 7. We have 69,000 customers, a $23M annual run rate, and will achieve over $2M in profit in 2025. To mark 15 years of Buffer, here are 15 of the key lessons I've leaned first hand as a founder CEO:

Today we're launching Community, which we've built to help you to stay on top of comments and replies across all your social channels. Available now on all Buffer plans, including our free plan.

Buffer is largely known as a social media scheduling tool. For publishing posts. And we do a great job of that. But for years now, I've known that posting is only part of the equation. We've been working hard on something new. Coming this Wednesday, November 12.

“When people start habitually exercising, even as infrequently as once a week, they start changing other, unrelated patterns in their lives, often unknowingly. Typically, people who exercise start eating better and becoming more productive at work.” – Charles Duhigg

This is one of my favorite charts at Buffer right now. It's the chart of our number of paying customers. It might look like we've just experienced awful churn, but that's not what it is. Those drops are when we proactively cancelled subscriptions for some of our inactive customers.

Yesterday I sent the Buffer shareholder update with August results to ~80 alumni and investors. August 2025 key metrics: - MRR: $1,854,462 (+0.88%) - ARR: $22,253,545 (+0.88%) - Customers: 65,815 (+0.69%) - MAU: 185,129 (-3.33%) - ARPU: $28.17 (+0.18%) - Net Income: $296,544.16 (+9.37%)

A great strategy should lead to strong differentiation and lasting results. Ensuring the strategy and culture are aligned can enhance execution and enable you to create something really special.

A fun fact to share from Buffer's July financials: our net profit for July 2025 was $271K, which is more than our total profit for the whole of 2024 (and in fact any year since 2020). I can wholeheartedly say we achieved this by getting hyper-focused on serving customers 🚀

If as a founder of a growing company you’re not working with a coach (even better, a therapist too), you’re most likely not uncovering your own flaws and ingrained issues that will ultimately hold back the business sooner or later.

There are a few beliefs I've followed as I've built Buffer. One of them is that as I attain personal freedoms through the success of Buffer, I aim to extend those same freedoms to the team. Here are a few examples 🧵 ⬇️

The great companies are the ones that are able to retain a creator and builder mindset, rather than purely being operated and optimized.

"They aren’t a record of my thinking process. They are my thinking process." – Richard Feynman, on his notebooks

For transparency to be a genuine value of an organization, it cannot simply be something you join and benefit from. It requires active participation and contribution. This should stretch everyone. It should feel a little uncomfortable because transparency is not easy, but the benefits are real.

Wow, we did it! We have officially achieved a new all-time-high ARR at Buffer 🎉 Our previous all-time-high was $22,384,598 on February 6, 2020. Today, our ARR stands at $22,395,427. This milestone has been 5 years in the making for us, it's going to take a little time to sink in for me personally!

Feeling so much gratitude for this wonderful group of humans as I return from the 12th @buffer.com company retreat in Antalya, Türkiye. 51 weeks of the year, we work together across 49 cities in 21 countries. To get to spend a week in the same place is special, and a vital part of how we operate.

My experience as a founder CEO has been that I go through alternating phases of feeling clouded, and then those clouds lifting and clarity around important decisions emerging. Some of my thoughts and techniques I've arrived at over time to lead effectively while I feel varying levels of clarity:

Here are Buffer's March 2025 results: – MRR: $1,790,039 (+2.25%) – ARR: $21,480,468 (+2.25%) – Customers: 64,237 (+2.05%) – MAU: 184,026 (+3.88%) – Team Size: 71 (-1 person) – Revenue Per Employee: $302,542 (+3.69%) This is part of the update I sent to shareholders of Buffer. A few reflections ⬇️

"An overall master plan to guide a business for the next ten years is unrealistic on the part of its author and is seldom worth the time and energy" – Charlie Munger

I've been adjusting the way I lead at Buffer, moving away from primarily 1:1 interactions with my direct reports, towards striving for as much transparent and group-based collaboration in projects as possible. A few thoughts ⬇️

“An organization, as a whole, is more conservative and resistant to change than the individuals who comprise it. Do not assume that general agreement will lead to change—it takes substantial energy to move a group, even when all are on board.” - Ed Catmull

We had our team-wide All Hands earlier this week, and each month we celebrate the team anniversaries (we call them Bufferversaries) 🎉 It's so heartwarming to me that we have such a long tenured team. Can you believe there are 49 collective years put into building Buffer here?

Introducing Streaks in Buffer 🪴 Post at least once a week to build your streak – miss a week and it resets. I've found that consistency in social posting leads to compounding benefits. Data confirms it: a 10-week posting streak can lead to 5x more engagement. Try Streaks in Buffer today ✨

Did you know that we publish all of our Shareholder Updates transparently at Buffer? We have a section of our website where we add the exact updates I send out to our shareholders. Key numbers for November: - MRR: $1,647,532 (+1.69%) - ARR: $19,770,381 (+1.69%) - Customers: 59,159 (+1.40%)

Today is a special day at @buffer.com - we just crossed $20M in ARR 🎉🚀 What makes it extra special, is that this is the second time we've reached this milestone. It's been a years-long whole-team effort to achieve the turnaround. Read my longer reflection: https://joel.is/posts/1734464838/

I enjoyed being on The Startup CEO Show to chat building @buffer.com. Topics we covered: transparency as a core value, taking a long-term view, buying out investors, navigating a co-founder breakup, working through revenue decline back to growth, fatherhood. Links to listen/watch in next post ⬇️

It's a little hard to believe. Fourteen years ago today, I launched Buffer from my apartment in Birmingham, in the UK. Today the business generates $1.65 million per month, serves 59,000 customers, and enables fulfilling work for 72 people. Read my reflections on the journey: joel.is/fourteen/

I've been seeing a lot of folks start following me recently - hello everyone! I've been struggling to keep up, so if we've been connected elsewhere and I haven't followed back, please say hi so I can! If you're newly following, I'd love to learn more about you. I'm excited to grow community here.

It feels like blogging and personal websites are back. And tinkering and sharing experiments, too. I suspect this never actually went away, but I think in the absence of a social network based on open standards, it became less interconnected. It's wonderful to have a broader gathering place again.

The @buffer.com team has officially achieved 10% year over year growth in MRR/ARR for 2024 so far 🎉 This year is proving to be an incredible turnaround year to get back to MRR/ARR levels of 3 years ago. I'm excited to see where we can land by the end of the year. And we have big plans for 2025!

It's on the way, folks! 📺

we're just about to hit 20mil bcounter.nat.vg

Over the last few days, we've seen a bunch of new people join Bluesky and also connect their accounts to @buffer.com As the Product Manager for the Bluesky <> Buffer integration, I would love to hear more about how we can improve this experience for you. Feel free to comment below or send me a DM!

A little bit about me if we have just recently connected 👋 🌏 Live in Sydney, Australia with my wife and three kids (incl. twin babies 👶 👶) 👨🏻‍💻 Product marketer at @buffer.com 🏀 Basketball aficionado 💌 Write a newsletter about marketing called Always Be Zagging: abz.beehiiv.com

We added @bsky.app to @buffer.com almost 4 months ago now. In Bluesky time, that feels like an era ago! It's so heartwarming and energizing to see this special place buzzing with more life. And fun fact - more people connected Bluesky to Buffer yesterday than 𝕏, LinkedIn, or Threads!

Seeing a lot of folks joining Bluesky! Hello! 👋🏻 A re-introduction for those I'm newly connected with: - I'm the Founder CEO of @buffer.com (and we support Bluesky publishing!) - Problem solver and tinkerer at heart - Brit living in Boulder, Colorado with my wife and two sons - More: joel.is

Very rarely are there correct ways when it comes to how to build a business. Trying to find the correct way is a trap. What we must strive for is to find our way. The challenge is most of our upbringing is focused on drilling into us that there is a correct way for everything.

I've been reflecting on working in, vs working on the business. Many will advise you to get out of the business, and work "on the business" instead of "in the business". My experience of achieving the best outcomes has been different:

If as a founder of a growing company you’re not working with a coach (even better, a therapist too), you’re most likely not uncovering your own flaws and ingrained issues that will ultimately hold back the business sooner or later.

"Certified Bluesky Elder" 👴🏻😁 I'm so glad this special place exists and is thriving!

I'm tinkering today with my personal website, and in particular my Posts page. This page is my own implementation of the POSSE concept (Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere).

I'm starting a regular newsletter 📰 🎉 My goal is to give insight into how I operate while building a long term, independent, profitable business with big ambitions. What you'll get via email (every 1-2 weeks):

Something you may not know about Buffer: We've raised just $4M in total funding, and generated over $170M in total lifetime revenue. Our last round was almost a decade ago in 2014. For 8 of our 13 years, we’ve been profitable. And since 2017, we've bought back 21.2% of fully diluted shares. ⬇️

"I just want a nice home for sharing links, memes and talking shop. There’s a strong temptation to focus on Threads because there are so many people on there, but my gut says that Bluesky is a much more suitable home for me." – @lylo.bsky.social

Alongside making Buffer a success, I'm also focused on becoming a better Dad and partner, strength training, learning piano, writing, and tinkering with code. Singularly focusing on a startup is risky. It's worth having something else that's going well during the tough times.

I've personally decided to focus on writing (vs audio / video). This resonated: "A wonderful thing about writing is it tends to last a lot longer than audio or video. It’s easier to find via search, and can more easily be edited to bring it up to date."

Once you see a business offering incentives for customer research (e.g. a starbucks voucher), it's a sign that a few things have gone wrong. The hack to easily get great feedback (for free): really work with your customers, listen to them and genuinely improve the product based on their input.

Oh hello Britain 😳 That blue line is activity in the UK spiking past all of the other countries on Bluesky right now. Welcome, and invite a friend to join us! bsky.app/download

I just sent Buffer's monthly shareholder update for June 2024. This goes to all investor and alumni shareholders (75 people) and I share it publicly as part of our value of transparency. Buffer's key numbers for June: $18,586,128 ARR (+0.82%), 56,046 customers (+0.22%), $86,538 in profit (+22.90%).