CEO Joel Gascoigne Reflects on the Highs and Lows of Building Buffer

Joel Gascoigne will be speaking at BoS Conf Spring.Online 26-27 April on the topic: “Reflecting on Ten Years on the Roller Coaster.”

2020 marked ten years from the launch of Buffer. A product that started out being built in a bedroom has now evolved into a household name amongst social media management platforms.

Buffer now employs almost 90 people worldwide (remote-first) with a unique and loved company culture.

Joel will take us through the highs, lows, ups, and downs of his journey in a personal and intimate talk about his decade of building Buffer.

A decade of transitions and decisions

Over the past decade, Joel and Buffer have gone through several transitions and big decisions which he will take us through in his talk, roughly covering the following:

• 2010: Launching Buffer and shifting the focus to marketing
• 2011: Transitioning to full-time work on Buffer.
• 2012: Choosing to become a fully remote company
• 2013: Creating (and living by) company values
• 2014: Turning down the largest acquisition offer
• 2015: Exploring and learning self-management
• 2016: Facing cash-flow challenges and layoffs
• 2017: Experiencing co-founder conflict and burnout
• 2018: Buying out investors
• 2019: Creating balance and scaling sustainably
• 2020: Taking a step back to think about purpose

What you will learn

You will learn about coping with life as a startup founder in the early days, navigating the scale-up years, and how Joel dealt with burnout and stress. 

With a goal of building a transparent, remote-first company, Joel and Buffer have experienced the gamut of startup and growth company challenges and successes.

They started out bootstrapped, took funding, made acquisitions, bought their funders out, had acquisition approaches, hit difficult times, laid people off, lost founders, and much more along the way.

Today, they’re profitable with $20mm ARR, still fully remote with 90 people who all work four days a week, and are committed to building a long term sustainable business. 

Who is Joel Gascoigne?

Joel is the founder and CEO of Buffer. He is focused on the lean startup approach, user happiness, transparency, and company culture. Always interesting, entertaining and thought provoking, he spoke at BoS USA 2014 on the topic of transparency and growing a business without compromising your principles.