I'd love for you to come join Buffer for the fun ride. We have over 650,000 users and are on a $1.3m+ annual revenue run rate. There are some super interesting challenges ahead, as we are looking to pass a million users in 2013. We are expecting even faster growth in the coming months through our mobile efforts.

We need help on 2 areas right now:

1. Android:

    - Android is our second highest source of signups for Buffer, only
      trailing behind Web which was our original platform.
    - our users love the app, which has a 4.3 rating on Google Play.
    - the app has 100k+ total downloads and 3k daily active users.
    - we work with Google Play, Kindle and Blackberry stores.

    - we get 1,500-2,000 signups per day on the web
    - we have 160,000 weekly active users for our Chrome extension
    - 4,500 API clients. Most popular: Feedly, IFTTT, Pocket, Instapaper
    - we ship to production multiple times a day
    - we have a data-driven process, with Einstein, our custom
      built a/b testing framework
    - ideally, experience in: PHP (Codeigniter)/Python, MongoDB,
      Backbone.js Javascript, CSS, HTML

If you're interested in coming on board, you will:

    - work closely myself on Product and Sunil on technical
      architecture
    - ship to thousands of users and iterate quickly
    - work with our metrics team to make smart changes
    - be friendly and comfortable talking directly to customers
      on issues and features
    - be a happy, positive-minded and kind person who has a great
      approach in dealing with others
    - be a Buffer user (would be awesome, it’s cool if not)
    - be anywhere in the world, and if you'd like, you have help and
      support from us to move to where you want to be
    - have experience working with another startup before (would
      be awesome, it’s cool if not)

    - we are totally transparent. We raised $450k, we currently
      have 650k users and generate $110k/mo. Ask me anything else!
    - within the company, all salaries and equity are open and we
      have a formula for the distribution.
    - we're all very focused on self improvement - we have daily
      standups where we discuss our current improvements. This
      could be waking up earlier, starting public speaking, blogging,
      exercise, learning a language, etc.
    - culture deck: http://www.slideshare.net/joelg2/buffer-culture-01-16707113

Equity: 0.5-1%

If this sounds fun, let's chat. Send a note to Sunil (our CTO) about yourself, why you’re interested in Buffer, and any relevant links (Github profile, Android Apps, projects and background): thenexthacker@bufferapp.com

- Joel (Founder/CEO)

I can say that in my experience reading Four Steps or The Lean Startup and actually doing a startup are completely different things. I thought I had the whole lean startup thing down, but I've messed up so many times. And it's not a case of "now I've learned my lesson" either. I've had great experiences with sticking to lean, and then afterwards I've slipped up again. For me it seems to be a case of waves of being good, and not so good. Over time I'm definitely getting better.

I think for us, as soon as we saw that people were sticking around we knew we had to switch to "do a better job marketing". With retention, that was validation that there must be many more people out there who would find Buffer super useful, just like the people who were staying active. In essence, we needed to make more people aware of the value we were providing.

Just had a look at our cohort analysis. Happy to let you know that 16% of the December 2010 cohort (those 100 people) are still using Buffer today (27 months later). It's actually fairly representative of what our retention stabilizes to after 4-5 months for almost every cohort, though 100 is not an ideal sample size!

We've certainly worked to improve retention over time, but in addition I think with Buffer I finally had hit upon a problem that was a real pain point. So, there was good retention right from the start.

I had a previous startup that also started slow, but never really changed. The key difference between the two, was retention. So I would highly recommend anyone who's getting started to closely watch retention. Does anyone keep using the product into their second week after sign up? That's the first thing I'd focus on with what I know now.

I'd love for you to come join Buffer for the fun ride. We have over 500,000 users and are on a $1M+ annual revenue run rate. There are some super interesting challenges ahead, as we are looking to hit the millions of users in 2013.

We've consistently grown 15% MoM for the last year and are expecting even faster growth in the coming months through our mobile efforts. That's where we are in need of some help.

    So, we're looking for an Android Developer to work on our app.
    This includes taking over most of the work of the app which has
    70,000 downloads and more in the Kindle and Blackberry stores too.
    If you've worked with Android before, that's great. If you're a great
    hacker and have developed in Java or other mobile platforms that's
    awesome also.

    - work primarily with myself and Sunil, who has lead development
      so far and is now taking a more general tech role
    - be a happy, positive-minded and kind person who has a great
      approach in dealing with others
    - be a Buffer user (would be awesome, it’s cool if not)
    - be friendly and comfortable helping our users
    - be anywhere in the world, and if you'd like, you have help and
      support from us to move to where you want to be
    - have experience working with another startup before (would
      be awesome, it’s cool if not)

Another key value we have is to "Have a focus on self improvement". The thing that we do which I don't know that any other startups do, is that we have a daily 'standup' Google Hangout between pairs of people in the team (the pairs cycle each 2 weeks). As part of the call we share a daily improvement. Something we're working on to improve ourselves. It can be related to Buffer, but usually it isn't. Some examples of improvements people have worked on: start blogging every 2 weeks, speak at first event, speak to a new person every day, wake up an hour earlier. We all encourage each other with our improvements, and this helps us push forward much faster than otherwise. It's a really positive environment and there is built in accountability. Everyone here seems to progress at an incredible pace, we want to do everything to make that happen for you as well. Whether you want to start speaking, blogging, learning marketing or have other areas of personal growth, you’ll have my personal support and the whole team as a resource too.

If you're interested in all our values, you can take a look at them here: http://www.slideshare.net/joelg2/buffer-culture-01-16707113

Since we have Open Salaries at Buffer, I can tell you right now that your salary will be between $88k and $110k depending on your location (living costs) and experience. You will also get equity in the 0.5-1.5% range.

If this sounds fun, let's have a chat. I'm looking forward to it! I'm Joel, drop me an email directly - joel@bufferapp.com.

This turned out to be good for a number of reasons:

    1. I had no idea how long it'd be before the first person paid, so why optimize
       that flow? Instead I worked on things which would help me get to the first
       paying customer.
    2. The IPN was the hardest part of PayPal implementation, so it saved me
       a lot of time to avoid it. The rest of the implementation can even be done
       with their button implementation and no coding experience.
    3. Actually people having a slight delay, and my needing to personally email
       them, was a great thing. That built a lot of loyalty through the personal contact
       and those were some insightful conversations.

For anyone reading who's interested, I think this might be the best example of how seriously we take self-improvement at Buffer:

Each day we have a daily standup video call (Google Hangout) with the whole team. Each person has 3 minutes to talk. Like most standups, we talk about what we've done and what we're doing next. The thing that we do which I don't know that any other startups do, is that as part of that 3 minutes we also share a daily improvement. Something we're working on to improve ourselves. It can be related to Buffer, but usually it isn't. Some examples of improvements people have worked on: start blogging every 2 weeks, speak at first event, speak to a new person every day, learn japanese, wake up an hour earlier. We all encourage each other with our improvements, and this helps us push forward much faster than otherwise. It's a really positive environment and there is built in accountability.

I hope you are having a fantastic day. Happy new year :-)

I'd love for you to come join Buffer for the fun ride. We're a small team of 7, we have 450,000 users and are about to hit a $1M annual revenue run rate. There are some super interesting challenges ahead and just around the corner we're expecting even faster growth through our mobile efforts.

2 key areas we're looking for help with:

    - JavaScript (+HTML5, CSS, Backbone.js) to lead our webapp 
      and browser extension development
    - DevOps (we're PHP/MongoDB on AWS Elastic Beanstalk, and it's
      been put together by a couple of full stack hackers so there
      will be a lot that could be improved!)

    - work primarily with myself and my co-founders Leo and Tom
    - be a happy, positive-minded and kind person who has a great
      approach in dealing with others
    - be a Buffer user (would be awesome, it’s cool if not)
    - be friendly and comfortable helping our users
    - be anywhere in the world, and if you'd like, you have help and
      support from us to move to where you want to be
    - have experience working with another startup before (would
      be awesome, it’s cool if not)

Great salary and equity - $85k-$140k, 0.5-1.5%.

If this sounds fun, let's have a chat. I'm looking forward to it! I'm Joel, drop me an email directly - joel@bufferapp.com.

To observe that early risers are consistently successful, it doesn't mean that late night workers aren't successful. I've just found anecdotally that if you were to take a sample of early risers vs late night workers, the first group seems to have a higher percentage of successful people.

Hope you are having a fantastic weekend.

I'd love for you to come join Buffer for the fun ride. We're a small team of 7, we have over 400,000 users and are about to hit a $1M annual revenue run rate. There are some super interesting challenges ahead and just around the corner we're expecting even faster growth through some interesting things we're launching.

2 key areas we're looking for help with:

- JavaScript (+HTML5, CSS, Backbone.js) to lead our webapp and browser extension development

- DevOps (we're PHP/MongoDB on AWS Elastic Beanstalk, and it's been put together by a couple of full stack hackers so there will be a lot that could be improved!)

If you're interested in coming on board, you will:

- work primarily with myself and my co-founders Leo and Tom

- be a happy, positive-minded and kind person who has a great approach in dealing with others

- be a Buffer user (would be awesome, it’s cool if not)

- be friendly and comfortable helping our users

- be based in or willing to move to San Francisco

- have experience working with another startup before (would be awesome, it’s cool if not)

You’ll be amongst people who are striving for success and pushing themselves forward each and every day. Everyone here seems to progress at an incredible pace, we want to do everything to make that happen for you as well. Whether you want to start speaking, blogging, learning marketing or have other areas of personal growth, you’ll have my personal support and the whole team as a resource too.

Great salary and equity - $85k-$140k, 0.5-1.5%.

If this sounds fun, let's have a chat. I'm looking forward to it! I'm Joel, drop me an email directly - joel@bufferapp.com.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4728061

Points: 60

# Comments: 17