I'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.
It'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.
I 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.
Buffer 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.
Buffer 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/) 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.
Doesn'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.
This 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.
Kuddos. 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.
Indeed, 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.
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.
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.
Right 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.
This 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 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.
You 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.
+ 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.
I should add that this is also a great move by Baremetrics, who are likely to gain much more out of this.