Startup Conversations: What Happens When Your Team Doubles in 4 Months

Key Takeaways

hey y'all today I thought we might talk a little bit about growth um which is a big topic so this might um this might go on for a little bit um as long as you have time for if I if I'm not mistaken I think we have doubled in size this year at buffer and I wondered um if there's a reason behind that if this growth is is strategic and something that y'all had in the plan this year or something that just kind of kind of happened more than doubled right yeah maybe more than doubled right that's right yeah I think there's a few factors in my mind um I think we had a we had this phase where like we were really experimenting with self-management and the teal ideas from the book Reinventing organizations and which is really exciting time for us but I think one of the outcomes of that period of time maybe I think it was kind of the first half of this year um was that we didn't really grow very much I think um as we started to realize some of the start to gather some learnings from that time period And I think Leo and I especially started to it kind of hit us that like wow not been growing but the product is like the customer base is growing um and uh there's so much more that we want to do so much opportunity and maybe not moving as fast as we want to um and so that was kind of like for us was like a big trigger point to to just decide like okay let's let's do this and we and luckily we've continued to grow in terms of Revenue so we actually started to hit profitability as well and that was also a moment for me I was like wow like it's great to make a profit but when there's so much opportunity we should really be like reinvesting that and so ideally we can just keep growing and make use of that to be able to provide better product and better customer service and all these things so I think that was a big trigger point and it's almost maybe catching up from when we I think there big uh kind of thing that hit us was when one Retreat to the next which is like a 5 month period and we had the same amount of people on Retreat so things like that started to make it realiz like wow like that doesn't feel too ideal um and now we're GNA have a different situation where from one we to the next be more than double people which interesting but um yeah I think it's been a really good kind of turnaround things in the last few months we're really excited and about I think things I know yall have done a lot of work on how to hire sort of like a blueprint for for what growth might look like at buffer um Leo would you be up for talking about that a little bit and maybe the idea of do you guys see a vision for how big buffer could be or does it feel kind of Limitless right now yeah that's really good one I think the original blueprint um um I think they came from from this I think great sort of exercise where Joel thought through like what structure do we need to move to in terms of um the company and uh what types of roles and people do we need to support that structure and I think we we started with the idea of the uh of the of the of the product team right and so the structure of the product and changed a lot we sort of this monolithic organization where it's just like one big like La of like people that like all work on one thing into like no actually multiple teams right and now we are like even like I think like seven or eight teams even right how many yeah yeah eight I think eight yeah and so and then Joel said like Joel came to me and said like look this is the system I think that works that that's be G to be the most efficient where people are actually not all involved in everything but people have multiple own things like Joel said um I think for people to work and really be able to focus we can't have multiple like we can't say like we we split you into different roles but you still like have a role in each of those areas so we were like actually each of these areas now needs to be separate right they need to have someone who can just focus on that and can give all their attention to one area for example is buffer for business or um the the Pablo team or the awesome team right and ideally you don't have to um your split your brain right between those um and and so that's became the basis for the blueprint and it was really a like Joel already mentioned like a bit of a catch-up blueprint because we moved to this new structure for the first time which also needed we mean meant we needed to uh come to that new uh we have to like build up to that and once we are in it I expect us like once we hit that original po print I don't think we'll need to double like like every few months again but because we can work with that structure until when we might need a whole new structure but I don't expect that to happen like every few months but it's more like something that happens every few years like this has been like the first time this has happened and how do you view that maybe jool have some more thoughts on that no I think that's uh I think that's great like yeah the the reason we need to grow so fast like Le said is that we're moving into this completely new structure and so I think we stretched the old structure as far as we could and so I guess in terms of numbers say for example we hit like 10 to 15 people in the like product and Engineering Group um but that was like 15 people in one team and then we suddenly realized like wow we need to actually split into multiple teams because once you get Beyond 10 people get to 15 people it's really inefficient to have one big team people are jumping from one different one thing to different things the product has grown so much we're now like four or five years in the product is you know there it's has a wide like span of of different parts of the product so it's hard to like really be able to effectively work in one and then just jump to this other area so that was kind of the idea is like let's move to a new structure where we split the product into multiple parts or into different customer segments which I think has being a bit more effective um but to do that we realize actually there's like it's really hard to break it down to only ideally we probably have like five people per team and so with 15 people that would be three teams we realize like we can't only have three teams there's more that we have than three teams so we have like six seven eight teams and so that's where immediately trigged us like okay we're going to split into six seven seven eight teams that means now we need to actually be like a product and engineering team of like 30 or 40 people rather than 15 that figured this like wave of of growth um yeah and I guess um I could speak a little to like how how big we think we could grow on things um uh I think uh in terms of like vision and just the growth here like my feeling is that uh I think we see like a lot of opportunity to for for buffer different uh you know spaces we could like move into or um just even with what we're doing how much more we could do to help customers with social media publishing and uh so I think we had this feeling of like oh we really want to just double down and grow there and I think the other part is the culture we've uh established and the the move movements that we've ended up being part of around transparency and being a distributed team and all these things are things that um over the last couple of years I started to really feel like wow that's like really one of the purposes of buffer is to spend these movements and be part of these movements and I think the the more we can grow the more we can um put out there that like this can work um really at scale as well I think um it's interesting like I think it's easy maybe people to say like oh oh you distribute a team like 10 15 people like yeah maybe that can work when you're small and then like I think it just as to keep growing people maybe keep saying that like oh this you a small you know 40 person company that can still work maybe even now it's still like oh like a 60 60 65 person company can still work but I think the more we grow the more it really becomes clear to people like oh like they're making it work and like they're not this tiny little you know just just a small group of people anymore um so for me that's like part of the motivation for really going further um and just to you know continue helping uh small businesses with like getting the they kind of having the voice that they deserve to have and and getting more uh more reach through social media is something that I think we feel like there's so much more we can do that and social media is evolving so fast and we just want to build the tools to keep up with that as well so I'm not sure I see like a limit I think like nothing just grows forever so it's like that's not a good aim to have but uh I think right now we see like huge am potential and I think this new growth trajectory we're on is maybe maybe F maybe won't as I stay on like this fast of a growth base but I think we will'll definitely be on pretty fast growth trajectory from now onwards I think it's interesting to see how um just from from a marketing standpoint the the part the area I work in when you bring new people on you're like oh like now like I'm I'm not going to have as much to do I'm I'm GNA like have to find new things to do and it never feels that way there's all like it increases exponentially the number of things that you can find to do and it just opens up new areas to explore so growth is really really exciting in that way um you you mentioned culture and uh one of the one of the really interesting things about growth is how how we're trying really hard to to maintain our very unique very specific culture as we grow and I this is sort of an impossibly large question how do you scale culture how do you scale um what's so special and unique about about buffer as we grow I've seen um you know a couple of the things that that we used to do we're experimenting with not doing like um the pair calls which we used to do every day um The Mastermind sessions which we um would do with a partner every week things like that um are sort of in flux right now um and I imagine that's just because we're we're growing so much and experience experiencing so much change um so yeah I I think the question maybe maybe Leah you could you could um speak to this one for for a minute um what are the things that you've noticed changing as we grow and how do we how do we keep a of that culture yeah it's it's really great I think it's it's a very valid question for many reasons I think the first thing comes to mind is that we recently started to um send out mini surveys at the end of the month to get a hunch of what people how people feel about how it's it going at buffer how much do they like being here and uh I think the rate of growth um got quite a few people worried about the culture changing too much as well I think the I think the were L comments people saying like um I'm little worried whether we will have the same great culture and amazing supportive environment to work in if you know given the pace we're growing at so I think that's on people's minds like this is really think really important to talk about and not just talk about but to actually do do things about and and like improve and and make and make changes um and uh to me I think the the big realization I've had is that um we used to focus on culture mostly Joel and myself where we used to sit down every week and used to work on it and we used to improve it we to check in with people we would make changes with new values and pair calls and and salary formula and and and all these things like we we introduced them through sort of we had this weekly meeting I think it was on Fridays we go to a coffee shop and we would work on culture and in the last few months or even like last year or or so something like that we haven't really been doing that right um and uh I think I realized that you know the key thing to make culture scale and work is that you give away your Legos right and you let sort of other people um keep working on that and keep you know improving on that and uh at the same time of course it's still we still very heavily involved but like this like you know we only scale so far as people we only have like so much hours in the day and so I think a big thing that's sort of crystallizing is that we're building the people team and we are um having people that are specifically thinking about culture uh on a day-to-day basis and I think right now there's Caro there is uh um there's yourself from diversity side right and so there's um probably more people that will join that team that will start to think about um you know how does it feel and and I I had this interesting conversation with car and said look as companies grow um I see many companies get better at being more and more efficient as they grow there's many examples that I can point to in terms of companies being around however there's very few companies I can point to that actually maintain the same warm and you know fuzzy and like good good vibe sort of feeling as they grow so having someone like yourself is going to be exponentially more important because it's exponentially rare as companies grow that you're able to maintain that feeling and Vibe when you when you interact with that company and so that there this is sort of a longwinded answer to say we we have to work on it very actively with people that think about it that think about the flows that think about the um how people feel that ask people how they feel that check in with people that make processes better that relate just to how we feel not not just how to make things more efficient but actually like you know the idea of wholeness and work environment and and all those things so that's my that's my take on it I Joel you have some other yeah that's that's awesome Joel I'd love to hear hear your thoughts on that as well and and maybe we could talk about whether whether that that change should be deliberate or whether it feels more more organic like how much how much effort do we put into maintaining that culture and how much do we say we've hired the right people and now it's it's up to all of us individually it's a great one um yeah I think I OT on the same pageot what just shared I think for me the one slight uh distinction I would make is that I think the cult to evolve so I think one thing we maybe we shouldn't maybe hold on too much onto like maintaining I think this this parts of the culture that we're really excited about that we want to like maintain or like at least uh see through and find new ways to have the same great parts of the culture that we feel good about um but I think as we grow culture will evolve um it's kind of like every new person you add evolves and that's why I think diversity is so important as well because you want to have um the culture evolving in in a really diverse way as well so um I think that's something where like we should be happy for I do think that I think so started looking like personality tests and things like that so I think we've become really really great in terms of figuring out that people are really good fit and for the culture and like have the same values and and kind of Life principles I think that's B key and now starting to realize that some things are important for us to be you know have the right uh setup of the teams as well and in terms of like the way that people lean one way or the other in terms of personality in terms of like details or like making things happen fast or like and that's something that I think Leo and I have like realized lot over the last few years how how well we work together because of that kind of like like yin yang kind of combination and so that's where I think a lot of it is just finding the right people with the right fit maybe on the culture side and also on the personality side for the teams and then a lot will just happen naturally I think that's definitely true um I think at the same time there is this underlying uh kind of idea which I really agree with which is that like you will have culture whether you like it or not like um and it's just down to whether you decide to shape it and I think that's something we've always believed in and that's why we you know put our values into words when we were only 10 people and most companies do that when they're well beyond 100 people um and I think so whilst we feel like it's very very important to just find the right people and then a lot of things will fall into place I think we also believe that like we should really be very deliberate about what kind of company we want to build and how we want it to feel this may be a tough one can you think of a an example we could point to as far as um an evolution that you've seen thus far in our in our culture in our values you mean like something that's changed that we no longer do and that's now evolved yeah I think I think both of you kind of mentioned the idea that um culture can and should evolve as the team grows and changes and we bring on new people with a different cultural contribution I wonder if we've seen that happen already or if that's something that we were thinking about for the [Music] future I mean I think even the focus on diversity is is one of those things where we um I think yourself and Neil really come to mind as people that think know Leo and I definitely have you know had a focus and like a deep appreciation and understanding that like that's very but I think um you and Neil come on and have you know thought about that a lot just in in your lives and it's really really important for for you and then you bring that in so I think that's that's one key example that comes to mind for me that's really benefited the company and now we've talking about like how do we make sure that we have diversity fully as part of the values and then really get it to that place where it's like a really core part of the culture so many exciting things coming up there a future a future chat for sure um y'all have passed around some really great resources I've taken a look at about recognizing the breaking points in management um I'm thinking of that rule of three and 10 um in the blog post that says every time a company triples in size I think everything looks completely different and I wonder does buffer look completely different to you than than where we started at the beginning of this year Leo you want to speak to that one maybe yeah yeah it's blows my mind how how different it is I I I I the other day I was chatting with Joel on slack and I think I used the word Synergy and I was like oh I just use Synergy like we a big company now so because I said like go different areas need to work better together and like me better synergies I like it was it was it was kind of funny kind of like was that now we're a big company you have to say words like that when you get big yeah I didn't even force it it just like sort of of came out um but but no I think it's it's it's it's it's very it's getting very different we we we we the best way I I I can think describe it for myself is that we we we're reaching a level of stability we're reaching a level of stability that um is uh you know at the early like this early startup Vibe of like constantly like um knowing whether you'll you'll die or survive right it's sort of moving and changing a little bit whereas um um we still want to move fast we still wna um you know uh uh be very very diligent with like uh um shipping things and you know making progress and making improvements for the customers but I think the process that we're using becomes more more disciplined becomes more focused like you know the structure of the product team and the process we want to follow there like how we create like CH a lot with Joel about like you know on the on the growth side how do you want to run experiments and and and and on the on the on the marketing side you know we structuring ourselves better like how do we want to write blog posts and you know which categories they fall into and and the same like on the on the on the on the happiness side so everything adds this becomes like this this uh this this more stable environment where hopefully we can still have creativity and it still has you know a lot of room all the room for Innovation it needs but it sort of moves away a little bit from this like the early days of like just throw a bunch of stuff against the wall and see what happens and see what sticks which which I think you know partially you need a little bit in the very early days and especially even like you know after so that's to me in my head the biggest uh the biggest change I would describe of how it feels to now be be part of buffer is like um yeah Joel I'd love to hear your thoughts on that one as well yeah I think uh I think it did feel very different um I like one interesting thing was just to catch up with Brian who like awesome product designer for two years and and really saw the company go from like maybe 10 people to less than 10 people to uh to the 2530 and then catching up with him and it's only been like five months or something I don't know how long but uh not very long and and now we've the team's doubled in that time and we've changed the way that we structured completely and just like amazing to catch up with him and and Sh out with him and see you know how he's doing now at at Facebook and and learn about how they do things there but then also to share like he was just like like what like what's going on what's Happening Now like and then like we're talking about um you know all these people we we're mentioning and like he's not he not met like most of them and and so yeah I think uh in a lot of ways um things have changed completely and I think that's we have to be happy to just keep changing things I think that's one thing where um it's it it's this constant uh striving for for that stability that Leo mentioned for that like Smooth like flow and like how do we have the right uh kind of structure and systems in place to be really efficient um but then like growing so fast that as soon as we hit that point where we're like wow this is like this is working really well now like then we're just going to be like grown to the next point and it's all going to break again we have to rethink it all again and that's just going to be like how it works now and I think that's it's it's a challenge but it's also a real opportunity and an exciting for especially for people in team where I think sometimes you might feel like oh like what's the how do you progress in the team and people look like the things in right now that they could maybe progress to where like if you join a really big company then you'll see like oh like this is how it works this is the progression there like this next level of like leading leading like lead engineer and then like managing all like these different paths you can go and we have that to some extent now as we grow bigger but we also have this other part which is just like maybe in a year's time we're going to be double again and just because of the fact that we're going to be you know double the size again in a year's time there's going to be so much more that like there more different roles we need to do it's like the structure is going to change completely again and that's then means that there's like so much opportunity for people to grow into those new roles as well not just the walls that they can see in the team right now that are possible things for them to to kind of go into it seems like this is such a a big thing to think about scaling and structure and culture like what what percent percentage of your of your brain is taken up by the stuff on a daily basis is it a large percentage or do you do you try and keep it smaller yeah it's a great one it's like this right now for me it feels like um challenge because uh it's I think it's quite a large percentage of my brain but then I think it's also uh like I was just chatting with Dave Dave o on the design side just had a one-on one with him and uh we were just kind of colle on like so they just had a like London meet up and there's 15 people this time it's like crazy how many people like the third would feat the third like whole team retreat with 16 people and now we just had to Gathering like 15 people and like then Dave was saying like when he started there was only four people like in in the UK and and it's just crazy and like and Dave said like and I'm not even like I I still feel you like I for nine months so um I think that's for me is like where it is occupying a lot of my mind thinking right now to try and figure out how we structure ourselves and things but then it's also like and I'd like to be maybe more on the the higher level there to figure things out um but then at the same time like kind of as Dave mentioned like maybe half the whole team right now is like very kind of new to to buffer and and things so there's also a lot of like needing to be like quite Hands-On and like working with everyone as well so it's just like kind of two-sided challenge uh me right now where it is on like I'm thinking a lot about those things but then I'm also trying to be like with like within like product and design and data and Engineering things as well and so that's kind of me lots going on there yeah um Leo I'd love to hear from you about any particular sort of challenges you see or maybe things that have surprised you about about growing this quickly I'm thinking in particular maybe about um The Retreat we have coming up that uh I have a slight intuition might be a little bit different than Retreats we've done in the past just because um not many of us know each other and many of us will be meeting for the first time and we're a larger number than we've ever been before trying to all Gather in in one beautiful space in the world um so yeah Retreats are anything kind of like that um the the particular challenges and opportunities of being um a remote distributed team that's growing so quickly yeah yeah I think there's two key ones that come to mind right off the bat and and and Joel and I spent a lot of time in the last few days discussing those I think the first one is is how does leadership work how do how do leaders how do leaders emerge how do we know who wants to be a leader how can we even be good at knowing that like how can we be good at you know helping um people become leaders um I think as we grow so quickly like I think that's that's that's really fast becoming I think the number one thing we we talking a lot about and we're like how do we do that like you know we we often times people come to us for for guidance and advice and and and and we love it like you know we feel like oh yeah like I get to like share so many things with people right and like every like people ask me and I can have such a big impact right and it's true at the same time I feel like it's not not always the best use of our time but the best use of our time is is maybe when someone comes to us and asks us the question to think why do they need to come to me to ask that question right and what can change over time so that they can either have the right answer to the question themselves without asking me or there's someone else that they can go to so that I I'm not the the bottleneck that that they need to go through to to make great decisions and not that not that only only the two of us make great decisions is more like people want to want to oftentimes know what we think or know or feel more more comfortable or more confident in their decisions once they get our advice and things absolutely um so so that's sort of big thing like how do we figure that out and we talked about like how do we hire with our culture especially we we had some attempts where we went pretty far with some more more senior people and where we reach out to them and it's not quite worked so we kind of rethinking how we want to do that and also how does that affect the team how do we even coach the team right I feel like Joel and I we read we we both ordered this book high output management we realized no we've not done a great job but even coaching mentoring people to be leaders like we help them we coach them to do roles better but not necessarily focused on like do you want to be a leader yes like okay here are the things that we think we don't know necessarily how to do that well um so so that whole leadership is is is one big big item the other one is like how do Joel and I work work together like that's been a big topic like we feel like we we had some some pretty tough conversations where we were like like why are we not on the same page with some of those things that we always used to be on the same page and and one of the key realizations for me was that before we would work together on a project and it works great like we know our strength we know what what we what the other person is better at and so when we work on a project together and that's what buffer in the very early days was is a project we worked on together it was great but now it's like we don't necessarily work on it together but we actually help people bring both of those strengths into like their own projects into their own process and that's sort of where we're like i'msure is like you know do they both sync with both of us or do do we sync with one but you know so it's sort of unclear how do we scale our own strengths and and part of that is that our both of our strengths are a big part of the DNA of the company so like um you know it's it's it's sort of this this this really I feel like really amazing like opportunity to say how do we scale our approach to work which is quite different and still make sure that the whole company benefits from both both sides that's how I describe it those are some great ones yeah really really interesting stuff to think on and if I if I know you guys I'm sure you'll be reading up studying um thinking and coming up with some really interesting solutions to these challenges um I could go on about this for quite some time it's such an interesting topic but um yeah I I don't want to take up too much time with this anything that you either of you particularly wanted to mention that we haven't touched on I think it's been a great discussion it's been fun yeah it's been fun to lay some of those things out there I think we've not really tied them all together in a chat like this before yeah um I I imagine we'll we'll have this conversation maybe again and again as we scale and things break and we We Do It All Over Again should be fun be completely different next time we chat about it maybe yeah probably so we'll make it a we'll make it a date this time in six months three months who knows sounds great all right well thanks so much y'all I appreciate it thanks so much