On September 17th 2014 I spoke at Business of Software about our experiences at Buffer in living to our core value of Transparency, how we set down our values and how we work as a distributed team.

1. http://www.flickr.com/photos/markybon/1726278203/
Can you build a business
without compromising
your principles?
Joel Gascoigne Co-founder and CEO, Buffer

2. About me

10. What I’ll talk about
• Tried to think, what are the most unusual aspects of
the culture at Buffer compared to the way I
understand other companies operate.

11. Transparency
What I’ll talk about
• Firstly, I want to talk about our journey with
transparency.

12. Values

13. Distributed Team

14. The Product

15. • 1.7m users
• 165k monthly active
• 28k paying customers
• $4.25m annual recurring revenue ($355k MRR)
• 5.5% monthly revenue churn
• My salary: $175k and whole team salaries public

18. http://www.flickr.com/photos/betsyweber/6719452305/

21. Culture Deck - buff.ly/buffervalues

22. Open Salaries - buff.ly/openpay

23. Transparent Email
More Details - buff.ly/emailtransparency

24. Why be Transparent?
What I’ll talk about
• Firstly, I want to talk about our journey with
transparency.

25. Transparency breeds
trust, and trust is the
foundation of great
teamwork

26. “On several occasions I
have taken our internal
profit calculations out
of one of the director’s
briefcases and given
the customer a copy.
Here is what we plan to
make as a profit, I’ve
said. Do you think it’s
too much? What do you
suggest? What should
we do?”
- Ricardo Semler

28. “if you want people to
make the same
decisions that you would
make, but in a more
scalable way, you have
to give them the same
information you have”
- Keith Rabois

33. “I kept saying that
our values were
not responsible
for the run-up in
our share price
and should not be
blamed for any
down-turns in the
future.”
- Dennis Bakke

34. Values

36. “You are the
average of the five
people you spend
the most time with.”
- Jim Rohn

39. “Every company has a
culture. The only question is
whether or not you decide
what it is.” - Jason Cohen

41. Culture Deck - buff.ly/buffervalues

42. Always choose positivity
and happiness
You always approach things in a positivity and
optimistic way.
You are deliberate about giving genuine appreciation
You never complain

43. Be a “no ego” doer
You don’t attach your personal self to ideas.
You let others have your best ideas.
You approach ideas thinking “what can we do right
now?”

44. Listen first, then listen more
You seek first to understand, then to be understood
You take the approach that everything is a hypothesis
and you could be wrong
You are suggestive rather than instructive, replacing
phrases such as ‘certainly’, ‘undoubtedly’, etc. with
‘perhaps’, ‘I think’, ‘my intuition right now’

45. “first get the right
people on the bus
(and the wrong
people off the bus)
before you figure out
where to drive it.”
- Jim Collins

46. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team

47. Two questions exercise
“would you hire the person again?”
“if the person came to tell you that he or she is
leaving to pursue an exciting new opportunity, would
you feel terribly disappointed or secretly relieved?”
- Jim Collins

48. If you want to have a great team and a
great company, you’re inevitably going
to fire people at times.

49. “For every minute you allow a
person to continue holding a seat
when you know that person will not
make it in the end, you’re stealing
a portion of his life, time that he
could spend finding a better place
where he could flourish.”
- Jim Collins

50. Distributed Team

56. “There are no advantages for people who
come into the office, no disadvantages to
staying home to get your work done.”
- Jason Zimdars

59. Being a distributed team
• It allows us to provide the best possible customer
service
• People can choose their most ideal working
environment (home, office, coffee shop)
• It feels like the future
• We’re super productive, and can work 24/7

73. “Every company has a
culture. The only question is
whether or not you decide
what it is.” - Jason Cohen

74. Thanks!
@joelgascoigne