20VC: Buffer's Joel Gascoigne on The Moment The Founder Is No Longer The Boss, The Questions Founders Must Ask Their VCs and Why We Need A Spectrum of Different Financing Mechanisms Other Than VC
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 637 Ratings
🗓️ 29 March 2019
⏱️ 32 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Joel Gascoigne is the Co-Founder & CEO @ Buffer, the social media management tool that makes it easy for businesses and marketing teams to schedule posts, analyze performance, and manage all their accounts in one place. They had raised both seed and Series A rounds but last summer, spent $3.3m to buy out the majority of their Series A investors, making them much more independent. Joel now runs Buffer as a profitable business with $2m in profit in 2017 and $3m in 2018. Before co-founding Buffer, Joel co-founded OnePage and StartupMill and was a web developer in the UK.
In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Joel made his way from web developer in the UK to founder of Buffer, in 2018 a business that did $3m in profit?
2.) What does Joel mean when he says that "fundraising is a bigger decision than most people realise"? At what moments does Joel believe that the founders are no longer the boss? When did Joel feel he was no longer the boss? What does Joel wish founders knew more about the VC process and mechanics? What questions must they ask VCs?
3.) Would Joel agree with Anand Sanwal, previously on the show that "VCs foie-gras their startups", forcing synthetic growth? What is the right way for founders to respond to this pressure? How did Joel personally handle the pressure? How does Joel assess and analyse the current VC ecosystem? What would he most like to change?
4.) There was a time when individuals did not want Joel to be CEO, how did Joel deal with that? What would Joel advise founders in the same position? What are the right steps to take? Joel then lost his co-founder, how was that process for Joel? What does he know now that he wishes he had known at the beginning of that process? How does he look to retain that level of support and guidance from someone other than a co-founder?
5.) What does Joel mean when he says, "leaders must lean into transparency"? Are there any limitations to being overly transparent? Now as a profitable company, how does Joel think about profit sharing with the team? What does profitable status allow the team to achieve and do that is not normally possible for VC backed co's?
Items Mentioned In Today’s Show:
Joel’s Fave Book: A Little Life
As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Joel on Twitter here!
Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You are listening to The 20 Minute VC with me, Harry Stebbings, at H. Stebbings, 1996, with |
| 0:04.7 | two Bs on Instagram. I really would love to see you there. But my word am I excited for today's |
| 0:09.3 | episode. Not only am I welcoming a fellow Brit on the show, but a really different founder and |
| 0:13.9 | company to the heavily backed venture companies we usually feature. With that, I'm thrilled to welcome |
| 0:18.5 | Joel Gascoigne, co-founder and CEO at Buffer, |
| 0:21.3 | the social media management tool that makes it easy for businesses and marketing teams to |
| 0:25.6 | schedule posts, analyze performance, and manage all their accounts in one place. And they had raised |
| 0:30.5 | both Seed and Series A rounds, but last summer, they spent $3.3 million to buy out the majority |
| 0:35.9 | of their Series A investors, making them much more |
| 0:38.4 | independent. |
| 0:39.2 | Today, Joel runs Buffers a profitable business, with 2 million in profit in 2017 and 3 million |
| 0:44.7 | in profit in 2018. |
| 0:46.6 | And before co-founding Buffer, Joel co-founded One Page and Startup Mill, and was a web developer |
| 0:51.3 | in the UK. |
| 0:52.2 | As for the intro, I have to say it was me cold emailing Joel |
| 0:55.2 | on this one. I'm such an admirer of Joel's and buffers, so I will give myself the credit for the |
| 0:59.9 | hustle on this one. But before we dive into the show today, a lot of what we do on the 20-minute |
| 1:04.1 | VC is talk to experts, pick the brains of founders and investors who tell us which trends to watch out for, offer tips on fundraising, and teach us how to excel at any company stage. There's no playbook for building a great business, |
| 1:15.0 | but we can certainly learn from people who've done it before. Beyond listening to this podcast |
| 1:18.5 | and talking to mentors and advisors in your own network, it's important to have resources |
| 1:22.8 | you can turn to when you're tackling a new challenge. Stripe has built those resources for you. Whether you'd like to learn how to run a pricing experiment or build a knockout landing page, |
| 1:31.4 | Stripe gives you the information you need to start, run and scale a technology company. |
... |
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