Leo Widrich, co-founder and COO of Buffer, shares his learnings as a founder scaling to $10M ARR at SaaStr Annual 2016 held in San Francisco Feb 9-11th. www.saastrannual.com

1. LEO WILDRICH
CO-FOUNDER AND COO / BUFFER
@leowid
TOP 10 LEARNINGS GROWING
TO (ALMOST) $10 MILLION ARR
@leowid

2. 1. EXPERIMENT WITH A
WEEKLY MASTERMIND WITH
YOUR CO-FOUNDER IN THIS
FORMAT
@leowid

3. •We take around 1-2 hours, preferably
when it feels a bit less busy.
•We talk for 10 minutes each about our
achievements; like “I shipped this feature”
or “I hit the gym 3 times this week”
•Then we spend 40 minutes each on
challenges. We try to really dive in here
and not stay on the surface.
•We then add a section at the end where
we share feedback for each other.
HOW MASTERMINDS WORK
@leowid

4. 2. AVOID BEING DISTRACTED
BY DATA TOO EARLY ON
@leowid

5. “Most Early Stage Startups Won't Have
Enough Customers To Rely On
Quantitative Data. You Need To Be
Acquiring Hundreds Of Customers Every
Month (Preferably Thousands) To Have
Enough Data To Support A/B Tests, Etc.”
HITEN SHAH
CO-FOUNDER OF CRAZYEGG,
KISSMETRICS AND QUICKSPROUT
@leowid

6. 3. TRY ASKING THESE 5
QUESTIONS TO LEARN
BETTER FROM CUSTOMERS
@leowid

7. @leowid
CINDY ALVAREZ
“You Need To Learn About How
Customers Behave And What
They Need. In Other Words,
Focus On Their Problem, Not
Their Suggested Solution.”

8. @leowid
QUESTIONS TO ASK
Tell me about how you do _________ today….
Do you use any [tools/products/apps/tricks] to help you get ________ done?
If you could wave a magic wand and be able to do anything that you can’t do
today, what would it be? Don’t worry about whether it’s possible, just anything.
Last time you did ___________, what were you doing right before
you got started? Once you finished, what did you do afterward?
Is there anything else about _________ that I should have asked?
Link to full template:
bit.ly/buffercustdev

9. 4. KEEP YOUR DATA IN HOUSE
TO BE MORE FLEXIBLE
@leowid

10. @leowid
2010-11: In-house data-tools built by Joel
2012: Experimentation with various 3rd party
event-tracking tools (KISSmetrics, Mixpanel)
2013-14: Moving back to build all data-tools in-house
2015-2016: Transitioning to using Looker
BUFFER’S JOURNEY WITH DATA

11. 5. PICK ONE CHANNEL TO
DOUBLE DOWN ON INSTEAD OF
MANY (BULLSEYE EXERCISE)
@leowid

12. @leowid
•Outer ring: What’s possible - brainstorm
all 19 traction channels there are
•Middle ring: What’s probable - Promote
3-4 most promising ideas and run tests
•Inner ring: What’s working - Focus solely
on the 1 channel that’s working
—> Marketing flywheel
HOW TO FIND YOUR ONE CHANNEL THAT WORKS
http://tractionbook.com by Gabriel Weinberg, founder of DuckDuckGo

13. 6. SEEK CONFLICTING ADVICE
FROM AT LEAST 2 MENTORS ON
YOUR BIGGEST DECISIONS
@leowid

14. 7. EXPERIMENT WITH
CHANGING YOUR PRICES
OFTEN AS YOU ADD VALUE
@leowid

15. DOUBLING BUFFER’S PRICING
Free
$0/mo
Standard
$5/mo
Max
$20/mo
Awesome Plan
$10/mo
Business
$50-250/mo
Enterprise
Starts at $300/
mo
@leowid

16. 8. USE THE LEAN STARTUP
METHODOLOGY FOR EVERY
FEATURE YOU BUILD,
ESPECIALLY POST LAUNCH
@leowid

17. @leowid

18. @leowid
CREATE A PROCESS AROUND IT THAT INCLUDES
• Hypothesis for your feature
• A customer development phase
• An (InVision), clickable prototype to get feedback
• A roll-out of a working version that embarrasses you slightly

19. 9. WHEN YOU GET AN OFFER TO SELL,
LIST THE EXPERIENCES OF PERSONAL
GROWTH YOU MIGHT MISS
@leowid

20. @leowid
WHAT WE’D MISS OUT ON LEARNING
• How to serve tens of thousands of customers
• How to let someone go
• How to hire key positions and train leaders
• How to acquire another company
• How to raise bigger funding rounds
• How to recover from a hack

21. @leowid
“STOP THINKING ABOUT MAKING A
MILLION DOLLARS AND START THINKING
ABOUT SERVING A MILLION PEOPLE”
DHARMESH SHAH
FOUNDER & CTO AT HUBSPOT

22. 10. COMING SOON!
open.buffer.com
@leowid

23. @leowid
buffer.com/transparency
leo@buffer.com
@LeoWid

24. @leowid
THANKS!