Joel is a true inspiration for me as I’ve seen him rise to world-class domination from his humble beginnings in my hometown Birmingham. He’s a tech genius who created social media tool Buffer in 2010 which has millions of users worldwide and at time of writing has surpassed one billion posts. Joel openly declares himself as an introvert who needs time to reflect and energise after a few hours of any social engagement, feeling overwhelmed amongst large groups of people. This is one of the reasons why he chose to scale his business as a distributed team across the globe where every employee of the company works from remote locations and they commit to a high level of transparency with their clients by publishing every employee’s salary in the company.
Joel is a well-known name in Silicon Valley where he spends most of his time building the company, however, unlike his financially-driven friends, Joel has always put happiness first and emphasises how important it is to know yourself and set new norms for tech companies. He was criticised for committing to running a ‘totally transparent’ company. Joel’s open-book management style involves sharing sensitive data with employees with the belief that it will encourage loyalty and help them do their jobs effectively.
Joel shared his learnings with me:
- He is a firm believer in openness and feels it makes a CEO of a private company more accountable for the company’s operations which are under the scrutiny of the public eye.
- He wanted to prove that remote teams can work without affecting company culture- something he has succeeded at managing for six years but he quickly admits that the moment the team grows beyond 40 employees, it is too difficult to manage people across different time zones and keep them engaged in the company’s mission. He declares that a strong team is built on the human face-to-face connection so he emphasises the need for three team retreats per year.
- Joel revealed the fifty books that changed his business which he also shared with Business Insider here.
- Don’t chase fast growth as you lose the company culture and will eventually fall out of love with the company you founded.
- Every startup founder should know what they want to get out of their company. If it’s an exit after 3-5 years, several rounds of funding are required to increase valuation and give a good return on investment through a sale of the company. If you love what you do, then have a longer-term view of ten years, because that’s when you experience the greatest learnings as a CEO. Joel turned down a tempting multimillion-dollar offer on his company when he realised he didn’t want to start a new company and work for years to reach the same stage of valuation.
- Exercise is a keystone habit which spurs good habits in all areas of your life, so commit to a daily habit of exercise. Joel’s preference is being outdoors in nature instead of being stuck in a gym.
- Don’t focus on A/B testing in the first year of your startup, as you won’t have the volume of traffic you need to obtain statistically significant data to influence your company’s strategy. Just go with one idea at a time and seek feedback from all your users. Speak to customers; if it’s not working, move on to the next idea.
- Joel believes in ‘turning management on its head’. He allows the people on the ground- those who deal directly with customers to make the key decisions and advise management on why they made the decision. Also in recruiting a new team member, Joel asks the person who will be working with the hiree, to be involved in the interview for recruitment as they will ultimately need to co-operate and will have hands-on knowledge of the daily role of that position being recruited. Joel’s key criteria for recruiting: recruit positive happy people who are go-getters, fit the company culture and demonstrate high levels of self-control to work remotely.
