Joel Gascoigne

"Cheers dude!" - Joel Gascoigne

"It's definitely on the way.. ;)" - Joel Gascoigne

"Totally agree Cec, both of these aspects are really important. Thanks!" - Joel Gascoigne

"Wow, thanks Gregory! I love that StudyHacks post so much, I've read it before and I think I'll keep going back to it." - Joel Gascoigne

"Fantastic point Ben, I completely agree. I guess we could also say, similarly, that being pointed in the right direction and reacting to unexpected things alone won't cut it ;) There are many factors involved in making massive progress and succeeding, and it's very hard to write a post on just one of the factors, but here I've tried to focus on reminding myself and possibly others of the importance of the hard work aspect. Towards the end I also mentioned loving what you do, which I think is vital too. Completely agree about open-mindedness, reflection, course-correction and purpose as important aspects too. > "run like hell in your new direction" Yep, that's what we must do! Another thought: we won't always be correct, but we should run anyway and know that we will need to adjust. Let's not be paralysed by not having complete information." - Joel Gascoigne

"I love that Jordi! Just Buffered it :-)" - Joel Gascoigne

"Great example! Love it." - Joel Gascoigne

"Great point dan. If possible, I think it is great to assume you will never have a co-founder (or will not have one for a long time), but to also be open minded when meeting and talking to people. This might seem like two opposing ideas, but I don't feel like it has to be. The key thing for me was to accept that I will do whatever needs to be done myself, without delaying progress by waiting for someone who can do marketing. By doing marketing as best I could, when Leo did come along be could quickly see the marketing I was doing so far, and easily imagine doing much more and better marketing. Without any marketing, it would have been harder to imagine the steps to take to improve." - Joel Gascoigne

"Love the "Lean Marketing" technique, it's something I think Leo has been doing perhaps without realising. Leo - there are certainly marketing ideas we tried and then let go, I guess these were the small cheap tests Giles is describing here. Good stuff." - Joel Gascoigne

"Yes, I think you raise a good point there. I've had a 50/50 partnership fail in the past, but the reasons for failure are certainly not limited to the fact it was 50/50, there were plenty of other problems!" - Joel Gascoigne

"I totally agree! :)" - Joel Gascoigne

"Totally agree with you here Calvin, that's a really hard part of the co-founder relationship. I think with a validated idea and some traction, someone coming on board and getting anywhere between 25% and 45% is getting a fantastic stake. If the stage of the startup is pre-validation (still in the idea phase) then it is much more difficult." - Joel Gascoigne

"Hi Sumit, great question. I think that if you leave it too long it can be bad, but I think the benefits of having it online and gaining insights from potential users and customers by engaging in conversations via email outweighs the risks of having it out too soon. So I would lean towards putting it out very early. As an insight, the "coming soon" page for Buffer was up for 7 weeks before the first version of the product was ready for people to use. Let me know how you get on :-)" - Joel Gascoigne

"Yes, that's right Josh! Heading back to the UK today, and off to HK on the 28th :)" - Joel Gascoigne

"I love this Eric, what a great use of iDoneThis which I am guessing is unexpected for Walter and team. Awesome :)" - Joel Gascoigne

"Hi Jay! I couldn't agree more with you, I think when you're building a startup, work and life are so intertwined that you need to spend as much time on your own happiness as well as your startup in order to be truly successful." - Joel Gascoigne

"Thanks for taking the time to chime in with a comment here Deb! I think you're absolutely right, getting funding for a side business is certainly very hard. For us, we were a side business only for the first 4-5 months, and then we were full-time on Buffer for another 5 months before we got our first small amount of funding from the AngelPad incubator in San Francisco. We've certainly had some challenges scaling up with the demand as you say. It's a nice problem to have in many respects, but sometimes it can mean we struggle to keep up with the support emails and community contact. I'm happy to let you know we're in the midst of raising a larger amount of funding, and we're certainly entering Phase II. With being in different locations (UK initially, US for the last 6 months, soon Hong Kong), we sometimes struggle to respond as quickly as we'd like to, but we almost always respond within a few hours and certainly try to make sure it's not more than 24 hours. Thanks for your support..." - Joel Gascoigne

"Hi Kevin! Aardvark are such a great example of this. I had them in mind and in the end forgot to mention them in the article itself, but they really are one of the best examples of this method working very well. Thanks!" - Joel Gascoigne

"I agree with you here Lavi, it's important to have in mind where it may lead. In my own experience, I find that part much easier than the "quality time" and wanted to make the point of just how important that "quality time" is at the early stage. Thanks!" - Joel Gascoigne

"I love this Kat, great to hear the things you're doing. I think that added personal touch could definitely be the thing that sets you apart and gets you into the market. Once you're in there and there are signs it is working well, you may have to adapt these methods, but at that point it will be more of a necessity and if you did it from the start you might never get into the market. That's been my experience. All the best with Outsmart :-)" - Joel Gascoigne

""once success is achieved run hard towards scaling, when appropriate" Absolutely agree with this point Ed. If there are signs something is working, take advantage of that and make it blow up. That's certainly what I'm trying to do with Buffer :-)" - Joel Gascoigne

"Great to hear from you Scott, thanks for the kind words! It's really good that you mention that as a company grows there are always new things that the company should do that fit this model of "not scaling". We've just hit a point where we need to try a few different user acquisition channels and just in the last 24 hours I've realised this is a perfect opportunity to cut down to the minimum and test the new channels in manual ways to validate them before investing further time and resources. Really appreciate the reminder on this! Thanks for stopping by :-)" - Joel Gascoigne

"Totally agree with this Adii. On a similar note to believing your own business is the best in the world, I wrote once that I believe founders should treat their products as if they are finished. Although we will always continue to build additional features and improve the experience, if we don't believe that it is a finished product at every stage, it is going to be very hard to convince potential customers to use the product. Keep the great posts coming. That you continue when you have a newborn son is truly admirable. All the best :-)" - Joel Gascoigne

"Awesome mate! It takes guts to push it live. Just Buffered this post :-)" - Joel Gascoigne

"Totally understand Daniel, that's certainly a tricky situation. I guess the type of business may make a difference to some of these things, but I wonder whether in your case you could still do those two activities in smaller ways which certainly wouldn't scale but could test the waters for spending more. For example, could you hire contractors or freelancers part time and make it clear to them that you'll provide work as long as you have it? Also, could you try advertising methods which cost much less, perhaps guerrilla marketing or heavy use of social media? Thanks for stopping by Daniel (especially as someone who uses both OnePage and Buffer! thanks so much for the support)" - Joel Gascoigne

"Thanks for reposting this Simon, and it's really great to hear your perspective on the topic!" - Joel Gascoigne

"That's definitely true Cec. What I've realised is that the time I take out to reflect on things can become really important and can help me move even faster. So I'm going to try and make sure I take some time every few days now. Thanks :)" - Joel Gascoigne

"I love that TED talk eabi! Great to hear, glad the post was useful for you :)" - Joel Gascoigne

"That makes sense, yep. Nicely put! Haha, indeed, that's definitely a weakness of mine. A blessing and a curse." - Joel Gascoigne