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Comment by ethank | Hacker News Reader

Buffer is similar to a lot of companies that are obsessed with being companies rather than about the products they make.

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I thought similar things after reading this:

"We will be a long-term, sustainable, fully remote team that works hard on mission-driven work. We will be the most reliable social media tool in the market. And we will continue to push the boundaries of transparency, culture and freedom in the team."

The first and last sentence has nothing to do with the product, and the product statement doesn't even hint at what it does... just that it does it well!

Yeah after a while it seems like the classic case of taking themselves too seriously. I was like "Chill" you guys are developing tools to tweet later not saving lives or anything.

Not every company has to disrupt, revolutionize, save the US/world (ok the last one was a rant about super hero movies)

Employees are an audience, maybe the primary audience, for this message. Buffer has collected employees that prioritize this sort of transparency and emotional sharing. Which makes the message seem apt.

It's less this and the fact that their radical transparency is something that resonates with certain folks who will buy the product because of it, regardless of whether it checks every box on their feature list.

For some companies, they buy software because they like the sales guy who took them out for a steak dinner.

For other companies, they buy software because they like the culture and philosophy of people making it. This is why companies like Basecamp, Buffer, etc. can keep operating the way that they do.

Isn't it for most companies you buy their product because the product is good? Radical concept I know.

Most products I've seen are "good enough" and have trade-offs with their competition. Infrequently have I seen a product that's head and shoulders above.

So companies get the checkboxes in features, then when I'm deciding between the finalists, stuff like this is a tie-break.

In other words, company culture is a differentiator, especially in a commodity product market.

I disagree on this. The companies culture is only a matter in terms of how it manifests within the product itself and the things around the product. It isn't THE product.

I don't buy a product because their CEO's salary is public and I can see what I'd make there in a hugely arbitrary / convoluted form based salary metric. I buy because the product is good and support is good.

Yeah tend to agree - if we look at the evolution of the product over the past 3 years, as a user I can't see much in the way of innovation or improvement. They've added Pinterest, but there's little else that I see - did I miss it?

Are you using the free version?

Actually, they're somewhat of the opposite of this.

Hah, well said.

PS hi Ethan

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