A Record-Breaking Start to 2025

Welcome to the February 2025 edition of Buffer’s Bottom Line!

If January is any indication, we’re in for a BIG year.  We didn’t just kick off 2025—we launched it like a rocket. 🚀

January brought our biggest surge in growth in years—in some cases, all-time records. Our top indicators soared, revenue climbed, and we posted the largest cash increase in a single month since March 2020. 

Not bad for the first 31 days of the year. Let’s break it all down.

 January 2025 at a glance

✔️ All-time best signup month (123K+ new users)

✔️ $1.703M revenue—highest since 2021

✔️ $370K cash growth—biggest month since 2020

✔️ $64K net income—10th profitable month in a row

✔️ No more burn rate—cash flow positive

Breaking it down: what’s driving growth?

💥 A record month for signups and activations

• 123,111 new signups – Our best signup month in Buffer’s history (👋 welcome, everyone!)
• 54,166 activations – An increase of 23% month-over-month. 
• 5,000 new paying customers – Our best month in this category since 2018.
• $46K increase in MRR – Our third-highest ever.

So, what’s behind the surge? A mix of smarter acquisition, sticky product updates, and some seasonal tailwinds:

• Blog-driven signups jumped by over 9% as refreshed content drove stronger engagement.
• Paid marketing delivered a record month in new customers while maintaining an efficient Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC).
• Our new Streaks feature kept users engaged and coming back.
• January’s natural SaaS boom helped bring in fresh energy and new customers.

💰 Where the money went: smart investments

Even with increased spending, we stayed profitable and strengthened our financial position. 

Here’s where we invested in January:

• 11K increase in Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) – Higher merchant fees, thanks to all those new signups.
• $31K in employee expenses – Investing in team transitions to support our evolving priorities.
• $20K in payroll taxes – Thanks to those annual U.S. tax caps resetting.
• $20K in tax expenses – Setting aside dollars for projected 2025 profitability.
• Profit-sharing begins! – We’re now allocating 15% of net income, on each monthly profit and loss (P&L), for year-end team bonuses.

💵 Let’s talk cash: A big shift in our financial story

Let’s take a moment to talk about one of the biggest changes at Buffer: we no longer have a burn rate.

For the past few years, we’ve tracked our cash runway—measuring how long our reserves would last. But here’s the thing: our declining cash balance was never just about spending more than we earned.

At Buffer, we’ve always believed that our numbers tell a story—one that reveals not just our performance but also what we truly value. When it came to our cash, we made deliberate choices to invest in what matters most.

Rather than sitting on reserves, we strategically allocated $1.475M over the past two years to:

• Provide liquidity for investors who helped fund Buffer’s journey.
• Offer buybacks for early team members, ensuring those who built Buffer had the opportunity to realize the value of their contributions.

Yes, there were months when operating expenses exceeded revenue. But those fluctuations weren’t the primary driver of our cash decline—our strategic investments were.

And here’s the result: Despite these significant commitments, we ended January 2025 with more cash in the bank than January 2024 effectively eliminating our cash burn rate based on a 12 month horizon.

This wasn’t about quick fixes. We tightened where needed, doubled down on high-impact areas, and proved that profitability and transparency can go hand in hand.

So, goodbye, runway tracking. 👋 We‘re onto bigger things. 

Looking ahead: what’s next?

January proved we’re building serious momentum. Now, it’s time to see where we can go from here.

Balancing the books until next time,

The Buffer Finance Team (Jenny, Kyle & Suzanne)