We’ve always had teammates who have side projects in addition to working at Buffer. Working on new projects, building, experimenting, and self-improvement are built into our DNA as a company. So it's quite common to be speaking with someone only to find out they own a small business outside of Buffer that started as a side project. We also have several published authors and many apps built by Buffer teammates.
We believe this entrepreneurial spirit and creative drive not only enhances our individual growth but also enriches our culture at Buffer. These passionate pursuits outside of work bring fresh perspectives, innovative thinking, and diverse skill sets back to our team.
In the spirit of celebrating these endeavors, we've compiled the blogs, businesses, books, and apps created by Buffer teammates. We hope they inspire you as much as they inspire us.
The 35 side projects the Buffer team is working on
Here’s what our team works on outside of work. Hopefully you might spot some cool side project ideas for yourself, or check out some of the things our team works on.
Apps
Andy: Alpenglow, F1 Calendar, Starglow
- Alpenglow: An app to check sunrise, sunset and golden hour times as well as quality predictions. Also sends out notification reminders and with Alpenglow Pro will notify you if the next forecast is looking good compared to your desired threshold. The app can be doing on both iOS and Android, often featured by Apple and includes over 35+ localizations.
- F1 Calendar: Taking over the development from a few friends, I rebuilt F1 Calendar as an easy way to check Formula 1 Session times in your timezone as well as making the data available via Calendar subscriptions. The site has been going for 14 years and we now have additional sites for F1 Academy, F2, F3, Formula E, IndyCar, MotoGP.
- Starglow: Essentially Alpenglow but for viewing the night sky. It’s been requested quite a bit from users and friends. It displays weather parameters for each hour, focused mostly on cloud coverage and visibility which are key to view the night sky clearly. The app is currently on the App Store for pre order, aiming to release it in April.
David: Contain
Contain is a browser-based, accessibility-first design tool. Current UI design tools like Figma and Sketch are great for visual explorations but become cumbersome with responsive design, components, animations, and user interactions. Website builder tools push too much complexity on users, and generate bloated, inaccessible code. Contain solves this by living in the browser, meaning everything you design is built with accessible HTML and CSS. This brings the design process into the final medium, making responsive design, container queries, and user interactions possible while cutting much of the waste from the design process.
Eric: PlayCraft
Platform for everyone to create web games and share it to their friends in seconds! We’ve built our own modular framework to create games really quickly for PixelBrawlGames. With today’s AI capabilities, we’re using this same framework to create new games with a single prompt.
Martin: Palabreja, Voices.ink
- Palabreja: A NYTimes Spelling Bee Game clone in Spanish.
- Voices.ink: Voices.ink is a cutting-edge application that streamlines the note-taking process by using AI to record, transcribe, and analyse audio, summarizing it directly to your Notion account. It identifies key points and actionable items, ensuring detailed yet concise notes.
Mike: Carpeta
Carpeta is a project-management tool for interior designers, architects, and industrial designers to help them centralize all their conversations, budgets, and files, and better manage their time while managing their projects.
Freelance
Karinna: Pilates Instructor
Karinna is a certified Pilates & Lagree Instructor, and teaches classes in her spare time.
Martin: Two Emotions
Street & Travel Photography
Mitra: Social media manager for The Used, Thrice, Dustin Kensrue, and robbietheused
Mitra is the social media manager for bands/artists The Used, Story of the Year, Thrice, Dustin Kensrue, and robbietheused. She’s been working with these bands since 2017.
Mitra: Mitra Mehvar Photography
Mitra does live music photography, primarily for rock bands.
Music
Brandon: Kid Lightbulbs
Brandon writes, produces & releases music under the name Kid Lightbulbs from his small home studio. He’s released 3 albums under this name, the most recent being RUINED CASTLE in December 2024.
Nonprofits
Amanda: SheSharp
Amanda runs SheSharp: a non-profit foundation based in The Netherlands that makes it easier for all women and non-binary people to enter, stay, and grow in the tech industry. We host events, facilitate mentorship programmes and give out funding through scholarships, and a plethora of other initiatives.
Kateryna: TallinnJS
It is a technical community for JavaScript developers in Tallinn
Sofia: Nosotras Hablamos Design
Nosotras Hablamos Design is a community where Spanish-speaking women come together to practice English and explore the world of design through engaging conversations and workshops.
Small Businesses
Andy: Woof Warehouse
Andy works on a Shopify store that sells dog bandanas and accessories. He focuses primarily on the tech side of things, customizing the store, plugins, and branding, while also caring for and photographing the adorable pups.
Mike S: Otter, WTC
- Otter: Mike co-founded Otter. Based in Spain, Otter helps people make custom furniture by connecting them to local carpenter’s that suit their needs.
- WTC: A hat brand 🧢 with statements designed for creatives, entrepreneurs, and those who embrace a life of thinking and doing business with purpose – more designs coming soon!
Mitra: The Torshi Dough
Mitra bakes sourdough bread at her home cottage bakery
Nathan: Riftgate
Nathan runs a brick-and-mortar store at 5412 S 900 E Murray, UT 84107.
Podcasts & Writing
Andy: Personal blog
Andy keeps a personal blog where he's written about App Clips in Alpenglow and plans to share more transparent updates about Alpenglow in the future.
Diego: Pink and Her Cast
Diego and his partner launched this book, which his partner wrote and illustrated himself. Diego did the editing, formatting, and cover design (+ translation since the book also exists in Spanish). They wanted to create a book with a valuable lesson for children: That sometimes life will throw curve-balls our way, and that even though we might feel like we are the only ones going through it, we are not alone, and others might actually be feeling the same way or going through similar situations. Fun fact: Their 8-year-old nephew did the Title and appears in the credits.
Hailley: Personal blog & weekly newsletter
Hailley writes a weekly newsletter about the systems she uses in work and life; she also writes pieces for her personal blog, where she shares more in-depth looks at those systems and her career growth advice.
Jess: Pinecone Papers
A blog about how to mindfully journal and track symptoms when you have a chronic illness. Working on a downloadable printable journal that will be out later this year.
Joe: Practical Jetpack Compose, CI/CD for Android with GitHub Actions, Practical KMP
- Practical Jetpack Compose: A book to teach Android Developers how to build apps using Jetpack Compose, Googles new UI framework for Android!
- CI/CD for Android with GitHub Actions: A book to teach Android developers how to automate their testing and release process using GitHub Actions.
- Practical KMP: A book to to teach developers how to build apps using Kotlin Multiplatform, the framework from Jetbrains that allows for code sharing between Android & iOS!
Joel: Newsletter
From time to time, Joel sends out a newsletter with links he's saved, what he highlights in books, new and noteworthy at Buffer, something that's been on his mind, and a general update.
Kirsti: SA Tech Marketers Podcast and Community
The South Africa Tech Marketer’s podcast aims to help spotlight fantastic talent we have in South Africa, and the community is set up to help us connect and grow. It’s sponsored by a company called The Global Talent Co, which is effectively a recruitment agency for SA marketing talent. They help South Africans get remote jobs — it’s neat. 😄
Lexi: The Burden of Joy
Lexi’s debut novel is available from Rejection Letters, an indie press.
Mike: Building Better
A weekly podcast where we reflect on building better businesses and relationships inside the hectic startup and digital business world.
Nate: Almost Heretical
A podcast by Nate (a former pastor) and his wife Shelby (a Bible scholar). They reimagine and revisit the Bible for those deconstructing Christianity.
Tami: Content-as-a-Career
Content-as-a-Career is a newsletter that shares tips on how to grow a personal brand that can secure global opportunities, along with a jobs board to relevant Marketing and Creative roles. Shared on Fridays.
YouTube Channel
David: Build UX
Build UX is a YouTube channel on focused on accessible design and development. Past series have focused on building out design ideas from Dribble in Figma and code to be accessible, performant, and responsive. Current videos focus on shorter accessibility tutorials that span design and development, as well as test-driven development (TDD) techniques used to build resilient user interfaces.
Honorable mention: side projects that turned full-time
You might be wondering if these side projects ever turn into full-time businesses – they do! We've had several teammates start a side project at Buffer only to leave to pursue it full-time. When this happens, we are beyond excited for that person. It's immensely gratifying to watch someone build something and see it succeed.
So, here are former Buffer teammates who left to pursue their side projects turned businesses, give them a follow or some support!
Over to You
We’d love to hear from you! Are you working on any side projects? Feel free to drop a link in the comments! If you are, how do you make time for them and stay motivated, are you working on more than one?
