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The Only Thing That Matters
Welcome to "The Only Things That Matters", where we deconstruct the path to product-market fit of successful founders and extract the principles and frameworks behind their success so that you can apply them too.
The Only Thing That Matters
Bootstrapping to $20M with Amir Salihefendic (Todoist)
What if you could build a leading brand in a highly competitive market and grow to $20M in annual revenue without raising venture capital?
In this episode, I chat with Amir Salihefendic, the brain behind Doist and its popular task management app, Todoist.
Amir reveals his journey of bootstrapping Doist from a side project to a full-blown business. He shares his experience of assembling a top-notch team on a shoestring budget and underscores the importance of a remote-first strategy.
Amir also discusses Twist, Doist’s innovative communication tool, and its potential to revolutionize asynchronous work.
Amir's story sheds light on the tech trends that have shaped Doist’s evolution, from the rise of web and mobile apps to the transition from B2C to B2B.
Discover the origins of Todoist as a personal solution and how understanding user needs can drive a product’s success.
Amir provides a candid look at the unpredictable market adoption of products like Twist and shares valuable insights into the iterative nature of entrepreneurship, emphasizing the need to adapt and experiment constantly.
Throughout our conversation, Amir talks about the gritty details of maintaining momentum and the pivotal moments that directed Doist's focus toward full-time development.
He shares the importance of recognizing product-market fit signals, the challenges of growing a passionate and unique team, and the strategies that have ensured Doist’s financial stability without succumbing to the pressures of becoming a billion-dollar company.
Join us for an enriching discussion on the principles behind Doist’s sustained growth and success.
We paid like very, very poorly because there was like not a lot of money. You need to like be able to convince people and then you kind of need to live up to that conviction. What I was good at is kind of like, you know, getting some really smart people convinced that this is worth you know doing, and then they had like a lot of fun doing that. What we did in the beginning you know like not many companies were remote first, like working across borders. Like we were just, like you know, different. We had, like you know, people in Russia, in, like you know, portugal I was in Chile at the time, you know so like there was like just like weirdness, and I think that also like attracts people because like you're just like doing something that not many other people are doing.
Ariel Camus:Welcome everyone. This is Ariel Camus and you're listening to the Only Thing that Matters, the podcast where I interview successful founders to deconstruct their path to product market fit and uncover the principles and frameworks behind their success. My guest today is Amir Salihefendic, the founder and CEO of Doist, the company behind the legendary task management app Todoist. Amir has built a lasting and prominent brand in one of the most competitive markets, all while bootstrapping and maintaining a fully distributed, asynchronous team. In today's episode, we will explore Amir's journey with Doist, learn about the company's operations with over 100 team members globally and how they have achieved over $20 million in annual recurring revenue as a fully bootstrapped company. We will also discuss the challenges and strategies of managing a distributed team and delve into the creation and impact of their underappreciated communication tool, twist. Join us as we uncover the secrets to building a sustainable bootstrap company in a highly competitive space. I hope you find this conversation as enlightening as I did and without further ado, Amir Salihefendic. Amir, thank you so much for being here with us today.
Ariel Camus:I've been looking forward to this episode for weeks. In fact, we've spent a lot of time together chatting about our companies, our stories, but I hope today we can get into much more depth of how you got to build this amazing company. I have a lot of respect for what you've done. You have managed to build a very long-lasting company that has such a huge presence as a brand worldwide. You have done this in one of the most competitive, crowded markets.
Ariel Camus:You've done it bootstrapping, without raising capital, with your team being fully distributed, fully async. I mean, half of that would already be difficult to do and you keep adding stuff and somehow you make it sound or you make it seem like it's not that hard, although I know there was so many years of hard work. But I really want to get to know, like, how did this happen? How did you make this happen? But before we get into that, could you share for those of the people listening that might not know as much as I do about Dois what is Dois? And maybe a little bit about how did the company start?
Amir Salihefendic:Yeah, it's amazing to be here. I'm really looking forward for the conversation and digging deep into the principles. Yeah, so a bit about me. I'm the founder and CEO of Doist, so we have been operating for at least like 10 years as a company and I like started to do this, which is like one of the most popular task management apps in the world in 2007. So it's like 14 years on this journey and, yeah, it has been, you know, quite like ups and downs and everything in between, and you know, and I'm still having a lot of fun.
Amir Salihefendic:So that's a very critical aspect. Yeah, and we have like about 100 people spread around the world. We have passed like 20 million in the ARR and you know, ambition and appetite is building something much larger than this, and basically, what I focus on, like you know, like building simple yet powerful tools that empower people. So that's something that I've been passionate about for a long time. Many inside tourists are passionate about that as well, and I think there's like so much opportunity in this space. Yeah, so that's kind of like a very broad, broad view of you know what we're doing and what I'm doing.
Ariel Camus:Yeah, you have two products in the company, the one that everyone knows about to do, and then you also have my, one of my favorite products in the world, that is highly under appreciated. That's twist. Um, I want to focus more today on on the on the to do it side of things. Just because it's such a crowded market and and I want to ask you uh, maybe an an obvious question to you, but, like, in which way is to do is different, and how does that allow it to compete in this such complex, competitive market?
Amir Salihefendic:yeah, um, you know, yeah, we do have like another product called twist. Like we, we have been very passionate about that, but you know, I think, like, like we talked, talked about before, this uh like started. Like you know, like the world is not really ready yet for async and you know, we, we have the product. We're just waiting for people to figure out. Like you know, synchronous, like chat and one-liners, is not really how you build great communication, but you know, we are still not there yet. So you know, we are just, uh, yeah, I, I like to tell you the truth, like I will be very excited to return back to communication space and, like, really, you know, give just another goal, but right now, like of the company we are focused on to this because, you know, the product market is just so strong and the opportunity is so large that it's like very hard for us to prioritize Twist when we have something that's, like, you know, hot.
Ariel Camus:And why is to do it so hot? Like, how is it that after like 14, 15 years of building this product without capital, you have managed to make it stand out so much? Why is it different?
Amir Salihefendic:Yeah, you know like I read somewhere like that. You know like getting to product market fit is like catching, you know, lighting in a bottle. So like once you catch that, you really need to focus on like keeping it in the bottle. And I think, like with today's, you know, there hasn't been like ups and downs but like we always know what the priority is. Like we are super passionate. You know I probably use like today's for most days the last 14 years.
Amir Salihefendic:You know many on the team feels the same. There's like a lot of passion and then also like people are super excited about it as well. So it's basically like a flywheel where you have like very excited users. You build them, you know, more exciting stuff, they get even more excited and just like a flywheel and that's kind of like. You know, like we have like tried to define what is our flywheel and it's kind of like building useful stuff for people. You know, because that's kind of the core driver. So you do that, you get more customers and then you basically get more resources to invest into building more useful stuff. And that's basically been the formula since the beginning. You know, like one of the reasons why it got some traction is because it was useful for people and people were very passionate about it.
Ariel Camus:Yeah, why can't someone come with a lot of venture capital and just spend more money trying to, you know, steal the customers away or get the new customers or build more features, or build better features, like, why can't, why doesn't that allow you to do that that other people cannot replicate?
Amir Salihefendic:You know, I mean, we have had some very heavy like funded companies in our space, like including, like Wunderlist, which I think sold for $200 million to Microsoft and got killed in the process. We had a lot of competition. They just died out after a while. And why? If this was about capital, then you will basically have only very rich companies competing everything away. Um, so that's maybe the beautiful part as well. It's kind of like.
Amir Salihefendic:It's kind of like you know it requires art and like finding like this, you know, lightning and capturing in the bottle, uh, that that that is very, very difficult even with a lot of capital. So, so actually, capital like it makes it maybe a bit easier or much easier to do that, but there's like no guarantee. And then also another aspect as well it's kind of like this is freaking hard Like so we have seen this with Twist. Like Twist does not have the same product market fit as Todoist and even like it's almost the same people that have worked on it. You know we got into that with a lot more capital and we have invested a ton like millions into twist. We have had some of our best people work on this, you know, and still like there's no guarantee that you're actually going to get a product out that has product market fit, um yeah. So I think you know that's a beautiful part and the hard part is kind of like you know, building products that really resonate with people. Yeah.
Ariel Camus:Yeah, and that it's interesting that you have the two experiences happening simultaneously with Twist and Todoist, because you get to see how the exact same team, putting the same resources, the same effort, the same hard work, doesn't necessarily deliver the same level of success, the same level of product market fit. So I wonder if we can maybe try to go back, travel back in time to the early days of Todoist and identify what was that initial lighting that you're able to capture and I don't know. Maybe we can extract ways in which people can extract that type of lighting nowadays in a different sector or different, you know, opportunity and maybe I think I have the feeling that to explain that, it could also be useful to frame the competitive landscape where Todoist sits. Would you say that a company like Asana is a competitor of Todoist?
Amir Salihefendic:I mean indirectly but not really. Maybe with our new team workspaces product we are more a competitor to them. But to this as a whole, most of the like real product market fit is in the individual use case, like empowering the individual. Um, that's where we are really trying to like create the, the space for ourselves.
Ariel Camus:Uh yeah, makes sense it's. It's the best model.
Amir Salihefendic:Is, for the most part, uh, b2c right yeah, and we are getting much better at b2b as well. Like that's uh, yeah, but you know, historically it has been mostly b2c. Yeah, but you're like traveling back in time. Um, you know, I started like to do this as a student, uh, and there's like zero ambition of, like you know, starting a startup or like you know, uh, like, or even even this being very big or being a company. There was none of that. It was basically I created the tool for myself and then I thought it could be useful for others. So that's mainly the first pattern. It's kind of like scratch your own itch, be your own user. Know, like, uh, yeah, scratch your own itch, be your own user, because I think, in fact, like the problem becomes much easier to manage if you actually understand it like fully. Um, I think it's very hard to actually build like products for others where you're not the user. Um, so that's maybe the first um, the the first like pattern, the first pattern.
Amir Salihefendic:The second pattern is, I think, a lot of really successful companies ride on waves. So the thing is, when I started to do this in 2007, web apps were just getting started, mobile apps were just getting started and they were quite primitive as well. So actually today is maybe one of the first real web apps where you have a real application like SaaS app that you can use and it's super dynam, dynamical. You know it also uses like like the fact and they use like modern technology such as like Ajax. Probably right now like people don't really know what it is, but you know Ajax is just like you know, dynamical. Like you do a request and you just change one part of the page. You don't like change the whole, like page, and that makes it like much more dynamical the whole experience so that's something it sounds.
Ariel Camus:It sounds so obvious like every app has that every day, every app has that nowadays. But, like, like you're right, 10, 15 years ago that was not a thing. I remember building the first like lines of like this asynchronous request with ajax and uh, it was magical to see that happening.
Amir Salihefendic:Yeah, yeah, and even something like as well like another way we wrote was the mobile wave. So it really like opened up like a huge distribution channels for us and really like that was like a very, very critical change that we did Like at some point. Like we built, like built some amazing mobile apps and we made that transition, yeah, so if you're starting out, I think starting out on a wave that is starting out or forming and then riding that wave is super powerful. So those are maybe like in the early, like patterns that I can see, uh, that are critical, uh, and, of course, like there's like no guarantee that this will be a success.
Amir Salihefendic:so something to note is, like you know, we were like one of the first maybe like larger companies, maybe over 50 people, to become like remote first and asynchronous first, and we kind of like became to like be preachers of this very early on um. And then also we started twist in 2014 or like or 17 I'm actually unsure where we started, but we started like way before the pandemic, you know, and you would say, okay, like you have been in this space for a long time and like Twist had so much potential to grow like huge, when everybody you know was forced to work from home and that didn't happen, you know, because the market you know moved in a very different direction, like moved into Zoom calls and Slack chats, yeah. So, like this, I also think like even if you're early in the wave and you kind of identify like a need or, like you know, a market, there's no guarantee that you're actually going to build the product that satisfies it, or like, yeah, you know, so that's why like you know it's a fun aspect of our job.
Amir Salihefendic:Like there's no certainty, like it's all like experiments yeah.
Ariel Camus:No, there is no certainty, but's all like experiments. Yeah, no, there is no certainty, but there are definitely patterns that start emerging, right like the scratching your own itch. It's a very obvious one. It's not the only way, but it's definitely a way to de-risk the, the bet that you're making on starting a business. The second one you're mentioning is writing a wave. Um, and it also sounds like you didn't just write away, you wrote a wave. You were also making the most out of it.
Ariel Camus:You were not just like trying to like play with the concept of like dynamic web apps or like mobile apps, like you went all in and you made them a core part of your strategy to take the most advantage and to position the company as a key player, taking advantage of those things. And, of course, then with something like Twist building software for remote async companies maybe I guess what I, in my own experience, like using Twist. It's a product that is not as as obvious to see the benefit. Once you start using it for a while, you realize there is no way I can go back to like slack, but it's not that obvious because it takes some time and it takes a whole team to be on board to try to like change the way you work, and that takes some time right. And I think the pandemic I agree with you gave us a moment of hope where we thought that, even though there was a lot of difficult stuff going on, companies were going to be forced to have to try these new ways of working. But I don't think maybe Twist was so obviously better at face value compared to something like Slack, so a lot of companies decided not to transition something like slack. So a lot of companies decided not to transition. And and now that we are back in the you know, remote is not forced, it's not. The need to change is not not that big.
Ariel Camus:But I agree with you that the time will probably come and and I think you're doing in that way something that is very interesting, which is building a company that is here to last right, you're not building a company to try to sell it very quickly, and that means that when the time is right, you will be able to like turn that into an opportunity for some of the products and ideas that you have. But I also know and this is maybe more about the present than about the past, but now I guess we have a new wave. It's a wave of AI. Do you find yourself also trying to ride that wave, like you did with web apps and mobile apps, you know back in 2007? And if so, does it feel like you're back in the early days in that sense? What are you doing about it?
Amir Salihefendic:Yeah, I mean, that's a great question and I think a lot of you know like people are asking the same question, especially like founders, especially founders. Yeah, so, like I told you before this recording started, I'm super excited about this Meta Tree release, like Meta Lama Tree release that they did yesterday, and there's multiple reasons why this is very exciting. You know, it's kind of like an open model. You can run it on your own hardware. It's small and it's efficient and I think it opens up like the whole competitive landscape. So, like Meta will put like 16 billion per year or maybe even more in ai and they're giving almost all of this value away. You know, this is like really, really significant and, uh, there's like so much opportunity to take advantage of this. Uh, so something like you know, before yesterday, uh, so I can tell just how I looked at ai. Um, I was very excited. So I've actually done like some work. We have done some work as well inside, doing some this. I use it almost every day, uh like to kind of augment myself and my decision making and you're just like when you're coding, it's also amazing. Um, so there's like a lot of utility and something I think as well, this kind of like.
Amir Salihefendic:I do think with Meta, especially push, this becomes a commodity and I think maybe all apps will have some kind of like AI assistance inside them, so you can basically think about integrating chat GPT directly inside your app and you can use this. I mean, for instance, like for Twist, which is a communication, you can use it for summaries, for search, for filtering and like. The AI does not actually have to be super smart for this to be useful. It needs to be fast, it needs to have like some smartness in it, but you don't need like super intelligence and it will be like much, much better than what we have right now, because right now, like all of like the ranking, sorting, filtering algorithms are like very stupid, you know, like they are not very smart. They have like zero smartness in them. It's just like statistics, uh, and if you could just have like a bit of smartness so you can kind of, like you know, just see some threat and say, okay, this is actually critical for you because of this, or like even like knowing a bit about your context, that can also be super useful and same with today's discount, like you can actually integrate these like AI systems directly and I think like this is actually available for all, so like you don't need to be Microsoft to do your own co-pilot, and I don't think tech is very hard to actually do this, and I also think it's scalable and it's also not that expensive.
Amir Salihefendic:Yeah, so that's one wave that's currently opening up in this app system and we are definitely going to ride this yeah, like app, uh system and like we are definitely going to write this.
Amir Salihefendic:Yeah, and we want to be on the forefront and, like you know, create something where people are just like holy shit, like this is amazing. Uh, yeah, similar to you know, when, uh like people initially like used to do this in 2007, they were like amazed at how fast it was, because if you had like the old model, like old task management apps, like you need to reload the whole page and wait for it. You know, while, like in ajax world, you could just like add something and you would see it right away. You didn't need to wait. Like it made the whole experience like much, much better and same with ai, it's kind of like, you know, if you have products that have like intelligence in them and done like, it would be like night and day. Yeah, and maybe you're just starting out right now, like you know, I would definitely figure out, like, how do I ride like the AI way, because that's the new big wave, you know, and it's just starting up, so like there's so much opportunities.
Ariel Camus:Yeah, and it sounds like you do believe there is like a first mover competitive advantage if lighting strikes and you are in this, you know, and it sounds like you do believe there is like a first mover competitive advantage If lighting strikes and you are in this, you know wave and you're one of the first ones to use it well, to take advantage to create a better product, but you are the first ones then that allows you to capture something that can become somehow of a competitive advantage to continue growing and having a you know, a loyal, I guess fan base behind the product, correct?
Amir Salihefendic:Correct, correct, yeah, this said. You know, like I do think I mean there's many examples, but this has not been the case. You know. So, like it definitely helps to be early and but also like you need to be able to execute as well. You know, so just being early is not enough, like you need to be able to execute and keep with the wave. You know, because maybe, like somebody they should could be, like, you know, maybe you identify the wave, but then somebody comes with a lot more capital and a lot more like efficiency and just, you know, crushes you and like, uh, the wave is like bye-bye and you're just like stranded. Uh, yeah, and that is like maybe also a very common pattern. Uh is like, yeah, you really need to, like you know, get the wave, get on it and stay on it.
Ariel Camus:You know how. How did you stay back in 2008, 2009, 2010,. As more and more companies started integrating Ajax to create this? You know dynamic web apps and started launching iOS and Android apps? How did you manage to stay on top of the wave, to to remain kind of a leader in those areas?
Amir Salihefendic:You know, the honest question is, like I didn't, Like I actually like I had a pause, so I started this and I only worked on today's, like during the night. So I had like another job. I co-founded another company, I co-founded actually two other companies while I worked to do this during the night. And how do you actually do this? I think it's really difficult and I think it's difficult on different stages. In the beginning, you're like yourself or a few people. You really need to keep learning, keep improving. You know, keep shipping. So actually, if you look at like my shipping, like I ship stuff every day in 2007, 8 and 9, you know every day Like there was maybe very few exceptions where I didn't ship.
Ariel Camus:And that was when you were working at night on Todoist. Yes, yes. When did you start like full-time?
Amir Salihefendic:In 2011.
Ariel Camus:Yeah, okay.
Amir Salihefendic:Yeah. So actually, when I was in Startup Chile, that's where I actually at some point like started working on Todoist full-time, but before that, you know, it was just like yeah, like hobby, you know, like like, uh, yeah, like hobby. You know like, uh, for for myself, like hacking at night and uh, yeah, um, yeah, and the thing is also like it's so beautiful and that's also like some like sometimes I had like these mini projects myself where it's only myself, um, and you can go so fast, because there's like no bullshit, you know, it's just like. You see, okay, this is a feature I want to do. You just code it, you know, and you ship it. So that's also like something that's beautiful about. Like you know, single person companies are a few people. It's like you can move incredibly fast. There's like very little bureaucracy, yeah.
Ariel Camus:Okay, I'm super curious now to reconstruct that timeline and the details about it, if you allow me. You said that you started on your own at night in 2007. That happened while you were working on a couple of other things. 2011, you go full-time. When did you join Startup Chile? In 2010. 2010, perfect. So there we go with the bubble of well, since we're going to go all the way, we're going to go all the way Perfect, oh my God. I didn't know that one.
Amir Salihefendic:That's an amazing one. Wow, yeah, I have some funny ones.
Ariel Camus:So 2010,. You joined Startup Chile. What happened at that point? What changed that made you, I imagine, kind of drop the other projects and say I'm going to go all in full time with Todoist.
Amir Salihefendic:Yeah, I mean, the thing is like I got a lot more experience. I tried to actually build another like for Startup Chile. I applied with VDUIST, which was like team task or project management app, and then I really struggled a lot to get like some traction, you know. And then I saw like holy shit, like I have, like you know, like I think maybe I had 100,000 users on Todoist and many I had like maybe like a thousand $2,000 income per month. I was like but I'm like, but I think like starting this other company, let's just go to stuff that works and like improve this, yeah.
Ariel Camus:And actually let me ask you something here yeah, did someone give you the advice that you should go for, like you know, team task solution and project management, because that was maybe like a larger market with more willingness to pay. Or that was your own internal, you know guru telling you now you have to go for a larger market yeah, I mean it's a good question.
Amir Salihefendic:Um, I don't think anybody gave me any tips on this. Like, uh, yeah, I did have like also a lot of passion uh for for this like you know, team aspect of like project management. Uh, and there was also, yeah, again like there was some interesting ideas in videos as well, um, that I hadn't really seen. Like there was a kind of a feed um, so there's like different ideas there that could be interesting as well, but you know it didn't really take off and now it's just like okay, you know I really need to focus on stuff that actually has, you know, product market fit. Yeah, and when I did return back to Todoist, like I returned back with so much like knowledge that I could like easily ramp up like a lot of the stuff. What?
Ariel Camus:what, what? What did you try for we do is what did you try to to generate traction, do you remember? Because, like what, what you know, we'll like naively think that if you had a hundred thousand people who are super passionate about it to do up, some of those people probably work for companies that also need project management that you could, like, probably either sell to them or at least convince them to try it and eventually get into the companies. But it sounds like either you didn't try that or that didn't work. Like, um, what, what did you try? The attraction for that, uh, different product and app that's a good question.
Amir Salihefendic:Um, yeah, I mean, honestly I don't think I tried a lot of stuff, like you know, because like marketing and like ads and stuff like that, like that was never my go-to model, like uh, um, so I definitely didn't try like ads, I just like tried organic, you know traction and but you know the problem is also like if you have product market fit, like you know, we just actually had signups.
Amir Salihefendic:They were just not sticking, you know, and there was not the same passion as into this case, you know, into this case, like I would get like these emails you know, like where, like there's a pissed off like user that wants some feature and they will basically, you know like do like a you know PhD thesis about like why I should add this to the product On VDList, like I had zero of that, like there was like very little fashion for the product and I do think, like you know, that's also something like signal you can take in. It's kind of like, you know, either positive or negative. It's like much better, like the worst you can have is kind of like silence. You know, like people don't really care.
Ariel Camus:Then you have a problem? Yeah, and it's hard, because unless you have a frame of reference which you did have you had the to-do list frame of reference that told you how it feels when someone loves what you are doing and takes it out of your hands. But so many entrepreneurs do not get that confused or, you know self, you know, tricked into believing that, hmm, people are signing up for this project management tool and they're not sticking around that much. But maybe that's because of me, maybe I need to improve the features here, maybe, like, I need to keep working, keep hustling, and maybe I keep doing that for years and years before I realized that I never had really real product market fit. Is there like, like what? What? Is there anything that you could quantify in some ways? Maybe comparing to Todoist, that like, how will you describe in a maybe quantitative way, maybe even qualitative as well, how does it feel different what you felt with Todoist, different what you felt with doers versus what you felt with to-doers at that point?
Amir Salihefendic:Yeah, yeah, I mean, you know there's like different like product market fit frameworks that people can use. Like Superhuman has one where you basically ask people how they will feel if the product got removed, and I think you need to have like 40% that are going to be very disappointed or something like that, and then you have product marketed. But honestly, I feel like it's kind of like you can feel it. But there's also a different aspect here and I think like a lot of founders as well have this is you have so much conviction, you know, because like that's the only way you can actually commit yourself to this crazy thing. It's kind of like you need to have a ton of conviction, absolutely, and you can be like so blindsided by that and you can kind of say, okay, like if I just improve like this aspect and add this feature, then like people will understand this.
Amir Salihefendic:Um, yeah, uh. So I think like it's a very, very tricky question to to answer and I don't think there's a heuristic, but, um, I do think, like you know, feedback from users is a very good tell, especially passionate feedback. That's a very good sign. I mean even right now, like if you read on, like our Todoist, which is like the Reddit Todoist subreddit, like you know like people are very passionate and you know like both negative and positive, you know there's like a lot of like stuff, uh, and that's a good tell, so like yeah, so maybe that that signal, like from feedback, can be very critical of course like you should probably be careful of.
Amir Salihefendic:Like, if it's like a very good friend or, like you know, family member that's giving you feedback, maybe it's not really as powerful as like some random person telling you that they are really like they love this or like they hate it. Yeah.
Ariel Camus:And so I think it sounds like product market fit seems to always feel a little bit extreme. It's not a lukewarm, it's not a maybe, it's when you see it, it's obvious. And if it's not super obvious, becausewarm it's not a maybe, it's when you see it, it's obvious. And if it's not super obvious, because people are, like you know, yelling at you, asking for more yelling at you, because they need something that you haven't built yet, and it's the only thing that they're missing. If they're not, like you know, taking your servers down, probably the answer is that you don't have product market fit.
Amir Salihefendic:Exactly, yeah, yeah. And then you know another problem as well is kind of like I mean, we have also experienced this with Twist Like we didn't have like clear product market. We had some. That's maybe also a real problem as well, Because then you have some hope.
Ariel Camus:Why do you say you had some? Like what? How would you describe some hope? Why do you say you had some? How would you describe some product marketing? That seems to go against what I was just saying, that it feels so obvious and loaded and passionate. What was that? Some level of PMF?
Amir Salihefendic:So some level is kind of like you have customers that are paying, you also have fans I always got some super feedback from you and you have some negative know, negative as well, etc. Um, uh, but the traction maybe isn't there when it needs to be, you know, um. So I think also like something that's maybe very useful and something I didn't actually have when I started out with to do this, and I think think people right now have so much of it. It's kind of like you can easily find out what is actually great growth numbers In any metric. You can kind of figure out what does for my market, what does great churn look like, what does great expansion revenue look like, or whatever else you want to, and that can kind of make it very clear to figure out.
Amir Salihefendic:Like you know how, yeah, how good is the fit?
Amir Salihefendic:You know, um, yeah, and I'll say in this case, like we were very ignorant, you know, and the problem is also like we had so much conviction. You know, like, uh, like we really thought like we were on to something and you know and that's also a beautiful thing it's just like it's a problem if you do it for many years, like you, if you pour many, you know, yeah, a lot of effort, a lot of money into something that is not going to work out in the end. Yeah, so I think most like for founders, you know like a critical element as well is kind of like figuring out like when you need to stop, you know, exit, because, yeah, like you have so much conviction, you have so much sunk cost that, like stopping can become very, very problematic, yeah, Absolutely, it's a double-edged sword and it's purest definition, because it is the weapon that allows you to keep going and fight the difficult battles that you will have to fight, yet, at the same time, is the one that can keep you fighting against the, the windmills.
Ariel Camus:You know that, that you shouldn't be battling because there is no battle to win there. So, um, absolutely and so like, if I, if I were to recap or summarize something you said or extract something from what you said, is that sometimes we believe that if we niche down and it's good to start in a niche you didn't go for whole project management, you went for more individual kind of task management. It's a good place to start, it's a more approachable problem and you will find people who love, who are passionate about what you do. But that's not enough. You also need a growing number of people.
Ariel Camus:If there is no traction, if there is no growth, probably that means that probably the group of people that are passionate, like it happened with Twist, is not going to be large enough. The market is not large enough that it can actually support a stable business in the long term, and I think that is something important, because we often hear that, yes, we need to get this passion from people who you know. There's a very common piece of wisdom from Y Combinator that it's better to have 10 users who love your product than 100 that like your product. But the reality is that you need to start with 10, but you also need to quickly validate that you can grow from 10 to 100 people that love it. Otherwise, the market might not be there and then that's not going to be a business.
Amir Salihefendic:I mean Harpo said that real. That's very, very well said.
Ariel Camus:So how did, or if you had to quantify that traction that you were having in the early days let's say 2000 well, you started 2007. You grew, it sounds like to a hundred thousand people using uh to do is while they were still working on it part-time by the time you decided to go full-time in 2011. What did traction look like? Um, what was the level of growth that you were seeing and where? Where was that growth coming from?
Amir Salihefendic:yeah, you know, uh, the beautiful part of like starting out is like I had like zero insight into any kind of growth metrics. Uh, yeah, so, actually, like the way I would like like check out like synopsis, like I would do a query directly against like the user table, yeah, so there's like zero metrics. Uh, uh, I I'm actually even like maybe I had like google and because that's it, uh, um, yeah, uh, and it was like 100,000 signups and I'm not sure how many actives I had, but it did generate a few thousand dollars per month in income.
Ariel Camus:How did it evolve from there? At which point do you remember starting to measure monthly active users, or weekly or daily? At which point did you remember starting to measure like monthly active users, or like weekly or daily? Um, at which point did you start like kind of like, well, did you at any point obsess on, like you know, the revenue growth side of things? Or it was more like you know, I don't know how much growth is too much growth, but this is growing, and as long as it keeps growing uh, and I'm enjoying this then I keep going I mean honestly like uh, that's like the beauty and like the.
Amir Salihefendic:The shock is like we had like zero control or anything like uh the the thing like also like uh, I I hired some people early on. Like some of them are still in the company. I told them, like you know, I can probably pay you like a month of salary. You know that's guaranteed. But after that, like I had an extra, I'm sure like what will happen.
Ariel Camus:When did you hire the first person?
Amir Salihefendic:I mean I did it like very early on, like because I mean there was kind of like, so something that was very good is kind of like. Once I returned back to Todo, to Todoist, I had a lot of skills, maybe not in analytics, but I had in building and knowing, for instance, optimizing the upgrade screens. That made a huge difference. Upgrade screens, you know, that made a huge difference. And I was like, I think in the first six months I grew like from a few thousand dollars like $30,000 per month.
Ariel Camus:In how long? Like six months?
Amir Salihefendic:Wow, that's super impressive. Yeah, because I had like so much, like so many ideas and so much like skills that I learned doing some other stuff that I could easily like skills that I learned doing some other stuff, uh, that I could easily like accelerate that a lot um.
Ariel Camus:Did that require doing anything to bring new users? Or it was mostly the organic um growth and just learning how to convert, or like applying your learnings to convert some of those free users into paid users?
Amir Salihefendic:Yeah, I mean I think there was multiple aspects of this. One is kind of just optimizing the paths, like landing page. I mean before that I had coded the landing page myself and created the copy as well and the logo and stuff like that. So actually when I returned back I hired a copywriter just freelancing design. That also got my laptop.
Amir Salihefendic:You know like there was a lot like stuff that I invested in that were like quite critical, um, uh, but of course, like I, you know I didn't really do a lot of analytics, I didn't do paid um, but I improved like a lot like just the organic growth that we already had.
Amir Salihefendic:Yeah, and of course, like something that we also started to do is like I figure out like mobile was very, very critical.
Amir Salihefendic:So I hide, like some of my first like engineering hires was like mobile devs and honestly, like the first thing I did is I hired an outsourcing company in Romania and the thing is, my background is development, so I can easily read code and what they have produced was just freaking horrific, just the most garbage code that you could imagine.
Amir Salihefendic:Holy shit, like this is not, this is not good, and I have like spent you know like maybe ten thousand dollars on like hiring them and that was just like huge mistake. Like, uh, yeah, um. So that's when I actually figured out, okay, like, if I want to do this properly, I really need to hire people that are super passionate, you know, and they are super invested. So that's like when I did some of the early like, for instance, our cto gonzalo like was one of the first hires uh that went in and like did our android app and they were like amazing like him and another guy called joao costa. Like they, uh, I mean, yeah, they gave it like like 100 percent uh, and we got like one of the best, I think, android apps at the time. Like it was really, really well made.
Amir Salihefendic:And they have so much passion for the craft you know building beautiful apps yeah.
Ariel Camus:I think there's a lot of wisdom and, yeah, not every person is the same when it comes to building your you know first version of the product. Like you need a lot of passion, care, quality, what you're saying, you know craft right For that, and it's hard to get that from from an agency. It's hard to get that from someone who doesn't care as much as you do as a founder. How did you get these initial people to care so much about it? Were you paying really well, or you were paying really well on equity, or you just found people who were passionate about the product because they were users of the product, or you got lucky. I don't know how did you do that.
Amir Salihefendic:It's a great question. Yeah, the thing is we paid like very, very poorly like because there was like not a lot of money like there was no capital.
Amir Salihefendic:So it's a very good, you know like question, yeah, and then I don't think that's also a skill as a founder, you need to like be able to convince people, and a founder you need to be able to convince people, and then you kind of need to live up to that conviction. Yeah, so I think what I was good at is getting some really smart people convinced that this is worth you know doing, and then they had like a lot of fun doing that because, for instance, like uh, like gonzalo and joao costa, the android deaths uh, like they had created apps before and they had like a real passion for like crafting android apps and they were always like super passionate about android development you know, uh, um, and then, like you know, like creating like a, uh, a space where they could actually like just go 100 into that.
Amir Salihefendic:You know, for them that was like having a lot of fun, uh, uh, yeah. And then also, like you know as well, like creating momentum and, like you know, just like, uh, yeah, shipping and, like you know, there was a lot of like excitement as well because, like what we did in the beginning, you know like not many companies were remote first uh like working across borders, like we were just, like you know, different. We had, like you know, people in russia, in, like you know, portugal uh, I was in ch Chile at the time, so there was a lot of just weirdness, and I think that also attracts people, because you're just doing something that not many other people are doing. Yeah, so that's maybe also very critical because as a founder, as a new founder, you will not have the capital, you will not have the reputation.
Ariel Camus:You must convince and build on momentum, yeah, and I think everyone know everyone can well not everyone, but a lot of other people and companies can offer a high salary or a higher salary, so that if that's your way to attract talent, most likely is not going to attract the right talent or allow you to retain the talent, because it's like a never ending someone can always pay more.
Ariel Camus:But offering a very unique environment to work where you get to do what you love with freedom, freedom to explore, freedom to play, freedom to you know to be excellent at what you do, freedom to do with people that you really enjoy working with, those are things that, to be honest, most larger companies can't offer. But as a startup, I think if you create your own weird flavor again, like talking about niches right, like it might not be a flavor that everyone likes, but those who like it can only find it in your company, in this startup, which means they're much more likely to be super passionate and enjoy and stay, and I think that is a really powerful thing at the beginning that it's hard to maintain. I think you need to work really, really hard, but it's really easy to do at the beginning. So maybe the principle here is at the beginning, if you want to attract people, just be weird, right, like be different, because that's the only advantage you have, that you can afford to do that I love that area.
Amir Salihefendic:Yeah, that's a beautiful uh, beautiful, uh, yeah, beautiful way to actually frame that.
Ariel Camus:You know be weird yeah yeah, I'm, I'm just listening to, to what you're saying. It's your experience.
Amir Salihefendic:I'm just trying to see if there's any conclusion there and I think it's very easy to kind of begin to believe that you need to attract everybody. You know, I think actually some of the worst like company cultures is when you try to. You know, please, everybody some of the stronger ones is kind of like either you fit in like perfectly or you don't fit at all, like there's no gray zones. And I also feel like in this over the years, like we have kind of slacked a bit, like we have improved in like the last year or so, but we kind of like we became, like you know, too complacent about like what values we stand for. You know what is our culture, and I think like that is something, as a founder, you really need to be very protective about, especially in the beginning, you know, because, because, like the first people that you hire will define the culture that you will have. Uh yeah, so is this something?
Ariel Camus:you, you, you think you can be.
Ariel Camus:I think we sometimes, like we can look at your case, for example, and try to deconstruct okay, if you attract people who are super passionate, you know, um, but sometimes it's hard to know what's the chicken, what's the egg right like, can you fake those? Can you fake the culture by saying this is the culture that I want, and then I'm only going to attract people like this, versus maybe at the beginning, when it's just you. Probably a lot of that comes from like, okay, this is who I am and what I am and this is what, what I care about, what I stand for. But the question is, does it work if you, at the beginning, try to attract people who are like you or you think that happens in a more kind of like natural, out of control way, with the first few team members and it's not just the founder, but the first few members that end up giving shape to what the culture and the values of the company will become few members that end up giving shape to what the culture and the values of the company will become.
Amir Salihefendic:Yeah, I mean, I I think it's a very hard question to to answer and like, uh, you know, like something I wish we have done before and maybe like something that that you can do, like if, if you're starting from zero, it's kind of like define the values, define the culture, like early on, like we waited way too long to do that I I've done, by the way, the opposite of like doing it from from day one, and I think it helped a lot and it did feel like it does feel authentic like that even today.
Ariel Camus:Those values are super strong. So I I was asking you to be I have the feeling that it is definitely worth doing. Yet, at the same time, the new people that you add will bring new flavors to that, to those values and to and to that culture. And it's it's hard to tell when those new flavors are, you know, flavors that you want to like mix, because you know there are just good spices for this sauce, versus when you're just like putting sugar on a savory dish. And well, I don't know, some savory dishes can have sugar and be great, right, but you know what I mean. Um, but I, I do think it's, it's, it's definitely worth doing. I really do like doing it early. It's important.
Amir Salihefendic:Yeah, I think the beauty about culture is that it changes over time, and I think that's also something that you need to embrace, and maybe the designer of that or the owner of that is you or the founding team. You really need to be opinionated about what kind of flavors you want in your know, or else you're going to end up with a dish that nobody likes, like that's yeah, absolutely.
Ariel Camus:There are some ingredients you don't want to mix, but most importantly, I guess, if the founder doesn't like the dish, you know it's really hard for that to keep going. So you better, you know, cook something you really like.
Amir Salihefendic:If you want to keep extending the analogy, yeah, and you know it's something to note, and this is especially like for VC-backed companies. It's like so many of the founders end up like building companies they don't want to work in. You know that is why you see them like they sell out. They just leave right away, you know, because they have built something that they are not wanting to work with. They have like taken many like shortcuts or compromises along the way and I think that's like a beautiful part of like bootstrap to like independent companies. Like you know, uh, yeah, like you can be very opinionated, uh, and you can also like really build a company you want to work with and in for a long time, uh, and you're not. You don't have like this pressure from the board or, like you know like hyper scaling where you need to hire you know like 2x, 3x people per year. That is just like not very sustainable to build like a very good culture.
Ariel Camus:Yeah absolutely I've been there right and even if you convince yourself that you are aligned with that because you want the growthises on two things that I think we have discussed that are super important. One is the quality of the talent and two is the the culture fit with the company's values and culture. So I can clearly see that. How, how did you manage to to to survive this long without raising capital? Like what? Were there some moments where you felt like, hmm, if I had more capital I could do x, y and z and uh, what made you decide not to raise capital?
Amir Salihefendic:yeah, I mean, there's definitely been moments where I've explored this option, but whenever I do, actually like I'm never convinced. Um, so my wife tells me, you know, like I'm kind of like you know like schizophrenic or like about it because, like I had like like sometimes I get like very convinced this is what we need to do, and then I kind of go into that and then I get like very unconvinced that, like that is not a very good option. Yeah, and, honestly, I think it's a tool like many others, like I'm, like I, you know we have been bootstrapped for a long time, uh, and I think it works, but also, like I think you can easily raise money as well and get it to work. Um, the thing, though, is, like, as a founder, like you really need to know what you're signing up for. You know you're signing up for, like, building a billion dollar plus company and like, historically, you know, there's been very few of those Like, and, of course, like there's like some peaks of like inflation where, you know, just valuation gets sky high, but, like, if you look at how many software companies has like over a billion in revenues, it's like very, very, very small percentage.
Amir Salihefendic:Um, so there's something you need, like you know, ask yourself is like do you really want to build, you know, that type of company you probably also need to manage like hundreds or thousands of people. Maybe you're not really, you know, the right person for that, but the thing is like the journey becomes very different and also the expectations become very different. You know, like you need to grow a lot and there's a pressure, and then you also need to exit as well. So, like taking all of that into account, like my conclusion is always like you know, why would I do this? So that's why we have never raised yeah.
Ariel Camus:Makes total sense, and I think it's very compelling, or maybe obvious, to say, well, you need to become a billion dollar company. Oh, yeah, I also want that, you know. And it's not just about money, right, and you can be. Yeah, I want to change the world, I want to make the world a better place, and, of course, a billion dollars will happen if I'm impacting a lot of lives. I think what's easy to ignore is what's necessary to get to that level of growth, right, and what are the compromises that will be necessary for that to happen. And then, you know, we, we get into the whole conversation we have been having about, you know, culture, creating your own like weird rules and and values, and bringing the people that you're happy to work with, allowing them to to be weird and unique and have fun in the way they work. So, yeah, the compromises are.
Ariel Camus:I think maybe we highlight too much the positive side of having a lot of capital and we forget to mention what are the difficulties, what are some of the maybe, what have been some of the most difficult moments, if any, by the way, when it comes to like capital. I imagine not every month was, you know, a profitable month, but on average. As a company, you need to be profitable. Uh, if you're uh here today, you know 15 years later but were there some moments where, like capital was, you know, a big issue, and how did you handle that? I? I'm asking you because I I would love to see more companies bootstrapping and and I wish they can see that the difficult moments will come, but that there are ways to deal with that as well.
Amir Salihefendic:Yeah, I mean, the honest truth is like we have never been like capital in capital issues, you know, because we have never lived above our means. We have always like hired very conservatively, spent money very conservatively. Even right now, you know, like I think I mean we could probably like have zero revenue and still pay salaries for like a half a year or a year, you know, or maybe even more. So that's kind of like the culture that we have. So that's why we have never been in these issues where we are strapped for cash. I think one of the most difficult aspects of my journey with DoS is of, like, my journey with DSAs. You know, when you have a code that is sliding in a bottle, it's very easy. You know, growth comes very, very easy. So, actually like from 2014 and even like before that, but like we didn't actually begin to check our numbers before 2014. That's so wild.
Amir Salihefendic:Yeah yeah, yeah. So we had like 50% year-on-year growth almost, I think, every year until like 2019 or 20 or something like that. Um, and then, like our growth began to like falter a bit and like actually, 2021 and 2022 were really tough years.
Ariel Camus:growth became really really hard and in our history, you know what, what, what happened, uh, at that point, you know, I think like there's multiple issues here, like I think one issue is just like market situation.
Amir Salihefendic:You know, the market also became a lot more competitive. I mean, even right now, we have on one side, like billion dollar startups. On the other side, we have trillion dollar companies that are doing almost the same thing as us, so it's really, really competitive in that sense. But also, I like we just became very complacent as a company. Uh, like the standards were not set high enough, and that's also something like that I think has changed a lot in recent years is, you know, the standards have become much, much more tough. You know it's like much harder to create growth right now than it was like when I started out. Um, uh, and you know, yeah, so like you need, as a company, also like always set the standards higher and higher and higher, like this, never stopping, and like you know, just like like uh, yeah, relaxing, you know, be on the beach drinking p pina coladas. There's like none of that.
Ariel Camus:Unless it's one of those 25 years of vacation you offer to everyone, right?
Amir Salihefendic:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So that is like really, I think, a tough period for any company. It's kind of like you have growth and then you don't have growth and then you must fight very hard to restore growth. So that's me Like, financially, you know that is maybe the most tough thing, but you know, I think we are very lucky that we have never had issues about not being able to pay salaries or like. You know, like seeing you know our like cash deplete or any any of that. You know like, yeah, and I think that's that's something you can design as a bootstrap company is kind of like you know, don't live above your means, you know.
Ariel Camus:Yeah, I, I, I was going to say that probably that is a principle, right, it's like, do not put yourself in a likely financially difficult situation. Right by I was. There is this metric that I've discussed in another podcast episode on, you know, revenue per team member, and I think it's a great one to talk about. Like capital efficiency and the companies that survive and do well with less venture capital obviously tend to have higher you know per per team member. But it's also true of the some of the best companies that also had capital, like you know, like a google or a meta, like the revenue producer is really high and you know, I was just doing the numbers for you.
Ariel Camus:Well, it's a very easy number, like the 20 million plus of revenue you have divided by 100 people and it's like 200k um per team member. Right, that's a. It's a pretty good one. Um, we were discussing in a previous uh episode that anything above 100 000 per team member, it's already a really good one. So I I think that that is a, very even if it wasn't intentional in the quantitative nature of it. Like you have achieved a level of capital efficiency that probably gives you a lot of peace of mind that it will be really hard for this to change suddenly in such a way that would put you in financial trouble.
Amir Salihefendic:Yeah, I think that is correct, you know. This said, I do think like 200,000, it's it's good, you know, but it's not really where we want to play at. Like I think that, like, things become much easier the more revenue you have per employee, and I also think like you really need to set the high standard and really aim for much higher. If you look at the best companies, it's like a million plus, so that's what best in class looks like and that is something that I think companies should try to achieve All right.
Ariel Camus:Amir, I'm so grateful again for having you here today. Thank you so much for dedicating us your time and sharing your wisdom, your story, and I hope that we get to continue this conversation soon. Take care.
Amir Salihefendic:Ariel, thank you for having me. This is awesome, thank you.
Ariel Camus:Thank you so much for tuning in. Your support means the world to me. If you enjoyed today's episode, please consider subscribing and leaving a review. It's one of the best ways you can help this podcast get off the ground and help more entrepreneurs like you. Thank you and until the next episode.
