075 - Bootstrapped Businesses, with Amir Salihefendic (Founder @ Doist) - Life on Mars - A podcast from MarsBased

Episode Transcript
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Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (00:00):
Hello everybody, alex here, ceo and
MarsBased of , and in thisepisode we bring you Amir Salihe
fendic.
He's the CEO and founder ofDoist, the company between the
two popular products to Duistand Tuist.
We had hosted him on this verypodcast about a year ago to
discuss async work.
They are a very well-known,entirely distributed team doing

(00:22):
product, a completely bootstrapcompany, and he's also been a
very, very, very big evangelistfor async work.
He takes pride in his schedulefull focus time, basically to do
deep, deep focus work.
Very, very few meetings perweek.
That's something he boastspublicly on his Twitter when he

(00:42):
shares screenshots of his agenda.
And so we wanted to continuethe conversation we had hosted
on the we had had on the podcastin this startup brand event.
Startup brand is this eventthat we organize monthly and we
also sponsor from Mars based.
That happens in Barcelona.
We garnered about 100 peopleand we host and we interview
some of the best leaders in theindustry, be it founders or

(01:05):
still levels of companies, ofhigh-growth startups mostly,
sometimes some big corporatesand then VCs and angel investors
occasionally.
So in this conversation we talkmore about being a
multi-product company, about howto have this long-term vision,
because they are entirelyindependent as a company,
because they're bootstrap how heis a solo founder, and this is

(01:27):
something quite rare in theindustry, because usually
investors like to invest incompanies that have two, three,
four founders, but never justone, because it's a clear no go.
It's some, like you know, it'sa red line for most investors,
but then again, of course,they're incentivized to maximize
the profit of their investments.
So you know, they miss most ofthe times on these outliers like

(01:51):
companies like like do is whenthe first time probably, they
didn't seek to raise funds atall.
So, that being said, let's jumpright into the question of the
day have you had any kind ofexperience with asynchronous
work?
And, whether you like it or not, share your experiences with
asynchronous work, because thisbig part of our conversation at

(02:12):
Mars based, as I mentioned,we're not loving it.
We implemented it two years agoand you know we have had some
learnings that, if you are moreinterested, just check our
previous podcast episode withAmir.
But otherwise, let's jump rightinto this conversation Now.
Hello, lots of people tonight.

(02:34):
Oh, that's really loud.
I think it's easy.
I think it's this way Bank.
You see, I run a tech company.
That's how I know.
I know things.
Ooh, some people are cominglate.
How are you doing?
Good to see you All right.
First off, welcome to StartBrain.

(02:55):
There are a few things we couldbe talking about tonight.
We didn't have a preparationchat.
It's going to be casual anduninformed, pretty much like
every band we've ever had.
But in this case I've got somesuggestions for the title of the
talk.
I mean, there's obviously howto do bootstrapping, remote work
and async, because you're anexpert in that, but you're also

(03:17):
an expert in turning off all theVCs because you're like you
don't say that, but I will saythat it's like fuck VC money.
It's healthier yeah, it'shealthier to run this kind of
money.
You pick which one you prefer.
There's also like one man, twocompanies, three meetings per
week, which is more or less theway you run things.
Or, I'm a businessman, but I'mnot a son of a bitch, because it

(03:40):
also defines you pretty much.
It distinguishes you from mostbusiness people in the scene, or
American.
We all come to work for youbecause you built amazing
companies.
Thank you for being here.

(03:52):
Thank you, alex, for having me .
Which one do you prefer?
I mean, we could start at thefuck VCs, all right, all right.

Let's go there.
Let's go there.
I didn't plan for that.
I thought you wanted to keepthe easy one.
But yeah, let's do like that.
How many times have you beenwelcome on stage as a rock star,
by the way?

(04:11):
Never.
This is my first time and itfeels awesome.
I want to do this again.

It's amazing, because it's like
before, when he walked in, it'slike, oh, we're going to have
100 people in the audience.
It's like, oh, I feel thepressure, dude, you've got
thousands of followers onTwitter.
Why don't you feel the pressurethere?

(04:29):
Because I'm just like in my pajamas tweeting, you know.

All right, let's talk about.
Okay, let's start with the VC.
Your company is entirelybootstrapped and you've been
advocating for bootstrapbusinesses and that, in for a
lot of people, has got an endingdate.
Do you ever see yourselfraising money for your company?
Have you ruled out completelythat option?
What is the future like for youguys?

(04:56):
Yeah, I mean, you know, like we started this many years ago
and something that I neverreally understood and I grew up
in Denmark, so it's kind of avery like different environment
than, like the valley, you know,the American way of what most
others are building and Icouldn't really see like the
business sense because it's justlike burning money and some get

(05:22):
very lucky and they get rich,but most of that is just, like
you know, burning money andthey're not really building
businesses.
And in our space, which is likeproductivity space, there has
been so much money burned.
That's kind of insane.
Yeah, so our approach is reallylike building a sustainable,
like you know, a great company,a impactful company, but not

(05:45):
like in an unsustainable way.
We're basically burning moneyand just like growing, growing,
growing and even like right now,if you look at like some of our
competitors, like Prince Asana,you know they are burning a lot
of money.
So I think they maybe have like500 million in ARR, which is a
lot, but then they burn 800million.
And then you ask yourself, youknow, yeah, and something to

(06:08):
note as well is yeah, I alsoasked myself yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Another thing as well is, youknow, I've like spoken to a lot
of VCs over the years and allsome of the best, and the thing
is it's just like what are yousigning yourself up for?
You know, and for me, like I'mnot sure if I want to sign

(06:30):
myself up for for like a billionin ARR.
That needs to be like you knowthe goal, because if you look
just like the history, likethere's very few companies that
reach that scale.
Yeah.
So I don't know.
And right now, I think it's agreat environment for bootstrap
companies because you know, themarket is really cooled down.

(06:51):
It's really like efficiency,profitability, building
sustainable stuff and that itshould have been like that, but
like the last 10 years has beenlike insane.

Yeah so can you give some, some context
to the audience, Because Ifailed to do that and you know
you run Duist, which is famousfor Duist.
You got another product.
Can you give some context as to, like the some metrics, some
dimensions of the company?

(07:18):
Sure, so we are like a fully, like remote first company.
We have about 100 employees andabout like 20 million in ARR.
Yeah, so that's about it.

Yeah, how many years have you been
doing this?

(07:31):
I mean, I started to do this in 2007.
And the company wasincorporated maybe in 2011,
something like that.
Yeah, so for 16 years.

Why did you take that long, like for
years, to incorporate?

(07:45):
Because it was a side project Okay, yeah, okay.

Now the reason I'm asking is one of the
epiphanies I had recently isI've been doing Star Brand for
almost 10 years and I waslooking back because we want to
bring back some of the firstspeakers.
There are companies don't existanymore, like they, probably
they haven't done anything wrong, but it's the VC game.
Some startups, they just, youknow, they go south and they
don't recover.

(08:09):
I was like, oh, this companystill exists, this one doesn't.
This one shrunk back to threepeople, only this one you know
about to shut down, whereasbootstrap companies, they seem
to be around for longer,precisely because maybe we come
across as not very ambitious orhere for the long term, man.
So what do you have to sayabout that?
When people say you're notambitious, you're not raising

(08:30):
funds?

(08:32):
I mean, you know it's a marathon not a sprint and like a
lot of our, I mean, for it'slike von der List, who was a big
competitor of ours, got bought,I think, by Microsoft Microsoft
200 million.
They shut them down and kind ofruined the product, yeah.
So you know like we survived byjust you know like not being
acquired, yeah, which maybe youknow like, okay, 200 million

(08:56):
could be very nice, but alsowe're still in business and
we're growing our business whilethey are dead.

There's something about the whole
narrative of startups havingowned by VCs, right, and so the
whole idea of move fast, breakthings, go big or go home, fail
fast, fail off, and all of theseshit man's press, you know
probably were created by MarkZuckerberg and the like, but
they were echoed by the VCs,which are people who have never

(09:28):
created a company in the firstplace most of them.
But the second thing I wantedto point out here is, of course,
they are in a cent device tomake you go fast, because if you
go fast, you burn money fasterand then you need their money
even faster, right?
So, while it can be, it canlook good to cash out on a
couple million in an early exit.

(09:49):
You can do so in a longerperiod of time by having a good
business that pays dividends.
So was it intentional that younever raised money?
Or just kind of like yourealized after 10 years of like,
oh fuck it, we never raised anymoney.

(10:05):
I mean it was very intentional because initially, like maybe
2008, I actually talked withlike a very famous VC firm like
we had insane growth in thebeginning, and one of the first
things they wanted to do waslike replace me as the CEO.
So, and honestly, maybe itcould have been a good call to

(10:25):
do because, yeah, like I wasvery technical and like not you
know, very CEO-y, so yeah, andat that time, you know, the VCs
had a lot more power than theyhave right now.
Yeah, so that's why.
And then, like, as we kind ofjust like got the business
started, like yeah, it justnever actually made a little
sense, yeah, but the thing isthe downside to running a

(10:49):
bootstrap business it takeslonger to do shit right.

So your competitors might be running
faster.
They can also crash and burnfaster, but you're always being
surrounded by people who saylike, oh, you got to be the
first in the market, you got toconquer the market before others
do right.
So how do you keep yourselffrom feeling, you know, like
you're not running enough?
Or how do you convince yourselfthat the long-term strategy is

(11:15):
actually to be slower than therest?

(11:19):
You know, something that I have learned over the years is
that actually, sometimes you canbecome very complacent, and I
think definitely we had a period, maybe around like 2016 to I
don't know like a few years,where, like we were way too
complacent and maybe with likeVCs or a board or something like

(11:43):
maybe would have been pushedinto like you know, like more
growth and stuff like that.
So I think, definitely, likethis route, you kind of need to
combine it like withself-discipline of pressuring
yourself and, you know, settingthe bar higher and keeping
setting the bar higher.
So that's definitely somethinglike I have learned.
Like the hard lesson is kind oflike, and the reason isn't so

(12:05):
much competition is basicallylike you're not really like
having the impact that you want,and then some point you wake up
and say, fuck this.
You know, like you know I don'twant to be part of this.
You know I want to do somethingthat's more important or bigger
.
So, you know, for me that'salso like always this question
of like having a vision, butlike in a balanced way, and

(12:27):
that's always like very hard todo.
Yeah.

But when you say complacent, what
happened exactly?
Can you elaborate on that?
What happened?
How did you measure it?
How did you find out?

(12:39):
Yeah, I mean.
So that's kind of like you findout like afterwards that, yeah,
like we could have done thismuch, much better if we have
known.
I mean, for instance, like forus like getting any kind of
analytics took us a long time.
So that means like we were not,even, like you know, data

(13:02):
driven or like analytics driven,like we were not even analytics
aware.
Yeah, so that's like a bigproblem, you know, and maybe
like if we had this.
The thing to note as well iskind of like I think the whole
markets like changed completelythe last few years.
I mean, people like yourselfhave like so much access to

(13:23):
knowledge that I didn't have,because a lot of like stuff that
we needed to do in thebeginning, you know, it was just
like trial and error, likebrute forcing, and right now you
have, like Lenny's newsletterand, like you know, even Twitter
.
You know people are justsharing the best stuff and you
don't need to like recreatethings.
Yeah, and even right now, Ithink, like, as we are like

(13:45):
building like a bigger company,it's much, much easier, like you
know, because there's like somuch knowledge that's shared.
Yeah.

How did you learn to be a CEO?
Because it seems like at thevery beginning, you were running
very fast but you didn't knowwhere you were going right,
which is kind of cool.
You wanted to run fast, butthen you realize that, oh, we
didn't have the metrics withinuse.
Analytics probably didn'tunderstand our customers.
I don't know, you're very muchof a product person and so but

(14:14):
how do you build yourself to bea CEO?
Understand the other thingsfinance, operations, hiring,
technology, legal, all of thatas you scale, yeah.

(14:25):
And I think that's kind of like the hardest part is kind of
like that you need to learn alot all the time and you can't
really stop.
And if you stop then thecompany is fucked because you
know like you're probably goingto have some kind of like huge
issue.
So something that I think andyou know, I know, like some
other founders most founders Iknow that are very successful,

(14:48):
like most of them are likelearning machines.
You know that's something youspend a lot of time on, like
reading.
You know a lot talking withother like smart people and
stuff like that.
So that's like the way that Ido.
It is basically like I spend alot of my time just like trying
to learn and become better.

Yeah, but you also share a lot like.
You're very active on Twitter,but always sharing what you're
building, with videos of whatthe new features, your thoughts
on AI, your code, your you knowyour marketing campaigns, things
where you fucked up, and yourblog posts.
You used to write the blog postof the company for many, many

(15:28):
years.
I don't know if you still do,but you were doing it for so
many years.
One thing you've doneparticularly well and I admired
you for that you've created acommunity, kind of like a drive,
if you will, around yourcompany, and was that also
intentional?
Was that something that youhave gathered and found out?
Like, wow, look at these people.
Like where do all these fansand followers come from?

(15:51):
I mean honestly, for me it was very natural, like when I
started to develop, you know, Iwas still at the university, I
had like a blog and like I wouldjust like go in and like post
every day almost of stuff I did.
And I'm actually on Shopify likeit's just like sharing stuff
and like you know, andeventually that became like very
popular.
So maybe like advice here wouldbe that actually, like you know

(16:15):
, having a more open likebuilding in the public, like
Mande Indi, haggaz Du, isactually a very good strategy
and even right now, like at ourscale, you know, people actually
appreciate if I share like theinternals of like I go design or
some code or like whatever itis like you know, like having
transparency and also like Imean for us it's kind of like we
want to be transparent.

(16:35):
You know we with our communityand then you see, like some of
our competition you know youdon't even know who they are
Like there's no face, there's nohuman.
You know like behind it.
So you know that makes like ourposition much stronger.
So you know, right now I do itbecause I think it's fun, but I
also think it's like supervaluable for for the company and
even like if you're startingout.

(16:56):
I think that's also supervaluable.

Yeah, on the topic of transparency,
which is one of your core values, and then we share it.
Of course, one of theprinciples of Indi, makers and
the and this kind of communityin the hackers and these
communities, is building onpublic.
For those who don't know whatbuilding public is is basically
creating some sort of socialaccountability of what you're

(17:20):
building, saying like hey, I'mgoing to build this, here's my
code, it's public, you know,they even do like live coding
sessions and stuff like that, sothat they feel the pressure of
actually delivering.
Right, there's always thismantra of ship, ship, ship every
day, and so maybe that's areplacement for the board that
you didn't have or that youdon't have the sort of social
accountability of oh, I'veannounced this new feature.

(17:42):
Now we got to go and fuckingbuild it, because it's going
viral on Twitter.

(17:48):
Yeah, yeah.
And I think like one of thebest things about having like a
bootstrap company is, like youknow, your board is your
customers and, honestly, like wehave like I think, like over
50,000 on Reddit, like theReddit to this community, and it
goes to be like veryinteresting like because if you
do a fuck up like they are goingto let you know there's going

(18:11):
to be a threat there.

Okay, who will not post this video on
there, on your, on your Reddit?
We'll know it high jacket, butno, but it's.
It's really interesting.
So do you actually get alsoanalytics from the social media
and the reactions to what you'reposting on your personal
profile?

(18:29):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, yeah, I mean this we get a ton of
feedback and I think that's thebest thing about building in
public or like sharing stuff, isyou can kind of have feedback,
especially as you build like acommunity or audience.
Yeah, so that's definitely likea super trick that that is
useful.

One thing that we can all learn from
is also how you run yourpersonal schedule Right.
You're very vocal about nothaving meetings.
You have very few, if any,recurring meetings.
You got some direct reports andmaybe you got one recurring
weekly meeting or two, butusually for a CEO of a company

(19:09):
of over a hundred employees, itwould be a full week trend with
meetings all day long from sevenam to 11 pm.
Something like that.
Something crazy and you youshare screenshots of your Google
calendar is like I got twomeetings this week.
Like how the fuck do you do it,mate?

(19:27):
I mean that's something like that we have promoted a lot and,
honestly, like we have stoppedpromoting that that much.
Like I told you, like initially, and it's like asynchronous
communication.
So most of our communicationinside the company is like in
written form and there's like aton of that.
So I read a lot, but it's alsolike I can read whatever I want.

(19:48):
I can kind of structure my daysas I work what I want, and then
we don't really do a lot ofmeetings because of that.
So you know, like written, likeasynchronous, that works, yeah.
So that's how?
Yeah, asynchronouscommunication.

On the topic of asynchronous
communication, because mycompany also works async.
We had up to two years ago andwe are we're not loving it.
There's a very Americanexpression of not loving it,
which is like it's shit.
But no, it's not shit, I'mkidding it's.
It's very great.
It comes with a lot of tradeoffs, right.
So with synchronous, everythingis immediate and you got like

(20:24):
Slack and notifications frombase cam and emails and colds
and you're in Zoom all day andmaybe you get too many things
that are not your element butthey are urgent, so they pop in
your inbox.
But, given it proper thought,then maybe it will be like now
I'm going to discard this idea,right.
That's one of the good thingsabout async, which is like oh, I

(20:45):
want to talk to you aboutsomething.
It's like when you write it,that's like it's actually not a
good idea.
I'm going to you know, I'mgoing to discard it, and so, on
the other hand, it creates likereally long posts that maybe it
doesn't feel like you'readvancing enough, but it's very
easy to postpone stuff like, oh,I'll read this later, read this
later, read this later, andthen it feels like you're always

(21:06):
doing somebody else's work.
I don't know how do you managethis trade off with async work?
I assume to be loving it morethan I do.

(21:14):
Yeah, I mean, and that's, you know, like something that I have
kind of realized is it'sdefinitely not for everybody and
I think it's maybe like a superniche, because I think it's
extremely hard and extremelyhard to hire people that fit
into these cultures, because itreally requires like very, very

(21:34):
good writers and communicators,and most people aren't that yeah
.
So, like you know, even like youknow, in development, like if
you want to do like moreasynchronous development, you
need like developers that cancommunicate very well, like you
know, do specs very well, andthat's just not true.
So I think that's that's thehard part.

(21:55):
It's kind of like realizing,and you know that's also
something like our mission ofthe company was kind of building
the future work and we reallythought like async is kind of
the future.
I think maybe it's the futurefor, like the minority,
unfortunately, because I thinkthere's just like a huge barrier
and maybe, you know, at somepoint we can get there, but like

(22:15):
we are very, very far away fromthat.
Yeah, and I like I reallycherish our culture, but I also
think it's like an extreme one,yeah.

But yeah, I feel you when you say
that you think that async is thefuture.
I think it was the future wheneverybody else, when everybody
was doing remote right 2020,we're forced to go remote,
Everybody goes remote,Everybody's loving it, and all
of a sudden, you know, somebodysays, oh, we got to go back to
offices because we're paying forthe offices and everything's

(22:45):
back to normal.
And all the companies thatlured talent by saying we're
remote, we love remote, we loveeverything.
They took away her talent.
Now they're like no, remotedidn't work.
Just go back to the office andyou're like I leave three hours
away from the fucking office.
I cannot go to the office.
They're forcing people torelocate, otherwise they get
laid off.
Do you think it was a tactic tohelp them to attract talent in

(23:10):
very competitive times and nowthey're reverting it because
they have to lay off people?
Or am I just being too paranoidhere?

(23:20):
I'm not sure I think there was a lot of excitement.
I just think the sacrifices youneed to make to make this work
are very, very severe and Ithink most companies are not
really willing to do that.
I mean even something to notice.
90% of the employees areintroverts.

(23:40):
Maybe normal companies you havelikeable people, extroverted
people.
They will advance.
In remote it's maybe not thesame people that are going to
advance or they become leaders,because it's a very different
environment.
So yeah, I mean honestly theCOVID remote is kind of like a

(24:02):
fuck up.
Remote was much better when itwas kind of a super niche before
that and then suddenly it kindof turned into like a thing.
Personally inside our companywe love this.
We love ability to hire thebest people around the world and
make this work.
But right now we have stoppedkind of like promoting this and
trying to convert because wewill let the results speak for

(24:27):
itself by focusing on buildingour tools and stuff like that.
But I think the conversion isvery, very hard.

But you built a product that's called
Twist, which is essentially likeSlack, without being shit.
So it's for async companies.
It's very toxic.
I'm sorry it was going to be avery opinionated talk.
You know him, you know me, sobut the thing is, in that blog
you wrote something exceptionalyour team I don't know if you

(24:57):
were involved in that blog postor not but something exceptional
is how to be more inclusivewithin an async.
Async environment.
And that's true.
We also realize in ourcompanies there are 20 people
and most of them they're reallyintroverts.
There are kind of people thatdon't want to go to anybody's
office, don't want to meetpeople in real life.
They don't even want to talk topeople on video calls.
They participate if they haveto, but they're rather not and

(25:21):
they see longering companiesbecause they don't feel forced
to go to an office, to travel,for work, to meet people, to
talk to humans.
And so I didn't realize.
And when I read that piece ofcontent I was like, wow, this is
what we've been doing for yearsand I didn't realize.
So thank you for doing that,because it's truly amazing that

(25:42):
async is really good forintroverts.
They have some companies wherethey can work and feel
comfortable and included.

(25:49):
Yeah, I mean, I think that's the most maybe beautiful part of
this, and also they can kind ofjust mix and match cultures and
such.
We have people all around theworld and everybody kind of fits
.
We don't have these HRnightmares either.
Yeah, so it's a wonderful thing, but maybe not for everybody.

(26:12):
That's kind of my conclusion onthe async.

And what are the downsides to async?
Like, for instance, for aservices company like mine, some
clients don't want to work withus because they want us to be
in the office.
They're like, oh, how do I knowyour people are working?
Well, I have been in an office.
I know people don't work in theoffice, but how about in
product companies like yours?
What's the downside of usingasync?

(26:39):
I mean I think there's various downsides.
One is I think it's probablygoing to be slower than if we
were all based in an office andall work at the same time.
So that's maybe the biggestdownside.
It's like everything is kind ofdelayed, especially here at
time zones in between.
Then also the wholecommunication form of written

(27:03):
text.
That also has not as muchappeal.
Yeah, and also even reading alot.
I mean I spend a ton of time, Ithink inside our Swiss
workspace.
We have like 3 million messages, so there's a lot, and we are
100 people.
I mean you can do somecalculation and see how much

(27:26):
gets communicated in text.
So all of that it creates avery different environment and
for some people they think, oh,this is amazing.
For some others, this is anightmare.
So that's maybe the downsideand maybe something I've also
learned about cultures.
These great cultures are notvery good where you're kind of
trying to appeal to everybody.

(27:46):
Maybe you need to actuallyappeal.
You either need to love it orhate it, and maybe those are
cultures that are kind of likegood company cultures.

We're highly opinionated and that
probably prevents everybody fromjoining our companies.
But the ones that join fuckinglove it because it's tailored
for them.
But one thing I don't agreewith is just that we're actually
slower.
In async environments probablyit is slower to reach consensus

(28:18):
and to make decisions Because,oh, I got to wait for somebody
else to chime in and share theiropinion.
But if they are given the work,if they are not part of the
decision, then it works as acontinuous shift.
It's like I finished my shiftand then you pick up where I
left off.
Somebody else picks up as if itwere a night shift, something

(28:38):
like that.
And we found that forproduction it's extremely
productive and you can be reallyefficient.
For decision it is indeedslower Because, oh, I have to
give it some more thought, Iwill sleep on it one more night.
And I was like, oh, I wrotethis three-pages article and
nobody's reading it, of course,but yeah, so let me challenge

(28:59):
you on that.
But otherwise I think it'spretty good.
How about the return to office?
Have you found that as anexpert in the industry, because
you're also very opinionated onremote work, distributed teams
and all of that?
What is your opinion oneverybody else calling the back
to office.

(29:17):
It's amazing for us.

It's amazing for you why it's
counterintuitive.

(29:21):
I know why, but we can hire the best people, and that's
something Before this remotethat everybody went remote.
We would do a job ad, we wouldget thousands of applicants.
Then COVID hit and everybodymoved remote.
Then it became very, verycompetitive to hire remotely,

(29:43):
and right now we are back.
So you hear it first If youwant to have a huge competitive
advantage as a founder, goremote, because you will be able
to hire amazing people.

That's what we did with Async, for
instance.
So we had been remote since theinception in 2014.
And in 2020, we're like fuck,we're not getting applicants
Because now everybody is hidingremotely.
We're losing our edge.
So we adopted Async becausewe're like nobody's doing Async.
This is going to be the nextcool thing, and so part of our

(30:14):
philosophy was to do Async.
And then we saw that somepeople were applying because
they're like oh, you're the onlyones doing Async.
That gave us an edge.
But now that there's back tothe office, we don't need the
Async anymore to hire.
So I feel you there.

(30:32):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's always about finding the edge.

And how about the running two companies
?
Because do you run iteffectively as two companies, so
Twist and Todoist?
Where are the trade-offs ofrunning the companies like this
way?
Maybe we should go to this.

(30:49):
I mean, the truth is we don't actually have two companies,
it's like one company and twoproducts.
And also, something we havedone as well is we have mostly
prioritized Todoist.
Right now and honestly again, Ithink one of the really hard
things is becoming multi-product, because you have I mean,

(31:11):
that's a whole differentballgame, because you need to
split resources, investmentswhat are you going to prioritize
?
It becomes much harder, but ourgoal is to become multi-product
and we actually even talkedabout moving Twist out as a

(31:32):
separate company.
There can also be a solution,but I don't think we were going
to do that.
So that's kind of the contextof this.
When you decided to createTwist?

how did you decide which part of the
team was moved to the newproject?
Was it we're going to bleepthis out Was it your best
engineers or worst engineers?
How did you select people?
Beep?
Beep.
No, I mean seriously.

(32:02):
I think you know, like, honestly, like I think, if
you're going, if you have thisposition where you need to start
a new product and you haveanother product that's already
working, you should hit yourselfin the head and be sure that
you are thinking straight,because I'm not sure if it's a
very good idea honestly, becauseit's very hard to balance and

(32:26):
even saying, okay, you put yourbest people on this, then your
other product that's alwayssuccessful suffers.
So we did actually put some ofour best people on twist and we
spent a ton of money, a ton oftime on this and we are still
kind of trying to make it work.
But I think that's maybeanother ball game and maybe just

(32:49):
creating one successful productis really, really hard, like
doing it with multiple.
It's much, much harder.
Yeah.

No, of course.
But you never know whether,like, if you put in, let's say,
your best engineers, then ofcourse the main product is not
going to suffer immediately, butin the long run it's not
sustainable.
But maybe they don't want towork on the small new thing
because the big challenges areon the main product, right?
If you put the not so greatengineers, they're like you

(33:18):
don't know whether the productis not successful because they
didn't have the right talent andit's a way of losing money.
So how did you?
Because you don't have thepressure of a board, you don't
have the pressure of maybe likeAPIs, but it's your own money,
right?
So it's dividends at the end ofthe year.
How did you calculate theopportunity cost?
What was the initial investmentlike?
More or less?
Give a ballpark, if you want,of how much money you wanted to

(33:41):
invest to see whether twist wasflying or not.

(33:46):
Yeah, that's a very good question.
And the thing I mean honestly,like we have like burned a lot
of money, like I would saymillions on this and we have
still not recuperated ourinvestment on this, and that's
also something to notice.
Like I think buildingsuccessful products is like

(34:08):
incredibly hard, like findingproduct market fit incredibly
hard, and I think like over time, it has become much, much
harder.
Yeah, so that's something youknow, like we have like so many
great people, we have so muchexperience and it's still super,
super hard.
You know, I heard like somephrase saying like it's like,
you know, catching likelightning in a bottle and yeah,

(34:31):
so that's all something.
And I'm not sure like how youcan do it easier.
I don't think there's anyformula, because if there was
like a formula or like you knowsomething you do, then everybody
would just follow that andeverybody will have like product
market fit and growing productsand yeah, it's just like a
grind like regardless of howmuch experience you have.

(34:52):
It seems for me, yeah.

And what is the strategy to kind of
like, do you cross sell theproduct?
Because one product to do is agenerally software is like
pretty much, or everybody in theroom could use it, whereas Twiz
is something very specific.
Probably my company, you coulduse it, that company of that
gentleman over there could useit, and that's it right, because
it's a very, very specific orlike very strict niche.
So you have a super generalistsoftware and something that's

(35:16):
really, really specific.
Is there some like correlation?
Do they complement each other?
How do you cross promote them?
What is the strategy to helpeach other grow?

(35:27):
That's another like hard lessons learned.

There is no strategy.

(35:34):
There was a strategy.
It was not a good strategy.

What was it not like?

(35:39):
So, honestly, like something I would do and I would like
actually recommend any of youthat are starting like your own
businesses or whatever.
It's kind of like you reallyneed to think hard about what is
your mission?
That's one, and like aligneverything around that.
The thing is we didn't reallyhave a clear mission and then

(36:02):
our mission kind of became likebuilding the future work, which
is like asynchronous and remote.
That's why we kind of went intoTwiz, but then we kind of have
like Todoist, which is likeproject task management, and it
kind of like does not really fitwell.
And then another thing is aswell is like we have like so

(36:24):
many, like like a 50,000, likedifferent companies around the
world that are using Todoist,and these are like SMBs that
don't really care about futurework, they don't care about
asynchronous.
So it's just like you know, sowe have kind of like really
actually recently, like we didour mission, which is kind of
like building, like empoweringpeople with like simple,

(36:46):
powerful tools, and that'sbasically what we do.
And if we have done that, thenI think also like we have built
twist in a very different way.
Yeah, but I'm also like youknow, I can easily like reflect
back and say, okay, that was amistake or like whatever, but
it's very hard to know that whenyou're in the trenches.
You know, yeah, but you knowthat's something like if you

(37:08):
could like hit that early on,then you can save yourself like
a lot of money and a lot of likeheadaches, yeah.

What is the future of work?
Because I run a small business.
That's why I don't care aboutthe future work.
No, just kidding.
What is the future of work in acontext where the world is
changing every year, every sixmonths?
How can you build something forthe future when the present is
changing so drastically, almostmonth over month?
War, pandemic, recession, thenthere's all remote back to

(37:39):
office, like you know all ofthese things, how can you do it?

(37:43):
Yeah, that's why our mission is yeah, and I think like I mean
that's one aspect.
And I think also like we becamelike very centered on ourselves
and you know we thought likeokay, asynchronous, you know,
this is the gift to the world.
Maybe it's like give to someand it's like a niche.

(38:04):
So I think also, like I mean Iknow like I think very critical
learning experience for me waskind of like it's really about a
customer, empowering thecustomer, understanding them and
their context, and if you don'tdo that, then you have a
problem, especially, maybe likein a service company, you have a
different dynamic, but, likefor a product company, but you

(38:26):
also have, like you know, yourcustomers.
You know like, yeah, yeah, Imean, it's the same yeah.

Yeah, I mean, obviously all the
companies are suffering andstartups.
They're not raising money.
As you can tell, like, who herehas raised money in the last 10
months?
Raise your hands, one personand very shy about it and, like
you see, probably three yearsago it would have been 30% of

(38:53):
the audience.
That's how it used to be, right.
It's very harsh.
Even corporate laying out likeeverybody's laying off people
everybody except Travel Perk, ofcourse, but nobody.
If you take a look at you knowDomestika, five rounds of
layoffs type form lay, hugelayoffs.
All of these are global hugelayoffs and everywhere but the
big corporations as well.
So the future is changing sorapidly that we have to that.

(39:15):
So my next question is you'vebeen doing this for so many
years and one of the things Istruggle with is the we're
companies without employeeturnover.
We don't have rotation, sopeople tend to stay for very
long in the company 10 years.
You probably got employees thatare like seven years into the
company, eight, nine years,which is not usual for tech.

(39:37):
How do you build career plansfor them?
How do you?
Do you encounter this nice tohave problem of people not
leaving your company?

(39:45):
You know something to note about like a lot of like async
and remote companies is.
I saw like some stats like theretention is like insane, yeah,
like almost nobody leaves, andthat is also a problem because
it, you know, that is again likecomplacency can easily be built
or, like you know, people arenot growing.

(40:05):
That is also like it's a loselose for the company, for the
individual, you know, and that'salso like and actually like
this year especially, like Ihave been much more like driven
to you know, like, yeah, movethe company to like the next
level and pressure everybodyaround, because I think that is

(40:28):
what kind of triggers growth,like personal growth, like if
you're just like you know, ifyou're flat, if not like
pressured, I don't think you'regrowing a lot as individuals,
not only as a company, you know.
So that's maybe it's stillsomething like as a bootstrap
company is kind of very chill,like you actually need to have
some pressure to perform, orelse I think it's kind of lose

(40:50):
lose for everybody inside acompany.
Yeah.

And how about for yourself as a CEO and
founder of these?
So you started in 2007,incorporated in 11, but whatever
you've been working on thesefor, it will be 20 years and
four years time.
So how do you keep themotivation year over year?
How do you keep pushingyourself Like?
This is still the thing I wantto do.

(41:15):
That's a or you don't.
I mean, you know, somethingthat I think is wonderful with
like a bootstrapped culture isyou can kind of design it as you
like and you can make anychanges as you like.
So that means like you canreally build the culture that
you want to like kind of be partof and attract people that feel

(41:37):
the same.
And in the VC companies it'svery hard to do that because you
have much more like many morestakeholders.
So what I kind of tried to doin my company is like you know,
I start every day, I'm energized, I want to do this.
You know, I love my work and Ithink it's very important to
feel that way, and it'sbasically designing the culture

(42:00):
and the environment that youwant.
Yeah, so I think that's likeone of the privileges of like
being in the bootstrappedenvironment, yeah.

And let's get serious for a moment
here.
So what happens when, in thedays where you don't feel like
it, you're also solo founder,right, yeah, okay, so it's well,
you don't have a shoulder tocry on.
It's like when people haveco-founders right, you probably
have got board sea levels andadvisors or whatnot, or like

(42:29):
really close friends.
So those days are really hardand you're like, no, I don't
feel like it.
How do you overcome this?

(42:35):
Yeah, I mean honestly, like everybody has shit days, like I
would not say like yeah, likeyou know, everything in this is
just, like you know, like wow.
So like I think there's likedifferent ways that you can
tackle this, like on a personallevel.
Like for me, like like doingsome sports is a great way to

(42:57):
you know, just get like the badenergy out.
Having, like you know, closefriends, especially like most of
my friends, are kind of likefounder types, so you know, we
kind of like talk and then wecry yeah or the group therapy
yeah.
Another thing as well is likecoaching.
So like I have an amazing coachthat I've worked with for many

(43:19):
years.
I know that he's also just likemental help as well, like if
you need that, you know.
So there's like many differentways and I think honestly like
that is also maybe supercritical to take care of
yourself.
Like yeah, so when you havethese shit days, you know,
having like different tools, youcan yeah, what has been your
worst day running doist?

Just one.
I mean.
I know it's terrible, right,but just one Okay.

(43:47):
I mean I mean initially, like I actually started the company
in Chile and I I mean it's kindof a crazy story Like I got
introduced to a lawyer inNetherlands that did a very
weird setup involving, likeCyprus and Seychelles.

Sounds interesting yeah.

(44:09):
Yeah, so the bottom line is is our lawyer went to prison and
we lost like 200K on this.
Yeah, so that is maybe likeit's not like it's a multiple
days, but you know like whenyour lawyer goes to like to
prison for, like, evading taxand you lose a lot of money, you
know there's.

There's only Panama missing in the
equation.
But Well, I didn't expect it tobe to be like that.
But wow, that's, thank you forsharing.
I mean we all should be morehonest about this, like
especially because VCs or otherpeople.
You will see people saying like, oh, this is great, I can build
a company of my dreams and Iget to hire super talented

(44:51):
people.
It's like, fuck that shit.
That's 10%.
I mean 50% of the days probablyare like that.
The other 50 is like dealingwith problems.

(45:01):
Yeah, yeah, I mean honestly like that was a close call and
that after that we kind of say,fuck it, we move it to the US
and now we're like a Delawarecompany and that's been like an
amazing change.

Yeah, has that helped you to?
Because your company is, youknow, entirely distributed.
You've been running, you'vebeen moving around, you've lived
in at least three differentcities that I have recollection
of in the last 10 years.
So was it intentional?
So you chose Delaware becauseyou wanted to keep it.
You know economic as to whereyou're living.

(45:32):
Or was it because of otherreasons?
Running on taxes Somebody saytaxes.

(45:38):
No, no, I mean actually like a stripe has like this Atlas
program.
We kind of did like Atlas on ourown and the reason is and you
know that's also like a tip ifyou're like like I have run
company in different parts ofthe world and the US, you know
there's like there's so manyservices and everything is kind
of systemized and like you havea lot of knowledge, like running

(46:01):
in other countries is just likeI mean, there's so much crap
that you need to deal with.
I mean, yeah, just to give likea concrete example, for instance
, like like we had a company inPortugal we needed to hire
somebody and you need to do likea freaking like new news ad and
then we had like random peoplecoming to our office that had

(46:23):
like zero experience in likesystem development, wanting a
job, and you know, yeah, in theUS you don't really deal with
that.
So that's like one of the isbasically streamlining and then
you have like access and you canautomate most of the stuff.
Yeah, and also, like when weactually did this, like stripe
was not really available in lowplaces, so that was also one of

(46:44):
the reasons.
It's kind of like you know,getting access to better tools.

Let's just talk for a minute about AI,
because that's something Iguess we could have spoken for
for an hour, but I think youguys are getting it right,
because a lot of people are justbuilding their company.
It's basically a fuckingwrapper around a touchy PD, but
I think you guys are getting itright.
Like, the good progress aboutAI with AI will be these

(47:08):
seamless functionalities that wedon't know they're being done
with AI that make your life mucheasier, right?
You're writing a text in yourapp and then it automatically
gives it format, corrects it ortells you like you're creating a
task to say like oh, this taskhas already been created before
it had this tax, it had this,things like this.

(47:29):
So what's your opinion on AI inproduct nowadays?

(47:36):
I mean that's a great question , and there's only great
questions.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

(47:40):
Yeah, and a hard one in a hard one, you know.
I think, like we have haddifferent shifts, like I think
mobile ship was a very huge onewhere, like suddenly you needed
to actually become very good atmobile.
And I think, like AI is alsosomething that will be very,
very, very critical, and rightnow it's kind of like it's very

(48:01):
hard to actually do it right.
But I mean, for instance, likesome of the products like Google
photos is a good example that'skind of like if you don't have
AI, if let's say that you'recreating like a Google photos
competitor and you don't havelike AI tagging of people, would
you even like use that?
Probably not, and maybe like alot of our products right now,

(48:24):
like done, really include a lotof intelligence.
I mean, even you know to dothis right now it's kind of very
dumb, gmail very dumb, likemost of the stuff that we use is
very dumb, but actually if youadd intelligence to them like,
for instance, google photos is agreat example of that Then it
makes like a huge, hugedifference and it can kind of
save people a lot of like frontwork.

(48:44):
So that is how we look at thisis kind of like how can we
actually, you know, just insertintelligence, like remove front
work from people?

And the last question before the stupid
last question is as a CEO, asyour company grows, you get a
lot of spam.
You get people coming withprojects.
I want you collaborate.
I want you to become the mentorof this acceleration program.
I want you to be the mentor ofthis whatever university
challenge and the jury of thisstartup pitching competition.

(49:14):
How do you deal with all thatnonsense?

(49:18):
So I have an amazing like a life hack that works in many,
many different ways.
So, like, the inventor of thisis Derek Sivers, he's like an
author and also a founder, andit's called the Hell yeah
principle.
So share it, yeah.
So, like things should eitherbe like a hell yeah or a no.

(49:40):
So if you're kind of like yeah,this looks kind of nice, then
it's a no.
So that's how I do.
A lot of my decision making islike either I am committing to
something and I'm super excitedabout it, or it's a no.
So, like on conferences, I onlydo like a few a year, maybe
like one or two, and same thingis like all other stuff, like

(50:01):
yeah, it's just like yeah, sothat is like you know, that's
good, that's good.

I had heard another version which was
it's either a fuck yes or a fuckno.

(50:12):
Right, but yeah, yeah, yeah, this is a more civilized exactly
.

And the last question this is a
signature question of startupgrind is what is your useless
superpower?
That's something that's fuckinguseless, but you do it very
well, you did it every day, butit's useless.
It's how, what?
Why do I know these four Right?
Why do I do these all the time?

(50:35):
And it's useless.

What's yours?

(50:37):
So something that, like I have done for many, many years is
like I'm really a fan of likestrategy games, like Starcraft,
and I know a lot about it and Istill watch like Korean pro
Starcraft scene grow how manyhours per week.
I mean, honestly, it's a fewhours per week.
It's kind of like, you know,just like when I want to relax,

(50:58):
I kind of watch that and it'slike it's very relaxing, do you
know?

the shortcuts to Starcraft, to like
doing all the actions, be auseless superpower.

(51:08):
I guess I mean I like yeah, I have played a very high level in
in age of like Kings andStarcraft as well, yeah, so yeah
, all right, that's a good one.

Ladies and gentlemen, give it up for
Amir.
That was amazing.
All right, that's going to beQ&A with this thing over here.
We're just going to bounce itaround.
Oh, there's a lot of peopleactually.
Thank you for coming Questions.
There are some rules to thequestions.
One question per person.
Say your name, don Peach, andjust be cool because you're

(51:40):
amazing.
All right, you start.
I think it's the other wayaround, but I don't know.
Yeah.
Does it have a microphone?
It has a microphone.
Yeah, it's a microphone.
Yeah, sorry, I failed tomention that.
Is it on?
Yeah, I think it's on, right.
No, it's not on.
Yeah, yeah, I think it's no.
It's not on or no?

(52:00):
Okay, it is on.

Speaker 8 (52:02):
Okay, it's on.

You against the wall mate.

Speaker 8 (52:06):
My name is Vlad.
The question I have is how didyou approach marketing in the
early years and what would youmake?

(52:15):
different if you were to bootstrap a project right now.
No easy questions.
Yeah, I mean something to note,and I think that is always like
we talked about is like tryingto find an edge.
And also in marketing, like Ithink you need to try to find an

(52:35):
edge.
So, for instance, likeinitially, where today's got a
ton of users, is like gettingpromoted on dick I'm not sure if
anybody remembers dick and likea life hacker blog and I kind
of like hacked that or liketried to like.
You know, I chatted with thelike the journalists that kind

(52:57):
of worked on life hacker andstuff like that and really
pitched them for a long time andthen they featured to do.
Is that it was like a lifechanging event for the company.
Yeah, so maybe like that issomething like guerrilla tactics
, you know, like trying to thinkout of the box and not thinking
, okay, you know, let's buy someGoogle ads because everybody

(53:17):
can do that.
It's not really veryinteresting.
So maybe right now, forinstance, some kind of like
weird Reddit community could beone.
Or like trying to build yourown audience.
I don't know.
I mean, yeah, I don't, I wouldneed to go in and like think,
but like I think being creativecould maybe be the best advice.

(53:37):
And the bootstrapped question Imean, that's a very, very hard
one.
I think, like something thathas changed a lot in the past is
kind of like competition hasbecome insane, like you need to
build very, very like goodquality things to even have like

(53:59):
any kind of traction.
And in my days, you know, youcould just like I did the
freaking like design ofeverything and there was shit
and people still used it.
And right now, I think if youdo that, then you have a problem
.
This said, I also think youhave a lot more leverage.
So I would kind of like try topick tools where you have a ton

(54:20):
of leverage, so for instance,like AI.
You know, like if you canutilize that and leverage that,
then suddenly maybe that's a way.
Yeah, yeah, so I hope that gavegive some inspiration Next up,
if you can.

It's funny because we never get this
sofa filled with people.
It's like it scares the shitout of everybody.
It's not for VIPs.
Next event.
You know it, just take it.
All right, can you bounce itover there?
There's a gentleman behind you,just toss it around.

Speaker 8 (54:49):
This one.
Yeah, so it will be like someHR question.
You showed us like two sides ofthe business from the people
management perspective.
You say from one side thatpeople don't live, and then you
say that in order to attract newpeople, it means that you only

(55:11):
grow how it works for you.
Do you really keep those people, because we know that there is
a big rotation, usually in thebusiness.

(55:23):
So something like that comment was the COVID period, so
basically like there was a dipwhere a lot of companies went
remote and then suddenly themarket became very hot and it
was very hard to hire.
Right now it's kind of becomingcold again.
Thank you all the office lovers, thank you real estate
re-enters, so yeah.

Speaker 8 (55:43):
What's the question?
The question was how is thereality in the company?
Do you really keep those people?
This is a core of the people.
And then there are some peoplelike circling around.

(55:54):
So our retention rate, I think for the last five years, is
like 95% BSA yeah.

Some questions over there.

Speaker 9 (56:07):
Always behind you.
I want to ask a simple question, but for the first I want to
comment about.
We are like doing John Stewartthing on Apple.
We are in TravelPrec, who arefamous for bringing people back
to office.
I know If not nobody's readingthe news or these email

(56:28):
sequences from weekly Barcelona.
My question is why, barcelona?
Your company is in the UnitedStates right now and you are
here and you are born not here.

(56:42):
Yeah, so like my wife is Chilean and we need to find a
compromise.
Yeah, so this is like Latinenough for her and yeah, I mean
honestly like it's an amazingcity and like we have lived here
for many years now and wereally feel like it's a great
place to live.
So that's kind of like we havebeen looking at different

(57:05):
options and we also lived indifferent places, but this is
kind of like our home now.

So yeah , If you want the long answer on
our podcast, Mars based podcast, I need to read him.
He tells a different story.
Yeah.
He tells a full story.
Actually, I remember that one.
I thought you were going to gofor that one.
More questions, yeah, oh, yougot them.

Speaker 6 (57:27):
My name is Ashton, first time I'm here, just wanted
to quickly ask what aboutlegacy?
Do you think about your legacyin any way?
Or and the fact that yourbootstrapped does that affect
how you think about the future?
How long do you wish to stayinvolved with the companies
until the company decides thatit no longer wants to, or you
feel that you can pass it on togood hands?

(57:48):
Is it something you look at?
I get the impression thatyou're very hands on, even
though you give thisasynchronous approach.
I just wanted to know again howcan you sort of almost let it
go, because it is very much yourbaby?

(58:05):
Yeah, I mean I think on Alex's podcast we talked a bit about
this, and I mean something tonote as well, and this is also
maybe a hack that you can use,but it's a very extreme one.
It's kind of like that as theexit strategy.
Most founders don't reallycommit this, but if you do that,
then suddenly you know like youhave a huge advantage over

(58:28):
others that are kind of lookingfor an exit.
So for me, it's really like youknow that's my legacy and I,
you know I want to die doingthis.
Yeah, Once you make thatcommitment, then it becomes like
a very different ballgame.
Yeah, but most founders don'treally do that.
But I think, like it's a huge,like, yeah, you need to find

(58:48):
your edge, and that's like ahuge edge.
Yeah, Wow.

So, felix, I'll take this over here,
yeah, marco here.

Speaker 10 (58:56):
Well, first of all, thank you so much for to do this
.
I'm a long time user, so firstof all, thank you, thank you for
using.
Yeah, and my question is relatedasking communication.
I mean, when I read the post itwas great idea and I always try
to, you know, to use askingcommunication in my company.
I mean it's not mine, that's my, that's the problem.

(59:18):
So it's really hard to pushthis culture right If it's not
coming from sea level orwhatever.
Do you think that inside acompany that cannot adapt
because it depends also on thekind of business of this company
, a team can work in a sinkenvironment, or do you think
that should be like a cultureembrace for the entire company?
That's the only way it couldwork.

(59:41):
I think maybe you can do it like on a team level Most likely
, yeah, but you really need tohave commitment from everybody.
And yeah, I mean, if you havelike a manager that's like
creating a lot of meetings andyou want to do a sink, then you
have like a mismatch.
Yeah, I'm not sure if you haveany.

Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (01:00:01):
I mean, our company is not that big to
have different teams, but I'vebeen running it in different
projects, for instance, and someprojects require to be
synchronous, right, for instance, some more space is async
entirely.
But if we were bigger, probablysome departments would be like
hey, we require immediacy, likeI don't know, sales, for

(01:00:23):
instance.
Maybe sales is that somethingthat requires to be more, like
in the we always hear this Likesales requires people to be in
the room because it's about theadrenaline of that.
I'm not sure.
But other projects they run.
They cannot be run asyncbecause people aren't used to
working remotely in the firstplace.
And I think you can do async ifyou're not working in a

(01:00:44):
distributed way, for instance.
I I'm not sure, like, I haven'ttried async in an office, but I
think it wouldn't work becausethe office is about being there
In the same place, right, andthere will always be like, oh,
let's, let's get coffee now,let's talk about this, and then
you know you could, you couldn'tprioritize long written form

(01:01:08):
blog posts or, you know, updatesin an environment that is
intrinsically synchronized orsynchronous like an office.
So I'm not sure whether thatanswer to question, but yeah,
give me some hope, yeah.
I got a question over here,chuck.

Speaker 5 (01:01:27):
That's all right.
Yeah, thank you.
So I checked my Gmail.
The date was June 2010.
And we had a product idea thatrequired integration with a
couple of to do list managers,and so I have the list here.
It's like to do list vital list, remember the milk and a couple
of others.
So do you keep track of thecompetition and how are they

(01:01:49):
doing now?

The milk.

(01:01:52):
Yeah, I used it.
I think they're still alive.
Yeah, I mean, we do track, yeah, but honestly like and that's
like something that's like veryspecific to our market.
It's kind of like, if you lookat like spreadsheets,
spreadsheets have, like you know, depending on which stats you
look at, but between like twoand three billion people, like

(01:02:15):
monthly active users.
Most task management andproject management jobs have a
few million max.
So, like our competition isn'treally, you know, like other
task managers.
It's more like okay, how do weactually build something on a
much greater scale?
So that's something that we'reworking on right now and I think
that's a much harder problemand I think anybody has sold

(01:02:38):
that.
So that's one aspect, andanother aspect is basically out
living the competition, becausea lot of these companies you
mentioned, like most of them,are dead and they have not
really evolved.
So I think it was like you know, being a lot of the years in
the business and keep likepushing, you know that makes
that's also a advantage as well.
I hope that I'm for a couplemore.

Speaker 7 (01:03:00):
So actually I just wanted to follow exactly on this
.
So why do you think that yousurvived?
Like that's the simple question.
I think you could elaborate abit of like everything you
talked about today, but thesimple questions like why do we
survive those 10 years anddidn't fail like the others,
given that VCs are getting money, everyone is maybe running

(01:03:21):
faster, growing faster, butyou're still there.

(01:03:26):
Yeah, I mean, I think that's a very hard question to answer
and I think also there's kind oflike a like survivorship bias,
but honestly, I think likecommitment and consistency
matters a lot.
So you know like we are just atit you know, we don't stop and
we don't have, like these up anddowns or, like you know,

(01:03:46):
microsoft coming in buying us,shutting us down.
So level even like something.
That was a problem for me andthat's something like a tip.
And if you're starting likewith a co-founder, is done split
50-50.
That is like the worst mistakeyou can do.
Like I think you always youshould have somebody that's in
charge that can make the harddecisions.

(01:04:09):
So actually, like this isn't myfirst company.
My first company was a socialnetwork where we had like 33%
everybody and then it kind ofbecame like a like a very
indecisive, very like fightingspirit and then we didn't really
do fast decisions and that canalso kill you.
So maybe also like there's manyways of dying as a company,

(01:04:31):
yeah, so there's one over therein the back.

So if you can just toss it over there,
no worries, it's not gonnabreak, it's made for that.
Where are we going Toss it?
To Marina?
Come on Without fear, noworries.

Marina Aisa (01:04:44):
Okay, so I'm Marina and I work at Apple and they
don't allow us to use any thirdparty that source data in
external servers, of course.
But I find very interesting howto do is.
Well, I used it for personalusage for like 10 years now,
maybe like a big fan, and like Ifind interesting how you put

(01:05:10):
like to do is on like B2C marketand then twist on the B2B when
I find that to do is cool, alsobe a B2B product itself, when
you have like all this abilityof inviting people and like it
could also work as a B2B product.
It's a bit that Apple will notallow me to use it and they will

(01:05:35):
force me to use remindersinstead, which I'm like feeling
right there.
So I'm like, oh, to do is tothat deal, so reminders will do
it and they don't just do it.
But anyways, like my questionwas like have you ever thought
about like creating like a B2Bversion of to do is within the

(01:05:58):
app without like creating asdifferent product, as you did
with twist?

(01:06:04):
Yeah, I mean that's a.
I mean I could like talk aboutthat specific thing for a long
time and actually, like when youasked me what was the worst
time at do is like actually wehave tried to create like a B2B
teams extension of to do is forlike the last maybe two years

(01:06:26):
and we are like very close tolaunching that.
But honestly, that has been afreaking nightmare.
Yeah, and the reason is andhonestly it's my fault because I
built the initial models likein a very stupid way and they
were built for individuals andthen you kind of like need to
add a multiplayer component youknow for like companies and

(01:06:46):
teams to use that, and then itbecomes like a nightmare,
especially given how much datawe have.
So, you know, I think right nowthe playbook that seems to be
working best is kind of like youhave something that attracts
individuals, like B2C, and thenyou also have a B2B component
and then you tie that together.

(01:07:08):
But honestly, like that issuper, super hard to execute and
it kind of like you know it's akind of like a different level
because it's very like it's verydifferent to serve consumers
versus businesses.
You need like different motionsand, by the way, if you make
that work, then suddenly youknow it's amazing, but it's also

(01:07:32):
super challenging.
Yeah, so excellent question,thank you.

I would be so happy if you could like just store in
the local machine like all,like paying an extra something
and then like not the startingafter 14, like locally, I'll be
willing to extra pay for like.

Or you could talk to Mr Team Apple.
Yeah, the.

Remanders team is kind of like annoyed by me, like
all the time feeling writerslike hey, yeah, do this, do this
, do this one Okay.

I remember 15 years ago when we
were not allowed in my previouscompany to use Dropbox because
it was evil.
And now, good thing of acompany without Dropbox nowadays
.
Well, anyways, thank you verymuch.
Ladies and gentlemen, that'sokay.
Now you got one.
You got one Last one.
I wanted to make no pressurebecause I'm hungry.

Joan Boixadós (01:08:25):
I just wanted to make that, to say that you
shouldn't give information toApple because they are going to
use it against us.

Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh yeah.
You get something to say aboutit.

Joan Boixadós (01:08:35):
Yeah, it's funny that she's asking for a feature
that Apple fights against.
So I have the same problem, butI'm just saying Mary, no, I
actually wanted to ask about.
I mean, you mentioned that AIis obviously going to be a big
shift.
We still don't know how.
But my question to you is doyou think you have a competitive

(01:08:56):
advantage because you alreadyhave a big business that can
leverage AI, or do you thinkthis can be negative because if
you were starting, you would beable to have to start without
constraints?

(01:09:09):
That's deep, yeah, easy question.

Yeah, the easiest one.

(01:09:16):
Yeah, I mean, I think that is going to play out.
But if you look at the markettoday, then those that have a
huge advantage are Is itexisting apps or services that
already have a lot of traction,a lot of distribution?
So if you look at Adobe, whatthey have done, they are

(01:09:37):
probably going to kill all theother startups in this Like AI
imaging space, and maybe thatwill play out in a lot of stuff.
So, from my perspective, Ithink we do have a huge
advantage because people alreadyhave the app installed, this
set.
This is also going very, veryfast.
So we will see where thisactually ends Like.

(01:10:01):
If the form factor becomes verydifferent, then maybe we lose
our advantage, but right now, asit is, it's just like doing
things better or smarter.
It's not really like doing itcompletely different way.
But I don't know, it's still avery early field.
So, yeah, it would beinteresting to see.

We'll see what happens.
Thank you very much.
Ladies and gentlemen, Give itup.

(01:10:26):
Thank you, Thank you guys.

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075 - Bootstrapped Businesses, with Amir Salihefendic (Founder @ Doist)

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