Making communication on the internet better with Tomaž Štolfa
Tomaž Štolfa is one of Slovenia’s best-known technology entrepreneurs. When I speak to him he is working remote in Croatia, walking his Boston terrier on a sunny day with the sea glittering in the distance — something he often makes time for to keep his head clear during in the working day.
After 10 years spent between San Francisco and New York, he and his wife moved back home to Slovenia with their son to ride out the pandemic closer to family and out of the bubbling metropolis. With what he describes as an ‘exceptional’ quality of life and the ability to work from anywhere, they don’t plan to go back any time soon.
Today he works at Pitch.io, a Berlin-based startup that just raised $85m in its mission to radically reimagine how teams collaborate on presentations online. There he leads presentation experience and special projects as well as running the mobile team.
It is the latest venture in a thread running through his career that expresses his deep fascination with how technology can enhance the way humans communicate online.
Back in the early days of the Web he was building communication products for mobile carriers, co-founding Vox: a consumer messaging and voice and video calling solution on a quest to make messaging ‘better and more human’. After that he started Layer, another messaging infrastructure-as-a-service, which wanted to ‘make communications better in products people love and use daily’.
He was interested in how to humanise text-only messaging to enable users to express emotions in digital communication and how to satisfy the impulse to share content as part of a conversation.
“Our vision there was to really capture more of how you would communicate on the internet in a modern messaging tool,” — he says.
A decade later, that aligns pretty well with what we are building at Tempo, of which Tomaž is an early adopter. Today, of course making communication ‘better’ isn’t simply about the sophistication of the technology but the decisions that define the user’s relationship with the product and the habits we build around the tools we use each day.
Settle in for the latest Community Conversation as we talk to him about what a good day’s work feels like to him and why tools are great but it all comes down to a good plan.
There seems to be a thread in your career around communication. I guess this is a topic that has always fascinated you?
Absolutely. Prior to my entrepreneurial adventures I used to build value added services for mobile carriers — mainly communication products. I stepped away from communications for little bit but now at Pitch I see pitches as just a different format that enables people to communicate effectively. And I was also one of the early users of Tempo. What you guys are doing resonated with me very well.
That idea of making communication ‘more human’ that you had back then, is that something you think about a lot?
We grew up with IRC (internet relay chat) and online chat groups in the early days of the internet. Vox is now 10 years ago at least, so it was right at the time when Skype started to feel a little bit bloated but mobile messaging products weren’t around yet. Our vision there was to really capture more of how you would communicate on the internet in a modern messaging tool.
One of the interesting insights we had was that basically every tenth message at the time was a link or pointing to some form of media. We started to bring those into conversation. So I could share a SoundCloud link with you and you could play it back straight from the messaging interface or I could show you a video or a map in the interface.
Leveraging content in the conversation was one part of it. The other one which became extremely widespread was producing emojis, quick replies and mentions: all the things that enabled some emotion to come across this very white and high contrast interface we had at the time. Those were the elements we were trying to plug into back then.
Obviously messaging has only become more sophisticated and pervasive in our lives. What do you think about the state of or culture around messaging and communication?
The downside of having an always-connected supercomputer in your pocket is notifications and messages coming in all the time. So we need to be conscious of managing which people can reach you at all times, as well as being very diligent about managing our time and attention. Don’t spend your day just looking at notifications and replying to random things flying onto your devices that you have no control over.
For me, email is a world that is still a little bit more thoughtful and long form. I typically revert back to email and that’s what I love about Tempo when I need to sit down and put a little bit more thought and structure into what I’m going to send to another person or a group — instead of just reacting with a quick ‘thumbs up’ or a ‘clap’.
So what are you doing day-to-day and where does deep work come into that?
If I need to think through a strategy it means that I’m sitting behind a piece of paper. I’m just drawing and I’m offline completely. Other times I have to produce content, like if I am presenting strategy or something. That is also something I can only do if I stay focused, otherwise the quality of the work suffers. Those are the types of work that I typically do.
It’s really important to me that I get to give my brain enough space to think through certain problems and sometimes that will just be a walk with the dog. I turn off all notifications, go outside, have some space to think and process and then come back and do the work and assemble the output.
What would like ‘a good day’s work’ look like to you?
Typically I plan my day the night before. I have a ritual where I write down the three most important things that can move things forward the next day. I’ve been doing that for a long time.
It’s just key to have a good plan and then basically try to keep momentum. I like the concept of the 10 mile March: that it’s better to walk 10 miles every day than a hundred the first day and then just basically die.
I prefer to just make sure that every day we move forward with the most important things and that has served me reasonably well so far.
Is there anything else that you use to protect your focus?
I learned that the best way to protect my focus is to know what the most important thing is, versus what is being thrown at me all the time.
Obviously there are urgent things that you need to get done in a certain timeframe but then you have, I would say, a shortlist of things that can really move the needle and I try to focus on those. What can be a 10x if you want leverage versus just ticking off a box?
I turn off all my notifications unless I know there is something urgent that I’m expecting. I try to stay away from my devices when I need to think.
What is most likely to break your focus?
I have a problem moving on from things. If something has really rattled me I keep dwelling on it for way too long. That’s one of my challenges but I’m getting better as I get more experienced.
I always had a pretty decent focus. I used to play sports when I was a kid and I think through that I was able to get myself into flow pretty well.
What were you into?
I used to play basketball
That’s massive in Slovenia!
Yes, it is. I was decent at it and through that I think I learned how to focus. How to practice every day and how to show up and do the work. One of the major breakthroughs was starting to meditate because that helped me put aside the things that would rattle me.
We talk a lot about getting in the zone and protecting the focus. How do you get out of the zone?
Planning, planning, planning — even free time. You get focused if you have a routine around that and you also use routine to get out of it. It’s just about having good habits around the context switch into free time.
We don’t have many screens around the house and I use a desktop computer. I don’t have a laptop with me at all times or anything like that. When I sit down at my desk, that’s when I work. When I stand up from the the desk that’s when I’m off.
That seems like a good note to finish on! Thank you for your time Tomaz!
Tempo is the email client that helps you focus. If you have a unique way of approaching productivity, we’d love to hear from you.
