Lunch and Learn: Lessons from Todoist founder, Amir Salihefendic
Call this new month resolutions or anything you please, but for some reason, I could not let this day pass without posting something. For someone who runs an online writing platform, writing my own stuff can be a chore. But, I digress.
Hi, my name is Tolu and I am the cofounder of Skrife, an online platform that takes care of startups and entrepreneurs’ written content needs through our curated community of high quality freelance writers. Last year, we got accepted into Start-Up Chile’s pre-accelerator program, The S Factory, and for the past two months, my cofounder and I have been working on making our startup make sense.
Every Friday, we have these things called SUP Lunch. The typical format is: at 1.30pm on Fridays, we gather on the rooftop (beautiful view I might add) to eat and converse, and on some occasions, we even have guest speakers. It is not a compulsory activity but it is a great way to meet and bond with other Start-Up Chile participants you probably haven’t gotten round to meeting (there’s a lot of us from various batches, or generations as we call them). Everyone who attends is expected to bring their own lunch. Since I got here, we’ve had three lunches and it’s the first time I remembered to pack a lunch. As Murphy would have it, this was also the first time they served lunch.
For this last SUP Lunch on 29 January 2016, we had a Startup Chile Alumni from the first generation, Amir Salihefendic, the founder of Todoist share his startup story. For those of you who don’t know what Todoist is (and I have to ask, where you have been?), it is one of the top to-do list and task management apps and was launched in 2007. I’ve used it and I love it…although productivity apps make me feel bad about my procrastinating self, so I mostly stick to pen and paper. And as usual, I digress again 🙈
The lunch was insightful and I especially liked Amir’s matter-of-fact, straight to the point, yet kind approach to sharing his story, answering questions and giving his opinion on things. A solo founder, Amir has grown Todoist into a 40-person team that generates millions in annual revenue with four million users, one million of whom are active. And all this was done with zero funding (save for the equity-free grant they received from Start-Up Chile).
Here are my notes from his talk and the Q&A after. Hope it’s useful for you. (disclaimer: these are paraphrased versions of what he actually said):
On picking an idea to work on
- Work on something you’re really passionate about and a problem that you yourself have; something that you are the user of.
On Startup Priorities
- Figuring out your business model, getting paid customers, scaling, hiring the right people, building the right culture, those are the important things. Focus on that, not on pitching all over the place.
On Funding and Focus
- We have zero funding except for Start-Up Chile and we are not interested in VC money
- Focus on getting some paid customers and not just on getting VC money. Funding should be to speed up growth.
- Some one asked, “how did you make the decision not to take funding?” Amir’s reply: I didn’t like the culture and pressure taking VC money created, I wanted to have something I could control myself. And we were making money already.
On Team and Cofounders
- If you are building a tech company, you should have a techie on your core team. If not, good luck hiring techies.
- Single founder vs multiple founders: if you need to move fast, you need to make decisions fast and somethings, having cofounders can be a distraction. For me, it was best being a single founder because I can make any changes I want. Having cofounder(s) is great but make sure you have a power structure where someone has veto power so you don’t have conversations over stupid stuff.
On Marketing Models
- Combine tech, design and marketing. If you are missing any of these, its very likely you will fail. Of all three, marketing is the most challenging part, actually getting users and starting a business now is so much harder than it was 10 years ago. You need to be creative.
- We focused on building a great product, building something that people would want to use.
Todoist vs Wunderlist (or any other to-do app really)
Todoist is my passion. I have been at this for the past ten years and I will still be working on it for the next ten years. I’m here for the long haul, not just to IPO, but to make your life better.
So, what’s next for Todoist?
We are building a new way for people and teams to organize themselves. Most people don’t really use good organizational tools. We want to build something everyone can use.
Notes I couldn’t find a category for
- Stop looking at the Silicon valley market and trying to model after it is very hard
- Getting people to use a product is hard, getting them to pay is even harder
That’s all folks. Here’s hoping the next SUP lunch is as enlightening…and that my writing streak stays.
Amor y luz.
