Amir Salihefendic, Doist.io

He Abandoned His Freemium SaaS for 4 Years and It Still Grew

Introduction and Amir Salihefendic's background

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Episode Summary

Amir Salihefendic built Todoist as a student in 2007, launched it with a single blog post, then abandoned the freemium SaaS for four years to work on a social network. When he came back in 2012, it still had 200,000 users - and he grew it to over 4 million.

In Part 1 of this interview, Amir reveals why he walked away from a product people loved, how he set freemium SaaS pricing at $29/year without any market research, and why he believes founders should build products for themselves instead of letting user feedback design them.

Amir Salihefendic was a student in Denmark with two programming jobs when he built Todoist in 2007. He needed a task management tool and could not find one he liked, so he built his own. He launched it with a single line on his blog and started getting users organically.

But then something unusual happened. In 2008, Amir got an offer to work on Plurk, a social network growing fast in Asia Pacific. He took it and essentially abandoned Todoist for the next four years. He fixed bugs and kept servers running, but did almost no active development. The growth curve went nearly flat.

In 2012, after three years of optimizing a social network to waste people's time, Amir realized he wanted to do something meaningful. He returned to Todoist with about 200,000 users - many of them inactive - and started building full time. Within months, revenue covered his salary. He hired a support person immediately and began growing the team.

Today Todoist is a freemium SaaS with over 4 million users, 40+ employees across a fully remote team with no headquarters, and several million dollars in annual revenue. Fortune 100 companies use it alongside individual users paying $29 per year - a price Amir set as a student without any research or A/B testing. Competitors later copied the same freemium SaaS pricing model.

Amir also shares why he believes user feedback should be filtered rather than followed, why building for yourself produces better products than building for customers, and how the mobile revolution changed his view of Todoist's potential.

Topics: Product-Led Growth|Bootstrapping

Key Insight

Amir Salihefendic abandoned Todoist for four years while working on a social network, then returned in 2012 to grow the freemium SaaS from 200,000 mostly inactive users to over 4 million - proving that a product built for the founder's own needs can survive neglect because it solves a real problem.

Key Ideas

Todoist launched with a single blog post in 2007 and reached ~100,000 users before Amir abandoned it for a social network startup
Four years of near-zero development (2008-2012) still maintained ~200,000 users, proving organic product-market fit
Freemium SaaS pricing at $29/year was set without market research - competitors later copied the exact model
Revenue covered Amir's salary within months of returning full time in 2012
Grew from 200,000 users to 4 million+ with a fully remote team of 40+ and no headquarters

Key Lessons

🎯 Build your freemium SaaS for yourself first, not for customers: Amir used Todoist every day for 9 years and built features based on his own needs. The product attracted 4 million users because solving your own problem creates authentic product-market fit.
📉 A real product survives neglect - a mediocre one does not: Todoist retained 200,000 users through four years of near-zero development. If your freemium SaaS loses all users the moment you stop marketing, the product itself may be the problem.
💰 Set freemium SaaS pricing and ship fast instead of over-researching: Amir picked $29/year with no market research and launched the premium tier in weeks. The price worked well enough that every competitor copied it, proving speed matters more than precision.
🧠 Filter user feedback instead of following it for freemium SaaS products: Users often propose solutions that only work for their specific workflow. Amir's team evaluates what problem the feedback reveals, then designs a broader solution the user never imagined.
🚀 Mission matters more than opportunity for long-term freemium SaaS motivation: Amir left a fast-growing social network because he was optimizing for wasted time. Returning to productivity gave him a mission - helping people get more done - that sustained years of building.
🏢 Evaluate output quality, not office hours, when building a remote SaaS team: Doist's 40+ fully remote employees have no headquarters. Amir argues that companies measuring presence instead of results are using a broken evaluation system.

Chapters

00:00Introduction and Amir Salihefendic's background

01:22Why having a mission matters more than a great idea

02:55How great ideas look stupid at the start

03:51Born in Bosnia, built from Portugal - the global journey

05:32Why Doist has no headquarters

06:43Remote work philosophy and evaluating output over hours

08:39Building Todoist as a personal tool in 2007

09:03Why Amir builds for himself, not for users

10:21The danger of building for customers you do not resemble

13:10Launching Todoist with a single blog post

15:15Why Amir would not recommend the organic-only approach today

16:07First revenue - covering server costs as a student

16:45Setting freemium pricing at $29/year without research

18:29Why the same pricing approach might not be optimal

20:08Competitors copying the freemium model

20:42Abandoning Todoist for a social network in 2008

22:06Four years of flat growth with zero active development

24:47Returning full time in 2012 driven by mission

26:57Mobile revolution triggers bigger vision for Todoist

28:33Generating salary-level revenue within months

29:11Hiring the first employee for support

29:58Managing passionate user feedback on the Todoist forum

31:08Filtering user feedback and not letting users design the product

32:26Part 1 wrap-up and preview of Part 2

Episode Q&A

How did Todoist grow to 4 million users as a freemium SaaS built by one person?

Amir launched Todoist with a single blog post in 2007. Users found it organically through word of mouth and early submissions to Digg and Reddit. He never did paid marketing, and the product's usefulness drove viral growth after he returned full time in 2012.

Why did Amir Salihefendic abandon Todoist for 4 years?

In 2008, Amir got an offer to join Plurk, a social network growing fast in Asia Pacific. He did not see the potential in the productivity space at the time, so he took the job and only maintained Todoist with bug fixes and server upkeep.

How did Todoist set its freemium SaaS pricing model?

Amir set the price at $29/year as a student without doing any market research or A/B testing. He just wanted to cover server costs. Competitors later copied the exact pricing model, and Amir acknowledges the price may not be optimal but has kept it.

What made Amir Salihefendic return to Todoist after 4 years away?

After three years optimizing a social network to waste people's time, Amir wanted to work on something meaningful. He was passionate about productivity, still used Todoist daily, and regularly received thank-you messages from users. The mobile revolution also helped him see bigger potential.

How does Todoist handle freemium SaaS user feedback without losing focus?

Amir believes founders should build products for themselves first, not let users design features. He filters feedback heavily because each user has unique preferences. When users suggest solutions, the team often finds a different approach that serves more people better.

How did Todoist become profitable as a freemium SaaS from day one?

Even as a student project in 2007, Todoist covered its server costs from premium subscriptions. Amir rolled out a premium version with features like reminders in a matter of weeks, and the revenue immediately exceeded hosting expenses.

Why does Todoist operate as a fully remote company with no headquarters?

Amir believes location-based hiring limits talent quality. Doist hires the best people worldwide and evaluates work by output quality instead of hours logged. He says companies that measure presence instead of results should not be managing people.

What freemium SaaS lesson did Todoist teach about building products for yourself?

Amir has used Todoist every day since 2007. He argues that founders who use their own product understand users better than any amount of customer development research. Even during the four years he neglected development, he never stopped using the tool.

How did the mobile revolution change Todoist's freemium SaaS growth trajectory?

When Amir returned in 2012, smartphones were mainstream. Mobile access made a task management tool exponentially more useful, and Amir could see Todoist becoming a daily companion rather than just a desktop web app.

Links

Doist.io: Website
Omer Khan: LinkedIn | X

Full Transcript

Omer (00:11.840)
Welcome to another episode of the SaaS Podcast.
I'm your host, Omer Khan, and this is the show where I interview proven founders and industry experts who share their stories, strategies, and insights to help you build, launch, and grow your SaaS business.
Today's guest is the founder and CEO of Doist IO, the makers of Todoist, an online and mobile task management app.
He started todoist back in 2007 when he was still a student with two programming jobs on the side.
He needed a way to manage his own work and productivity, but couldn't find the right tool, so he decided to build his own.
And when he started that journey, I don't think he saw it as a startup or had any particularly big ambitions.
He was just building a tool.
But today, that company has over 4 million users, and Todoist is also used by a number of Fortune 100 companies.
And the tool that our guest built for himself has grown into a company with over 40 employees.
So today I'd like to welcome Amir Salihefendic.
Amir, welcome to the show.

Amir Salihefendic (01:22.840)
Thanks, Omer.

Omer (01:24.600)
Now we should just, like, prepare people, because you are calling in from Porto in Portugal.
And as we were talking before we got started, there was a bunch of sirens and noises in the background.
And you said, you know, people tend to get a little crazy over there on a Friday night.

Amir Salihefendic (01:44.120)
Yeah.
So I'm sorry about that.
So if there's noise, you know, it's my fault.
Yeah.

Omer (01:51.630)
Tell everybody out there in the city just to calm down for a little while.

Amir Salihefendic (01:54.150)
Right

Omer (01:56.710)
now, one of the first things I like to do is to ask my guests what.
What gets them out of bed?
What motivates or inspires them?
Is there a favorite quote or is there something that.
That drives you to do what you do?

Amir Salihefendic (02:09.750)
Yeah, I mean, that's a really good question.
And actually I wanted to present a quote for that, but I think actually that's not really, like, the reason why I get up in bed.
I think one of the biggest and most important thing is having a mission, and having an important mission that you think helps other people, helps the world.
And that's really what motivates me, is that I think I work on something that has positive impact on people's life.

Omer (02:42.030)
And so we talked about how you'd started todoist.
You didn't have a.
A big mission at that time.
Right.
At what point did.
Did this kind of become important for you?

Amir Salihefendic (02:55.750)
So I think, like, a lot of times when you start something, you are not really aware of the, you know, implication.
It has or like the potential it has.
And I think, like, a lot of the really great ideas are not really great when you think about them.
Like, if you see some of the quotes that people had about the computer in the 40s or 50s, they didn't see that as something that would have huge potential.
And the same can be said about the Internet or anything else.
Even like Dropbox or Airbnb.
People thought they were stupid things that were already sold.
And when I started todoist, I also didn't really see the implications of it.
So I just started a tool.
But like, when you think more about it, you know, it is much more than just a tool.

Omer (03:51.400)
When I was doing research for this, one of the things that kind of struck me was like how, like, you've just been all over the place, right?
You were born, I understand, in Bosnia, grew up in Denmark.
You initially launched this business from Santiago, Chile.
You're now in Porto in Portugal.
You have a team that spread all over the world.
How did it end up like this?

Amir Salihefendic (04:17.760)
Well, that's a really good question.
The thing is also something to note is that I had like a detour.
So actually, like, I became full time on Todoist in 2012.
And between 2007 and 2012 I was doing something else.
I was doing a social network mainly in Asia Pacific called Plurk.
So I have actually also lived in Taiwan for like a year or something, or maybe even longer.
So I've been like all around the world and I don't know, I mean, I like to travel, but I also like to challenge myself and just like, you know, go out and live somewhere else and try to make something happen.
I think also, like, a lot of people are very location specific.
Like they think you need to be like in Berlin or London or San Francisco in order to build something.
And I think this is not true.
I think it can be anywhere.
And I think also it helps you to have the broader perspective to visit many different locations and live in different locations and learn different cultures and languages.
So.

Omer (05:32.270)
So earlier I asked, I had asked you where your headquarters now in Porto, in Portugal.
Or.
Or did you be in Chile?
And you said no, actually, no.
And we don't want to have a headquarters.
Tell us a little bit about that.
What's your philosophy to.
To running your business and managing a team.

Amir Salihefendic (05:53.910)
So base, basically, like the philosophy is to have a remote company where we are not really constrained by location, so we can hire the best people from all around the world and help them work together online and also create tools that enable this kind of work.
And we think this is a really, really powerful construct that is only available right now.
It was not available 20 years ago or 10 years ago even.
And that's like what we really want to promote isn't like this headquarters thinking where you need to have all the people, most of the people in one location and then you roll everything from there.
We don't really care about that.
We want to make something that's more modern.

Omer (06:43.420)
Yeah, I mean, I've still seen people who are so kind of old school that, you know, they're not that comfortable having an employee work from home, you know, occasionally, let alone having this kind of model.
Have you found it, has it been a difficult thing to do to try and build a, I guess a culture and a sense of team with people or working remotely?

Amir Salihefendic (07:12.950)
I think that's like one of the most difficult challenges, I think.
But I mean, I don't really think it's only a challenge for remote companies.
It is a challenge for all the companies.
And I think also a lot of companies today evaluate work very badly.
So they evaluate work in terms of you showing up at work at a specific hour and working at specific amounts of time.
But I think this is a very bad way of evaluating work.
What you should evaluate is the output and the quality of the work that is produced and not how it's produced or where it's produced or like how many hours the person has spent on it.
And if you can't evaluate the work that people are doing, then like, you know, you should not be, you should not really have people working for you.
Because I mean, so, so I think like, it's really like a problem in today's company is that evaluation of work is really, really tough.
And the only way that like normal companies seem to be elevating work is like showing up and you know, doing something X hours per day.
And we are not like that.
Like what we care about is the end results, the quality of it and you know, everything else is not really that important.

Omer (08:39.760)
So let's go back to the early days.
We talked about how you had in the introduction how you had come up with todoist and built it as a tool for yourself to help manage your own work and priorities.
At what point did todoist become a product that you started building for other people as well?

Amir Salihefendic (09:03.800)
That is actually a good question.
And I mean up until now we have actually mostly built the product for ourselves.
So of course we are very serious about user feedback, but we are not really driven by it.
We are driven by the vision that we have and our use cases of it.
So I think that's probably bad to say as well, but that's how it has been.
But right now we are trying to build something for others that maybe are not our use cases.
And these are mostly for our todoist for business version where we need to address needs from different businesses and also businesses that don't do the same stuff as we do.
But in general I think the product is basically made for us and like we are huge users of the product.
And I think that's also like one of the reasons why it's so good, because it's very hard to know the user if you're not using the product yourself.

Omer (10:21.440)
Yeah, I've seen a lot of examples of that where entrepreneurs get into building businesses where they aren't using the product themselves and then maybe don't even fit the target customer.
And for example, I had Pete Kuman, the co founder optimizely on the show some time back and one of the businesses that he and Dan Siroca had originally built was called Carrot Sticks, which was some kind of educational site for kids to help them with maths.
Math.
And you know, both of these guys, they weren't kids, they weren't parents, they weren't teachers.
And so surprise, surprise, they, you know, eventually they ended up folding, you know, shutting down the business because they could only go so far with this.
And I think it really is important to understand and use the product yourself.
But I think from what I'm hearing, you guys go further than that, right?
I mean a lot of people will talk about customer development and using that as the main sort of vehicle to drive the product development and to figure out what features they should have.
They may have initially started by building the product for themselves, but they sort of transition into creating the product for your customers.
But it's like you're telling me that no, we still really spend most of our energy on creating the product for ourselves and what we think is a great product.
And almost the side effect of that is that you have like over 4 million other people who love that too.

Amir Salihefendic (12:01.010)
Yeah, I mean the thing is like we are very, very user centric.
So like it's not like we are completely, you know, just like it's only for us.
But the thing is like it should not really be the user that designs the product, it should be, you know, your team.
Because like we have worked on this or I have worked on this for almost nine years.
So I know a lot of stuff about this space, about this product, and I should foresee what the user needs and how it should be implemented and how it should work.
And I think this is probably the best tip I can provide also for other entrepreneurs, is that I think actually you should not build a product for other people.
Like, you should build something for yourself and you should be the main user of this because the data case, like, it works.
But I think it's much, much harder to pull off because it's so hard to know something if you're not an active user of it.
Yeah.

Omer (13:10.190)
Okay, so again, let's go back to 2007.
You've built the product, you start to use it.
Do you remember when you started having other people use the product too?
How did they find out about it?

Amir Salihefendic (13:27.560)
So, I mean, I had a pretty popular blog and I posted a link there, and then people just started to sign up and use the product.
So that's basically how it started.
And actually my blog is still online, so you can go there and see how it launched.
So basically I launched with one line and one link and come on in.
And then also you can see how I celebrate the first hundred users and then some reviews and etc.
So really everything grew organically and like from a core user base, it just grew like that.
I didn't really do marketing or paid advertising or something like that.
I think also maybe I submitted it to Dig, which was pretty big that time, and maybe Reddit, but other than that, I didn't really do that much marketing.
This said, I would not recommend this route on.
And I think some of the hardest parts is figuring out your marketing strategy, your distribution channels, like, how are you going to reach the users?
I think I was lucky in this sense.
And I'm unsure.
I'm pretty sure I could not repeat this in today's climate.
Today you have to really be good at marketing as well.
So, like, it's not enough to just, you know, build something that that's useful.
You also need to.
To nail the marketing aspect.

Omer (15:15.960)
Yeah.
Or what you did is starting to, you know, you said you already had a following on the blog, and I think that that's something that I see as well with, with some entrepreneurs is they start to build that following before they even launch the product.

Amir Salihefendic (15:33.980)
Yeah, I mean, definitely that helps a lot.
And also if you can have a way to have a core set of first users that are influential, that can also help you a lot.
But still, it's not really enough to have a good product.
You also really need to nail the Marketing aspect and what I did, it's probably very hard to pull off.
I think there's lock involved, there's timing involved, and I would definitely not recommend to do this like, right now.

Omer (16:07.400)
I saw a blog post, I think it was on your blog from back in 2007 where you said, we're profitable.
Did you remember that one?

Amir Salihefendic (16:21.560)
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, yeah, basically, like I was a student there and I didn't really want to pay for the server cost, so I just put up a premium version where they needed to pay like for reminders or whatever.
And like already from like the get go, it paid for the service.
So it was, I felt really good about that.

Omer (16:45.960)
So you were covering your hosting costs.
So you were like, I'm profitable now.
That's awesome.
And the irony is that, you know, almost, almost nine years later, you guys are still profitable.

Amir Salihefendic (16:59.620)
Yeah.
And also like, the irony of that, like the pricing that I did there, like, all the other competitors have copied that pricing model and we were like also the first to do app to actually have like freemium product.
And the truth is also, like, I didn't really think about, like, I didn't read about freemium.
I didn't know anything about it.
Like, you know, the pricing set points is the same as it was back then.
And basically I didn't do any kind of research on the pricing or on the model.
And the strange thing is that our competitors have also copied that and maybe it's not really the best pricing strategy or the best price.

Omer (17:49.790)
You mean in terms of how much you guys charge?

Amir Salihefendic (17:52.670)
Yeah.

Omer (17:54.670)
So I mean, you guys are charging what, $3 a month at the moment?

Amir Salihefendic (17:58.510)
Yeah, like $29.
But I mean, that price, like, I did some calculations back then and I just selected a price like.
Yeah, and of course, like, if I, if I were to redo this, you know, I would probably do like market research, a b testing on the price, you know, figure out what people will pay.
But like, back then I didn't do any of that.
Like, you know, I just said, okay, this costs $3 per month, let's do this.

Omer (18:29.630)
So that's interesting you took that approach and it seemed to work very well for you.
So why do you feel that you would have to take a different approach if you were doing it again?

Amir Salihefendic (18:41.070)
I think, like, it's probably the experience, but I mean, that experience could also be bad.
I think I rolled out the premium version and the payment model everything in a matter of weeks.
And right now if I did a new product, I would probably spend a lot more time on this than just say, okay, this is going to cost this and this, let's implement this and let's roll it out and see what happens.
Like right now I would be much more calculated in this, but I'm actually not sure what the best approach is for this.

Omer (19:15.870)
Like, but yeah, but I'm still curious why you feel like that.
Because you did whatever you did back then worked, right?
So why wouldn't you just do the same thing again if you were starting over?
Why do you feel like you would have to do things differently?

Amir Salihefendic (19:36.010)
Because I think maybe the pricing model that you select or the business model in general will not be the best one.
And maybe the thing is I selected this business model, everybody else copied it and then we have competitors.
Now we are competing on the same business model.
And maybe this business model isn't the optimal way for this to work.
Like, even if it works, maybe there's something that's more optimal if you think more about it.

Omer (20:08.940)
Got it.
Okay.
Yeah.
So it's kind of like you kind of went with your gut at the time, you ended up picking something which nobody else was doing.
Now it's got to a point where people have copied that and maybe success is going to come from not doing the same thing over again, but trying to find maybe an another different type of model that nobody is thinking about right now.
Maybe.

Amir Salihefendic (20:34.330)
Yeah, yeah.
Something in that, in that like regard.
Yeah.

Omer (20:42.010)
Okay, so you, you've got, you know, you put, you posted this link up, you've got people starting to sign up.
You, you quickly rolled out this premium version and so you were covering your hosting cost.
How long did that go on for?
How long were you the only guy working on this product?

Amir Salihefendic (21:02.260)
So here's the like the shock story.
Like in 2008 I actually I joined another startup to work on something completely other like a social network.
And between like 2008 and 2011 or 12, nothing happens for todoist.
So like also if you see our growth curve, it's like almost flat in this period.
So basically I abandon the space and the product.
Like I only fix box, I keep it afloat, but I don't develop actively that much on it.
And then in 2011 or 12, I think it's like in 12 I return back and work on this full time.
So basically there's like three or four years where the product is basically like not being developed actively on, but it still has like a lot of users, people are happy for it and et cetera.

Omer (22:06.660)
Wow.
So what.
Okay, okay, we got to talk about this.
Okay, so 2008, do you remember roughly how many users you had?

Amir Salihefendic (22:24.110)
I don't know, I'm actually unsure.
It's, it's, I think probably on the hundred thousand.

Omer (22:32.750)
And so for four years, why was it, why did you decide not to do anything with it?
Did you not believe that this was a business there or what was your thinking?

Amir Salihefendic (22:45.320)
I mean I got like a really good offer to start this social network and I just got sidetracked on that.
Yeah, so that was like the main reason.
And the thing is I didn't really see the potential in todoist or like the productivity space at that time.
So I think also it shows you how hard it is to actually evaluate ideas.
And.
So like even with a lot of success I could not really foresee the, you know, the future or like how big could this be or like how good idea is this?

Omer (23:30.560)
And so when you're working on, you know, you're working on a full time job, did you ever.
And you don't see the potential with this product, did you ever feel like maybe I should just shut this down?
Maybe this is just a distraction to what I really need to go and do?

Amir Salihefendic (23:53.330)
I felt this a lot of times during this because like I still maintain the product, you know, and made sure it was up and sometimes you had bugs or scalability issues or whatever and I needed to fix them.
And it was very hard because our other startup was growing very, very fast as well and was doing really well.
So I didn't really have the time to maintain it.
This said, I have actually since 2007 used the product every day.
So I never really stopped using the product or I didn't really abandon it as a user.
And that's also why I returned back and did this.

Omer (24:47.010)
So what happened in 2012?
Why did you go full time?
Did something change?
Did you see an opportunity that you didn't see before?

Amir Salihefendic (24:59.770)
Yeah, I mean I can tell you like when I joined the social network I was like 20 something, 22, very young.
It was like my first real job.
So I didn't really know what I wanted to do.
And I learned also a lot doing this social network.
But what I found out is that like doing something that you're not really that passionate about or like that you don't feel like is improving the world.
Like on the social network we would spend like a lot of time optimizing for wasting people's time, you know, like how can we make them waste more of their time?
And after, you know, three years doing that, like I was just sick and tired of that.
Like, I wanted to optimize how people can get more done and you know, have a better life instead of just wasting it on.
On some social network.
So that was like really the big changes that I wanted to do something meaningful with my life and I thought a lot about like, what would I want to do?
And productivity is definitely an area I'm very passionate about and I think it was like, I can make an impact in.
So when I returned back to Todoist, I was very mission driven and I wanted to make something meaningful and I think it was like that.
Like when I returned back, todoist had like about 200,000 users.
And like the last, from 2012, we have grown it like from 200,000 users.
There are only like a few of them.
I don't know how many.
I think maybe a few tens of thousand were active.
We have grown it to like millions of users right now.

Omer (26:57.450)
So you've decided that you kind of have a clearer purpose.
You'd spent time at this startup, decided that that really wasn't fulfilling you in a meaningful way.
You're passionate about productivity, but you still, up until that point, you still felt there wasn't an opportunity with todoist.
So did something change that, that you felt that now there was a business?
There was.
Was it because you were getting a lot more users or what.
What was happening there?

Amir Salihefendic (27:34.230)
I'm.
I'm actually unsure.
It's like, it's hard to go back and think about it.
I think like it's.
It's really triggered by a lot of stuff.
Like, I mean, I wanted to do something meaningful and after some time, like I still use the product every day.
I had a lot of like people, you know, sending me stuff, like maybe on a weekly basis where they thanked me for creating Todoist and stuff like that.
So like, I think that was probably the main motivator, is that I still use the product.
I loved it and I wanted to improve it and I thought like there was a lot of possibilities there and especially I think also the mobile revolution triggered also something like I could see a much bigger picture, especially with mobile in mind.

Omer (28:33.710)
So were you generating enough revenue in 2012 to be able to pay yourself?

Amir Salihefendic (28:42.190)
Not really.
But I changed actually that like in a matter of months, I think because like when I returned back to work on it, I had a lot more experience with like product development, with development in general, with design.
So it took me like a few months to make it like generate enough revenue to pay for my own Salary.

Omer (29:11.330)
And then at what point did you hire your first employee?

Amir Salihefendic (29:17.890)
I mean, I did it pretty fast.
The thing is, like, I had a support section on Todoist and I was like getting a ton of emails and, you know, like, I would just spend a lot of time doing support emails.
And at the beginning, I just hired somebody to do that.
And that was like a huge relief because, like, I could just focus on development after that.
So I think, like, pretty much very fast, after I returned back, I hired the first support person.

Omer (29:58.120)
I've been on the Todoist forum, and it's a group of very passionate people who have some very strong ideas about how the product should be built.

Amir Salihefendic (30:11.240)
And

Omer (30:13.480)
the one thing that struck me was that it must be really hard because there are people out there who either sort of look at to do this and say, no, no, you need to kind of simplify it more and, and go this direction.
And I've seen other people saying, no, it should be more like a Kanban board and like Trello or something like this.
And, and so is, you know, have you found that that's, that's.
Has that been a challenge, dealing with that kind of constant input from your users about what you should be doing with the product?
I know you said that you continue to really focus on building a product for yourself, but how do you deal with this sort of constant, sort of demands from users about what they want to see from the product?

Amir Salihefendic (31:08.010)
I mean, I think that is like a very fine balance.
I think user feedback is very, very valuable, and we really value that a lot.
But I think also you really need to filter that feedback and prioritize on it, because every user, especially for something that's so personal as todoist, have their own ideas of how this should work.
You can build a product that's suited for a million different users.
So you really need to.
To look at the feedback, filter it and focus on the important aspects.
And I think that's really, really a huge challenge.
And I think also for new people that are entering this, you should.
The user feedback that you get should be filtered and you should really think about it.
Maybe the solution they really want isn't the one that they want.
Maybe there's another way to solve their problem.
And a lot of users, when they come with feedback, they also provide a solution.
But like a lot of times, that solution is not really a great one.

Omer (32:26.050)
All right, that wraps up part one of the interview with Amir Salihefendich.
You can Listen to part two of this interview in episode 85.

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