MBA1923 Extended Interview: Amir Salihefendic – Building a 25 Million User Business

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Our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholme. I'm also the co founder of Webinar.

Ninja, an independent software company I started with my co founder back in 2014 and today's episode is an extended interview episode. This is a special type of episode, a new format that we've been experimenting with recently. We've been getting a lot of positive feedback about this type of episode. It's a little bit longer, a little bit more in depth, so you're in for a treat today. We are so lucky to have today's guest. I sat down with Amir Salafendic who is the CEO and founder of Dueist. Dueist is the company behind Todoist who, which is one of the most popular apps, period, a productivity app that has over 25 million users over the years. Amir and I have become fast friends but I wanted to bring him on the show. I wanted to have a discussion with him and get into his beautiful mind because it's really a gold mine in there. So many great things we discuss and uncover in this discussion. From his biggest failure as an entrepreneur to why he doesn't really stress his numbers too much to the power of freeing him and his advice for those who are starting out. Today's episode is so, so interesting. I love the discussion. I can't wait to share with you. So let's get into it.

Let's get down to business.

Today's extended interview discussion with Amir Salfendic is a really honest one. I think Amir was incredibly generous with his time and a total open book. Amir, my book is one of the most successful entrepreneurs I know, not only because his business is.

Is doing well and they're making money.

And they got, you know, over 25 million users, but because he built the business that he loves. He built a business on his terms that suits his life. And you'll learn in today's discussion, it.

Wasn'T always that way.

You learned a lot of hard lessons in his early years. He's also the founder and CEO of two products, Todoist, the very popular app, as well as Twist, which I think is absolutely brilliant. It's a great way for remote teams to work asynchronously, and we talk about asynchronous work because it's becoming more and more important this day and age with everybody going remote, working from home, and the realization how important communication is to an organization and that that communication doesn't have to be live. We're going to jump into the conversation with Amir, but I'll be back to wrap up today's episode, give my takeaways, and even give you a bit of a homework assignment. Let's jump into the discussion with Amir Selafandic right now.

Amir, so awesome to have you here on the show, on the podcast, to have this conversation with you, Amir Selafendich. It's so nice to finally kind of dig deep because we met each other in Bali in a conference running remote, and we just had a great time getting to know each other. We laughed a lot, we had a good time, but I never really got a chance to ask you any business questions. So I'm really actually interested in learning a little bit more about you and your philosophy when it comes to how you run your businesses. So, so happy to have you, man.

Omar, it's a pleasure to be here and, yeah, I'm very happy to talk about our radical, different business strategy.

Yeah, yeah, we're going to definitely dig into that. As I mentioned, Amir is a CEO and founder of Dueist, which is the company that creates the products Todoist and which has over 5 million users. And Twist, which is a great product if you want to start saving yourself some headaches and hair and gray hairs, like we talked earlier off mike, in terms of working with your team, it's a great asynchronous app. We'll talk and talk a little bit more about Twist and their philosophy there in a moment. But I want to back up a little bit because a lot of people see somebody like you and they say, wow, I've heard of Todoist as a great app, you know, Twist sounds amazing, but they don't know that this is not something that you did overnight. You know, it took years and years of reps and some failures. So I want to start today's conversation with. Maybe you can share with us what was one of your first business failures.

You know, I think, like, one of the biggest failures of my career. I wouldn't actually say it's a failure. Uh, like, it's like doing a social network. That was like, one of my first actually. You know, I was like, 22:20 when I started that, and that kind of like, taught me a lot of things that I didn't want to do in my life. So. Yeah, I mean, for instance, like, working on something that you're not, like, super passionate about. So, like, you know, I'm, like, not a super social person. I don't really care that much about, like, social networks, and I really felt like I was optimizing, like, wasting people's time instead of, like, you know, empowering people and helping them get stuff done. Yeah. So that's maybe like, one of the things. And then also, you know, like, all working. So I was like, basically working, like, 80 hour weeks, maybe even more. Like, I was basically working all the time. Like, including weekends. I almost didn't really take any vacations. And the reason is also, like, you know, social networks, they grew a lot. So I think we got like 10 million users in, like, the first six months. So, you know, you go like on a hyperscale. And the problem with that is kind of like, it's really. I was like a CTO of this thing, and I didn't really know anything about, like, scaling social networks. And it was based, like, fire fighting, like, you know, 24 7. Yeah. And then, you know, combine this with just not having, like, a business model as well. So, you know, we built something that was popular, but, like, they didn't make any money and, like, super dependent on, like, investors.

Yeah.

And yeah, I mean, honestly, like, there's like a whole storyline there. But, you know, a lot of the stuff that I did with this, like, afterwards was kind of like, what, you know, like, basically the opposite of what I did in my first company.

Yeah. I mean, there's nothing more opposite from a social, social networking kind of app to a, you know, productivity app.

So.

So it's. It's pretty. You know, it's interesting because they say that the easiest way to find out what you want to do is to do a bunch of things you don't like doing. And I have a similar story. I Used to have my own clothing line, one of my first businesses. And it was actually quite like, in terms of a business, it was successful and we were scaling. But like you, as any of my listeners know, I found out that my customers were more passionate about the product than I was. Like, I just felt a little bit like I shouldn't be leading these people because they love this more than I do. You know, I just saw a business opportunity and I learned what kind of entrepreneur I wanted to be and what kind of business I wanted to run. Um, so I love that. That, you know, even if it from the outside of my look good, you know, to. For you and your lifestyle, it was sort of a failure or sort of a learning point, you know?

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, and that's the thing. It's kind of like it's optics, you know, because, like, on the outside, like, you know, I was like 20 something. Like, I was worth like, millions on paper. But, you know, like, my inner, like, perception was kind of like, very dark. And, you know, I was also, like, just getting like, burned out. And I really felt like, you know, even, you know, and that's. I think that was something like a hard lesson I have learned is like, you know, if you don't actually have inner happiness or inner peace, like, any kind of achievement will not actually make you happier. You know, like, because at that time, you know, like, we were growing like crazy, you know, blah, blah, blah, like, there was a lot of stuff, but, like, my inner happiness wasn't there. So, like, you know, all of that didn't really matter. So that's something, you know, like, I would recommend people. It's kind of like, you know, being like this milestone driven. Like, if only, you know, I can reach like 1 million in revenues, I would be super happy. Or, like, if only I can get like, to that milestone or this milestone, you know, it's kind of just like chasing, you know, and you actually never stop the chase. So that's also something I figured out. It's like, you know, like, the chase will never actually end. So, like, it's better just to be like, find happiness in the present moment with the stuff that you got, like, you know, and then of course, like, you should have some dreams and goals in life, but, you know, don't, like, offset your happiness for later.

I love that because it reminds us to realize that, you know, what we have is today. A lot of us as entrepreneurs, by nature, we're optimists, and we think the future is always going to be better. Uh, that's not always necessarily true, you know, so maybe your best days are right now, so you better enjoy it. So. So I love that advice because it's a good reminder, you know, you know, both of both you and I have, you know, over, you know, 15, 20 years of experience. But these reminders are important because, you know, we are in the world of high achievement, and it's very common to think that, you know, you have to always hit a milestone or you're not, you know, you're not doing well.

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I'm a big believer that your philosophy in life really will dictate your success in what you do, what you believe in, your own personal philosophy. And your personal philosophy is really shaped by the experiences you've had in your life. Both you and I are children of immigrant parents. You were born Bosnia, moved to Denmark. Right. And I want to learn a little bit more about how has that experience shaped you as a person growing up as an immigrant, adapting to a new culture, adapting to a new lifestyle, sort of being different amongst your peers. How did that affect you growing up and how has it impacted you as an entrepreneur?

Yeah, I mean, that's such a great question, Omar. And yeah, you know, like, I think something there's like, a lot, like, privilege talk, you know, like coming from a privileged background. And honestly, like, I have been very privileged. Like, growing up in Denmark has been a huge privilege in itself. But, you know, I think just like, being born or like having opportunity to work or, like, grow up in, like, a Western society or just like a, you know, like a country that kind of works is a huge privilege in Itself, like, it opens so many doors. Yeah. And, you know, something to note as well is like. Like my story, like, I think, like something that is very positive with my history is like, I've actually used like, these disadvantages kind of to strengthening myself.

So.

And also just like, looking at my parents and honestly, I think my parents are kind of like those that struggled the most. Like, they lost everything in the war. They had to rebuild from scratch. They didn't know the language. And also, like, they were super hard workers as well. You know, like, you talk about like, hard work and like, you know, like, even like when I worked the hardest days, like, my parents probably worked that like, almost every day because, you know, they will get up. We had a grocery store in Denmark, and they would get up like at 5am in the morning to like, buy stuff for the grocery and then they would leave at like 8 or 9 at night. So that was like their work day. And they also worked weekends, almost no vacation as well. So that's kind of like my background. It's kind of like looking at people that were really like, super hardworking. But also like, you know, like my dad, like, he had a drive, you know, like, he could easily have just like Social Security in Denmark is like, really, really good. He could just say, like, fuck this. I just want, you know, to be on Social Security and not work. And that is possible in Denmark. But, like, he really wanted to create his own thing and kind of like be his own boss and like, you know, earn his own living. And, you know, he paid also a huge price for that. And I think that the whole family did. So, like, you know, so just to give you, like, my story a bit is like, like, growing up, I didn't actually have vacations. So, like, most of the vacations would be spent helping out in the grocery store. And I fucking hated that, you know, like that because I really love computers. I love, like, tinkering, you know, programming, creating stuff on the computer. I didn't love to, like, you know, put groceries on the shelf and service customers. Yeah. So, you know, I grew up and actually one of my dreams, I remember this really as a child was kind of like, I really wanted my parents to have a normal job, like a factory job. You know, they would, like, work from 9 to 5. They come home and not like this.

Grueling.

Work they did. And honestly, I would never imagine myself to start my own business because I just saw like, the commitment that you actually had to do it to start your own thing and be your own boss. Yeah. Yeah. So that's kind of like my story. And then of course, like, it's all connected. You know, I came to Denver as well and I started school like in fourth grade, like real school in fourth grade, you know, I couldn't really speak the language properly, so I had like a huge disadvantage. And even like, you know, there's a lot of stories there. But just to give you an example of this is like in Denmark there's like a promotion system. So like, they actually recommend what path you, you, you want to do after you're done, like with primary school. And the recommended path for me was kind of like not going to a high school or like gymnastics because like, you know, and I was also an awful student as well. That didn't really help. But, you know, they basically didn't think I would actually be very good, like in like a more higher education. Yeah. So they wanted me to have like a practical, you know, like being like something where you work with your hands and not your mind. Yeah, yeah. And the reason for this is basically combining all of this and combining the startup very late, that I basically like, didn't have a lot of discipline and stuff like that. You know, that, that's kind of like. I fully understand that. Like, I don't blame anybody, but you know, it's just like, yeah, a bit of the history.

I love that because I can totally relate. Totally relate. My parents immigrated from Egypt to the US and had to start with zero. And they both were university graduates, but the US didn't recognize their degrees. My mom had to learn a new language, learn, get her degree all over, had to be an elevator operator, take odd jobs so she could pay through school. So when you grow up in that environment of ultimate sacrifice, you're going to a country, they don't know anybody there, they're changing their whole life. When you're growing up in that environment, really, there's no excuse. There's no excuse for you not to behave and to do what you're supposed to be doing and try your best. And the other thing is when you grow up in an immigrant family, I feel like immigrants are all about seeking out opportunities. The reason why they left their country is because they want a better opportunity so you don't squander opportunity. And I feel like I inherited that from my parents, which is like, if you see an opportunity, you should appreciate, be grateful. And a lot of people ask me, I remember when we were at Running Remote, one of the questions I got on stage, like, how do you motivate yourself? Every day I'm like, I don't know you're talking about motivate myself. Like, I'm just grateful I get to, I get to do what I get to do every day. Like, I'm, I'm lucky that I can work hard on my products and services and my customers. You know, like, there's so many people that don't have that situation and obviously that hits home for you directly and coming from Bosnia war torn country. But I definitely have a lot of respect for that history of yours because I'm sure it seeped in somehow in your success as an entrepreneur.

I mean, most definitely, Omar. I think actually it's an advantage that we have and not really a disadvantage. Actually something I'm thinking about for my kids, I have two kids is based like, how do I make their life like harder? Because like, you know, like if you just grow up and have like everybody everything served on silver plate, you don't actually have any struggle. You know, I don't really think like you grow and you learn. Yeah. So that's something that I'm actively thinking about. Let's make it, you know, set the notch, you know, level a bit harder so they don't get served everything.

Yeah. But put the setting on difficult a little bit. I love it. When we first met in Bali, my first impression of you was that you were a very non traditional SaaS founder. What do I mean by that? Let's drill into some of those things and why I felt that way. The first thing, number one, is it became very clear to me that you and your company don't really closely follow metrics. Like, you obviously have metrics, but it's not something you guys totally obsess over and celebrate and everything's driven by that. That's the first thing I was like, wow, this is a little bit different. Never, never seen somebody like this. Number two was, you know, you're, you're a large, you know, larger type of startup business. You know, you're not really startup. Been here, you know, for a decade. So, you know, but you have 80 plus staff members. You have no, you know, headquarters. Your team is totally remote, you know, across the world.

The third thing that I thought was.

Very interesting, like my team, you guys believe in asynchronous first where communication, it should be asynchronous before it becomes synchronous. Where you have to chat in real life, whether on, you know, chat channels or video or meetings. In fact, you shared a story with me that you have a team member that you Never even spoken to or even seen. And they're part of your team and they're producing work which for most people would probably think that's really uncomfortable. So I'm going to drill into some of these things because I want to learn a little bit more about why you chose to build this type of business. So let's talk about the metrics thing first. I've read a few articles about you, I've seen some other interviews and when we had some chats I noticed that it's not such a big deal at dois. And why?

Yeah, I mean, that's a great question. And honestly there's some pull from the company to be more metric serving. But I guess the thing is we are really creators and builders at the heart of it and what we really enjoy is building stuff and creating stuff for others. And that's kind of a passion. The passion isn't really to hit some numbers in the dashboard, you know, so, and whenever I see that, you know, I'm just like, I'm very, you know, everything's also me. My personality is like, I have been in like a metrics driven business, you know, and for me that's not really my passion. Like my passion is building, you know, stuff and doing with people that are super talented. So that's kind of like the motivation. And then of course you need to have some data informed. So you actually need, you need to make sure that what you're building actually is making a difference. The direction that you're headed is actually the right one. So actually over the last couple of years I think we have become much better, like beta informative. So we actually have some way of measuring on the right direction. But it's not like when we do something like, let's say that we have completely revamped recently. Twist. There's no metric.

Yeah, 2.0.

Yeah, there's kind of a side to that. There's no, we need to hit 15% growth or whatever.

So how do you motivate the team? How do you motivate the team if it's not number one?

I mean, it's basically the vision, you know, like, what are we actually building? Why are we building that? You know, what's the position of this product? Like, why would it matter in the marketplace? And that also reflects in like the marketing of this. Like it's very, you know, like it's, you know, like it's very like kind of positioned to everything else inside the market. And that's kind of like, I think the driving force it's kind of like more like being mission driven and driven by the why than like, you know, some data points. Yeah.

So remote team, you have around 80 employees or team members, 100 now. Okay.

Wow.

That's incredible. So how has it been? I know you've been doing the remote thing way before the pandemic, but how has it been for you in terms of creating the culture and the procedures and the just practices across your team to run a well oiled machine even though you guys are remote and people are across the world?

Yeah, I mean, that's a good question, Omar. And I think something to note, like, you know, our whole philosophy is that the current way that we are working is broken and we kind of need to create and invent a new way. So that's kind of the company mission and that's kind of like our starting point. And that means that a lot of stuff that we actually do inside this is kind of like challenging the status quo or like thinking from the first principles. And we do that across many fields including like, you know, people, ops stuff, like the way that we do product development, the way that we do like design or engineering. Yeah. So honestly, you know, like, there's like so much stuff and we block so much about this as well. So like if you go and I blog, like, you know, we have like share all of the stuff and if you have like a specific problem as a listener, like, you know, we are probably blogged about that or like we have our own like way of doing that could maybe be inspiring for the person. Yeah, yeah.

I think one of your secret weapons as a remote team and something that we've adopted more and more. And if I'm going to be 100% honest, you influenced us in a big way. When I met you at Bali, I learned a little bit more about your philosophy on asynchronous first. And we were doing this, but it wasn't a mindful thing. We didn't really, I don't want to say enforce it, but really didn't encourage the team to really think about how can I communicate this in a way that doesn't disrupt the other teammates workflow. You guys are champions of Async first and I want you to talk a little bit about how did that happen? How did you guys come up with this philosophy, this understanding, this idea that, hey, you know what, I think this is a better way to work.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, the thing is like we were not always asynchronous first. So initially actually we did use slack and you know, like, like I said, like we are really creators. So the problem for us is like we saw like what it did to actually our creative process, you know, like being disturbed all day long.

Not being.

Able to really disconnect and then also like being stuck in meetings as well. Like that isn't really like the best environment to create, like you know, like great work, like great creative work. Because if you're like a writer, you know, designer, developer or even like almost any field, like it really requires like deep thinking, like most knowledge work requires like deep thinking and being able to block a lot of time to do the deep work that's required. And what we saw is based like the whole market was just focused on real time communication, chit chat, being interrupted all the time, doing multitasking all the time. And we were just like, this feels completely wrong. And then we looked on the market and nobody was really creating any products for this. And even right now we are really challenging the status quo. But it seems like the status quo really loves being in meetings all day long and sucking these real time chats. So yeah, I think we still have a long way of actual like moving more towards asynchronous first and even I think globally it's a super niche movement right now. There's probably a handful of companies with all 50 employees that are asynchronous first and they really take that to the core. Of course we did have the GitLab IPO which is based like asynchronous first company worth over 15 billion with all like thousand people. Yeah. So, you know, I think like it's really possible to build something amazing with this and there's like really no limits of what you can achieve. But you know, it's a very different way of working and also living. I think so. Yeah. Yeah.

What Amir is referring to for those who are listening in terms of the product that they created for Async commissioners is twist twist.com and I can, you know, I don't know for sure, but I can imagine that being in this type of market you are, you know, competing with the base camps and the Trellos and the asanas and the Mondays.com and I can go on forever Slack. And you know, and you guys are very different from these products in terms of, you're saying, you know, let's shut off all the notifications and the distractions and even the banter and all that stuff that can be distracting sometimes. And let's create a tool that allows you to dip into, hey, this is what you need to know and check your messages and read the threads and then step out and be able to live your life or step out and just focus on three hours of whatever you do in your team, whether it's marketing or sales or development or design. Um, so it must be hard because in a way you're, you're pioneering a movement. You know, in a way you're like Airbnb when no one ever thought about renting out their guest room. Right. So I know it's, I can only imagine, but like it must be a bit of a struggle in the beginning, you know, the first few years. Can you talk a little bit about like persevering through that struggle and say, and sticking with it and saying, you know, no, I believe this is what we're going to do and this is what I, I believe the future is. How do you stick to your guns? What do you do to kind of motivate your team to stay the course?

That's a very good question, Omar. And I mean, honestly, like something, I think you must be a bit crazy because like most normal people would never do what we are doing, you know. Yeah. And just to give you some context here, we already have a very successful product like Todoist that is bringing in tens of millions of dollars, has a lot of users. We actually don't really need to do twist and twist. We have developed this for almost five years now. There's no hockey stick curve. It's basically linear growth for five years. Yeah. So you know, it's very, very hard. But you know, for us it's kind of like more a religion than it is, you know, like something like a business case for this. It's kind of like we really believe strongly in this way of working. We really think it's the future and really want to accelerate this. So I think this kind of again, being more driven by the mission, believing in the mission and not so much being driven by the metrics. Because if we were driven by the metrics, we were stopped after a year because it's just hard to justify. Especially building a world class communication platform requires a sum of resource like we have probably spent. Like if we just aggregate like the salaries we have spent on this, the people, it's probably millions of dollars that we have not invested into this. For a small company like us, it's like a huge investment. It's a huge investment in money, in energy. You know, guys are self funded, right? Yeah, yeah. So, and you know, I even talked with like some friends and VCs about this, most things, we are completely insane. But again, it's really believing in the mission. The mission is really driving this. It's not really the metrics. And then slowly but surely you see asynchronous first popping up more. We have a company that's kind of like asynchronous first that went public, GitLab. So, you know, it's kind of like taking form. Twist is also like taking off a bit, you know, bit by bit. So maybe, you know, it will kind of be a snowball effect in the end. But even if it isn't like, you know, it was super fun. It is super fun. And, you know, just like doing something that you believe in and being business driven, like, that's really, I think, a core thing of what we are good at doing and something I would recommend deeply because, you know, it's kind of like a drive that is like, hard to stop. It's kind of like religion. It's kind of like. It's more like belief than actually like. Yeah, like factuals. Yeah.

But it's very interesting because you get to do what you believe because you create a todoist the app which took off and is an incredible success. Millions upon millions of users making millions in revenue. You're able to take that success, take what you've learned from that, take the resources and the talent and be able to build something that you really believe in and really can kind of see your future in. And even, like you said, even if it's not as big as a success as todoist, the. The beauty of business is that you only got to be right once, you know, so. So everything after that is gravy. So, you know, and even if. Even what I. What I always like to say is that sometimes businesses are not all just about the money. Sometimes you get to. You get to fulfill a dream, you know, you get to fulfill something, a desire inside you. You want to see something in the world. Became an entrepreneur is because I was fascinated with this concept or these people called entrepreneurs that can just basically think of something and it manifests in the world. Like, what is this magic like? To me, that's what attracted me to entrepreneurship. And to me, that's the beauty of Twist is that you were able to kind of create something that you really believed in and you're moving along and you're doing well, and that's awesome. And I think that I believe it's going to be the future of online work because it's the only way you can really scale a business. For the long term, if you're looking to do short term gains, maybe Chad and blah, blah, blah is fine. But long term, you have to trust your team. You have to be able to know that they're going to communicate. You got to enforce that practice of open communication. I really do love the fact that you did build Twist and are holding that banner of asynchronous first. That's awesome stuff, man.

That is a beautifully put Omar. Yeah, yeah. And honestly, you know, like, yeah, you know, being like, like doing this is like super hard. Like it's. And I, I.

You're running two businesses, you know.

Yeah, yeah. And you know, people that are doing.

This.

You know, like we have an advantage if we actually have like a cash cow that is to do it for that. You know, I could imagine like if we only had twists, like, it would be very hard to stay like on the course because. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you know, like, maybe I didn't like, what could also be a good lesson and that's also something you love is like you actually also need to be data informed, like metrics informed at some point to make sure that you're actually on the right course. Yeah. So yeah.

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I want to talk a little bit about todoist, which is a fantastic app. I have it on my phone if you're looking to get more productive. If you just want a simple way to track your to do's or reminders. I love it because I'm a list guy and I literally write a list every single day for work as well as life. Pick up milk, all that Kind of stuff. You guys have millions of users, over 5 million users, right?

Actually, it's like over 25 million. Yeah. Wow.

Okay. The post I read was really outdated. 25 million users, right? You guys have a freemium model. You have a free plan as well as a premium where they upgrade. I want to talk a little bit about how freemium allowed you to scale your business and what are the lessons you learned through the practice of freemium.

Yeah, I mean, something to note is like, you know, there's like all of this, like product led growth movement that I'm sure that you have heard about. Actually, we were probably. We didn't know that we were doing that, but like, that's basically what we're doing. It's kind of like using the freemium as kind of a marketing tool to get leads. So that's basically how the business works, is like you build something, you give some of it away for free. And even I think some of the most successful freemium models is kind of like where you can get a lot of value initially, and then at some point, once you have received a ton of value, you convert to a paying customer. So from what I've seen and also read about, it's like that is the best strategy and that's also something that we try to apply into this. So actually, we have changed our business model as well. Like I think half a year ago maybe there's. Before, it was kind of like feature restrictions. We had 25 feature restrictions on a free version. We actually removed most of those. We only have a few now. And the idea was more to go into limit restrictions. So you actually start with the best product and then as you add more data, you hit some limits. That's where you upgrade and that creates a much better user experience. And yeah, so like, you know, that fuels into the growth. And also like, people are much more likely to upgrade once they already received a lot of value, you know, so that's kind of like, you know, the framework of freemium and all of this. Yeah.

I like that because you get to show the best of the product and those who actually use it are going to see the value and then they're going to hit their limit because they used it and they're more likely to upgrade at that point rather than just having people trickle in and just kind of be in and out of the app. I love the idea of rewarding somebody for using it, giving them some sort of credits or things like that. So I'm asking this for selfish reasons because we're moving From a free trial to a free plan on Webinar Ninja. And we did a lot of research ourselves and, you know, spoke to Patrick Campbell, Profitwell, all these guys. And it's been interesting learning that, you know, how behind we are. But, you know, free trial is working us for some time, but we want to kind of open up the funnel and do what you just mentioned. Use it as a lead magnet, use it as a way to get targeted leads and use the product as our marketing tool. So awesome stuff. I love that. I know you've been working on todoist a bit longer than Twist, but you're constantly. You know, what I love about your products is that you don't rush your product. Your products are always solid. You know, I'm sure behind the scenes you have a couple bugsnag errors, but I don't see any of these bugs. It's so smooth. It's great. It's fast. It's a good apple. I feel like your company doesn't feel the urgency to push new features and updates constantly. How did that happen? Where did you, like, kind of rein the horses in your team and say, hey, guys, listen, we don't need to do 5 billion things. We could do 5 things, but do them right. Where did that come from?

Yeah, yeah, that's a good question as well. I mean, something to know is, I really think, like, especially once you're in business for like a decade, it can be very dangerous to just like, have a feature factory where you just, like, spit out features. And then in the end, like, you know, you have like, this super complicated product that maybe does, like, a lot of things, like, in a mediocre way.

I know a lot of apps like that.

Yeah, yeah. And if you look at some of our competitors, I won't mention names, but it's like, so, like, overloaded with stuff. And that's basically because, like, they keep adding stuff. And a lot of times, like, also, it's actually much easier to add stuff than to remove stuff. Yeah.

Kill your darlings.

Yeah. Even with us, like, you know, when we had to, like, remove some features, you know, it creates, like, huge revo. Like, if you have millions of users, like, Even if, like 1% really hates that, like, you will. You will know, you know, and the support team will just be flooded with like, angry emails of, like, you know, you ruined my life by removing, like this. And we know the stats, like, we know that nobody uses this, but, you know, there's a few percent that does use it, and they love that. Yeah, yeah.

And They're a free user.

Yeah, yeah, most likely they're free user. Yeah. So I think that you know, as a product owner and like, I really think you need to be very careful of not like turning into like a feature factory. And maybe I think some of the biggest lessons we have learned is like improve the core. Keep improving the core. And also if you look at like the most successful products, you know, maybe you can take like WhatsApp as an example. It has actually not really changed a ton and they really nail like the core thing. The core job of the app is really smooth. Same thing with like Google Search or whatever else like popular product. You see there's not many products that are just like, you know, features and then you keep like for years building features because like, you know, and also for customers, like they don't really care. Like they have a core team, a core job that you need to help them with. Yeah. So honestly, you know, that's something that I'm very proud of is like we keep, instead of like investing in like fancy features, like we could add so much like bloat, like we really tried to improve the core and I think this has paid off for us over the years and I actually wish we could do that even more because we only have like so many features, so much stuff, so much power and most of our users like that they don't really use most of it. So yeah.

I think this is a huge lesson. Regardless if you're in the software business, if you're in E commerce, if you're doing a service, whatever it is, the quality of your product you're offering is not a once and done. It's something that you have to revisit over and over. And this is, I learned this the hard way with webinar neutral software is that anytime we focus on quality, we focus on refinement in getting rid of technical debt, in improving our experience for the customer. This always resulted in happier customers, lower churn, just great reviews online, you know, and it's, it's never that feature, that one feature that is going to change the world. Like, oh my, when this feature goes out, we're going to blow up. It's never that. Because honestly, you know, we thought like, okay, we're going to give them a new feature every month. They're going to think the value of this product is amazing, keeps getting better. For a lot of people, that's too overwhelming. There's like, this is too overwhelming. They feel guilty because they're not using all these features and they feel like, instead of saying, hey, here are these core features that we're going to help you in your life or business, whatever it is, just do these and we.

Do them really well.

And for a customer, that's so relieving. Okay, great. I don't have to, you know, do a million things. So it was a hard lesson learned for me for sure. And I definitely am on that, on that bandwagon for sure. Amir, this has been a great conversation, but I want to wrap up with a semi personal question. You know, as entrepreneurs, we can get really busy. We can constantly maybe be thinking about our business or life or team, and it's important for us to shut off and relax. How do you like to relax if. What's your perfect week off, your perfect holiday for a week? How do you like to relax? AS AMIR yeah, that's.

You know, something. And I'm going to be honest here, like, and I'm sure, like a lot of people can relate to this, especially people is like, for me, shutting off is like, really, really a huge challenge. Like, even if I'm actually not working, like, my mind is still like spinning and like switching off and goes for like, sleep and stuff like that. It's really, really hard to do that. So what I like to do, like, for instance, like, if I'm vacationing is like a lot of physical things, like sports. Like, you know, if I, I play a lot of. Like, I live in Barcelona, so I play a lot of football. And actually in Barcelona you can play like football almost all the time if you want, which is kind of amazing. And what I do is like, I go and play football. And for me, that's kind of like a time where my brain actually does shut off and then I'm just like focused, you know, on the game. I really am in the moment. If I go, for instance, for a walk, I actually also like to swim. Like, swimming for me is basically, it's kind of like, yeah, I'm thinking a lot because, like, it's so boring, you know, like, you don't really, like, there's not really a game element that kind of pushes you to just like, focus on one thing. So for me, like, sports is incredibly important. And then of course, like, also, I have also tried to train my brain as well. It's like when I go with the kids to a park and stuff like that, that's usually also where I'm kind of disconnected when I play with them. Yeah. So, yeah, those are the two things. And of course, I think sometimes, like doing vacations, like it takes some time, some days, to actually get into, like, the vacation mode. Yeah.

Takes a few days to wind down.

Yeah. Yeah. So after a while, you know, I can kind of, like, get relaxed and stuff. Yeah. So, like, actually, some of, like, my best vacation is basically going with some friends or, like, some family. Like, last year, we did, like, a trip to Chile. We went, like, south of Chile. We rented a huge house and just, like, barbecuing, you know, hanging around, drinking some wine, you know, that is also a perfect way to unwind. Yeah.

I love it.

I love it. Amir and I definitely agree. The idea of immersing yourself in an activity kind of allows your brain to focus on something else, and therefore, it rests your mind from constantly, you know, the chatter that's going on. That's why I love snowboarding, because you're so focused on just, you know, not falling and surviving. You're not thinking about anything else. You just focus on getting down the mountain, which I love. That's why whenever Nicole and I go on vacation, I love to, like, book one excursion a day on the days. So, like, I'll, you know, we'll do one activity, like atving, or the next day we'll do, like, camel riding. Next day we'll do, like, just so. Because I always feel like those are the happiest moments in life when you're in the moment, like, whether you're, you know, enjoying a sunset or you're enjoying a meal and you're. You're with a loved one or a kiss, all these things are all, like, where you are present in the moment and realizing, okay, this is good. This is what life should be like. I should be absorbing this. So I really resonate with what you said about, you know, just going all in on a sport or an activity. I love that. Amir, this has been fantastic. Thank you so much for your time. We're gonna, you know, wrap up the lesson in a moment, and everybody who's listening, I'm gonna let you know where you can learn more about Amir, as well as doist todoist the app, as well as twist to get your asynchronous game on and run your team with some great practices. Thanks so much, man. It's so good to catch up.

Omar, thank you for having me. I hope the listeners can get a bit inspired by just the storyline. And, of course, if there's anything, I'm active on Twitter amix3k. You're very welcome to reach out as a listener and. Yeah. So, yeah, thank you for having me here and Also to see each other somewhere, maybe on Bali again. Let's hope.

Let's do it. Awesome catching up.

What a fantastic discussion with Amir Self Andic. I'm so happy I got him on the podcast. I've been wanting to have this discussion with him, share this discussion with you for some time. I've known him for a few years now. I follow him on Twitter. I love his work. I love the things that his team produces. Every interaction I've had with him has been nothing but professional. What I love about Amir the most is that he makes up his own rules, meaning he doesn't do things just because everybody else is doing them. He asks himself, is this something I want to do? Does this benefit me? Is there a reason why I'm doing this that is actually rooted in fact? Does it actually go along with what I want to do in my life, my lifestyle? And he builds the rules based on that. I also love how humble he is. He comes from humble beginnings as his family migrated from war torn Bosnia, grew up in Denmark, struggled in school as you heard, and now an incredible successful entrepreneur. But he's still grounded. He still makes time for family, makes time for breaks, makes time for holidays, and makes time to give back by being on today's show. Guys, I got a bit of homework for you. If you haven't downloaded the Todoist app, I want you to do that because it's absolutely free. And the reason why I want you to do it is not just to support Amir and his work, but just because you're going to learn a ton by what a great product looks like. The onboarding, the experience, the communication, the messaging. Also, it's just a fantastic app. I have it on my phone. It's a great way to go through to do's. I use it for all my personal to do's, but you can use it for both professional and personal to do's and you're going to learn a ton by using a great product. If you want to learn more about Amir and his work, go todoist.com that'S-O-I-S-T.com There you can find links to the app Todoist as well as Twist. If you want to learn more about asynchronous work, I highly recommend you check out the Twist website and the blog as well as follow Amir on Twitter. That wraps up today's lesson. Thanks so much for being a part of it. If you like today's episode and its format and you want to hear more extended interviews, let us know. Hit me on Twitter theomarzenholm on Twitter and let me know what you think of this episode as well as the format in general. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. One of the things I learned from Derek Sivers in his book Anything youg Want is when you're starting a business, you're building your own utopia, and it's just a great concept. You make the rules. You shape your business. You get to do what you want, how you want it. That's all the positives of being an entrepreneur. A lot of entrepreneurs forget that. I mean, there's a lot of hard work, there's a lot of sacrifice, a.

Lot of long hours.

But the positives are that you can create whatever you want. Don't forget that this is your business. You get to do what you want, how you want it it. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. See you then. Take care.

Of.

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