Founder Interview
How Doist Bootstrapped to About $10M in 2019 Revenue and Expected to Pass $15M in 2020 (Interview with Founder and CEO Amir Salihefendić)
- Interview Date
- October 19, 2020
- Interviewee
- Amir SalihefendićFounder and CEO
Company Metrics at Interview Time
2019 Revenue
About $10M
Team Size (2020)
About 85 people
Engineers (2020)
50
Twist Run Rate (2020)
About $600K
Historical Snapshot
These numbers were reported by Amir Salihefendić during his interview with Nathan Latka in October 2020 and are a historical snapshot, not current figures. See Doist’s current numbers.

Key Takeaways
- 01Doist was founded in 2007 as a side project and, as of the interview, had never raised any money.
- 02The company projected passing $15M in full-year revenue for 2020, up from about $10M in 2019.
- 03Twist, the asynchronous communication product, was generating about $600K in annual run rate as of October 2020.
- 04The team was about 85 people, maybe 90, including roughly 50 engineers and zero salespeople.
- 05In 2020, Premium cost $5 per month or $4 per month paid yearly, and Todoist for Business was about a dollar a month higher.
- 06Amir set up a 25% employee stock option pool in 2020 while retaining the majority of the company himself.
- 07The company had been profitable every year, and Amir's strategy was to reinvest almost everything back into the business.
- 08At the time, Doist had two core products: Todoist (task management) and Twist (asynchronous team communication).
- 09The company had been fully remote since day one, with no office.
- 10Amir stated a goal of reaching $100M in revenue within about four and a half years from the interview date.
Company Metrics at Time of Interview
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Year Founded | 2007 | Founder interview, Oct 2020 |
| 2019 Revenue | About $10M | Founder interview, Oct 2020 |
| Twist Annual Run Rate (2020) | About $600K | Founder interview, Oct 2020 |
| Team Size (2020) | About 85 people | Founder interview, Oct 2020 |
| Engineers (2020) | 50 | Founder interview, Oct 2020 |
| Sales Reps (2020) | 0 | Founder interview, Oct 2020 |
| Premium Price (monthly) (2020) | $5 per month | Founder interview, Oct 2020 |
| Premium Price (annual plan, per month) (2020) | $4 per month | Founder interview, Oct 2020 |
| Products (2020) | 2 | Founder interview, Oct 2020 |
| Employee Option Pool (2020) | 25% | Founder interview, Oct 2020 |
| Team Size (2015) | About 40 to 50 people | Founder interview, Oct 2020 |
| Customers (2012 or 2013) | Passed 10,000 | Founder interview, Oct 2020 |
| First Employee Hired | 2011 | Founder interview, Oct 2020 |
Growth Breakdown
Revenue
Amir estimated 2019 revenue at about $10M and projected the company would pass $15M for full-year 2020, possibly a bit more. Twist, the newer product, was contributing about $600K of that on an annual run rate basis. Amir said the company had been profitable every year.
Team
The team stood at about 85 people in October 2020, with roughly 50 of them engineers. Amir noted they were actively hiring at the time. In 2015 the team was about 40 to 50 people, and the first employee was hired in 2011, four years after the company launched.
Products
At the time, Doist operated two core products: Todoist, a task management app used heavily by individuals, and Twist, an asynchronous team communication app launched several years before the interview. Todoist also had a business tier, Todoist for Business, priced about a dollar a month higher than the individual Premium plan.
Funding and Profitability
At the time of the interview, Doist had never raised any money and had been profitable every year. In 2020 Amir set up a 25% employee stock option pool to reward long-tenured team members.
Growth Strategy
Blog-Driven Early Acquisition
Amir's personal blog at amix.dk was the primary channel for acquiring Doist's first paying customers in 2007. The blog already had an audience, and Amir said he "already had a lot of traction. People were really excited about this, so a lot of them just paid."
Native Mobile Apps
Launching native mobile apps for Todoist in 2013 was the single biggest accelerant to customer growth. Amir described the growth curve as nearly flat during the side-project years and then sharply rising once mobile apps were live and the team began scaling. He said Doist passed 10,000 customers "probably, like, 2012 or '13."
Low Price Point as Market Anchor
Doist set a very low price point early, and competitors matched it: "Because we were one of the first online to do apps, we basically set the price point, and everybody has the same price point." Amir agreed this made Doist a low-ARPU, high-volume business with hundreds of thousands of customers.
Bootstrapped Reinvestment
Rather than raising capital, Doist reinvested its profits: Amir said "the general strategy has been to reinvest everything back to the company," though he had "taken some money off the table over the years." He still owned most of the company, with employees set to own about 25% through the option pool he was rolling out in 2020.
Multiplayer and Collaboration as Next Growth Lever
Amir identified the shift from single-player to multiplayer use as the key to increasing lifetime value and retention. He planned to add proper collaboration features to Todoist and expand Twist's asynchronous communication capabilities to make the products stickier for teams.
Best Quotes
“Yeah. So we have, like, a task management app, one of the most popular to do apps called Todoist. And then we have also recently, like some years ago, actually, launched a team communication app, asynchronous team communication app called Twist. So basically, Todoist and Twist are our core products. Yeah.”
“Yeah. I mean, it's it's like a premium model, so we have a very powerful free version, and then we have a, like, premium version that's up. I think it's, like, $5 per month, and then, like, if you pay yearly, it's 4.”
“Yeah. I mean, I think, like, this year, we'll probably pass 15 and maybe a bit more if we are lucky. And next year, I think we'll definitely pass, like, 20. That's at least the the plan.”
“It's a really, really brutal market as well. There's a lot of competition. But I really believe in the asynchronous way. So I would probably say that, yeah, probably maybe $600,000 Run rate. Or maybe even more yearly. So it's very small compared to Doist.”
“The thing is, want to pass 100,000,000 in revenues in the next five years. It's right now probably more like four and a half years. So that's kind of the goal, and it's basically finding out the strategy to achieve that.”
“I mean, we have actually been profitable, from, like, more... All the years. Yeah.”
“Yeah. Yeah. We didn't raise any money, and we still have not raised any money.”
“I mean, I know that the churn is bad compared to the benchmark, but honestly, I don't really care that much. There's some people inside a company that care more about this than me.”
“Yeah. Yeah. We have been remote since day one.”
What Happened Next
At the time of this October 2020 interview, Doist was a bootstrapped, fully remote company of about 85 people projecting $15M in full-year revenue, with Twist generating roughly $600K in annual run rate. Amir had just set up a 25% employee stock option pool and was focused on adding collaboration features to both products. This page captures the company as Amir described it during the recording. Visit the Doist company profile on GetLatka for current figures.
View Doist’s current profile and metricsFull Transcript
Chapters
- 0:00Introduction and Company Overview
- 0:28What Doist Does: Todoist and Twist
- 0:55Founding Story: 2007 Side Project
- 1:50First Customers via Personal Blog
- 2:51Pricing Model: $5 Per Month Premium
- 12:38Bootstrapped and Profitable Since Launch
- 13:47Employee Stock Options and Ownership
- 15:16Revenue: About $10M in 2019, $15M Projected for 2020
- 17:36Churn, Retention and the Consumer Market Challenge
- 19:59Plans for Collaboration and Multiplayer Features
- 20:50Twist Revenue and the Async Communication Bet
- 21:29No Interest in Selling the Company
- 22:25Famous Five: Books, Tools and Life Advice
Introduction and Company Overview
Nathan Latka
00:00Hello, everyone. My guest today is Amir Salihefendić. He is... Views life differently ever since his family fled war torn Bosnia for Denmark, and he began to see the world becoming truly borderless. That worldview influences his mission to change the future of work as founder and CEO of Doist, a fully distributed bootstrapped company that creates productivity tools used by over 13,000,000 people globally. Amir, are ready to take us to the top?
Amir Salihefendić
00:00Let's let's do this. Yeah. I'm
What Doist Does: Todoist and Twist
Amir Salihefendić
00:28excited.
Nathan Latka
00:28So folks have not heard, it's doist.com, doist.com. What are you guys doing? What's your average customer using you for?
Amir Salihefendić
00:36Yeah. So we have, like, a task management app, one of the most popular to do apps called Todoist. And then we have also recently, like some years ago, actually, launched a team communication app, asynchronous team communication app called Twist. So basically, Todoist and Twist are our core products. Yeah.
Founding Story: 2007 Side Project
Nathan Latka
00:55So so give us the backstory. When did you launch Doist? What year?
Amir Salihefendić
00:59Yeah. I mean, I launched it for my own usage in 2007. So, you know, I just created, like, my my background is development. I created a to do list, and then I kind of stick to it and coded on it for many years. And then I actually co founded a social network in between, and then this social network didn't really work out, so I went back and worked on my to do list.
Nathan Latka
01:22So now What year did you work on the social network?
Amir Salihefendić
01:25From, like, 2007 to 2010. Yeah.
Nathan Latka
01:29Okay. And then so this was sort of a side project in your evenings. And then after 2010, shut the network down, you said, I'm gonna go back on Doist.
Amir Salihefendić
01:36Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, I... You know, it's just like my passion project, and most developers kind of start with a to do list. Not many continue doing that for, like, over ten years. So that's basically what what I have done. Yeah.
First Customers via Personal Blog
Nathan Latka
01:50So what year did you get your first paying customer in?
Amir Salihefendić
01:53On the first year, actually, in the first couple of months because I was doing this on the side, and I didn't want to pay for the server costs. So I just like, you know, let's just make reminders a paid feature.
Nathan Latka
02:06But was this 2007 or 2010?
Amir Salihefendić
02:062007. Yeah.
Nathan Latka
02:06Okay. So who who was it? Do you remember how you... Where you found your first customer?
Amir Salihefendić
02:15I had a popular blog. So I was a blogger, you know, and... Yeah, so basically, of the first customers were via my blog.
Nathan Latka
02:24What was the blog URL?
Amir Salihefendić
02:26amix.dk.
02:28Yeah. It's kinda like some of the stuff I'm not really super proud of because, sometimes I would just drink and then come home and write something stupid.
Nathan Latka
02:38Okay. Wait. So it's a... A... It's aix.dx?
Amir Salihefendić
02:43Amix dot d k. So finish, like, the main name. Yeah.
Pricing Model: $5 Per Month Premium
Nathan Latka
02:51Can you can you send that to me on the chat here on Riverside? I'd love to I'd love to check that out as we're chatting. So... Okay. So you you use that community blog to get it going. And then after that, help me understand today how people are using the tool and maybe start with sort of what they're paying on average. Are you... It's... You strike me as a low ARPU, high volume, no touch play. Is
03:12that accurate?
Amir Salihefendić
03:14Yeah. We have hundreds of thousands of customers, and most of them pay... The lifetime value is, I would say, about a 100 or something like that. So it's very, very low, but we have a lot of volume. Honestly, we still lack the multiplayer aspect. So we have figured out the single player mode because Todoist is used a lot by individuals. And I think when we actually figure out the multiplayer mode, and then I think the magic
03:45will happen because we basically have, like, of active users, you know, using this.
Nathan Latka
03:50Well, so let me let me so let me break all that down, though. So instead of giving me a lifetime value number, when people sign up for Doist, what do they pay you per month on average? It's like, 5 or $6?
Amir Salihefendić
03:59Yeah. I mean, it's it's like a premium model, so we have a very powerful free version, and then we have a, like, premium version that's up. I think it's, like, $5 per month, and then, like, if you pay yearly, it's 4.
Nathan Latka
03:59Yeah. Okay.
Amir Salihefendić
03:59It's very low.
Nathan Latka
04:14Yeah. So there's only one pricing plan. Everyone pays $5 a month.
Amir Salihefendić
04:18Yeah. We also have Todoist for Business, but it's a huge hack. Actually, it was an afterthought, and then we're trying to improve that now. But we have basically created this, I think we spent three months, and we basically had generated 30% or more of our revenues for many years now, and we have not really improved it.
Nathan Latka
04:41Your enterprise tool?
Amir Salihefendić
04:43It's not really an enterprise tool. It's basically like if you want to buy premium for your employees, then you will use this for business.
Nathan Latka
04:52What do you charge for that?
Amir Salihefendić
04:55It's a dollar higher.
04:59So it's about $49 per year, or $5 or $6 per month. Sorry, actually not... We have updated our pricing maybe a year ago, so it's something in that range.
Nathan Latka
05:14No. No. You're fine. I'm just trying to... So I wanna understand the story here. So, basically, between two thousand and seven and twenty nineteen, you only had one price point. It was $5 a month.
Amir Salihefendić
05:23Yeah. Honestly, I said this initially, very low price point, and basically all the other competitors compete this.
05:33Because we were one of the first online to do apps, we basically set the price point, and everybody has the same price point. And I don't think they were probably like, What does Doist charge? And then they basically do a price similar to us.
Nathan Latka
05:33Let's go back to the customer
05:51growth story. So your user blog gets your first customer. What year did you pass to 100 customers? Do you remember?
Amir Salihefendić
05:57It was a side project for me, so I didn't really care about the numbers that much. I basically cared about, Is this actually covering the server costs? And it actually made some profit, but it was a few thousand bucks per month, maybe.
06:15So it was very, very small scale in the beginning.
Nathan Latka
06:18I understand that, though, but do you remember what year, even as a side project, what year you passed 100 or 200 customers?
Amir Salihefendić
06:25I did that in the first six months because I already had a lot of traction. People were really excited about this, so a lot of them just paid.
Nathan Latka
06:25By the end
06:38of 2007, what you're saying is this was generating a couple thousand dollars per month in profit, you had over 200 customers?
Amir Salihefendić
06:45Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
06:46Something like that. Yeah.
Nathan Latka
06:47And you still... Was it you on the team, or was there multiple people?
Amir Salihefendić
06:52I mean, it's just me. Yeah. So I did the the support, the marketing, the design, the development, everything.
Nathan Latka
06:59You're a one man.
Amir Salihefendić
07:01Yeah.
Nathan Latka
07:02One man machines. So when did you hire your first employee?
Amir Salihefendić
07:06In 2011. Yeah. So, like, four years in.
Nathan Latka
07:10Okay. And how many people did you have at the end of 2011?
Amir Salihefendić
07:15Once I went full time on this, I began to hire more rapidly. Right now, we're about 85 people, maybe 90, because we are hiring more now.
Nathan Latka
07:15How many?
Amir Salihefendić
07:15Initially, most are engineers, so probably 50 engineers. We don't have any salespeople.
Nathan Latka
07:37That's great. Yeah. Do you remember... Because you're 90 people today, 50 engineers. Back in 2012, do you remember what the team size was at the end of the year?
Amir Salihefendić
07:48It's a very good question. I mean, initially, we actually ramped up, so I probably hired maybe five five-ten people initially, and then we integrated those people in, and then we created mobile apps, native mobile apps, and then after that we hired a bunch of more, and then we kind of struggled for a bit to kind of...
Nathan Latka
08:09What year was the mobile apps?
Amir Salihefendić
08:12It's probably, like, 2013 or '14. Yeah. So we were actually very late to the market with the...
Nathan Latka
08:18But you launched the Doist mobile app in 2013?
Amir Salihefendić
08:22Yeah. Todoist mobile apps, native mobile apps in 2013.
Nathan Latka
08:27Maybe And you said you struggled. What do you what do you mean by struggled?
Amir Salihefendić
08:30I mean, we basically hired more people, and we didn't really become more productive. We actually became less productive because we didn't really have have the structure in place to actually make people productive.
Nathan Latka
08:41Mhmm. So what was the team size? Let's just go to twenty fifteen.
Amir Salihefendić
08:49I think probably we ramped up to about 40 or 50 people, and that's where we actually struggled to kinda I think, actually, we we got a lot less productive than when we were, like, 10 or 20.
Nathan Latka
09:01Mhmm. Yeah. And are you measuring that off, like like, revenue per employee or something like that?
Amir Salihefendić
09:07I mean, just like shipping. We didn't ship anything. So, yeah, we struggled a lot to ship between probably 2015 and maybe 2016 and 2017. So it's only in the last two years that we actually reset this and began to ship and change stuff. Also, nice, there was a lot of legacy crap because I basically did this at a side project. A lot of the choices that I made initially weren't really the smartest ones.
Nathan Latka
09:36Between 2015 and 2018, you guys were really paralyzed, really, because you were rewriting the code base to take out technical debt, and just in 2018, you started shipping again.
Amir Salihefendić
09:46Yeah. Yeah. That's probably the the right way. And also, just creating the structure and getting people productive. Also, we experimented a lot and questioned. So we also had a
10:04love affair with no hierarchy, and that didn't... Try that. Like, it's not Yeah. Really It didn't work that well. Yeah.
Nathan Latka
10:13And so let's keep going on the customer. We understand sort of the team struggles and growth. Well, let's go back to sort of customers. So 200 customers in 2007, your first year. It's a side project, you're making a couple grand a month in profits, you're covering your AWS or your server spend, etcetera, if that was even around back then. When did you pass when did you pass, you know, your first, you know, 10,000 customers? What year?
10:33Do you remember?
Amir Salihefendić
10:35Yeah. I mean, honestly, the thing to note is we never actually celebrated any of the milestones. So even right now, when we passed 1,000,000 or 10,000,000 in ARR, it's not really something that we celebrate a lot. And the same thing with customer numbers, it's like, I really didn't track that much and I didn't really care that much about it. So I think it's kind of very different from most of the founders that kinda are hoax, you
11:05know, on the numbers. I was
Nathan Latka
11:05Well, I think just I think just because you
11:07don't celebrate something doesn't mean that it's not important to document your story, right, as a business case study for future, which is what I'm trying to do. So I totally get it wasn't a focus, you didn't pop champagne in wine bottles. But general... I mean, do do... Some general customer numbers in terms of as you were growing would be helpful, especially if you're in hundreds of thousands right now. I mean, do you remember the year you
11:27were around 10,000?
Amir Salihefendić
11:31Yeah. I mean, something that really accelerated a lot our our growth was basically the native mobile apps. So probably, I would say that, like, the... You know, because if you look at our growth curve, it's based, like, almost flat from, like, when it's kind of a side project for me. And then when we begin to ramp up, it's the native mobile apps, hiring the team. And that's where most of the customer growth comes in as well.
Nathan Latka
11:57So do you think you passed 10,000 customers in 2015?
Amir Salihefendić
12:00I I... We passed that before. Probably, like, 2012 or '13, like, when we... Yeah.
Nathan Latka
12:08Okay. And then the mobile app goes live in 2015. So the mobile app then gets adopted 2015, 2016, 2017. Mean, do you met... Do you remember, when did you pass 100,000 customers?
Amir Salihefendić
12:23I could actually maybe look that up.
Nathan Latka
12:26I know you don't know them by heart because you guys don't celebrate them, which is fine. I'm just looking for... I mean, are we talking, like, 2015 or '28... '18?
Amir Salihefendić
12:34Yeah. I can I can look this up? So let me actually try to to do that.
Bootstrapped and Profitable Since Launch
Nathan Latka
12:38Okay. Great. And so and we'll we'll sort of keep chatting as you're doing that. So so you're building you're building you're building Doist, again, launched in 2007 as a side project. You're scaling. You hired some people and started scaling really in 2015, and you started shipping things like the mobile application, which helped drive a lot of growth even as you were dealing with a lot of technical debt. You've done all this bootstrapped. Correct?
Amir Salihefendić
13:03Yeah. Yeah. We didn't raise any money, and we still have not raised any money.
Nathan Latka
13:07Love that. Which means you're profitable. Correct? You're not burning cash?
Amir Salihefendić
13:11I mean, we have actually been profitable, from, like, more... All the years. Yeah.
Nathan Latka
13:18Now are you... I mean, when you say profitable, are you basically at breakeven? You reinvest everything? Or US Founder helping create, like, personal wealth because you're really probably 20%, 30% EBITDA margins per month?
Amir Salihefendić
13:30I mean, the thing is, the general strategy has been to reinvest everything back to the company. I have, of course, taken some money off the table over the years, but it's not like, you know, I'm not DHH.
Employee Stock Options and Ownership
Nathan Latka
13:47You own do you still own 100% of the company?
Amir Salihefendić
13:50We are actually rolling out the, like, employee stock options right now. But, like, I I own most of it, and the the employees will own Indiana, I think, 25%. That's the least...
Nathan Latka
14:0135?
Amir Salihefendić
14:0135%?
14:0225.
Nathan Latka
14:04Oh, 25. Okay. That's great. And you just set up that 25% kind of employee option pool this year in 2020?
Amir Salihefendić
14:09Exactly. Yeah. So, like, yeah, like some... Like, yeah. That's basically it. Yeah.
Nathan Latka
14:14And why did you decide this year was the right year to do that?
Amir Salihefendić
14:18I mean, honestly, I think... I mean, I was kind of against this, the bootstrapping, especially if you hear the Basecamp guys, equity has no value and stuff like that. But it's kind of bullshit because equity is like, if you want to get wealthy, it's true equity. And I think it's kind of a way to align people as well on just building something bigger, and also just to reward people.
14:43A lot of have our doing this for over five years. I don't really think it's fair for myself only to make myself wealthy. I also want to do the same thing for other people.
Nathan Latka
14:56No, makes a lot of sense. Do you have that customer number up? What year was... Did you guys pass 10... A 100,000?
Amir Salihefendić
15:02I don't actually, but would probably say like 2015 or 16 or something like that. Yeah.
Nathan Latka
15:09Okay. Do you have eyes on passing a million paid customers, or is that really going to be a stretch in the next year or two?
Revenue: About $10M in 2019, $15M Projected for 2020
Amir Salihefendić
15:16The thing is, want to pass 100,000,000 in revenues in the next five years. It's right now probably more like four and a half years. So that's kind of the goal, and it's basically finding out the strategy to achieve that.
Nathan Latka
15:33And what are at right now in terms of revenue?
Amir Salihefendić
15:37Yeah. I mean, I think, like, this year, we'll probably pass 15 and maybe a bit more if we are lucky. And next year, I think we'll definitely pass, like, 20. That's at least the the plan.
Nathan Latka
15:50What'd you finish 2019 with?
Amir Salihefendić
15:56I think it's about... Yeah, I'm actually not 100%, but probably around 10. Yeah.
Nathan Latka
16:03That's great. So you basically have grown over the past twelve months from a $10,000,000 run rate to a $14,000,000 run rate bootstrapped.
Amir Salihefendić
16:10Yeah. Yeah.
Nathan Latka
16:10That's awesome.
16:12That's that's amazing. You need to be on the cover of, like, the Wall Street Journal and TechCrunch. The Bootstrap, good growth, this is how you build a SaaS company that actually generates real wealth.
Amir Salihefendić
16:27Yeah. But honestly, I think the opportunity is huge in this market that we're in. So,
16:34I think that the opportunity is much bigger than that.
Nathan Latka
16:37What year did you pass a million dollar run rate? Do you remember?
Amir Salihefendić
16:42Here's the thing. Like I said, we don't actually track
Nathan Latka
16:46Oh, but come on, Amir. A million. I I get you don't track it. I understand you don't track it, but that's like a big number.
Amir Salihefendić
16:51Yeah.
16:52I I actually like... I think we probably passed that probably, like,
16:58Lina, I would just like to... I'm actually unsure. 2015 maybe. But the thing is, I didn't even notice that because I was not really focused on the number.
Nathan Latka
17:07This is crazy. This what's interesting to me though. You launched it on Sentinel as a side project. You are slugging basically, even though you had another social network. You are slugging for basically eight years to get your first million bucks in revenue. And then over the past four years, you've basically 14 x that.
Amir Salihefendić
17:07Yeah. Yeah.
Nathan Latka
17:07That's what's impressive to me. I think that's a very interesting story. So so... And and you said about 200,000 customers today?
Amir Salihefendić
17:34Yeah. Yeah. We we probably have more than that.
Churn, Retention and the Consumer Market Challenge
Nathan Latka
17:36Yeah. Okay. So I guess what I'm going down here in line of questioning is how many free users do you... Like, what's your average conversion rate from free to paid?
Amir Salihefendić
17:46I mean, honestly, like, the market that we're in is, like, brutal. You know? It's kinda like con con... Consumer. Like, it's almost like consumer. So both the conversion rate and retention rate are really, really bad because it's just the market you're part of. So I would probably say a few percentage we convert from free to paid.
Nathan Latka
17:46Yeah. Okay.
Amir Salihefendić
17:46And also, like, the the retention isn't as great as, like, if you actually had, like, you know, businesses
18:15or enterprises using your product.
Nathan Latka
18:17Yeah. It it sounds like your growth... Because you told me earlier, lifetime value was about a $100. So if people are paying $5 a month, that means it's twenty months of lifetime value, which means your revenue... Your your churn annually, what is something like 70%?
Amir Salihefendić
18:36Actually, I don't know.
Nathan Latka
18:37Each month, how many customers do you churn?
Amir Salihefendić
18:42I don't know, actually.
Nathan Latka
18:44How you know that churn is bad then if you don't know what the number is?
Amir Salihefendić
18:50I mean, I know that the churn is bad compared to the benchmark, but honestly, I don't really care that much. There's some people inside a company that care more about this than me.
19:01Yeah.
Nathan Latka
19:02Why don't you care about churn? You don't you want... You work so hard to get customers. Don't you want them to fall in love with your product and use it forever?
Amir Salihefendić
19:10I do. But I think like there's a lot of like focus on the numbers and, you know, the dashboards and stuff like that. And honestly, like...
19:18Yeah. Well, I mean, ignore the number.
Nathan Latka
19:19Exactly. Ignore the number.
Amir Salihefendić
19:21Yeah.
Nathan Latka
19:21You
19:22can put your life in a totally great tool. Don't you want people to use it forever? Ignore what the actual CAC and LTV and churn ARPU numbers are. Don't you want people using it for a long time? Doesn't it upset you when people churn because they're they're basically killing your baby?
Amir Salihefendić
19:35I don't really feel like that. It's... I kind of feel like I'm creating a tool, and if people find it useful, they find it useful. If they don't, they have other tools they can use. So it's kind of like a very
19:47Zen like philosophy. And I think it makes me sleep much better at night than kind of
19:55dreaming about or nightmaring about bad churn.
Plans for Collaboration and Multiplayer Features
Nathan Latka
19:59What's the plan for the next year? What are you most excited about?
Amir Salihefendić
20:03We really want to tackle the collaboration space, adding proper multiplayer sharing, and Twist. We also have really great ideas for asynchronous communication. So all of these, I think, actually, will be kind of just increasing our lifetime value a lot. Usefulness as well, because, honestly, creating a tool that is mostly for individuals is brutal. If you're doing anything, that's not something I can recommend doing because you have a very hard time to actually keep users because you
20:40don't have a natural way to bring them back. With collaboration, it's much, much easier.
Nathan Latka
20:44And your whole team, by the we should point to that as fully remote. Correct? You have no office?
Amir Salihefendić
20:48Yeah. Yeah. We have been remote since day one.
Twist Revenue and the Async Communication Bet
Nathan Latka
20:50Yeah. I love that. So so on Twist real quick, you said you'll break about 14,000,000 revenue this year. Is any of that revenue coming from Twist, is it almost Doist?
Amir Salihefendić
21:00Mean, Twist is also freaking stock fest. Most companies would have given up by now.
21:10And it's a really, really brutal market as well. There's a lot of competition. But I really believe in the asynchronous way. So I would probably say that,
21:19yeah, probably maybe $600,000 Run rate. Or maybe even more yearly. So it's very small compared to Doist.
No Interest in Selling the Company
Nathan Latka
21:29Very good. But... Yeah. If someone approached... I know you wanna break a 100,000,000 in revenue, Amir, but if someone came to you like Monday, or one of these bigger companies and said, hey. We wanna buy the company for $200,000,000 all cash upfront. Do you sell the company?
Amir Salihefendić
21:44I would say fuck you. To...
Nathan Latka
21:46There's no... Even to to any number, you'd say fuck you.
Amir Salihefendić
21:50Yeah. Yeah. Like, you know, I have already, like, declined, you know, as... Like, I don't even, like, entertain that... Those ideas.
Nathan Latka
21:58What's the largest offer you declined?
Amir Salihefendić
22:00I I mean, I I don't even go into them. So, like, if somebody sends me an email and they're just like, I just ignore it, or, like, I have a template that I send them back.
Nathan Latka
22:11But no one's put a number in front of you?
Amir Salihefendić
22:14No. Because I don't even entertain the idea of going... I don't actually... Why would I want to sell like this? It's kind of my life's work.
Famous Five: Books, Tools and Life Advice
Nathan Latka
22:25On that note, Amir, let's wrap up with the famous five. Number one, what's your favorite book?
Amir Salihefendić
22:32Yeah. I would probably recommend Let My People Go Surfing by the Patagonia Founder.
Nathan Latka
22:40Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying?
Amir Salihefendić
22:44I really like love the podcast Invest Like the Best. I'm unsure if your listeners know it, but I would... And there's like a lot people...
Nathan Latka
22:54Is there a CEO? You're following a specific one?
Amir Salihefendić
22:57I mean, I really like Toby Lutke from Shopify. His interview there is, like, amazing. Yeah. So probably that and maybe also the the Stripe founders.
Nathan Latka
23:08Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building your company besides your own?
Amir Salihefendić
23:14Yeah. I would probably say, like, Git, you know, and, like, Git workflow. So we have based, like, a handbook that's kind of, like, versioned and lives on GitHub, but you can also use GitLab. And that is very, very powerful, because you can kind of do the development aspects, but to knowledge base of your company.
Nathan Latka
23:36Amir, number four, how many hours of sleep are you getting every night?
Amir Salihefendić
23:41I'm not a great sleeper. It's not really because I work a lot, but I probably get maybe seven hours per sleep.
Nathan Latka
23:49What's your situation? Married, single, kids?
Amir Salihefendić
23:53I'm married with two kids.
Nathan Latka
23:55Two kids. How old are you?
Amir Salihefendić
23:58I'm 35.
Nathan Latka
24:00Last question. What's something you wish you knew when you were 20?
Amir Salihefendić
24:08Yeah. Something... Yeah.
24:12That you can probably do anything that you actually want to do. So I think there's so much freedom and a lot of people think there's limits, and I don't really believe in that.
Nathan Latka
24:24Guys, doist.com, a multimillion user productivity tool, has passed $14,000,000 in terms of run rate, up from 10,000,000 last year. But this all started back in 2007 as a side project where he hit his first 200 customers was profitable from day one. They've bootstrapped the company today, also now launching Twist, which is a new product line doing $600,000 a year in revenue. He says absolutely no interest in selling. Amir, thank you for taking us to the top.
Amir Salihefendić
24:50Thank you for having me.
Nathan Latka
24:52One more thing before you go. We have a brand new show every Thursday at 1PM Central. It's called Shark Tank for SaaS. We call it deal or bust. One founder comes on, three hungry buyers, they try and do a deal live and the founder shares back end dashboards, their expenses, their revenue, ARPU, CAC, LTV, you name it, they share it. And the buyers try and make a deal live. It is fun to watch every Thursday, 1PM
25:17central. Additionally, remember these recorded founder interviews go live. We release them here on YouTube every day at 2PM central. To make sure you don't miss any of that, make sure you click the subscribe button below here on YouTube, the big red button, and then click the little bell notification to make sure you get notifications when we do go live. I wouldn't want you to miss breaking news in the SaaS world, whether it's an acquisition, a big
25:38fundraise, a big sale, a big profitability statement, or something else. I don't want you to miss it. Additionally, if you wanna take this conversation deeper and further, we have by far the largest private Slack community for B2B SaaS founders. You wanna get in there. We've probably talked about your tool if you're running a company or your firm if you're investing. You can go in there and quickly search and see what people are saying. Sign up for
25:59that at nathanlatka.com/slack. In the meantime, I'm hanging out with you here on YouTube. I'll be in the comments for the next thirty minutes. Feel free to let me know what you thought about this episode. And if you enjoyed it, click the thumbs up. We get a lot of haters that are mad at how aggressive I am on these shows, but I do it so that we can all learn. We have to counter those people. We gotta
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