SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
Todoist Productivity Tool Hits $14m Revenue, Bootstrapped
31 Oct 2020
Chapter 1: What personal experiences shaped Amir's worldview?
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 plan.
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And you'll get interviews three weeks earlier from founders, thinkers, and people I find interesting. Like Eric Wan, 18 months before he took Zoom public.
We've got to grow faster. Minimum is 100% over the past several years.
Or bootstrap founders like Vivek of QuestionPro. When I started the company, it was not cool to raise. Or Looker CEO Frank Behan before Google acquired his company for $2.6 billion.
We want to see a real pervasive data culture, and then the rest flows behind that.
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My guest today is Amir Salihafendij. He 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 Duist, a fully distributed bootstraps company that creates productivity tools used by over 13 million people globally.
Amir, you ready to take us to the top?
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Chapter 2: How did Todoist and Twist come into existence?
Yeah.
Yeah. No, no, you're fine. I'm just trying to, so I want to understand the story here. So basically between 2007 and 2019, you only had one price point. It was five bucks a month.
Yeah. Yeah. And honestly, like I said this initially, like very low price point and basically all the other competitors compete this or like, so I kind of like, because we were like one of the first online to do apps and we basically set the price point and everybody's kind of have the same price point. And I don't think like they were probably like, what does this charge?
And then the base, like do a price similar to us. So let's go back to the...
Let's go back to the customer growth story. So you use your blog to get your first customer. What year did you pass to 100 customers? Do you remember?
I mean, honestly, like, you know, it was a side project for me. So I didn't really care about the numbers like that much. I basically care like, is this actually covering the silver cost? And it actually made some profit, but it was like a few thousand bucks per month maybe. Yeah. So it was like very, very like small scale in the beginning.
I understand that though. But do you remember what year, even as a side project, what year you passed sort of 100 or 200 customers?
I did that, I think, 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.
So by the end of 2007, what you're saying is this was generating a couple thousand dollars per month in profit and you had over 200 customers.
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Chapter 3: What strategies did Amir use to acquire his first customers?
So we also had like a... like a love affair with like no hierarchy. And that didn't like, don't try that. Like it's not, yeah, it didn't work that well.
Yeah.
And so let's keep going down 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, you know, it's a side project. You're making a couple grand a month in profits. You're covering your AWS or your server spend, et cetera.
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 do you remember?
Yeah, I mean, honestly, like the thing to note is like we never actually celebrated any of the milestones. So even right now, like when it passed like 1 million or 10 million in ARR, like it's kind of like not really something that we celebrate a lot. And the same thing like 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 like it's kind of like very different from most of other platforms
uh like founders that kind of are like hawks you know on the numbers i was i think just i think just because you don'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 and you didn't pop champagne and wine bottles uh but general i mean 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 were around 10 000
Yeah. I mean, uh, 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, uh, when it's kind of a side project for me. And then when we begin to ramp up, it's kind of like the native mobile apps, like hiring the team.
And that's where it was like the whole, like most of the customer growth comes in as well. Yeah.
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Chapter 4: What is the average revenue per user for Todoist?
Um, Yeah, I mean, I think 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 20. That's at least the plan.
What did you finish 2019 with?
I think it's about, yeah, I'm actually not 100%, but probably around 10. Yeah.
That's great. So you basically have grown over the past 12 months from a $10 million run rate to a $14 million run rate bootstrap.
Yeah.
That's awesome. That's amazing. You need to be on the cover of like the Wall Street Journal and TechCrunch. The bootstrap, you know, good growth. This is how you build a SaaS company that actually generates real wealth.
Yeah, yeah. But honestly, I think the opportunity is huge in this market that we're in. So, yeah. I think that the opportunity is much bigger than that.
What year did you pass a million-dollar run rate? Do you remember?
I mean, here's the thing. It's kind of like I said, we don't actually track. Oh, but come on, Amir.
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Chapter 5: How did Amir bootstrap his company to $14 million in revenue?
But I really believe in the asynchronous way. So I would probably say that, yeah, probably maybe 600,000 or maybe even more yearly. So it's very small compared to Todoist.
Very good.
Yeah.
If someone approached, I know you want to break a hundred million in revenue, Amir, but if someone came to you like Monday or one of these bigger companies and said, Hey, we want to buy the company for $200 million, all cash upfront. Do you sell the company?
I would say, fuck you.
There's even to any number you'd say, fuck you.
Yeah. Yeah. Like I, you know, I have already like declined, you know, like I don't even like entertain that, uh, those ideas.
What's the largest offer you declined?
I mean, I don't even go into them. So like if somebody like sends me an email and the interest is like, I just ignore it. Or like, I have like a template that I send them back.
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