How do you scale your company to millions and billions in ARR? Well, if you ask your average founder or a VC, there are a couple of steps one must take to quickly scale the business after finding the product market fit.
On the other hand, some founders don't take the usual route but rather build their company over time — often bootstrapping and investing the profits back into the company rather than raising money and aiming for an exit a few years down the road.
One such company is Doist which is behind a popular productivity app called Todoist. Recently, we had the chance to talk to its founder and CEO, Amir Salihefendic, about his experience with scaling the product to 30+ million users while being a remote-first company that doesn't share the usual Silicon Valley values.
Throughout the talk, Amir highlighted how persistence and passion for the product pushed him and the team to deliver value for such a long time. He admits that initially, he only wanted to create a side hustle that generated a couple of thousands of dollars. However, after seeing how users loved the product and how passionate they were about it, he knew that he had to scale the operation.
Still, Amir opted for bootstrapping the company and growing it moderately — only hiring when there was a real need for a new role. Being an asynchronous organization long before work-from-home became a thing during the pandemic, our guest admits that the competition was fierce during the year 2020. Still, since every major tech company is pushing for a return to the office, things have returned to normal with Doist maintaining its reputation among remote-first companies.
Amir was open about the leadership challenges of a bootstrapped company, but he also noted that he firmly believes in sustainable growth and wealth distribution — creating more financial options for the company's employees, who are its backbone.
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Timestamps:
00:00 - Intro
00:36 - What is the episode about?
01:48 - Growing for 20 years
05:26 - What is CEO's job?
08:19 - Being a good communicator
11:02 - The benefits of writing
14:00 - Stock options for employees
16:33 - Not going for the VC money
18:15 - Sharing the wealth with people
19:29 - Remote first culture
21:41 - Saying NO to meetings
24:55 - Building trust with the team
26:48 - What is a CALM company?
28:29 - You need to shut off
33:49 - Lessons from challenging periods
35:58 - Marketing for 30+ million users
38:57 - Creating unique product
43:06 - Find people that care
46:52 - What is the end game?