Todoist

In 2007, Amir Salihevnidj was a student juggling two programming jobs and needed a better way to manage his work and priorities. He couldn't find an existing tool that fit his needs, so he did what developers do—he built one for himself. "I was just building a tool," he recalls. "I don't think he saw it as a startup or had any particularly big ambitions."

Amir launched Todoist with minimal fanfare—just a link posted on his popular blog. "I posted a link there and then people just started to sign up and use the product," he remembers. The organic growth was steady from day one. Within weeks, he decided to add a premium tier to cover server costs. "I was a student and didn't really want to pay for the server costs. So I just put up a premium version where they needed to pay like $3 a month or whatever. And like already from the get go, it paid for the service." Remarkably, this freemium model at that exact price point became the industry standard—competitors would later copy it exactly.

In 2008, just as Todoist was gaining traction with roughly 100,000 users, Amir received an offer he couldn't refuse: a job at a social network startup (Plurk) in Taiwan. For the next four years, he maintained Todoist minimally—fixing bugs and keeping it online—but didn't actively develop it. The growth curve flattened dramatically. "Between 2008 and 2011 or 12, nothing happens for Todoist," he admits. "I abandoned the space and the product."

By 2011-2012, Amir was burned out. "We would spend a lot of time optimizing for wasting people's time... how can we make them waste more of their time," he says of his social network work. "After three years doing that, I was just sick and tired of that." He realized he wanted to work on something meaningful—something that helped people get more done, not waste time. He still used Todoist every day. He still received emails from grateful users thanking him for building it. Most importantly, he saw the mobile revolution coming and sensed massive opportunity ahead.

When Amir returned full-time in 2012, Todoist had roughly 200,000 users (with only tens of thousands active). Using his newfound experience with product development and design, he quickly rebuilt it for mobile and made the premium model sustainable enough to pay himself within months. He hired a support person almost immediately to handle the influx of emails, freeing himself to focus on development. From 2012 onward, the product accelerated: it grew from 200,000 users to over 4 million today.

The key to Todoist's success, Amir believes, isn't copying trends or chasing every user request. "The product is basically made for us and we are huge users of the product," he explains. He filters user feedback carefully rather than trying to build for every request. He stayed true to his original vision while letting the mobile moment lift the entire product category. The result: a profitable, self-sustaining business used by millions, including Fortune 100 companies, all while Amir built a fully remote team of 40+ people spread across the globe.