Todoist self-reflection
How can we make sure Todoist will forever be around?
How can we make sure our users who love us will never have a reason to leave us?
How can we make sure that in a permanently changing landscape of technology, Todoist will always be relevant?
At Doist our mission is to build tools for a more fulfilling way to work and live – that are intentionally designed to help people and teams do more and stress less.
Is Todoist the only way to accomplish our mission?
Is there a future in which technology tells us “Todoist is no longer really needed” and what are we going to do when that future comes?
What are we doing right now to prepare for such future?
In which ways we are currently dying a slow death as opposed to slowly growing?
What if we modified Todoist to have very strong network effects - which would those be?
If those strong network effects were present in the Todoist product - what would it mean for its spirit and mission? Would they stay the same, and ever stronger? Or would they be eroded, as the app turns into a social media for tasks?
Why did Trello get so big, and why did Todoist not? Aside from them being bought and getting capital. What did they DO?
Can we do it on a smaller scale - i.e. without having to borrow capital?
Can we afford to do it on our current profits?
How would we do it if we had literally zero profits to work with?
How would we do it if we had a considerable injection of cash - making sure it’s done in a sustainable way that is not going to crash the company?
In which other areas is the company choosing to stay small?
How does our profit per employee compare to other companies we admire?
Is it different? If so, why?
What does the path towards making sure it’s the best it can be?
What do the milestones along the way look like?
Do we need to make a choice between growing and serving a more niche type of community?
Can we balance these two properly?
Is our free plan hurting us more than doing us good?
What would things look like if we had no free plan?
What undesirable consequences would we need to face?
What would be the benefits of such decision?
What would be a way to still offer people a free option, but that would get much more people that are “okay” with using Todoist free to switch over to Pro?
What would that look like if it were implemented based on limits?
What would that look like if it were implemented based on nice shiny features?
How does a “power user” of the free version currently look like? What would they need in order to switch to a paid version?
How can we make people feel identified with being a Todoister and feel proud and cool about that?
How about our users are called Doisters? Meaning they are more than doers, they’re Doisters. I know our employees are called that, but is keeping it to our employees at the expense of creating stronger sense of empowerment and belonging in our users?
How can we foster a community of people proud to use Todoist?
How can we celebrate our current users?
How about the whole product is called Doist, so it’s more exciting than Todoist? Because to-dos are not exciting, they’re anxiety inducing, and based in the future, dos are based in the present, taking action, and feeling empowered.
How can the products encompass everything you need to get things done and get your shit together?
How about the team version includes everything you need to do to get your shit together, meaning twist built-in and other key work functions? I think considering Todoist is there, and Twist is there, all we need is shaping it a bit so Todoist can also be considered a bit of a “Confluence” of sorts, and we have all the parts of a STRONG and FOCUSED work management tool.
How can we avoid the “work management tool” category? Work management is boring and inspires rejection from many employees, what is a category we can create that Todoist Team would OWN? In all honesty, I think Basecamp could be the other contender in this category, but they won’t be the pioneer or leader if we invent it.
How can we make our Team users Todoist evangelizers? How can they not only - go around convincing the office to use Todoist, but also convince any potential new employers that Todoist is the tool they need to use?
In terms of our vision and direction post:
- How are we going to 5x annual revenue? What do the milestones along the way look like? Who will be responsible for achieving this?
- How are we going to 1.5x employee count? Why do we need to do this? Which department needs to be the main focus? Where are our current employee bottlenecks?
- How are we going to grow our user base by over 5x? What is our main strategy? How can we make sure that our profits grow linearly together with this?
A reflection of the past 10 years as well:
- Why did our annual revenues 30x but our revenue per Doister 4x?
- How did our user base grew 69x but our revenues only 30x?
- How is this impacting our profits? What was our profit per Doister in 2014 and in 2024?
How are we expecting more and more people to discover Todoist Teams?
How are we incentivising them to switch over to Todoist from the platform they’re currently using?
What is the current most popular technology stack of productivity tools of our ideal target companies?
Are we trying to fit in the middle of a Microsoft ecosystem or a Google ecosystem?
Should a different main strategy be best?
How are we convincing people to use Todoist and Twist when they have Teams and Slack?
Who are the decision makers that determine which software companies are going to use? How can we make it a no-brainer for them to decide to implement Todoist?
Crowbarring our product in the middle of an organisation still wedded to Teams seems a VERY tough sell. There’s a lot of things happening on Teams besides chat that are not happening on Todoist.
How can we make sure the use of both is feasible and not clunky? Which companies are better suited for this workflow? i.e. companies with fully remote teams.
Do we need a sales team?