Amir Salihefendic
Founder and CEO of Doist
Amir Salihefendic is the Founder and CEO of Doist, a company known for its productivity applications, including Todoist and Twist. Born in Bosnia, Amir's early years were marked by the upheaval of war, prompting his family to flee to Denmark, where he grew up in a rural setting. He pursued a degree in computer science at Aarhus University and began his entrepreneurial journey while still a student, creating Todoist in 2007 to manage his own tasks amidst multiple programming jobs and side projects.12
Before establishing Doist, Amir co-founded Plurk, a social networking site that gained popularity in Asia, and he developed a successful spell-checking service as one of his early ventures.13 Under Amir's leadership, Doist has adopted a remote-first approach since its inception, allowing it to attract talent globally while fostering a culture of independence and self-motivation.45 This operational model has contributed to the company's resilience and sustainability, enabling it to thrive without external funding.34
Amir emphasizes the importance of building products that address real user needs and has remained committed to the long-term growth of Doist, focusing on profitability and efficiency rather than rapid expansion.34 His journey reflects a dedication to both personal productivity and creating tools that empower users worldwide.
Highlights
One of the core lessons I've learned while building Doist is that small organizations can achieve remarkable feats. The potential for growth and success in a small organization is often underestimated, and the "bigger is better" may not always be a great idea.
For the last 10-20 years, running the "blitz scaling" playbook has been common. The core approach is quickly building a big, highly inefficient, unprofitable company. The culture suffers from extreme scaling, and the whole thing becomes too big to be nimble and react to accelerating change.
A counter to a blitz-scaled approach is a 1000x organization. This is an organization that has the following characteristics: — It's small, highly efficient and nimble — It has extreme talent density — It's hyper-specialized, competitive, and can quickly react to change — Lastly, and most importantly, a 1000x organization is highly leveraged with AI, robotics, and/or automation
Contrary to popular belief, these 1000x organizations might not eliminate jobs. A good example is Germany's Mittelstand companies, which form the backbone of the German economy and employ around 60% of the people. The Mittelstand are Germany's small-to-medium-sized companies.
1000x organizations could positively impact societies because, due to hyper-competition, everything will become cheaper and better, and improvements will accelerate.
Building Doist further, this is the area I think a lot about…
This year's Doist retreat t-shirt is pretty epic. A Todoist-inspired coat of arms ⚔️ 🇮🇪 https://t.co/IPo7jiWHGl
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