In January 2011, Salihefendić got accepted to the program and received $40,000 of equity-free funding. Amir Salihefendić in an interview with Salesflare (4) I did that for maybe six months, and I got like zero traction, then it was like, “What the fuck am I doing?” 💬 “Before I went and worked full-time on Todoist, I actually tried to start something else called Wedoist, which is basically a live tool, project management tool. He wasn’t interested in moving Todoist forward, so he submitted another app called Wedoist. He learned about the program from Hacker News and decided to try his luck with a random application email. 🐣 From Doist to Todoist (2011)Īpplying to a seed accelerator in Chile wasn’t high on Amir’s to-do list. The breakthrough moment came when Amir submitted an application to a seed accelerator Start-Up Chile. After quitting, he returned to Bosnia where his family lived at the time. Salihefendić felt burned out and he eventually left Plurk around 2011. Amir Salihefendić in an interview with Baremetrics (3)

Yeah, so basically, it was just a service I provided to people and I didn’t really care much about the growth or the numbers.” 💬 “So I didn’t really care that much, and I wasn’t very focused on it. While Todoist’s user base grew, Salihefendić wasn’t interested in making Todoist a full-time project, so he kept moonlighting on the app. Amir Salihefendić in an interview with the Postlight Podcast (2)Īmir dropped out of Aarhus around 2007/2008 and took a co-founder’s position at an emerging social network Plurk. And like one of the first suggestions he wanted to do is basically replace me as the CEO.“ I think it was like $500,000 or something-you know, for me that makes a few thousand dollars per month on this. 💬 “I actually very early on I got contacted by like some very famous VCs and they basically wanted to do a seed investment. He managed to convert some readers of his blog into the first batch of users, and coverage from sites like Lifehacker and Digg helped bring first VC offers. At some point, Salihefendić decided to spread the word about the new tool.

Doist blog