Amir Salihefendic built Todoist in January 2007 because he was a busy student juggling multiple programming jobs and couldn't find a task manager that worked the way he thought.

The Side Project That Refused to Stay Small

While studying in Denmark, Amir shipped the first version of Todoist as a personal tool. It was simple: nested tasks, due dates, and a clean interface. He put it online and forgot about it. Then people started using it.

The early growth was entirely organic. Developers and productivity enthusiasts found Todoist through forums and word of mouth. Within a year, a modest but steady stream of users were paying for premium features. Amir had accidentally built a business.

The VC Rejection — By Choice

Before building Todoist, Amir co-founded Plurk, a social network that raised VC funding. The experience left him with a strong conviction: he never wanted to be replaced as CEO and never wanted to optimize for someone else's timeline.

When Todoist started showing traction, investors came calling. Amir turned them all down. "Fully bootstrapped. Customers have supported us since the beginning," he later wrote. The decision meant slower growth — and total control.

Building a Remote Company Before Remote Was Normal

By 2012, Todoist had a small but distributed team operating under the brand Doist. Amir built an async-first culture years before the pandemic made it fashionable. The team published extensively about remote work, which drew a wave of users who respected the philosophy behind the product.

$20M ARR, 30 Million Users, Zero VC

Doist reached $10M ARR in 2019, $14M in 2020, and $20M+ by 2022 — all with no outside investment. In 2024, Amir announced that Todoist had crossed $100M in total lifetime revenue, bootstrapped from day one.

"We did it in our unique way," he wrote. "Customers have supported us since the beginning, and we've used only our revenues to improve things further."