18 years on the market and always against the tide and conventional business knowledge. See how my theoretically immature decisions lead me to business growth and running my company for over 18 years and thriving.
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- 4-day workweek at Nozbe
- No Office ep. 37 - Mighty Fridays in Nozbe
- How To Be Productive On Fridays
- The Podcast - ep. 70 - People Want To Work
- The History of Nozbe
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Which immature decisions I’ve made led me to a mature business. How I refused Silicon Valley companies, Silicon Valley investors. How I decided to work from home and let everyone else work from home, and how Nozbe started with limits and problems, and how we dominated mobile apps while not having our own mobile app. All of that, all of my immature decisions when running Nozbe which is turning 18 years this week. I’m going to share them here in this podcast. So you’ll learn that running a business is not as conventional as you might think. Hi, I’m Michael Sliwinski, founder and CEO of Nozbe. And yes, this month Nozbe is turning 18, 18 years of age. And today in this 58th episode of No Office Podcast, I’m going to give you a bit of a Nozbe story, but with a twist, showing you how we turned mature 18 years by making many, many immature decisions. For all who are listening, I’m going to also share here a short presentation on YouTube. So if you want to join on YouTube, you’ll see the short presentation, but you don’t need it to listen and take advantage of the audio version of this podcast. And remember, if you like this podcast, make sure to like and subscribe. And this way, all your fellow entrepreneurs, your friends who are running businesses could listen to me showing you that you can run a business your way, making decisions which are not straightforward and yet celebrate 18 years and thriving. All right, let me share my presentation now. Okay, so let’s start with the beginning. I failed several times trying to launch a business. And when I did launch Nozbe, I was already like a seasoned failure as an entrepreneur. I was a marketing consultant and I didn’t believe that finally I would have this thing, this business. But Nozbe was different because I built it for myself first. I built it inspired by an app, no, but a book, Getting Things Done by David Allen, initially. And I made a simplified version of what he wrote in the book just for me. And later I launched it as Nozbe. And what happened was that I launched, because I was so burned by failing, I decided it’s going to be hard, so maybe I’ll just launch quietly and let’s see how it goes. So I launched Nozbe as a web app in 2007 with a hard-coded limit of five projects and no way to pay me more for more projects. And especially after the first week when only 10 people signed up, I was like, okay, let’s see what they say. But then the blogosphere, the productivity blogosphere blew up because Mark Orchant wrote a column on ZDNet about my app because he tried my app. He was one of these very few first users who tried my app and he loved it. He loved the simplicity of it. And the simplicity aspect will be very prevalent here in this podcast and in this whole history. And he loved it. He wrote a GDT web app that keeps it simple. And it blew up and people were demanding more projects. And I was like, what do I do? What do I do? So again, not being a mature businessman, I decided, okay, I’m going to just create a special premium plan for more projects. And I will tell people that they don’t have to pay it. So this is what I did. So for the first three months, we had 5,000 users trying out Nozbe and they were also using the paid version, which they didn’t pay for. And only in May of 2007, I launched the payment via PayPal because it was the only system I knew back then. And now you can pay for Nozbe using different payment methods and of course, credit cards and all that stuff. And only then I got my first 100 paying customers. And from there, the rest is history. But yeah, I launched a web app that I thought was great, but I limited it much. And then I had to just listen to customers. And this is also the story of my life that I had to just listen to customers and they told me what they wanted. And then I had to decide if I wanted to implement what they wanted. So yeah, that was my first kind of immature decision of launching early with all these limits and all these problems and not being able to get the money. Now you can pay for Nozbe using the Apple Pay, using in-app purchase on a mobile app, all that stuff. But back then, you couldn’t. But yet people loved it. People loved the simplicity of Nozbe. And this is how it all started. All right. Second, immature decision. I remember, so before I said that, I remember that when I read the book about the Minecraft, the founding of Minecraft and the founder of Minecraft, when he decided to work on Minecraft full-time and make it a company, his decision was to rent an office so that he could be a real company. So I did not do that. I didn’t have any fancy office and I decided to work no office. I wrote my thesis when I was in college about working remotely. So I wanted to keep working remotely. And I hired my first two people, first programmer, Tomasz, who’s still with me, who’s still working with me. And he’s the member of the board of Nozbe and Delphina, the customer support representative. I hired them even though they were living quite far away from me. Tomasz was living like 300 kilometers away from me, so like 200 miles. So we didn’t work together in the same place. We worked remotely and he, especially he wanted to work remotely. He didn’t want to go to anywhere. He was just a programmer and wanted to just work on something cool. And this is what happened. And he was working initially part-time. So I hired a part-time programmer who was already better than my programming skills. So my programming skills were good enough to launch the first version of Nozbe, but were not good enough to make it better. That’s why I invited Tomasz and Delphina. And that’s the thing. Instead of thinking like a true businessman and getting an office and hiring people who are around me, I hired the best people I could find. Tomasz was one of the seven people I interviewed for the position and he was the best, even though he was living the furthest. And even though I was living in the capital, so I could basically hire anyone from around me, but I hired him because he was the best. All right. And then another thing I did was in 2010 when the iPad launched, before the iPad launched, Nozbe, you know, the thing with Nozbe, I wanted to, when I launched it in 2007, already iPhone launched in 2007. And I thought Nozbe is going to be a web application that you use on your desktop, because this is how I was using it. But then when the iPhone launched, I built a special small web application for the iPhone called iNozbe. And my customers from the States, because I wasn’t living in the States, they could use it and they used it and they loved it. So what happened was that they were testing the application as I was building it. And I was building it without having an iPhone to test it on. And then later when the app store launched, I didn’t have the skills to build an iPhone app because it was completely different language, completely different programming skills. I couldn’t do it. So I hired some people, but the first version of iPhone app was not really so good. So I didn’t know what to do. And then a company, a bunch of friends who were launching an iOS development company approached me that they could build the official Nozbe client. And I did something again, which is really immature and really like, like all business people were saying, what are you doing? But for me, it was a simple deal. Because Nozbe by that time had already, you know, tens of thousands of users and thousands of customers. So I said to these guys, look, you build, I will give you the code that I have for the mobile app. You build it as a great mobile app. And when you build it and you charge for it. So initially Nozbe’s mobile app was pay upfront. Like you’ve had to pay five to or $10 for it one time. So you pay for that apart from your Nozbe subscription. And you guys, you keep all the profits. So the guys were shipping the mobile app and they kept all the profits from the sales of this mobile app, but they had no profits. They couldn’t get any profits from my sales of subscriptions. So it was a very simple deal. Subscriptions are for me. The profits from the mobile app are for you guys. And then you have free marketing because I have free users. I have users who want to have that app. So I will send these users to you. So you’ll have guaranteed profits. On the other hand, you know, if the app is good, I will also get new subscribers. So everybody’s happy. So it was a very simple clear cut deal. And it worked. It worked for them. They could show off to their new customers who would hire them for iOS app development that they had this great Nozbe app who was popular on the app store. And I had the mobile app. And the best part is I had the iPad app when the iPad launched. The iPad launched in April of 2010. And in May of 2010, we already had the iPad app. So one of the first productivity iPad apps ever was Nozbe. And you know, sometimes in business timing is everything. And in my case, it was because a very well-known blogger in Japan, Zono. And here I’m showing on YouTube the book, iPhone and iPad Creativity, Creative Lifestyle of iPhone and iPad. He published a book and he sold this book. And the best part is that the first chapter you could download it for free from his website. And the first chapter, long and behold, was about Nozbe. So with screenshots of Nozbe actually. So this way people could actually download the first chapter and learn about Nozbe. So it was free marketing for me. And suddenly I was big in Japan, popular in Japan. I mean, Nozbe was big in Japan. And thanks to that, I later reached out to him. And half a year later, we published a book about Nozbe. The first book about Nozbe was in Japanese. And I am here on the cover of the book and I went to Japan to sign it. So it was a whole story about this. And we’ll send the link in the show notes about the story, how it happened. It was very cool. And this way I got lots of customers from Japan. And we still have many customers from Japan using Nozbe. And some of them are with us from that very beginning, from 2010, 2011. So amazing. So again, an immature business decision, instead of me paying for mobile app development, like doing it the traditional way, I just partnered with a company and it worked for both of us. Later, of course, after a few years, we decided to part ways and they kept the app as an unofficial Nozbe app. And we developed our own Nozbe app in-house. Now Nozbe app for the Android, iPhone, iPad is developed in-house by us and is free. And it comes included with your Nozbe subscription. And even if you have a free plan, you can still use it with your Nozbe. All right. Another thing, let’s talk about money again. So I was running Nozbe. It was a very popular tech startup way back when. And many venture capital companies were approaching me because they saw the Nozbe’s growth, popularity, and they wanted to help me by throwing money my way. And I was in several advanced talks with several VC companies, but in the end, I decided not to do it. I decided to keep bootstrapping the company. So keep just doing it my way and not getting the investments, even though the additional money might have helped me promote Nozbe better and make it grow better. But I was actually afraid of losing control of Nozbe. And one of our values is freedom. And I wanted to be free to have control of how Nozbe is developed. And I didn’t want to be forced to just set up an office because the venture capital companies thinks that they should. And I’ve heard some of the VC’s saying that if you take our investment, you have to have an office near us so we can help you or control you, whatever that means. So in the end, I decided not to take investment. And as the French would say, je ne regrette rien. So I don’t regret anything. I don’t regret it. I think it’s great that we still are profitable. And for me, it’s the proper way that the customers, our users, are paying for Nozbe. They are my investors. They tell me what to do. I mean, they don’t tell me what to do, but they give me ideas. And they like our independence. So that’s why I think it’s inspiring for them as well. So some other companies would take the money and many did, but then they burned because they went for growth at all costs. I did not want to do that. So yeah, I have a few more immature decisions, immature stories. But before I continue, I’m going to just show you one of my customers who loves Nozbe and what they think about it. Once I started using Nozbe, that’s when we started to really think beyond a freelance mindset to more of a team mindset. And the beauty of it is that we can have a remote team. So we can hire people based on their credentials or based on relationships that we had with people that we knew would be really good and didn’t have to hire based on location and somebody that’s within a mile radius, something close to where we were. And also Nozbe is very intuitive and easy for a team to use. So as we add new people, whether it’s a contractor or an employee to the team, we can get them set up with Nozbe and within really an hour, they can see projects and tasks that are assigned to them and start working. So most of our teams really take Nozbe pretty easily. So yeah, that was our idea to keep Nozbe simple, to keep Nozbe easy to use, to help small business, smart business owners set up quickly and also onboard their team quickly without schooling, teaching, all of that. So speaking of that, I was even approached by Evernote, my favorite productivity app. I was a very avid Evernote user and Nozbe user. And I was the leader of the idea of making these two apps work together. And I met the CEO of Evernote on one of the conferences and we talked about it. And then later we came up with this idea of how to have a cool Evernote integration. And we still support Evernote, even though it was sold now to a different company, but we still support Evernote. And at that time in 2011, 2012, Evernote was very popular and they saw the integration and they loved it. And they thought that they could actually get me on board and buy Nozbe. And we talked, I went to see them. It was great. It was fun. But in the end, I decided against it because again, freedom. I wanted to just keep doing what I’m doing. And the thing is, when you launch a business, you don’t always get this idea. As a businessman, you have many ideas, but it’s very hard to find this sweet spot when you have an idea of a product that works and that people are willing to pay for and they use it and they love it. And I had that and people were paying me good money for this. Nozbe is pretty inexpensive, but with thousands of customers, it’s okay. And I loved it. I don’t want to need to be a billionaire. I just was making good money, having fun and working from home, working my way. And I decided even though moving to the Silicon Valley would be very tempting and joining Evernote would be very tempting. In the end, I decided against it. Now in hindsight, it was of course a good decision because Evernote later didn’t take off as quickly as they thought they would. They didn’t go IPO. They didn’t blow up like they were supposed to. So I think I did well. But at that time, even when I consulted my mentors, they all said, keep doing what you’re doing because you have something great here. And I agree. And 18 years later, I’m still excited about working on Nozbe. So speaking of other decisions, every programmer or every major programmer, senior programmer, every basically software owner tells you never to rewrite your software because your software is complicated when it’s been done over many years and you should just keep improving it, but never rewrite it. And I did not listen and I let my programmers rewrite Nozbe. And we launched as Nozbe Teams. Initially this new Nozbe and now it’s called just new Nozbe. And the old Nozbe is called Nozbe Classic. And we have still thousands of customers using Nozbe Classic, but many of them are migrating. We made the migration very easy now to the new Nozbe because the new Nozbe is the new thing. And we knew that with the technology that we had and with the ideas that we had, we came to a ceiling and we needed to do something new and something else. That’s why we wanted to try new technology, which would be much better for mobile. And new Nozbe is much faster on the mobile phones and on the iPads and all these devices. And as you know, Nozbe works offline. So even if you use Nozbe on your mobile device and you have no internet connection, you can just add your tasks, reorder your tasks, and they will sync later when they have the connection. So we wanted to make this experience really great for our users. So yeah, I did make lots of mistakes with the rewrite. So we launched too early. There are so many things. I’m probably be writing something about this at some point on my blog, how many mistakes I’ve made with the rewrite. But in the end, it paid off. Now Nozbe is taking off again. We are seeing great customer growth. We are seeing lots of migrations from Nozbe Classic to the new Nozbe. So in long term, it all pays off. Sometimes there are rough patches as they are, but now in long term, it pays off and now we’re turning 18 and we are thriving. So yeah, that’s great, I think. And not only do we work from home, we only work four days a week because on Fridays… I mean, on Fridays, we technically also work, but on Fridays, it’s not day-to-day work. On Fridays, we have mighty Fridays. And please listen to the previous episode of No Office Podcast where I explained the whole four-day work week, how it works, how it came about, and why we believe this is the future of work. The short story is we were not doing our weekly review well. We were the productivity company that wasn’t practicing what it was preaching. So I decided let’s make Friday the weekly review day. So when we do a weekly review, we plan next week. And then later, after you’ve done your weekly review, you should focus on your personal development. So this way you can learn new things, new skills, be better. And in my last episode of No Office Podcast, I’m quoting some examples how many of our team members came with cool ideas on Fridays. They developed new skills on Fridays. They changed their careers even on Fridays. So listen to that, but I think– and I strongly believe we need a buffer. We need a place that– because there’s always lots of work. There is not enough time for work. So it’s really important that you work as much as you can, but you have this buffer where you can get organized. So do a weekly review, clean your desk, clean your stuff, and also focus on your skills. And we also tell it to our customers that on Fridays, why don’t you just schedule an hour to go through our Nozbe help pages, watch our tutorials, watch our videos, and you learn how to use Nozbe better. So next week, when you start your next week, you’ll know how to use our app better. Because our app, Nozbe, is very simple to use. It’s a very clear structure of projects, tasks, and all these tasks have parameters and comments. So projects, tasks, and comments. But there is much– behind this simplicity, there is much power. We have so many cool features and more are coming hidden behind this simplicity. So it’s great to– it would be great to discover them, to discover these things. And this way, you’ll be able to be just better, to manage your tasks better, to manage your life better next week when you do a Friday hour for Nozbe tutorials or Nozbe help page. And then do that with all your tools that you’re using. I just got a new app for my Mac, which I’m going to also on Friday study to take advantage of it. And not just the image of one cool feature, but many features. All right. So basically, I’m closing up here. And one of my– to give you the idea that running a business doesn’t have to be so mature and so serious, we don’t have a mission statement. We just have four core values. And our four values are PSFF. I mean, I know Americans like the acronyms that they mean something. Here is the which doesn’t look very professional. Again, very immature. It’s passion, simplicity, freedom, and fairness. And passion, because we’re passionate about productivity, we’re passionate about getting things done, about helping our customers get things done. And it’s a great privilege, but also great– it’s really something to behold, because people wake up every day and they launch Nozbe, and then they have all their tasks, all their hopes and dreams. And we have to make sure that they see that, that it syncs, that everything works, and they can get stuff done. They can get their reminders on time, get their meetings on time, everything. So we are passionate about it. And this is our core value. This is why after 18 years of running Nozbe, I’m still passionate about it. And then simplicity, as you’ve heard many times here, I’m trying to make everything simple. Now we also have a simple payment plan. There is a premium plan. There is a business plan. In premium plan, you can only have one premium workspace. In business plan, you can have unlimited premium workspaces. We don’t nickel and dime. Recently, I got an email from a customer who’s on the Nozbe business plan. And he asked me how many workspaces he can have, because it doesn’t show. And I said, look, man, you can have as many as you want. Of course, it’s your business decision how many– how you want to divide your team members and everything. But knock yourself out. Try a new workspace and see how it goes. So really, simplicity is the key. And again, this simple structure of projects, tasks, and comments, we are right now working also on redesigning a little bit in Nozbe to make it even simpler to use so that it’s really approachable and very easy for everyone. And freedom. Freedom because we’re free to work from anywhere. We are working from home. We are free of obligations from not only from investors or some other companies, but also we have structured the pricing as such that our ceiling is 200 users. You can have more than 200 users, but you’re still going to pay the same money for 200 users for Nozbe because we don’t want one customer also to dominate us. So we are not interested in chasing deals for millions of dollars because then we would have to basically build a different version of Nozbe for these customers and we don’t want that. So again, this is our freedom also in our simplicity. And fairness because we want to be fair. We want to be fair to our customers. We want to be fair when we record the podcast that what I say is what I do and not what I want you to believe that I do. So completely fair, completely upfront. We are not completely 100% transparent with everything, but with most of the things. Also, we have a fair salary structure. We have a fair salary formula, which is transparent. The formula is transparent. So people on my team know that how much they are earning and how much they can earn and how their peers are earning more or less because I mean, there is no negotiation. It’s just fair. And also we are fair with our pricing to our customers. And as you know, if you upgrade to a higher plan, you add a new team member to your Nozbe team, you don’t have to pay anything. We automatically calculate new expiry dates or new renewal date and that’s it. So it’s really easy, simple and fair and square. And again, I said we don’t have any additional add-ons or additional things to charge for. So these core values are something that we believe in and something that we base our decisions on. So yeah, we have four core values. That’s why we are making immature decisions. But then again, we managed to stay afloat and thriving now after 18 years and I can’t wait for what other more 18 years again will bring. I don’t know how much I’m going to work on Nozbe for these years to come, but I don’t see why I wouldn’t because running this company is a marathon, 18 years in business. Even though maybe Nozbe is not as successful as different companies. But again, for me, the best way is to measure myself against my past self. And I think we’ve come a long way and I’m still excited about this. And I thank everyone who is a part of Nozbe and who has a Nozbe account and is using Nozbe every day. And if you are not a Nozbe user, but you’ve listened to this podcast and you also believe in what we believe. So I do encourage you to set up an account and I’ll give you a bonus. And this bonus will let you use Nozbe for free for two, three months, depending of your team size. So make sure to get the bonus and to sign up for Nozbe. And please like, subscribe and share this podcast with everyone who you think would resonate with the immature way we’re doing business. Thank you for being an amazing listener of the No Office Podcast. Every other Wednesday we meet to talk about productivity and hybrid lifestyle, because we believe that work is not a place to go, it’s a thing to do. It’s a special gift only to No Office Podcast listeners. When you sign up for Nozbe using this link, Nozbe.com/podcast, you’ll get 30 bucks of credits, which you can use to upgrade to Nozbe Premium. Nozbe helps thousands of smart business owners and their teams get their professional and private life organized in a single app in a simple way. And Nozbe is free for up to three active projects and three people on your team. So start today and claim your free bonus credits, which you will later need to upgrade to unlimited projects. Once again, thank you for being an amazing listener. Thanks for your support and for spreading the word about our No Office Podcast. And Nozbe. See you and hear you in the next episode and in the meantime, claim your bonus credits.
