How Todoist is Built ✅ — with Gonçalo Silva

January 23
52 mins

Episode Description

Today's guest is Gonçalo Silva, CTO of Doist, the company behind Todoist and Twist.


This interview is an incredible behind the scenes about one of the most peculiar companies in tech.


Because Doist is bootstrapped, profitable, has no office and has about 100 employees that are spread across about 40 countries. Yet, or maybe for this reason, they created one of the world's most beloved productivity tools, used by more than 25 million users and they're up against billion-dollar companies with hundreds of millions of funding.


So how do they pull this off? Let's find out.


(00:00) Preview

(01:15) Introduction

(04:26) What does Doist looks like?

(06:48) The perfect number of people

(09:44) Remote and async-first

(15:59) Asynchronous threats

(18:34) Todoist engineering teams

(21:06) Continuity or chaos

(28:18) A team for every platform

(29:21) Product management

(31:37) Product development process

(34:03) Merging top-down strategies and bottom-up feedbacks

(38:16) AI in product engineering

(46:34) Team level AI practices


You can also find this at:


• 📬 Newsletter: https://refactoring.fm

• 🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7Luds9dmzZDoDC8Q7EMbSw

• 📱 Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/refactoring-podcast/id1719137305


For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, or appearing as a guest, email: luca@refactoring.club

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