Hello, I’m Michael Sliwinski, founder of Nozbe - to-do app for modern teams. I write about productivity, #NoOffice, #iPadOnly and I believe that work is not a place you go to, it’s a thing you do.
Capitalism, business, money and my struggles as an Internet entrepreneur. No, I don’t really own a briefcase.
As I’m pondering more on the Basecamp saga, I see that despite me paying so much attention to all of their advice of running a business all these years, there’s one very important thing I did differently. As far as I understand, at Basecamp both David and Jason make all the important decisions. At Nozbe I don’t make these decisions alone - we have a “Braintrust”, or actually two of them. Let me explain:
Recently there was quite a controversy around the tech company Basecamp. Their CEO announced a new policy forbidding employees talk politics and societal issues in the company. As a result 30% of their workforce left. In this post I’ll unpack why this wasn’t really just about politics. Why it was a much bigger deal than it sounds. And ultimately why I took it very personally and this whole situation makes me really sad and disappointed in them.
Pricing is an art. It’s not just slapping a number on a service or product. Pricing conveys what the product stands for. It shows the positioning and the value of what you’re offering and conveys the kind of relationship you want to build with your customers. Here’s me explaining in detail the pricing of Nozbe Teams and why we believe that our prices must be: Affordable, Predictable and Transparent.
Yesterday I had an idea. One of many this week. I’m an entrepreneur after all so I have ideas all the time. But this was different, because in a span of one day it went the full circle from inception, through development and it’ll most probably be implemented pretty soon. And the best part is that this idea wasn’t completely new. It was more of an intersection of several ideas that came before it. But finally it all clicked together. Here’s how it went down.
I’m still in the process of writing the #NoOffice book and I’m at 66% done so far. In the meantime I’m preparing next week’s Nozbe Teams productivity webinar in which I’ll be quoting parts of my Nozbe vision which I mentioned in one of the last team productivity vlogs. Today I’d like to show you the draft of the entire vision of Nozbe in very abbreviated form.
One of Nozbe’s main competitors - Wunderlist - is going away in a few months - Microsoft is shutting it down after they acquired it years ago. At Nozbe we’ll be offering a way to migrate from Wunderlist to Nozbe or Nozbe Teams soon, but this post is not about that - it’s about how this app, when launched in 2011, gave me a strong kick in the butt to make Nozbe much better. Here goes:
Recently I wrote this post on Twitter, in reply to Tim Cook visiting Alabama:
Yes, Rosa stood for something. Yet Apple, the company I used to so highly admire… Recently stands for nothing. Videos promoting Trump campaign? Removing Taiwanese emoji? Removing Hong-Kong apps? Putting Crimea in Apple Maps as “Russia”? Yes please, Tim, do learn from Ms Parks
I’m an Apple user myself. I’m #iPadOnly, I buy a new iPhone every year, I love my Apple Watch and I own lots of Apple shares as well… and I’m so invested in this fruit company not just because of the “design is how it works” thing, but mostly because of their values. Here’s why I’m so disappointed in Apple so much recently:
Every now and then I get an email from an investor, thinking about investing in Nozbe. We even had some serious acquisition offers in the past. Especially now that our main competitors like Asana or Monday are valued at more than $1B. This is really flattering but our answer has always been:
We’re humans and we’re emotional. Apparently the notion is that women are more emotional then men, but by watching male fans react to what’s happening on a football stadium I have my doubts. Regardless, we’re driven by emotions and I think too often we get the emotion get the better of us… and we don’t take enough time to consult our rational part of brain.
Update July 15, 20019: Apparently scrutiny and social media outcry and posts like these worked. Much later the same day, Zoom finally acknowledged that they shouldn’t compromise user security and use creepy tactics like installing web servers on their users’ computers. Even though initially they said it was fine. A few days later even Apple reacted and posted a silent update to all Macs that removes the web server even if you haven’t yet updated the Zoom app to the latest version. Which you totally should!
The drama is over. I’m happy that Zoom reacted quickly and I’m a little surprised that even Apple jumped in to really make sure this thing was over. That’s all good and I’m happy that the system worked, but as a cautionary tale I decided to leave the original blog post - you can skip the part about removing the server and read the rest of my thoughts on why we need high standards of ethics in the technology companies of today.