Capitalism, online business, startups, money and my struggles as an Internet entrepreneur. No, I don’t really own a briefcase.
Capitalism, online business, startups, money and my struggles as an Internet entrepreneur. No, I don’t really own a briefcase.
When the war in Ukraine hit I was shocked and sad. As Russian attacks continued I took a stand personally and as Nozbe and stopped all our business with Russia. I couldn’t with clear conscience continue doing “business as usual” when Russian/Putin regime is killing my Ukrainian sisters and brothers. Yale University is actively updating a comprehensive list of businesses that left Russia where we are also featured. However, this list also shows businesses that seem to not care that they’re supporting a terrorist regime of Putin. Here are the ones that stand out for me personally:
As we celebrated 15 years of Nozbe we made a big announcement that our latest product that we launched less than 2 years ago, became the new Nozbe. In the same time we explained that our Nozbe Personal users are taken care of, and we’ve got options for them. Apart from the birthday announcement, we also improved the “Compare” page that explains the differences between both apps in detail and I recorded a special video for this: More info ℹ️ at nozbe.com/compare
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:
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.
