How Todoist is Built ✅ — with Gonçalo Silva

The Refactoring Podcast interviews Gonçalo Silva, CTO of Doist, to explore how the company succeeds as a bootstrapped, fully remote organization with around 100 employees competing against much larger, well-funded companies. Silva attributes Doist's success to its narrow focus on productivity, allowing for deeper expertise and more cohesive branding. He also highlights the company's asynchronous-first communication style, which balances focused work with efficient collaboration, and its functional organizational structure that uses temporary "squads" for projects. Silva details how Doist balances top-down strategic direction with bottom-up ideas from the team, and how AI is impacting software development, emphasizing the increasing importance of clarity, communication, and architectural skills. Doist uses AI in code reviews, prompt engineering, and even career navigation tools.