I’m Gonçalo, CTO at Doist, the bootstrapped and globally distributed bunch behind Todoist, Twist, and more (soon!).
Before joining Doist, I founded Heavy Player with João. We wanted to build mobile games with delightful stories and mechanics, but we also needed to pay rent. That’s how I met Amir, who was trying to get Todoist, then just outgrowing side-project status, off the ground through freelancers alone. We pivoted quickly.
Freelancing wasn’t new to me. I’d worked with clients such as Shopify, Engine Yard, and PT Inovação. Earlier still, I joined Tecla Colorida, where I worked as an engineer and later as a sysadmin on Escolinhas, a platform for primary school children, teachers, parents, and, unfortunately, government contracts.
I’ve been contributing to open source for as long as I’ve been programming. If you’ve used or worked on the Ruby, Rails, Kotlin, Android, or GNOME ecosystems (to name a few), there’s a decent chance you’ve run code I wrote.
When not working, I’m often chasing after my three little rascals.
Work
- Doist
- Heavy Player
- Freelance
- Tecla Colorida
Organized events
- Lisbon AI
- Make or Break
- Porto Summer of Code
- Rails Girls Porto
Talks
- The Art of Distributed Work
- Developing Software Remotely and Asynchronously
- Developing Software Remotely and Asynchronously
- Distributed workforces: pros, cons and challenges
- Kotlin in Production
- Remote workflows
- 100% Kotlin and Anko
- Building Todoist: past, present and future
- Remote workflows
Podcasts
- How Todoist is Built
- Trust is essential in remote companies
- Why iOS Developers at Todoist Wanted Kotlin Multiplatform
- Cultivating a Culture of Learning in Organisations
- Why Culture is King in the Remote Workforce
- Working Completely Asynchronously
- Remote Work & Asynchronous Communication at Doist
- Championing Asynchronous Communication in Remote Teams
- Pandemic Remote Working Lessons, From The Masters
- Remote Working Cultures
- How A Fully-Remote Team Builds and Maintains Software
- Working Remote
- Highly Productive Teams
- Lessons From Growing Doist To 70+ Remote Employees
- Gonçalo Silva, CTO of Doist
- Lists and Growing Organically