Founders’ Stories: Checkli
For our newest interview in our Founders’ Stories series, we are pleased to introduce Marvin Russell. Marvin has done a ton of interesting things, ranging from founding and then selling The Ocean Agency, a digital agency for SMBs, to creating MySiteAuditor, a leading SEO audit tool.
For his most recent project, Marvin built Checkli, a super simple and beautifully designed checklist app. While Checkli has gained a strong and incredibly active following thanks to its great web app, Marvin and his team just released a mobile app for iOS. If simplicity and beautiful, minimal design are your thing, then read on, because that, and boosting your productivity, is what Checkli is all about.
1. Tell us a little bit about yourself. What got you interested in productivity? What methods / tips tricks do you use to stay focused and productive?
Checkli is my fourth startup in 10 years, so I think the best phrase to describe me is Serial Entrepreneur. I’d say three important events, that I can remember, got me interested in productivity.
The first one is simply being an entrepreneur. At any given time, I have a million ideas floating around inside my head, and I can’t keep track of all those things.
The second thing that led to my obsession with productivity is my severe ADHD. Ever since I was a child I had a hard time focusing on one thing. Checklists are a great substitute for ritalin and adderal.
The third thing was reading The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gwande. It changed my entire way of thinking. It taught me that almost every single industry on the planet uses checklists for everything they do. It also taught me that humans, unless you’re a savant, aren’t meant to remember so many things. We need checklists to function.
2. What’s the story behind the app? Where did the idea for Checkli come from? How big is your team and how many users do you have? And how did you go about building and launching Checkli?
Checkli, pronounced “check-lee”, is just an abbreviated version of checklist.
When I first launched a checklist making tool, the name was actually ChecklistPal. Then I did some research and bought the domain Checkli.com for $2.99.
The idea really came after reading The Checklist Manifesto. If making checklists were critical to all of Boeing’s processes, then it was good enough for me.
The team was just me until March of 2016. I built the app across seas using UpWork, formerly elance. Now I have a full-time partner, a developer who owns part of the company. He’s cleaning up all the cheap crap I did across seas.
3. What makes Checkli different from other task management apps? Why do your users use Checkli instead of some of the other solutions out there?
One word, simplicity. I want our app to be the easiest Checklist app to use. End of story. That’s what I do, and that’s what I focus on.
Some other cool features are the ability to share and brand checklists.
4. What are the unique challenges and joys of developing an app that is used by people all over the world?
The joy is knowing that Checkli is a solution to real problem that all humans share. Our brains are not meant to remember everything we need to do in our lives.
The challenge is not adding every feature that’s requested from our users. I personally think fewer features make any app much better. But there’s always a balance.
5. How do you split your time between developing new features and managing existing ones? What changes will users see when you roll out your new app?
It’s a very delicate thing. More features isn’t always a good thing. We’d rather perfect the features we have than add more new features that only 5% of our users may use.
We constantly run surveys on our site to get feedback from our users. That’s so important. One feature we’re adding in the near future was not even in our minds, until a high percent of our users asked for it.
6. What other productivity apps to you use? What do you see as the future of task management? What are the challenges and where are the opportunities?
I really like IFTTT for killing two birds with one stone. I also like Basecamp for bigger, team-oriented project management.
The future of task management is getting back to the basics of using checklists. So many apps are way too complicated. People want simplicity. That’s all we focus on at Checkli.
Marvin, thanks for taking the time to share a little bit about Checkli with us! Anyone interested in learning more should check out @checkli on Twitter and in the iOS app store.
If you are, or know of someone we should interview, please get in touch, we’re always looking highlight people building cool stuff that makes the rest of us more productive.
