I’d try one app for a while then dump it and try another. I’d been looking for an app that could keep and organize all of my reporting notes, source lists, story ideas and outlines. I first learned about WorkFlowy in 2012 from tech writer Farhad Manjoo, who wrote a column about it in Slate. The design aims to improve navigation between lists. Ev Williams, who founded Twitter and Medium, is said to be a fan, as is Vanity Fair writer Nick Bilton who, legend has it, used WorkFlowy to write his book, “Hatching Twitter.” A preview of Workflowy’s new desktop app. Slack’s founders are said to have started their company with it. WorkFlowy has been spotted on the screens of CEOs, journalists, screenwriters and startup teams, Patel said. That number is all the more impressive when you consider that WorkFlowy has no marketing strategy and attracts new customers only by word of mouth. WorkFlowy is profitable, Patel said, with 15,000 people paying $50 each year for a Pro subscription. Patel said WorkFlowy has more than two million registered users, 130,000 of which use the site regularly each month. The company’s slogan is “Make lists, not war.” In its eight years it’s become the productivity app for people who hate productivity apps. There’s an unmistakable bohemian vibe baked into WorkFlowy. “It’s an extension of yourself rather than somebody telling you how to work and how to think.” “It’s just more satisfying than other tools,” Patel said. Everything is searchable, and you can use tags to surface cross-sections of your data. Use it for a few days and you end up with an ever-expanding organic tree of information. (You can see it in action in the video below.) WorkFlowy’s lists can be nested within lists, and every list springs open and snaps shut with a satisfying, liquid-like flourish. There are almost no buttons and no windows to open you just dive in and start adding stuff - your to-do lists, projects, random thoughts, goals for the year, meeting notes, grocery lists, ideas for a book you’re writing - anything. Open it up for the first time - in a browser or in the desktop app - and you’re met with a single bullet. WorkFlowy is quite possibly the strangest cloud app you’ll ever use. He has hired three additional team members and he says more are on the way. And, where WorkFlowy had previously been run by just Patel and his business partner, Patel is now hiring employees for the first time. (Patel has called his previous mobile app “terrible.”) A new desktop app is in the works as well. This month, the San Francisco-based WorkFlowy launched a new and much-improved mobile app for iOS and Android. He faces a tough challenge: How to win over customers demanding more features while staying true to the thing purists love most about WorkFlowy - its bare-bones simplicity. Now, Patel, 37, is rebooting WorkFlowy with new features and a smoother interface. It’s not difficult to see why Patel and his team would be feeling a little beat up these days. And in recent years, some have questioned whether WorkFlowy is even in development anymore. A feature-rich but less-charming WorkFlowy clone called Dynalist has been siphoning away customers. But the app has hardly changed in its eight years, and calls for new features have grown louder among the WorkFlowy faithful.
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