After years of fighting with project management tools, we realized something: The problem wasn't missing features. It was missing philosophy.
Every tool we tried had plenty of features. Tags, filters, custom fields, integrations, automations. But none of them had a point of view about how work actually happens.
So we started with philosophy first.
Three Beliefs That Changed Everything
Before writing a single line of code, we sat down and asked: What do we actually believe about how teams work?
Three core beliefs emerged:
1. There Are Three Types of Work
Not everything is urgent. Not everything is a task. We realized work falls into three categories:
Today - The handful of things that actually matter right now. The work that moves you forward this week.
Next - Important work that's coming up. Things you're thinking about, planning for, or will tackle soon.
Later - The ideas, maybes, and somedays. Things you don't want to forget, but don't need to stress about.
Most tools give you one infinite list. We decided: three finite buckets instead.
2. Context Is More Important Than Tasks
Tasks are easy. "Fix the login bug." "Design the onboarding flow." "Update the pricing page."
But tasks without context are meaningless. Why does this matter? Who decided this? What problem are we solving?
We believed: Every task needs to exist in a story. A shared timeline where decisions, discussions, and work live together. Where context isn't lost in Slack threads or buried in comments.
3. Teams Need Shared Visibility, Not Real-Time Collaboration
Meetings are exhausting. But complete async chaos is just as bad.
We believed teams need something in between: A shared feed where everyone sees what's happening, but you work on your own time.
No meeting pressure. No inbox anxiety. Just: "Here's what happened. Here's what's next. Here's why it matters."
From Beliefs to Buckets
Once we had our beliefs, the features started to make sense.
The Three Buckets weren't just a nice organization system. They were a philosophical stance: Work should feel finite, not infinite. You should be able to see what matters today without drowning in a backlog.
The Feed wasn't just a timeline. It was our answer to context. Every update, every decision, every note lives in a shared stream. You see what's happening. You understand why. You stay in sync without meetings.
Notes, Not Just Tasks became our mantra. Because work isn't just checking boxes. It's thinking, deciding, discussing. Notes capture all of that—right alongside the tasks they relate to.
History That Matters emerged from the feed. Because when everything lives in one shared timeline, you don't just have a record of what got done. You have a record of why. The story of your work, not just the output.
The Feature That Almost Broke Us
Early on, we debated: Should we add subtasks?
Every PM tool has subtasks. Jira has subtasks. Asana has subtasks. It felt like table stakes.
But subtasks violated our philosophy. They encourage breaking work down into smaller and smaller pieces. More nesting. More complexity. More cognitive overhead.
We believed: If something is too big, it's not a task—it's a project. And projects should be handled differently, not nested infinitely.
We didn't add subtasks. And it was one of the best decisions we made.
Philosophy as a Filter
Having clear beliefs gave us a filter for every feature decision:
- "Should we add custom fields?" → No. Infinite flexibility leads to infinite complexity.
- "Should we add story points?" → No. We're not optimizing for metrics—we're optimizing for clarity.
- "Should we add a calendar view?" → Maybe later. But feed-first. Context-first.
Every feature request got run through our core beliefs. If it aligned, we considered it. If it violated our philosophy, we said no—even if competitors had it.
The Risk of Being Opinionated
Here's the thing about having a philosophy: Not everyone will agree with it.
Some teams need custom fields. Some teams love story points. Some teams want infinite nesting.
And that's okay.
We weren't trying to build a tool for everyone. We were trying to build a tool that actually worked for teams like us—teams drowning in complexity, craving simplicity, and tired of tools that felt like work.
What We Built
From those three core beliefs, Bonjour emerged:
- Three buckets (Today, Next, Later) instead of endless lists
- A shared feed where all context lives in one place
- Notes and tasks together because work is thinking, not just doing
- History that tells a story not just a log of changes
- AI that understands context because it lives in the feed with you
Every feature traces back to our philosophy. And that philosophy came from years of frustration with tools that had no point of view.
But Did It Actually Work?
We had our beliefs. We had our features. But we still needed to build something real and put it in people's hands.
That's where the MVPs came in. And that's where we learned what worked—and what we got completely wrong.
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Ready to try Bonjour?
A hyper-focused feed for your team. No endless lists. Just the work that matters.