Kit#21 Ervin Kalemi
| First name: | Ervin |
| Last name: | Kalemi |
| Country: | Albania |
| Occupation: | Startup founder |
Where to find Ervin online:
Ervin, what do you do?
I’m the founder & CEO of Kalemi Code_ a relatively new software development company in Tirana, Albania.
We currently have only one product, Publer, but very soon we will start working on other (social) apps.
What is your background?
I got my bachelor’s degree in computer science in 2012 from the University of Texas in Austin. After graduation, I worked as a software developer for a startup in Houston — Onit, Inc. — for 3 years before deciding to quit my job, leave the big American Dream, and move back home to tiny Albania to start my own venture.
Your favorite tools to help you with your work?
I think Slack has become the epitome of team collaborations via chat. There maybe be other alternatives, but I’ve been using Slack for the past 4-5 years.
Our project management tool. Mingle helps us effectively ingrain Agile into our development process. It’s very flexible and easy to use. Without it we would no longer be a team.
Zeplin helps our designer collaborate and live in harmony with the rest of the developers. No need to setup a meeting for changing the color of a single button.
Our user’s opinion matters. With Wantoo our users can easily submit feature requests, vote or comment on existing ones. Most of the features we’ve implemented came from Wantoo.
It’s the Google of our programming world. Without it who knows how many hours would we spend on fixing a bug, or finding a solution.
We use Paddle for selling our software worldwide (subscription based). Paddle is the only payment gateway we have found that supports vendors in Albania. Stripe, Braintree and the other big guys don’t support us. With Paddle we can accept payments via PayPal, Credit Cards and just recently Apple Pay. It costs a little more than its competitors, but Paddle does all the tax handling & invoice processing for us, so the cost is justified.
Your favorite tools on a personal level?
My personal, and also my business, financial tracker. When you’re a sole proprietor it becomes very hard to separate your personal budget from your business budget. Toshl helps me with that.
Where I waste my spare time. You can find an answer to every question you may or may not have. A great source of acknowledgement. I also use it as a growth hack tool for Publer.
My source of new products being launched around the World. I barely watch / read news, so it helps me keep in touch with the outside world.
Your absolute favorite tool in one sentence?
There’s an answer even for questions you didn’t have.