The Real Story Behind Team Toolbox
The Problem
I'm a Creative Director in the gaming industry by day, and by night (and weekends... and way too many hours), I help run a large volunteer nonprofit team. We're a scrappy group of passionate people doing meaningful work on literally zero budget.
Like many creative teams, we lived in Discord. It's where our community thrived. But managing projects, calendars, and documentation? That meant constantly alt-tabbing between Discord, Google Calendar, Notion, and a dozen other tools. It was chaos.
The Frustration
I started looking for productivity bots that could bring these tools into Discord. What I found was... depressing:
- Expensive premium tiers for basic features
- Corporate-focused tools that didn't get creative teams
- Generic integrations that barely worked
- No personal touch - just another faceless SaaS product
The best tools were built for big corporations with deep pockets. Teams like ours? We were afterthoughts.
The Solution
So I did what any developer with too much caffeine and not enough sleep would do: I built it myself.
Team Toolbox started as a scrappy side project to solve our team's problems. I wanted deep Google Workspace integration, smart Notion syncing, AI-powered chat summaries, and features that actually understood how creative teams work.
Most importantly, I wanted to build something that felt human. Not another soulless corporate tool, but something made by someone who gets it because they live it every day.
Why It's Free
And why it always will be
It Started as a Gift
Team Toolbox was created to help my nonprofit team. Making it paid would defeat the entire purpose - we couldn't afford expensive tools, and neither should anyone else trying to do good work.
Creative Teams Deserve Better
Indie game studios, content creators, artists, nonprofits - you're doing amazing work often on tiny budgets. You deserve professional tools without the professional price tag.
Community Over Commerce
I'd rather build a tool people love and actually use than create another paywalled productivity app. Your feedback and success stories are worth more than subscription fees.
What We Believe
Built with Love
Every feature is crafted with care, tested by real teams, and improved based on actual feedback - not boardroom decisions.
Community-Driven
Features are prioritized based on what you need, not what looks good in a pitch deck. Join our Discord and help shape the roadmap.
Privacy-First
We only collect what we need, store it securely, and never sell your data. Your trust is more valuable than any monetization scheme.
Constantly Improving
New features ship regularly. Bugs get fixed fast. We're always listening, learning, and making Team Toolbox better.
Joey Ziolkowski
Creator & Developer