Wunderlist
The Berlin-born to-do list app that reached 13 million users
- Founded
- 2010
- Closed
- 2020
- Lifespan
- 10 years
- Total funding
- $23.9 million
- Country
- Germany
- City
- Berlin
- Sector
- Consumer apps
- Founders
- Christian Reber
- Investors
- Sequoia Capital, Atomico, Earlybird Venture Capital, High-Tech Gründerfonds, Frank Thelen
- At its peak
- More than 13 million users at the time of Microsoft's acquisition (2015)
- Cause of closure
- Acquired and shut down
What did it do?
Wunderlist was a cloud-based to-do list app that let users create and manage task lists from their phone, tablet, computer and smartwatch. Basic use was free; extra features for teamwork were offered in a paid version called Wunderlist Pro. The app was developed by the Berlin start-up 6Wunderkinder.
Why did it shut down?
Microsoft bought 6Wunderkinder in June 2015. In April 2017 Microsoft To Do, developed by the Wunderlist team and integrated with Office 365, was unveiled, and it was announced that Wunderlist would eventually be shut down. Because To Do's infrastructure was rewritten to run on Microsoft Azure instead of Amazon Web Services, the transition took years. In December 2019 Microsoft announced that it would close Wunderlist on 6 May 2020.
The story
In September 2019 Christian Reber put an unusual question on Twitter to Microsoft-affiliated accounts: could he buy back the app he had founded? The question stemmed from his frustration at the uncertainty over the future of Wunderlist, which he had sold four years earlier.
The story began in 2009, when Reber went looking for a partner for a new to-do app through the business networking platform XING. Frank Thelen answered the call, and the pair developed the first concept together. The Berlin start-up 6Wunderkinder released the first version of Wunderlist for desktop on 9 November 2010. In December 2010 High-Tech Gründerfonds invested EUR 500,000, and in November 2011 Atomico invested USD 4.2 million. The iPhone version arrived in December 2011. For a while the company tried a second product called Wunderkit, but in September 2012 it shut it down and put all its energy into Wunderlist.
The focus paid off. Wunderlist 2 was released in December 2012, and the paid Pro version arrived in April 2013. In September 2013 the number of users passed 5 million, and in November 2013 a USD 19 million Series B led by Sequoia Capital was raised. After Wunderlist 3 arrived with its real-time sync architecture, users reached 10 million in December 2014. The app made Apple's and Google's best-of-the-year lists.
On 1 June 2015 Microsoft announced that it had bought 6Wunderkinder; the price was reported to be between USD 100 million and USD 200 million. At the time Wunderlist had more than 13 million users. In April 2017 Microsoft unveiled To Do, developed by the Wunderlist team and integrated with Office 365, and announced that Wunderlist would eventually be shut down. Because To Do's infrastructure had to be rewritten from scratch on Microsoft Azure instead of Amazon Web Services, even in January 2019 it had not matched all of Wunderlist's features. Reber's bid to buy it back came to nothing; in December 2019 Microsoft announced that it would close Wunderlist on 6 May 2020. Users were able to transfer their content to To Do.
Wunderlist's story is a reminder that a successful exit can be the end of the product. Reber and his team returned in early 2024 with a new app called Superlist; the product users had loved, meanwhile, disappeared while being rewritten to fit the buyer's own ecosystem.
Lessons for founders
- When selling to a big company, discuss in the deal how long the product will live and how users will be migrated.
- When replacing a much-loved product with a new one, do not announce a shutdown date before the new one has matched the old one's core features.
- In a free productivity app, design the move to a paid version early and clearly; user numbers alone do not keep you independent.
Sources
- Wunderlist (Wikipedia)
- Microsoft to finally shut down to-do list app Wunderlist on May 6, 2020 (TechCrunch, 2019-12-06)
- Microsoft confirms acquisition of Wunderlist app maker 6Wunderkinder (VentureBeat, 2015-06-02)
- Wunderlist founder wants to buy his app back from Microsoft (VentureBeat, 2019-09-06)
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