Wunderlist Creator Wants to Buy Back the App From Microsoft
- Mehedi Hassan
- Sep 09, 2019
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Microsoft first acquired to-do list app Wunderlist back in June of 2015. At the time, Microsoft said it’d be bringing Wunderlist’s features into its own apps and services. In April 2017, the company said it’s launching its own app called Microsoft To-Do, which will eventually replace Wunderlist. Microsoft promised to transition Wunderlist users over to Microsoft To-Do, though that new app was seriously lacking in terms of features. The company had also run into some migration issues with the Wunderlist infrastructure, leading to a botched acquisition.
Wunderlist users were obviously quite upset with all the announcements, and although Microsoft has made good progress with its To-Do app in the recent times, some still want Wunderlist to make an actual comeback. Here’s the thing: Wunderlist is yet to be shut down by Microsoft, though it plans to make that happen once Microsoft To-Do has feature parity with Wunderlist.
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And now, Wunderlist founder Christian Reber is requesting Microsoft to let him buy back Wunderlist from the company to stop it from shutting down. It’s unlikely Microsoft will let Reber buy the company back, though.
Still sad @Microsoft wants to shut down @Wunderlist, even though people still love and use it. I’m serious @satyanadella @marcusash, please let me buy it back. Keep the team and focus on @MicrosoftToDo, and no one will be angry for not shutting down @Wunderlist. pic.twitter.com/27mIABncLF
— Christian Reber (@christianreber) September 6, 2019
“Want to make one thing clear: I feel nothing but gratitude for Microsoft and everyone involved in the Wunderlist acquisition in 2015. It made perfect sense, definitely the best thing that ever happened to us. The team there is amazing, I’m friends with many of them. I’m just sad that our plans for Wunderlist didn’t work out, but I also don’t want to point fingers at anyone. Acquisitions are hard. Acompli (now Outlook) worked out perfectly. That’s life,” Reber later tweeted.
Microsoft has done a good job with the Acompli acquisition that’s now the Outlook mobile apps, but the company didn’t have the same luck with Wunderlist and calender app Sunrise. The new proposition from the Wunderlist founder to stop Microsoft from shutting down the app could lead to something, but I doubt Microsoft will allow that to happen. After all, it’s probably invested a lot into Microsoft To-Do.
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Conversation 16 comments
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dontbeevil
<p>still nobody also on the tweet, could reply exactly which wunderlist features are missing in to-do</p>
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dontbeevil
<blockquote><em><a href="#462684">In reply to Vladimir:</a></em></blockquote><ul><li>the list sharing feature was added in June 2018 ("few months")</li><li>didn't have problems with sync, so don't know what to say</li><li>MS always stated wunderlist will be shutted down after feature parity with to-do, so no point to switch earlier if you miss some features, and you can keep using wunderlist till that day and than reimport everything in to-do</li></ul><p><br></p><p><br></p>
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stmorr82zw5zml
Premium Member<p>I have zero sympathy for founders like this. <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">I’m so sick of reading their unicorn and rainbow press releases talking about all the team/ product synergies when they decide to sell. </span>Acompli is clearly something of an outlier; normally three or so years (or months) later, the product has either morphed into something unrecognisable, shut down, left to wither and die, or ripped into a dozen pieces to be absorbed into the larger Microsoft/ Google/ Apple/ Verizon/ etc Borg. The founders end up cracking the shits and resigning. What happened to all those beautiful synergies? Meanwhile, it’s the customers who really get screwed, as, after investing significant time into a product solution, they’re forced to repeat it with something else.</p><p><br></p><p>Maybe don’t give into the temptation of a big pay day, and instead focus on what you apparently give two fks about: your amazing product and helping your customers with the issues you created a solution for. Maybe go read more Signal v Noise and less Investment Weekly.</p>