Wunderlist co-founder Christian Reber
Pitch
In 2015, Microsoft bought Christian Reber’s to-do record app, Wunderlist, for a sum that was reported to be between $100 million and $200 million.
It was a major amount of cash and an enormous second in Reber’s life nevertheless it did not go away him feeling as one would possibly anticipate.
“I feel promoting Wunderlist was a weird expertise for me,” the Berlin-based entrepreneur informed CNBC.
“I felt like I misplaced a baby in a method and as a father of two, I really feel like I can say that,” he added. “I actually felt like I got depressed. I felt actually sad.”
Wunderlist was a easy app that amassed round 16 million customers in its lifetime. One of its largest promoting factors on the time was that customers may entry it on their cellphone in addition to their pc.
It was an enormous a part of Reber’s life and promoting it wasn’t simple.
“I felt like I completely disconnected from my workforce and from the corporate that I’d created,” he stated.
When requested to additional clarify his emotions at the moment, Reber replied: “You ought to ask my therapist.”
Reber now believes he wasn’t mentally ready to promote Wunderlist, which he had been making an attempt to make as huge as doable for 5 years.
“Selling it all the sudden felt utterly unintuitive,” he stated.
When Microsoft got here knocking with the provide, Reber’s associate, Charlette Prevot, was pregnant. Prevot co-founded Wunderlist with Reber and 4 others.
“The alternative I needed to make as a founder was I both raised a development spherical and tried to show this right into a worthwhile enterprise, or I promote this for a really worthwhile amount of cash and my household will get independence.”
Reber and Prevot finally determined to step off the start-up rollercoaster, which had virtually seen their enterprise crash and burn on a number of events.
“I used to be utterly burnt out and I used to be drained and I felt prefer it was the very best choice for everybody concerned to promote the corporate,” Reber stated, including that he needed to placed on a “poker face” as he did it.
“When I bought it I by no means celebrated it, I did not get together, did not go for fancy dinners. I similar to muted each electronic mail and felt like I used to be unhappy. I’m not even joking. There have been moments the place I used to be holding my baby and I requested my spouse to take him as a result of I felt so unhappy that I did not need him to see daddy being unhappy.”
Reber stated it took him a 12 months or two to begin to come to phrases with the sale.
“I got financially impartial, which is superior,” he stated. “I constructed one thing that had a very constructive affect. People will at all times bear in mind Wunderlist. It was an excellent product and plenty of nice folks got superb jobs at Microsoft. So there’s actually no cause to be annoyed about it.”
Plea to Satya
What occurred to Wunderlist just a few years after Reber bought it was nonetheless laborious for him to abdomen.
In 2019, Microsoft introduced it deliberate to close down Wunderlist and substitute it with Microsoft To Do.
In September of that 12 months, Reber made a bid to purchase the app he’d invested a lot of his time in again from Microsoft.
“Still unhappy Microsoft desires to close down Wunderlist, despite the fact that folks nonetheless love and use it,” Reber wrote on Twitter in Sept. 2019.
“Please let me purchase it again,” he added, directing his plea straight to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Marcus Ash, vp of product and engineering at Microsoft.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella hearken to an viewers member query through the firm’s annual shareholder assembly in Bellevue, Wash., on November 30, 2016.
Stephen Brashear | Getty Images News | Getty Images
His bid was unsuccessful and Microsoft pulled the plug on Wunderlist in 2020.
Reber wasn’t prepared to surrender, nonetheless.
Superlist is Wunderlist’s ‘unofficial successor’
In 2021, he based a brand new to-do record app known as Superlist, which he describes because the “unofficial successor to Wunderlist.”
One of the primary causes Reber felt annoyed when Microsoft shut down Wunderlist was as a result of he felt that the app by no means grew to become the product he wished to construct.
“What we wished to do was construct the de facto customary utility to collaborate on private initiatives and in enterprise,” he stated.
There are both enterprise merchandise like Asana and Trello or private to-do record apps like Things or To Do.
“I really feel like nothing actually nailed the bridge between each,” Reber stated. “You both get like very cluttered software program that’s mainly optimized for challenge managers, otherwise you get like these very private to-do apps that make it unimaginable to collaborate.”
Superlist is meant to be the “good bridge” between private to-do apps and enterprise collaboration software program. It’s designed to assist customers scale a challenge from one particular person to 100 or 200 folks.
So far, the corporate employs round 20 folks and has raised $3 million, with one other funding spherical coming quickly.
“I’m dreaming of constructing my very own Salesforce, my very own Microsoft, my very own Atlassian,” Reber stated. “That’s actually what’s driving me.”
He would not have all his eggs in a single basket although. Reber has co-founded one other firm known as Pitch, which competes with Microsoft’s PowerPoint.
“The cause we began this firm is as a result of we felt like displays as a medium are actually driving the world and affect the most important selections in enterprise and politics,” Reber stated.
He added: “Think of it as like PowerPoint mixed with SlideShare and Docs.”
The four-year-old enterprise, which employs round 160 folks, has raised a bit over $130 million and it was most lately valued at $600 million.
“I feel it is extremely simple to lift funding for expertise firms proper now as a result of it is like there’s extra money than firms available on the market,” Reber stated. “As a founder who’s beginning firms extra ceaselessly, I really feel prefer it’s by no means been higher to lift.”