Wunderlist founder wants to buy his app back from Microsoft • Hacker News Board

Re: Wunderlist founder wants to buy his app back from Microsoft

#71

Post by nxc18 » Sun, Sep 08, 2019, 7:51 PM UTC

amix wrote: post #65

If you are looking for an alternative todo app that is in it for the long haul, check out Todoist. We have been at it longer than Wunderlist (12+ years), and we will never sell out. As I like to put it, death is my exit strategy. For more thoughts about this, check out https://doist.com/blog/no-exit-strategy/

I’ve been a huge Todoist fan and premium subscriber since 2013. At the time it was hard to find anything that got task management right and worked on every platform.

One question: are you still innovating/investing in the core to-do experience, or is all your effort being put into Twist? Todoist is fantastic (I continue to evangelize it and have converted a few friends already) but it is starting to feel like it could use some love. The last big update I’ve noticed is dark mode support, but there are improvements I could see. It’s still by far the best option, I just think I got used to a more regular update cadence and some of the novelty has worn off.

Sorry if this comes off as critical in any way, I sincerely encourage everyone who reads this to give Todoist a try! The ability to add labels, projects and dates with text saves a lot of clicks :)

Re: Wunderlist founder wants to buy his app back from Microsoft

#72

Post by grizzles » Sun, Sep 08, 2019, 7:53 PM UTC

This is an odd form of public shaming. Satya ought to respond to him on Twitter that it's a deal if he'd be willing to pay 50% of the price they paid him for it. A shame back if you will.

Re: Wunderlist founder wants to buy his app back from Microsoft

#73

Post by kossae » Sun, Sep 08, 2019, 7:53 PM UTC

I loved Wunderlist, and after the announcement of the acquisition I went looking for alternatives. It turns out, I didn't _really_ need "sub-tasks" or collaborative comments on my TODOs. All I really needed was shared lists, dependable reminder push notifications, and perhaps some location-based/geofencing features.

This is all covered by the stock iOS Reminders app. I use Fantastical as the 'GUI' instead of Reminders, but basically use my e-mails CalDAV server (Fastmail) to manage my lists now, and have retained the reliability and subset of features that I needed. It's been great so far, and it's virtually free as part of your standard email/calendar service (Gmail/Calendar, Fastmail, etc.).

Re: Wunderlist founder wants to buy his app back from Microsoft

#74

Post by bearcobra » Sun, Sep 08, 2019, 7:54 PM UTC

kaushikt wrote: post #55

grumpy8 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's far from accurate, but an easy way to think about it is: 200 000 000 users * $1.

They had 200,000,000 users?

Closer to 13,000,000 at the time of acquisition.

Re: Wunderlist founder wants to buy his app back from Microsoft

#75

Post by iamnotacrook » Sun, Sep 08, 2019, 7:54 PM UTC

Marsymars wrote: post #34

discreditable wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And God help them if they somehow have a work/school and personal Microsoft account and don't remember which one they used.

Is this somehow worse with MS accounts than with Google or Apple accounts?

Yeah, I can't even log into my MS account to do MSDN stuff. Microsoft support: "Use any non-microsoft browser". I ended up creating a "personal" and "work/school" account as part of the process, and I think I have to pretend it's the personal account when I log in. I get the feeling I was creating two accounts - a live account and one related to the MSDN side of things, and they are linked in some way. Why...just why? Why can't I just create one account, and don't come up with this specious personal/private distinction. I wonder if they're making decisions on products etc based on what sort of users they think they're dealing with. Personal MSDN customers?

Re: Wunderlist founder wants to buy his app back from Microsoft

#76

Post by viach » Sun, Sep 08, 2019, 7:55 PM UTC

maklu wrote: post #69

viach wrote: post #39

I don't understand, why Microsoft is porting features from Wunderlist to their To-Do instead of just shutting down To-Do and add small shiny MS logo to Wunderlist? As far as I can see, WL is more feature rich and has better user base, no?

Wunderlist still runs on AWS. To-Do runs on a Microsoft back-end, including all security features needed for their enterprise (O365) customers..

Still, moving product to new servers and improving security sounds to me easier than rewriting it.

Re: Wunderlist founder wants to buy his app back from Microsoft

#77

Post by Drdrdrq » Sun, Sep 08, 2019, 7:55 PM UTC

oh_sigh wrote: post #28

What's the point of buying it back, if he can just start another similar company and siphon off many active, disgruntled users? Yeah, you don't get to keep the already registered userbase, or the brand, but I think former users would flock to it if they knew the original people were in charge of this product. Is there something in the contract that they can't start a competing product within X years, but could do a b…

>... but I think former users would flock to it if they knew the original people were in charge of this product.

So maybe such tweet is how you let them know that something's cooking? Followed by "they won't sell it back, we'll build a new one!". We'll see.

Re: Wunderlist founder wants to buy his app back from Microsoft

#78

Post by kfrzcode » Sun, Sep 08, 2019, 7:58 PM UTC

amix wrote: post #65

If you are looking for an alternative todo app that is in it for the long haul, check out Todoist. We have been at it longer than Wunderlist (12+ years), and we will never sell out. As I like to put it, death is my exit strategy. For more thoughts about this, check out https://doist.com/blog/no-exit-strategy/

Meh, give me a self-hosted or open core version and maybe I'll consider switching from taskwarrior

Re: Wunderlist founder wants to buy his app back from Microsoft

#79

Post by earenndil » Sun, Sep 08, 2019, 8:01 PM UTC

Barrin92 wrote: post #58

noego wrote: post #6

Microsoft has a directly competing product, so I don't see why they would ever want to sell Wunderlust. They would essentially be creating their own competitor, in return for a fraction of the money they had paid to acquire Wunderlist earlier.

then again I doubt that the microsoft empire stands or falls with a to-do list app and it might just be good PR to sell it back instead of letting a well-liked product rot given that they're on an alleged "we love the community" campaign now.

Good PR--sure. $100M worth of PR? I don't think so.

Re: Wunderlist founder wants to buy his app back from Microsoft

#80

Post by amix » Sun, Sep 08, 2019, 8:04 PM UTC

nxc18 wrote: post #71

amix wrote: post #65

If you are looking for an alternative todo app that is in it for the long haul, check out Todoist. We have been at it longer than Wunderlist (12+ years), and we will never sell out. As I like to put it, death is my exit strategy. For more thoughts about this, check out https://doist.com/blog/no-exit-strategy/

I’ve been a huge Todoist fan and premium subscriber since 2013. At the time it was hard to find anything that got task management right and worked on every platform. One question: are you still innovating/investing in the core to-do experience, or is all your effort being put into Twist? Todoist is fantastic (I continue to evangelize it and have converted a few friends already) but it is starting to feel like it coul…

Most of the company are working on Todoist, and we have a big update coming in October. For the past two years, we have worked on an initiative called Todoist Foundations, which is redoing and rethinking some of the design and tech debt we had (e.g., the web app has been rewritten to use React and Redux).

I understand the frustration, but it was critical for us to spend time on improving the core.