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Microsoft Buys German To-Do List Startup 6Wunderkinder

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Re: Microsoft Buys German To-Do List Startup 6Wunderkinder

#61

Post by JonoW »

frik wrote: post #13
frik wrote: post #7

US based headquarters cannot transfer money from foreign sister companies back to US without paying tax, so they buy foreign companies. Wunderlist seems like one of many todo list apps: https://www.wunderlist.com/

Offtopic: Speaking about Microsoft, I just noticed a "Windows 10" advertisement in my Windows 7 taskbar next to the clock. Windows update silently installs and launches new applications (two executable) and one of them comes with enabled Telemetry. 23MB big ad-program is located in C:\Windows\System32\GWX\. Check your Windows 7/8 taskbar. Source: http://venturebeat.com/2015/05/31/microsoft-starts-prompting... https:/…

"Offtopic" was a wee bit of an understatement there

Re: Microsoft Buys German To-Do List Startup 6Wunderkinder

#62

Post by easytiger »

neokya wrote: post #40
throwaway12357 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$100-$200 million!? I'm dumbfounded with this. How many users did the app have? Granted it's a more than a TODO list. But it looks like an exorbitant amount of money for it.

They have 10 million users, so it's fair price to pay I guess https://www.wunderlist.com/world-productivity-report/

> They have 10 million users

10 Million active users? Or like me, installed it, abandoned it; like most todo apps.

Re: Microsoft Buys German To-Do List Startup 6Wunderkinder

#63

Post by MCRed »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #17
kolbe wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like, if your goal is to get bought by Apple, Google or Microsoft (or a pharma company, for that matter), it would be wise to incorporate in a country where they can use their offshore cash to buy you. Maybe Americans can start getting in on it.

"Tax haven support as a service"

Germany is not a tax haven.

Taxing the repatriation of funds that have already been taxed (Eg: Apple sells a Mac in germany, it pays taxes on the profits in germany) is punitive and very rare for a country to do.

Most countries actually want money coming into the country from outside- and call it "foreign investment". This money tends to stimulate the economy and benefit everybody.

The USA is neandrathal in its taxation schemes. Leaving money outside the USA is not "evading" taxes, because no taxes were due (the local taxes were already paid). It's simply not enabling the federal governments' attempts to double dip.

Re: Microsoft Buys German To-Do List Startup 6Wunderkinder

#65

Post by downandout »

easytiger wrote: post #59

Can we please stop posting paywalled content? http://www.slashgear.com/microsoft-tipped-to-buy-6wunderkind...

A happy medium might be to post a link to the Google search for the title. Clicking on the WSJ link from the result will bypass the paywall. Also I'm not necessarily trying to knock the poster or suggest spamming on the part of WSJ, but he or she has an awful lot of WSJ paywalled posts here [1].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=abetaha

Re: Microsoft Buys German To-Do List Startup 6Wunderkinder

#66

Post by robhu »

downandout wrote: post #56

Everytime I run into the WSJ paywall I want to throw things. Yes it is easy to get around but no we shouldn't have to. Because advertising. Anyway does anyone know approximately how many users this app had? Seems like a pretty rich valuation for a to-do list app.

If you're often running in to the WSJ paywall that means their content is often good, and they fund that content through subscriptions. Their competitors, who you're not running in to very often are not funded through subscriptions.

Maybe subscriptions lead to higher quality content?

Re: Microsoft Buys German To-Do List Startup 6Wunderkinder

#67

Post by alexbaker »

NSAID wrote: post #38
phlyingpenguin wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And oh crap, one of my favorite startup quotes was "Nobody got rich making a Todo list App." That is in danger of being falsified :-) Ehh, Yahoo bought Astrid a while ago and closed it. The price wasn't announced, but I imagine they did well. My heart still pangs for the long-dead Astrid app, and I'm just that much less likely to use any Yahoo service because of that murder.

You may be interested in "Tasks", an open source replacement for Astrid. I don't believe it does everything Astrid did, but it has worked wonderfully for my needs. https://github.com/tasks/tasks https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.tasks

Thanks for the plug!

Re: Microsoft Buys German To-Do List Startup 6Wunderkinder

#68

Post by Nicholas_C »

theallan wrote: post #30

How do big companies make the initial approach? Do you get a phone call out of the blue from someone at Microsoft saying "We are interesting in acquiring you - how does x million sound?" (I know I've grossly over simplified!).

From talking with the corp dev guys at my company it sounds like they (the corp dev guys) get pitched via email and make calls to companies they're interested in.

Re: Microsoft Buys German To-Do List Startup 6Wunderkinder

#69

Post by bsg75 »

I hope that MS treats these acquisitions seriously.

Sunrise is lagging a bit on the Mac dekstop - it still cannot connect to Exchange - and the mobile first craze is starting to look like desktop becoming a never reached second.

Desktop and mobile integration is where I believe success lies, and hope that Wunderlist (and Sunrise) continue to be universally usable.

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