Wunderlist founder wants to buy his app back from Microsoft
venturebeat.com
venturebeat.com
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 :)
I understand the frustration, but it was critical for us to spend time on improving the core.
Just as a counter to the comment you replied to, if an app has matured I personally prefer fewer updates as far as new features go and prefer updates only for bug fixes, especially in enterprise software.
For what it’s worth, we’re currently looking for task management software at work (steel fabrication industry) and I’m looking to potentially evangelise Todoist.
> ... it was critical for us to spend time on improving the core.
Bravo! Ensuring the foundations are solid (and in this instance, going back and doing this despite the product's success) is a great sign that you believe in the product's long-term development. Not just milking it while the sun shines. As a customer, that encourages my faith in the vendor.
EDITED: formatting.
I like to leave Todoist open in a permanent/pinned tab. Often, when I open that tab, the pre-filled date for "today" in the new-task-entry area is stale, yesterday or a few days ago (right now it's 5th September). I assume because that's populated on page load and never updated?
What will happen is that I enter a task without setting a date, meaning I want it for today. It then saves that task as ONE YEAR IN THE FUTURE minus one day. The task then gets forgotten and not done :(
Also, I cannot get Siri to understand "todoist". I've tried every pronounciation, even "2-doyst"!
I really love Todoist, but that one bug hits me so often!
Tbf, I have tried to reach out to Amir but he seems to busy to reply (?).
When I realize I have something to do and it doesn't need to be done right away, I log it in my task inbox. Everyday I start the day by reviewing the inbox and qualifying it - is there a due date, how long will it take, is it important, etc. Then I plan my day by peaking things based on the triage. Once a week I review the entire list of tasks.
Calendars work for meetings, but for a more advanced system it doesn't.
I used to be on Wunderlist, migrated to ms to-do, the "my day" feature is awesome.
That said, I'm actually getting a lot of mileage from a new one I'm trying "Due" (iOS/mac only. unfortunately). Really lightweight reminder system with a great snooze feature at its core. Recommend giving it a shot.
My current system is two-tiered. I have a traditional to-do manager (Omnifocus) for more abstract project tracking, and a lighter weight app (Due) for reminders. Not having it all in one system, or integrated between the two is kind of a plus for me in some ways. When I get a reminder, I don't have to "load" the full context (and emotional baggage) of the overall project/task in order to make a decision. It becomes more reflexive, with the easiest options being to just do it or pick another time for the reminder.
Additonally, why can't I say, for example, that I want to work on a project for 10 hours a week, and my calendar automatically schedules it for me, to work on an hour and a half each day, based on some preferences like morning, afternoon, evening time periods? These are some of the things I want to address with my app.
Having said that, it's not perfect. You need to be prepared for some frustrating bugs in the web app. That includes having been unable to log in on my laptop for several days. Todoist gets updated too frequently relative to the ability to test for and identify bugs. Finding that a pile of my tasks were marked done was not a moment of joy, and having items scheduled for the wrong day wasn't a great experience either. That Todoist is easily the best option is a function of the low quality and excessive prices of the competition.
(Just realized amix is Amir Salihefendić. I thought it was a Todoist employee, though rereading the OP it should have been obvious.)
https://medium.com/@lexkon/sound-design-studies-wunderlist-3...
My personal recommendations are OmniFocus and Things. Obviously this is going to favor Mac users and people who care a lot about UX.
As a second tier alternative, I'm interested in where MS ToDo is going. They have been iterating fast and making lots of important improvements. It already feels better than Wunderlist anyway. That is its heritage so no surprise there.
Which is kinda bad, because I'm searching for a good list-app for a good time now. Todoist is a good daily driver, but not a good app for notes in list-form.
I've only started to move away from it in order to do task management better, but still use it for shopping, inventory, checklists etc and it's a really smooth experience.
- http://todoistlinux.hakimouake.com/
- https://github.com/KryDos/todoist-linux
There are also various command line clients, e.g.: https://github.com/sachaos/todoist
You also miss out on the Todoist search functionality if you use Gnome Todo.
That made my day. Also, it's parenthood's only strategy.
Also OmniFocus has platform lock in.
That way, Best Buy doesn't make any money and I spend hours of my day (which, by the way, I bill my employer hundreds of dollars per hour for during the work week) assembling something that I'll have to do all the maintenance and upkeep for myself! Everybody wins!
It’s more like going to Best Buy and just buying a computer. End of analogy. Because that means you now own the computer and Best Buy can’t one day prevent you from using it or stop you from getting your data out of it.
Btw, I use Todoist and don’t need all my software to be self hosted. But I understand why some people do want that.
The self-hosted solution isn’t an excellent option for a todo list as integrations, plugins, and apps are critical. E.g., we actively maintain over ten apps and plugins and integrate with 100s of others (e.g., Zapier).
To-Do is a joke compared to Wunderlist. It suffers from the same fate as all MS-built iOS apps: random logouts. I can't convince anyone to use MS apps because the first time they get logged out after an update they just stop using the app.
I had a Microsoft account from a long time back: me@company.com
Years later the company decides to adopt the whole office365 thing and so company.com is now 'managed' by MSFT for email, etc .... so I have a me@company.com 'company' account as well as the 'personal' one.
I'm sure there are a lot of complicated edge cases around all of this which make moving forward really tough for MSFT without breaking things, but the current status quo is confusing and very user hostile.
But in my experience even though I have 5x as many Google accounts as Microsoft ones (across several organizations and institutions) I spend almost no time confused on whether I'm logging into an account that I created, was created for me, was merged with another account, or is an institutional account that was created with a personal email.
I use a password manager for all of them. The only difference I can think of is the UX flow on Microsoft's sign-in page.
Do they know that doesn’t work?
If you do a run-as then you are as vulnerable to PTH as you would be if you just logged in with the admin account anyway... you need to go full PAW these days.
- cut off from general purpose Internet etc.,
- a non-mobile device,
- etc....
See for instance Microsoft's documentation: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/identity/sec...
For PAW see https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/identity/sec... conceptually I like to explain it as a client-side bastion host
I'm a heavy OneNote user and I can't get OneNote on the web to stay logged in more than a day.
This is actually for personal accounts. (Specifically family)
(I migrated to any.do and I’m a very happy user of that. Even if they don’t have a true native Mac app and don’t care about one.)
Apart from a basic anti-microsoft stance is there anything substantiating the hatred?
If you had read the rest of the paragraph you would see a legit complaint.
Another legit complaint is that you can't see who marked a task as complete in ToDo, while you can in Wunderlist.
But the reason it's a joke compared to Wunderlist is the logout thing, there is no legitimate reason to not have persistent login across updates (at least on iOS) and the fact that MS hasn't figured this out yet is just embarrassing. It's a todo app, I shouldn't need to login in the first place, but if you're gonna make me login, don't log me out.
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.).
It’s using Org syntax, but has a mobile friendly interface. Synchronization is done using Dropbox or Google Drive, so you can also have shared projects and todos. The app is written in React and Redux, has a AGPL license and has a free public instance at https://organice.200ok.ch
I paid for Wunderlist, but dropped it because it evolved into something more convoluted than I wanted. I went back to the stock iOS apps.
I didn't even know what Microsoft ate Wunderlist. I guess that's why I got an e-mail about Wunderlist out of the blue after I hadn't used it in what seemed like years.
Relatively speaking, building a small team of capable engineers is much easier than getting a business, especially in a competitive space like TODO lists, to 13+ million users (their numbers in 2015 at the time of Microsoft acquisition).
Today they likely would start from scratch anyway, the old app is now decade old or so. The real worth is all in the brand. Bringing back a somewhat beloved app, innovate it a bit here and there, this will bring them some attention and money, maybe enough to sell it again some years in the future.
They've gotten better at being bad. Before, apps crashed but at least they were full featured, had two or three ways of doing the same thing - so you could get shit done.
Now, stuff from MS is generally slower, still crash prone, looks fancy but is bare-boned, updates remove the few useful stuff and replace em with half baked alternatives or nothing.
This is a meme I’ve never understood.... how is it more “useful” if it is less “full of stuff to use”. When people equate streamlining experience with feature removal you get this kind of frustration.
Yes, have done for years, but they haven't really implemented many features over the last several years (despite the paid users renewal.) I always wonder if they're out on a beach somewhere just spending the revenue money on margaritas, but...I can't be upset with that. RTM just works, and it's still there.
Is there something in the contract that they can't start a competing product within X years, but could do a buyback?
Also building a brand is not too easy (https://twitter.com/christianreber/status/117063845983445811...)
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.
Rebuild something new/better.
EDIT: I can't believe how much positive press MS To-Do has gotten. It's a featureless rip-off of WL that could have been built in a month.
Here is one guy hoping/praying it comes back!!!!
Dude in one way or another cashed out and now wants to have his cake and eat it too.
We get so many "founder sad about how things turned out after it is sold". If the founder hands over the keys IMO to some extent they're "responsible" for what happens next.
Also I don't think you are cynical. Don't take the money and continue to push the product seems to be a better solution, especially for users. I just appreciate that founders are more transparent about the fact their service is failing after being acquired. And yes, they have a big part of the responsability, but according to me it's a better signal than just heard the typical story of celebrating an acquisition, join a tech giant and remain silent. I like to see that people keep the bounds with their product even after this. Also it's more honest for other entrepreneurs in the same situation that becoming rich will be at the expense of your creation.
Microsoft upgrades things to death.
Anyone can make a chat app. Making a chat app with 100M+ users takes years of effort and luck.
1- Absolutely no real privacy regulation exists in the US, where people's information can be bought and sold freely. (I know there is regulation, but not real regulatory activity means it's de-facto unregulated)
2- There's no anti-trust activity and companies like microsoft, google and facebook can engage in anti-competitive behaviors of all types: buying competitors and closing them to reduce competition (it seems the case with Wunderlist), operate a market and be a participant in it while undermining other market participants using inside information, create a monopoly or oligopoly with no real regulatory costs (aside from a small % of earnings being taxed as 'fines'), actively conspiring to avoid competition for employee salaries, etc
3- Very low interest rates/net negative interest rates for capital holders with opaque and byzantine distribution of newly minted fiat.
4- Zero consequences for undermining democratic institutions by creating revolving doors between regulatory agencies and the companies they are supposed to regulate.
5- Regressive regulatory compliance costs
While the ones who benefit from such an environment would like to make it seem this is the natural state of the economy, it isn't, it's a very new and very strange experiment.
Also, while capital holders would like people to think that the current state of prosperity is caused by our current system of regulatory and financial application, these same people then agree that the greatest advancement in standards of living for the western world happened during the 1920-1960s, a time when the regulatory and financial systems were very different (like a 90% tax on earnings above $50 mill/year (in 2019 money)). So I'd guess we could advance just as well if not better with something more akin to what was then.
I'm hoping our current conditions will not remain over the next 40+ years and some of these valuations will be more in line with traditional P/E ratios.
200 000 000 users * $1.
- Very good platform coverage of clients
- Good UX
I don't think the set of features is too impressive by todays standards, but at the time it was pretty appealing compared to the competition.
I bought Things for mac for myself and my partner at the time and was blown away when I discovered a $60 CAD To Do list app couldn't share a list. WL ended up being the best option by a long shot.
These days I use Todoist which can also share lists nicely.
Your can't have your cake and eat it too. You can't sell your company and keep it too. Basic.
Of course you can buy back something that you sold. They just don't have to sell it to you.
The former owners wouldn't pay more than 10-25% of what they previously sold Wunderlist for, at this point.
If you've made millions of dollars from selling something - I don't feel like you have the right to shame the buyer especially if you're only offering 25% back. He should have kept the offer he made private.
I can't imagine him offering anything close to that. I notice he hasn't said how much he will offer.