The former founder of a to-do list app that sold for up to $200 million is back, 9 years later, with another app to do the same. Actually? It's a story that would be hard to make up, but it's happening.
I guess you can't hold back a good founder. After selling his first startup (to-do list app Wunderlist) to Microsoft in 2015, Christian Reber (pictured) might have relaxed about his angel investing (he's an investor in Notion, for example). Instead, he launched a new company, Pitch, for which he now had to find a new CEO. But a long time ago he also decided that he still needed to scratch the 'To Do app' itch.
This week finally brought Superlist out of Beta. It's a smartphone and desktop app that takes the elegant interface approach of old Wunderlist and brings it into the 21st century.
Now, before we explain why the heck Reber decided to start a startup again, let's cover the basics of the app.
Superlist is a complete to-do list app (it should be, it spent a full 12 months in beta testing) that, unusually, allows you to split up personal to-do lists and share them with family, friends or even co-workers (this last point is key to what comes next). These to-dos can also be enhanced much more deeply than other apps of this type: with long notes, images, whatever, giving it much more firepower than similar platforms.
There's also a fairly basic “ai” feature that can convert unstructured emails or Slack messages into tasks and their contents with other productivity tools like Gmail, Slack, Github, and Google Calendar. The minimalist user interface is easy to use, but the main point to remember is that Superlist is designed for teams. You can make a list for a project, share it with a team, and then fill it with notes, files, tasks, images, etc. The Pro account costs $8 per month per user, but a free account will be enough for most. people.
So yes, it's designed to be personal, but it has an interface that makes it easy to switch between personal and work spaces. Reber says that when surveying Beta users, he found that most of them didn't want to use his company's tools “due to privacy concerns or usability issues.” Instead, they are more likely, he says, to take their personal to-do list into the work environment and start using it there. In other words, Superlist has a “Trojan horse” strategy where it will use people's personal to-do lists (which also include work lists) to backtrack the company.
As for the company, it has a highly experienced founding team consisting of Reber and Niklas Jansen (founder of Blinkist). To date, the company has raised €13.5 million in funding from Cherry Ventures and EQT.
Superlist app
The key to all of this is that Reber is convinced there is a gap between planning apps and listing apps that Superlist will fill. And you can bet he's pissed that Microsoft turned his baby into a pretty boring version of his original vision and then shut it down. Ironically, Superlist has no integration with Microsoft 365. Maybe they will have to buy Superlist again?
This is an edited conversation with Reber about what he plans to do:
Reber: “The whole story is that in 2015 we sold and I personally, as a founder and product manager, felt like I hadn't really finished the job. What we wanted to achieve was a better to-do app that worked for individual users and could basically be adapted to teams. We wanted to create a product for people to manage their personal and professional projects. Because out there you have tools like Things or Reminders. “These are well-designed tools for organizing your personal life, but you can never take them into the business world because they are not really designed for sharing and collaboration.”
Mike Carnicero / TechCrunch: What about all the planning tools out there?
Reber: “In the business world, there are tools like Asana, Monday.com, Basecamp, and other pieces of software optimized for project managers. But we did a lot of research and found that 75% of users don't use those tools. They buy them for the company, but people don't really like to use them. When we sold to Microsoft, Microsoft decided to rework the product in the Microsoft stack, but honestly, the product wasn't for me. I used it. “I respect the work, but I didn’t really enjoy it.”
TechCrunch: However, there have been other tools for taking notes and tasks. What did you see that was wrong?
I honestly think it's a multi-billion dollar business opportunity… Every person in the world is working with lists.
Reber: “Evernote was the first individual productivity app for taking notes, jotting down tasks, and posting business cards. And then Notion (I was an early investor) took this to a whole new level where you have workspaces. You can add team members and collaborate on really simple document types. I love the company and it grew into a $10 billion giant in the productivity space. And I'm a Notion power user. I use it on every project I'm on. But for me, I always felt like, if someone made the successor to Evernote, why isn't anyone making the successor to Wunderlist, like a team app? A collaborative to-do app that bridges the gap between personal life and business life?
“And I sincerely believe that it is a multi-million dollar business opportunity. I think it is a gigantic market. Every person in the world works with lists, organizing their lives personally and professionally. “I tried, as an angel investor, to find the company I was excited about, but then COVID hit.”
TechCrunch: Why did it take you three years to create Superlist?
Reber: “There were problems like figuring out what the fuck Superlist is and how we solve this problem. And how do we make the product feel nice, unique, and not just like a cheap copy of Wunderlist? So there was a lot of thinking, a lot of iteration, and a bit of a clash of founders.”
TechCrunch: Did you see the opportunity in the fact that we've had an explosion of tools for collaborative work, like Slack, Teams, Notion, etc.?
Reber: “Apple Reminders is a very personal product. Asana is a very business-oriented product. Personally, I don't know why all the companies in this space work in the consumer space or in the enterprise space. But no one is addressing the real problem. What we notice is that people want flexibility. They also want to add long paragraphs to a quick side note, or want to add extra headlines or add images to lists, attachments, PDFs, numbered lists, etc. What we did wrong in the software world was, for example, that Evernote focused exclusively on notes. And that remains the problem. The lists are much more.”
TechCrunch: What will ai look like?
Reber: “We're playing with a lot of ai features right now, like 'build me a due diligence list for a startup.' Maybe you could ask Superlist to create a short summary of something.”
TechCrunch: How do you see this becoming more than just a consumer app and something that integrates with other commerce platforms?
Reber: “You can be part of several teams. In fact, you start using this product yourself and then incorporate your own software into your business. And then you also start organizing your lists at work. And then you invite your colleagues to grow the teams you create. That's the idea we have here and I think a good part of the whole experience is that you can just turn off these computers and then your work lists are gone. And if you're at work, you can deactivate your personal list. “You don’t have this ladder of switching between a ton of different workspaces.”
TechCrunch: It reminds me a little bit of the Dropbox strategy where people used it in their personal lives, because it was much easier than trying to use an internal intranet or something.
Reber: “Okay. That's where we failed with Wunderlist. We had tens of millions of users. All we accomplished was creating a nice interface for managing shopping lists. But we had a couple of users who used it at Fortune 500 companies and none of them paid. None of them really invited their teams because it was too complicated. It just didn't work. And I think that's the challenge we're trying to focus on. How can you bridge this? How can you organize your life and your work, without getting distracted? with neither of them?
TechCrunch: Do you think Notion, Slack, Salesforce, or anyone else will pick this up on the way out?
Reber: “Look, it always sounds corny, but I don't want to start a company to sell it. I didn't want it with Wunderlist and I hope we can avoid it with Superlist. I learned the hard way that every time you write a line of code, it can be overwritten the next day, the next month, or the next year, so nothing lasts forever. I also have to include my co-founder's vote in the equation, for example if they want the opportunity to convert their shares into real money, etc. There are always ways we can find to solve this. But I don't want to sell this. I really think Superlist can be a Decacorn, if we focus on executing it very, very carefully, don't get into a feature war with competitors and just really focus on our mission.”
