The Exchanges

Q So what are the most requested features by users have you had in, in the past?

A Uh, in the past, um, The biggest one that we held off on for an incredibly long amount of time was folders. So, you know, for those who haven't used wonder list, it is, uh, a list of lists of things that you need to do. And inside the lists are tasks and inside the tasks, you have comments, files, uh, subtasks, et cetera. And for a long time, people had been requesting the ability to create folders and put lists in folders. So essentially just creating one more layer of hierarchy, uh, And we held off for, um, a crazy amount of time really in doing that, even though many of us on the teams sort of knew we wanted it. It was a, an internal battle to hold off on doing that as long as we could. And that is sort of the way we, we approach feature requests, even when they're coming from ourselves, because we realized that we, we were able to manage our work and lives with Wunderlist without the folders. And so we started to look for ways of working that emerged that would satisfy the needs of folders without introducing a new feature. Ultimately, we decided that folders really were an essential part of the experience for power users. And we added, added it later this year, but I think it had been on the request list since the initial launch, like four and a half years ago.

AI assessment note: “The biggest one that we held off on for an incredibly long amount of time was folders.”

Q So what are the most requested features by users have you had in, in the past?

A Uh, in the past, um, The biggest one that we held off on for an incredibly long amount of time was folders. So, you know, for those who haven't used wonder list, it is, uh, a list of lists of things that you need to do. And inside the lists are tasks and inside the tasks, you have comments, files, uh, subtasks, et cetera. And for a long time, people had been requesting the ability to create folders and put lists in folders. So essentially just creating one more layer of hierarchy, uh, And we held off for, um, a crazy amount of time really in doing that, even though many of us on the teams sort of knew we wanted it. It was a, an internal battle to hold off on doing that as long as we could. And that is sort of the way we, we approach feature requests, even when they're coming from ourselves, because we realized that we, we were able to manage our work and lives with Wunderlist without the folders. And so we started to look for ways of working that emerged that would satisfy the needs of folders without introducing a new feature. Ultimately, we decided that folders really were an essential part of the experience for power users. And we added, added it later this year, but I think it had been on the request list since the initial launch, like four and a half years ago.

AI assessment note: “The biggest one that we held off on for an incredibly long amount of time was folders.”

Q Would you say that Berlin is a great place to start a startup at the moment?

A Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And, and in fact, it's a, it starts by being just a wonderful place to live. Um, you know, I've talked to a lot of, uh, investors recently who are asking about whether Berlin is a good place to go, uh, investors and sort of LP level people. Um, and there is often this kind of like, what's the scene in Berlin question to me. The, the advantage of Berlin is that people want to live there. That's the first thing. Like, it's just a cool place. It's cool if you're, if you're young and sort of alternative or, you know, you're interested in, uh, even the more kind of conservative old school European values, you get kind of everything in Berlin. So when my wife and I first heard about the opportunity for Wunderlist, It was, it was first Berlin that made me even open the email at the time, because the subject said CTO Berlin, and we just love Berlin. It really stands out among the European cities as a wonderful place to be. So with that in mind, it has been very easy for us at Wunderlist, for example, to attract international talent from Almost all over the world, and, and certainly even the west coast of the United States, because it's a nice destination for people and a place where you can have a good lifestyle.

AI assessment note: “Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And, and in fact, it's a, it starts”

Q And talking of kind of user experience there, both with Living Social and with Wanderlist, you created a product with really incredible habit-forming abilities with users. How did you go about creating this product? And when, when you were, was user retention key to the building of it?

A Sure. Well, I think in, in both scenarios, uh, The products were inherently habit forming, um, you know, with living social, of course, you're receiving a daily email and that's what you're signing up for, at least back then when I was working on it. Um, and, and so therefore it will create a habit as long as you continue to receive and look at the emails. With Wunderlist, the whole point is to drive your habits. So we kind of start off with an unfair advantage there in terms of habit formation. But I would say in both scenarios, the, the teams, the product designers and technology teams at LivingSocial and on Wunderlist were, um, radically driven to, to simple solutions, um, and to avoiding complexity at all cost. And that's the core of how you can make something habit forming. You know, if you, if you have a product that is complicated to work with and not a joy to work with, Then it's going to be harder to get yourself into a habit of using it, even if you want to use it. So we have that as a foundation for habit formation. On top of that, of course, uh, it is all about creating, uh, an experience that is, as I said, a joy to work with, but also doesn't get in your way. And that's where we get into really looking at funnel metrics, um, and, and, Removing barriers to usage in, in a more engineering style, uh, approach. So with, with Wunderlist, we literally never paid for adv…

AI assessment note: “we were so obsessively focused with the next steps, with not losing people”

Q And are there any features then that you would like to add, but still think would be in keeping with the minimalist aesthetics of the product?

A No, no, I, I, I don't want to add any features, uh, and that's not to say we won't, but personally, I would like to never add another feature to this piece of software. I think it's done. Um, and I say that, uh, it's sort of a lie because, uh, I think the, the product, the client of Wunderlist is done, and it's up to us to guard its simplicity. And that's the promise we made, actually, in that post I was talking about why business software is broken, is that we would, we would be the guardians of the simplicity of the product. That said, uh, Wunderlist can and should be the thing that connects, uh, all of the other things in your, your world that you need to get done. So, You know, there are all these different implicit and explicit inputs and outputs of the tasks you need to do in your daily life. For example, email is a big one. Calendar invitations are a big one. Trips coming up. Conversations that you have via messaging applications, whatever they happen to be. Wunderlist can and should become the glue that recognizes those things, or at least allows you to explicitly input them in a seamless way. Uh, and helps you make sure that you don't forget them, and you're doing things in the right order that you're able, able to prioritize, and then integrates with external services that could then help you accomplish them.

AI assessment note: “No, no, I, I, I don't want to add any features”

Q Would you say that Berlin is a great place to start a startup at the moment?

A Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And, and in fact, it's a, it starts by being just a wonderful place to live. Um, you know, I've talked to a lot of, uh, investors recently who are asking about whether Berlin is a good place to go, uh, investors and sort of LP level people. Um, and there is often this kind of like, what's the scene in Berlin question to me. The, the advantage of Berlin is that people want to live there. That's the first thing. Like, it's just a cool place. It's cool if you're, if you're young and sort of alternative or, you know, you're interested in, uh, even the more kind of conservative old school European values, you get kind of everything in Berlin. So when my wife and I first heard about the opportunity for Wunderlist, It was, it was first Berlin that made me even open the email at the time, because the subject said CTO Berlin, and we just love Berlin. It really stands out among the European cities as a wonderful place to be. So with that in mind, it has been very easy for us at Wunderlist, for example, to attract international talent from Almost all over the world, and, and certainly even the west coast of the United States, because it's a nice destination for people and a place where you can have a good lifestyle.

AI assessment note: “Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And, and in fact, it's a, it starts by being”

Q And talking of kind of user experience there, both with Living Social and with Wanderlist, you created a product with really incredible habit-forming abilities with users. How did you go about creating this product? And when, when you were, was user retention key to the building of it?

A Sure. Well, I think in, in both scenarios, uh, The products were inherently habit forming, um, you know, with living social, of course, you're receiving a daily email and that's what you're signing up for, at least back then when I was working on it. Um, and, and so therefore it will create a habit as long as you continue to receive and look at the emails. With Wunderlist, the whole point is to drive your habits. So we kind of start off with an unfair advantage there in terms of habit formation. But I would say in both scenarios, the, the teams, the product designers and technology teams at LivingSocial and on Wunderlist were, um, radically driven to, to simple solutions, um, and to avoiding complexity at all cost. And that's the core of how you can make something habit forming. You know, if you, if you have a product that is complicated to work with and not a joy to work with, Then it's going to be harder to get yourself into a habit of using it, even if you want to use it. So we have that as a foundation for habit formation. On top of that, of course, uh, it is all about creating, uh, an experience that is, as I said, a joy to work with, but also doesn't get in your way. And that's where we get into really looking at funnel metrics, um, and, and, Removing barriers to usage in, in a more engineering style, uh, approach. So with, with Wunderlist, we literally never paid for adv…

AI assessment note: “we were so obsessively focused with the next steps, with not losing people”

Q to touch on now the, the acquisition, um, a huge congratulations to you for that, and we've actually got a question from Carolina Bruchado, a friend of ours who was on the show from Atomico with Matthias, and Carolina wanted to know, what is it like moving from a small man startup to a giant corporation like Microsoft? I mean, how's the company and your role changed since the acquisition?

A I think, so the way the question is, is phrased is interesting because the question says like Microsoft, and I think the, it would be really hard to generally answer this question, um, because I can imagine it would be very different depending on where we went. Uh, for us at this point in time, joining Microsoft has been just like joining a larger version of ourselves to some extent. So, In fact, when we, when we first met the team at Microsoft, we were amazed and, uh, surprised at how well our visions, uh, overlapped and aligned, and so you probably won't even believe when I say it, but joining Microsoft has really just meant that we have more resources, we have more, more people to talk to and learn from, um, more colleagues, I guess, but otherwise it's very much like, like it was before, only kind of amplified, um,

AI assessment note: “joining Microsoft has been just like joining a larger version of ourselves”

Q And are there any features then that you would like to add, but still think would be in keeping with the minimalist aesthetics of the product?

A No, no, I, I, I don't want to add any features, uh, and that's not to say we won't, but personally, I would like to never add another feature to this piece of software. I think it's done. Um, and I say that, uh, it's sort of a lie because, uh, I think the, the product, the client of Wunderlist is done, and it's up to us to guard its simplicity. And that's the promise we made, actually, in that post I was talking about why business software is broken, is that we would, we would be the guardians of the simplicity of the product. That said, uh, Wunderlist can and should be the thing that connects, uh, all of the other things in your, your world that you need to get done. So, You know, there are all these different implicit and explicit inputs and outputs of the tasks you need to do in your daily life. For example, email is a big one. Calendar invitations are a big one. Trips coming up. Conversations that you have via messaging applications, whatever they happen to be. Wunderlist can and should become the glue that recognizes those things, or at least allows you to explicitly input them in a seamless way. Uh, and helps you make sure that you don't forget them, and you're doing things in the right order that you're able, able to prioritize, and then integrates with external services that could then help you accomplish them.

AI assessment note: “No, no, I, I, I don't want to add any features”

Q And now you're in Europe, what do you believe that Europe has as a kind of competitive advantage over the US?

A Uh, it's kind of hard to say. Maybe there is no competitive advantage over the US, and maybe that doesn't matter. Um, It used to. So, you know, it used to matter when, like, I remember going to Europe in the nineties, playing music and being completely disconnected from the rest of my world. But at this point, it's not like that anymore. It doesn't really matter where you are in the world. Uh, there are some cultural factors in, in Europe that I think we're still getting over that are a disadvantage. Europe has historically on the, in the tech industry been, uh, kind of behind the United States, a little more conservative. But even that is sort of fading away. So, for me, the advantage of Europe, and specifically Berlin, is just that it's a fabulous, very international place to be. And compared to most of the, the cities, or in contrast to most of the cities in the US that have the same sort of international footprint, it is incredibly cheap to live and operate in. That's not a Europe wide advantage, but that is something very special about Berlin itself.

AI assessment note: “for me, the advantage of Europe, and specifically Berlin, is just that it's a fabulous”

Q And talking of Wunderlist standing out there to you in that email, in 2013 to-do list apps were really rather common, you know, as they are now. So what do you think made Wunderlist the all-star to-do list, you know, the app of the year it was? What made it so special?

A Simplicity, primarily. Um, our, our chief design officer, Benedict Leonard, he, he always says that the advantages we had and have are technology, design, and simplicity, and, and the design of it, it's, it's absolutely beautiful. That's the thing that kind of first catches your eye, uh, and, and by that I mean visual design, but taking it another step further, what we have done is, Removed everything we could, and there's probably still more that we can remove. It's almost like this meditative mental exercise of looking at something that already seems like it is at its essence and figuring out what else you can take out. Um, we, we actually wrote a post that summarizes, uh, a career full of observations that I've had and that Benedict has had, uh, about business software. And it's called why business software is broken. And it's all about the, the historical war between customers and suppliers of enterprise business software, where it's like this, this self-defeating fight for features and complexity. It's all driven on fear and it's driven on, you know, fear based negotiation tactics. So I've been on the purchasing end of this, um, at big companies in the past. And the way it sort of plays out is you're trying to negotiate a license for some business software. And you ask for everything you might ever possibly want. Every ridiculous bit of complexity you can think of. And ult…

AI assessment note: “Simplicity, primarily. Um, our, our chief design officer, Benedict Leonard”

Q And now you're in Europe, what do you believe that Europe has as a kind of competitive advantage over the US?

A Uh, it's kind of hard to say. Maybe there is no competitive advantage over the US, and maybe that doesn't matter. Um, It used to. So, you know, it used to matter when, like, I remember going to Europe in the nineties, playing music and being completely disconnected from the rest of my world. But at this point, it's not like that anymore. It doesn't really matter where you are in the world. Uh, there are some cultural factors in, in Europe that I think we're still getting over that are a disadvantage. Europe has historically on the, in the tech industry been, uh, kind of behind the United States, a little more conservative. But even that is sort of fading away. So, for me, the advantage of Europe, and specifically Berlin, is just that it's a fabulous, very international place to be. And compared to most of the, the cities, or in contrast to most of the cities in the US that have the same sort of international footprint, it is incredibly cheap to live and operate in. That's not a Europe wide advantage, but that is something very special about Berlin itself.

AI assessment note: “the advantage of Europe, and specifically Berlin, is just that it's a fabulous”

Q And talking of Wunderlist standing out there to you in that email, in 2013 to-do list apps were really rather common, you know, as they are now. So what do you think made Wunderlist the all-star to-do list, you know, the app of the year it was? What made it so special?

A Simplicity, primarily. Um, our, our chief design officer, Benedict Leonard, he, he always says that the advantages we had and have are technology, design, and simplicity, and, and the design of it, it's, it's absolutely beautiful. That's the thing that kind of first catches your eye, uh, and, and by that I mean visual design, but taking it another step further, what we have done is, Removed everything we could, and there's probably still more that we can remove. It's almost like this meditative mental exercise of looking at something that already seems like it is at its essence and figuring out what else you can take out. Um, we, we actually wrote a post that summarizes, uh, a career full of observations that I've had and that Benedict has had, uh, about business software. And it's called why business software is broken. And it's all about the, the historical war between customers and suppliers of enterprise business software, where it's like this, this self-defeating fight for features and complexity. It's all driven on fear and it's driven on, you know, fear based negotiation tactics. So I've been on the purchasing end of this, um, at big companies in the past. And the way it sort of plays out is you're trying to negotiate a license for some business software. And you ask for everything you might ever possibly want. Every ridiculous bit of complexity you can think of. And ult…

AI assessment note: “Simplicity, primarily. Um, our, our chief design officer, Benedict Leonard, he, he always”

Q to touch on now the, the acquisition, um, a huge congratulations to you for that, and we've actually got a question from Carolina Bruchado, a friend of ours who was on the show from Atomico with Matthias, and Carolina wanted to know, what is it like moving from a small man startup to a giant corporation like Microsoft? I mean, how's the company and your role changed since the acquisition?

A I think, so the way the question is, is phrased is interesting because the question says like Microsoft, and I think the, it would be really hard to generally answer this question, um, because I can imagine it would be very different depending on where we went. Uh, for us at this point in time, joining Microsoft has been just like joining a larger version of ourselves to some extent. So, In fact, when we, when we first met the team at Microsoft, we were amazed and, uh, surprised at how well our visions, uh, overlapped and aligned, and so you probably won't even believe when I say it, but joining Microsoft has really just meant that we have more resources, we have more, more people to talk to and learn from, um, more colleagues, I guess, but otherwise it's very much like, like it was before, only kind of amplified, um,

AI assessment note: “joining Microsoft has really just meant that we have more resources”