Wunderlist founder Christian Reber launches PowerPoint competitor Pitch

Pitch founder, Christian Reber.
Pitch

• A founder who sold his last startup to Microsoft has
  raised $19 million for a new company… that competes directly
  with Microsoft.
• Berlin founder Christian Reber has raised the cash from
  Index Ventures and other backers for Pitch, a presentation
  software startup that will rival Microsoft PowerPoint.
• Reber was previously chief executive of Wunderlist, a
  popular productivity app that sold for up to $200 million to
  Microsoft in 2015.
• Reber quit in late 2017 after difficulties integrating
  Wunderlist into Microsoft’s suite of products.
• He said there’s no bad blood with the firm, and that he
  still gives technical help to Microsoft from time to
  time.

Christian Reber, the founder behind productivity app Wunderlist,
has raised $19 million for his new presentation startup Pitch.

The Series A round was led by Index Ventures and BlueYard, with
new investors Slack Fund, Zoom’s chief executive Eric Yuan, and
other high-profile angels joining the funding.

The raise is interesting on several levels.

Reber is the man who sold Wunderlist, a much-loved productivity
app, to Microsoft for up to $200 million in 2015. He quit
Microsoft in late 2017, saying that it had been difficult to
integrate the app into Microsoft’s services.

The Wunderlist app.
Wunderlist

In a call on Tuesday, Reber told Business Insider that there’s
“no bad blood” with Microsoft, but acknowledged the irony of his
new startup Pitch taking on a familiar Microsoft product:
Presentation builder PowerPoint.

“It wasn’t our goal to build something Microsoft already built,
we’re grateful for what happened [the Wunderlist acquisition],”
Reber told Business Insider.

Reber said he was originally reluctant to pursue a concept that
competed so directly with Microsoft, not least because it’s tough
to take on any of the tech giants. But eventually, he wanted to
see where Pitch went.

“Right now, no one at Microsoft is scared because of us, everyone
has been wishing us good luck,” he added. “Microsoft has products
in every category. Whatever you’re building, Microsoft probably
has a product somehow connected to the space.”

Pitch’s pitch is that it’s a more simple and intuitive than
PowerPoint or perhaps even Apple’s Keynote. It comes with lots of
templates for different scenarios, such as board meeting,
investor pitch, and internal company report. It’s also suitable
for kids to use for their homework, Reber said. It’s only open to
beta testers for now.

Pitch has a good pedigree, with several Wunderlist alumni on its
staff including branding boss Jan Martin, and developer Misha
Karpenko.

Reber’s goal is to build a multibillion-dollar company
like Slack

The Pitch founding
team
Pitch

Reber is wistful when he talks about selling Wunderlist to
Microsoft. He won’t confirm the price tag, but said he had always
aspired to build a globally successful company, such as Slack.

After joining Microsoft, Reber said, he had worked on integrating
Wunderlist into Microsoft’s services, such as Outlook and Office.
Trying to integrate Wunderlist was “really challenging,” so the
team decided to build something new, called To-Do.

“I realised that I’m not a project manager, I’m not someone who
can lead a project inside a huge organisation, it’s not my core
strength,” said Reber. He agreed with internal executives to try
and build something else entirely new, but inside Microsoft.

He said: “I explored a few ideas, even other acquisitions… but
I think Microsoft didn’t have the processes in place to handle a
product founder in Berlin. If I had been in [Microsoft’s
headquarters in] Redmond, it would have been no problem at all…
But in Berlin, nothing was in place, so I felt very alone and
disconnected. I tried to build a product inside the organisation,
but I didn’t get funding.

“I’m not mad about it — if I asked myself whether I’d fund myself
inside an organisation, I would say no.”

He added that he and other Wunderlist staffers had been “sad” to
leave the product, and that he still provides technical advice on
the new To-Do app, which hasn’t been as well received among
users.

“My goal as a German founder is to build something like Atlassian
and Slack and Zoom in Berlin,” Reber said. “That’s really what
makes me happy. Of course, I was happy about the financial
outcome of an exit, but I also kind of felt like I failed
personally with what I wanted to accomplish. I’m giving it one
more try.”

Given he’s building a competitor to a Microsoft product, could he
sell once more to the Redmond giant?

“I’m not naive. In three to four years, I [may] realise an exit
is a great strategy, it’s something that makes sense and for
everyone involved, and I’m gonna do it. But if I somehow get
close to achieving my real goal, a company that’s going to last,
I’m going to for sure pursue that direction.”