Acompli, Sunrise, and Wunderlist (with Kurt DelBene)

Accompli was founded in April 2013 by Javier Soltero, JJ Zhuang, and Kevin Henriksen. The product combined email and calendar in one mobile application, filling a gap that the hosts felt was still open on iOS. It raised a $7.3 million Series A led by Redpoint, with Harrison Metal and Felicis, and Microsoft acquired it in December 2014 for a reported $200 million. The company had about 25 employees, all based in San Francisco, and the team joined Microsoft after the acquisition.

The acquisition came less than 18 months after the company's founding, during a period when mobile email was attracting major acquisition interest. Microsoft then acquired Sunrise, a calendar application, in February 2015, and Wunderlist, a to-do list application, in June 2015. Accompli became the basis for Outlook on iOS and Android; Sunrise was later folded into Outlook, while Wunderlist remained independent at the time of the conversation.

Kurt DelBene described the Accompli deal as a strategic acquisition rather than primarily an acqui-hire. Microsoft sometimes buys technology, sometimes adds a strong product to an adjacent business, and more rarely buys a team for its talent. In this case, Office had deep desktop strengths on Windows and Mac, but Microsoft needed strong mobile products for the core Office 365 scenarios: email, contacts, calendaring, and to-do. The decision was whether to build that capability internally or acquire a company that already had it.