MeisterLabs
MeisterLabs began with MindMeister, a web-based collaborative mind mapping product that has been running for about ten years. When the company launched MeisterTask, it drew heavy inspiration from Trello and Asana. The team saw that Trello's card-based Kanban model was brilliant but was not built for task management: its cards could be anything, and they lacked status, priorities, and clear task structure. The team also found it hard to use. Their goal was to combine the best of those tools in something fun and focused on execution.
MeisterTask launched as a freemium SaaS product available on the web, iPhone, Android, Mac, and Windows, and it integrates with MindMeister. The paid plan launched in September 2015. Early revenue was small, with the team estimating around $20,000 from paying users that year. Conversion was intentionally lenient at first, with only a few paid features: unlimited integrations, custom images, and section actions. Plans cost between $6 and $9 per month.
The team's growth came mostly from MindMeister's established base. MeisterTask grew to about 550,000 free users. The iPhone App Store was the biggest channel, accounting for about 60% of downloads, or roughly 60,000 per month. The team found that integrations were the strongest payment wall: free accounts get limited integrations, and anything beyond three requires a paid plan. Customer acquisition cost averaged about $30 across both products, and MindMeister's paid marketing relied heavily on Google Ads, with about $20,000 to $30,000 spent per month.
MindMeister's early growth depended on SEO and ranking for the keywords that mattered, especially "mind mapping." As search results filled with ads, the company shifted toward paid search. Churn was a problem at one point. The team moved from monthly-only pricing to six-month and annual plans, which improved retention. Annual churn is about 27%, which works out to roughly 2 to 4% monthly by the interviewer's estimate. The conversion rate for MeisterTask stayed low because the team had few paid features at the time.
The business had about 18 people in Vienna, two in Munich, and several freelancers. It was reported at about $250,000 in monthly recurring revenue, with about $220,000 from MindMeister and about $30,000 from MeisterTask. The company had raised a small seed round years earlier and had two angels and two investors. Michael said the company was not actively raising capital and was focused on building a small suite of products, expanding to the United States, and launching a third product.
- •Positioning MeisterTask as a focused task manager, rather than a general card-based board like Trello, gave it a clear reason to exist beyond copying a competitor.
- •Gating paid value behind integrations, instead of storage or basic features, tied the upgrade decision to a workflow users already depended on.
- •Building on an existing paid user base with MindMeister let MeisterTask grow from a bigger foundation and kept acquisition costs manageable.
- •Strong mobile distribution through the iPhone App Store delivered most downloads, showing that a well-designed mobile experience can outperform the web for acquisition.
- •Moving from monthly-only plans to longer commitments reduced churn, which matters a lot for a low-price SaaS product.
- 1.Study a successful incumbent, identify what it fails to do well (for example, task status and priorities), and build a more focused product around those gaps.
- 2.Make the free tier useful but limit one high-value feature, such as integrations, as the paywall that naturally drives upgrades.
- 3.Invest in App Store and mobile presence early, since it can supply the majority of downloads.
- 4.Track customer acquisition cost against monthly price so you can estimate payback time, and watch monthly churn closely.
- 5.Offer annual or six-month plans in addition to monthly billing to improve retention.
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