Wishlist

01The full story

Chris began building Wishlist in 2019 after using a spreadsheet to track Christmas gifts. The app organizes wishes into lists that users can share with family, with privacy controls, notes, custom list images, and product links. He released an early version in 2020 and rebuilt it as Wishlist 2.0 after the first codebase became difficult to update. The product reached 100,000 registered users by the relaunch in 2023. Chris kept it as a side project through university and more than two years in a full-time developer job, then quit in July 2025. He reports about $6,000 in monthly revenue during the low season, 1.1 million registered users, around 4,000 paying customers, and 110,000 monthly active users; he says those audience figures rise fivefold in the high season. Revenue comes from in-app purchases and affiliate commissions when users open product links. Chris reports roughly 99% margin, with server costs as the main expense. He describes the six-year path as a marathon rather than a quick launch.

For a consumer wishlist app, the first useful audience is the person who already coordinates gifts for a family or friend group. Start with the organizer’s immediate need: create a list quickly, add a product from a store link, and share it without forcing every recipient to install the app first.