Hidden champion Ulysses: How a hobby project from Leipzig became a worldwide hit June 2nd, 2021

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iphone write.jpg
iphone write.jpg

With the Ulysses app, two founders from Germany have developed an app for novelists and journalists that is a hit all over the world. Your small company now has 20 employees.

In industry there is the phenomenon of “hidden champions”. This refers to medium-sized companies that are world market leaders in some highly specialized niches and are fueling the economic upswing, but are still almost unknown to the public. This principle can also be transferred to the digital economy – and one of these German hidden app champions is Ulysses from Leipzig.

App success from Leipzig

The Ulysses story begins in 2002, when the first iPhone wasn’t even a rumor. Marcus Fehn wanted to write a book and was looking for a powerful and at the same time user-friendly writing program. But apart from Microsoft Word, there seemed to be nothing. So he had no choice but to develop his own program. He was therefore looking for a programmer online to help him with this endeavor – and came across Max Seelemann.

Together they developed the Ulysses program, named after the famous novel by James Joyce. “The novel of the century,” says Seelemann in an interview with the star. “If that’s not a suitable yardstick, what then?” The program is explicitly aimed at those who write a lot, i.e. novelists or journalists, bloggers and scientists. In 2003 the program was ready and made available for download online.

Ulysses co-founder Max Seelemann
Ulysses co-founder Max Seelemann

 

It cannot be taken for granted that it could have come to this point. Fehn still lives in Hamburg today, Seelemann comes from Leipzig. Both have been practicing remote work – i.e. working at a distance, which was boosted by Corona – for two decades. In 2004 both met for the first time at the Leipzig Book Fair. So that both of them could recognize each other in the hustle and bustle of the fair, they had to send each other photos beforehand – video telephony had not yet been invented.

Ulysses became a hit on the App Store

The Ulysses program was originally developed only for the Mac and has been further developed over the years. For a long time it was a hobby project with which Fehn and Seelemann earned a little extra money to buy new computers, for example. In 2011, the App Store, which was already known from the iPhone and iPad, came to the Mac. Seelemann put his Ulysses writing program in Apple’s software store, where it was featured directly. Seelemann could hardly believe his eyes: “We made 20,000 euros in sales in the first week. Right from the start. That was just incredible.”

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At that time, Seelemann was in the middle of his doctorate. But economic success presented him with a choice: PhD or Ulysses? The decision was made in favor of the writing program. “I would have regretted my life not to have tried the business.” Over the years, Ulysses was brought to other Apple platforms – first the iPad, then the iPhone. From the two-man hobby project, they both formed a company with now more than 20 employees.

“We would not have opened up China without the App Store”

The App Store was the breakthrough for Seelemann. Apple demands a commission of 30 percent on sales made via this (with recurring subscriptions this later drops to 15 percent, also with small developer studios), which repeatedly leads to friction with cartel guards and legal disputes. But in return, developers like Seelemann benefit from the global popularity of the platform and the great trust that users place in the App Store. “We generate more than 80 percent of our sales outside the EU. The USA is our most important market, followed by China. And to be honest: I don’t know whether we could have opened up China without the App Store.”

An effect that can be observed with many app providers. According to a calculation by Apple, the App Store created 250,000 jobs in this country alone. Since they were founded in 2008 on the iPhone, developer studios in this country have generated more than two billion euros in total income. The business continues to grow rapidly, the growth rate in 2020 was 21 percent compared to the previous year.

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In addition to Ulysses, successful apps made in Germany include the language learning application Tandem and the piano learning app Flowkey, which was developed in Berlin and quickly became one of the world’s most successful music learning apps. Both recorded enormous user growth during the Corona crisis. The Fastic app for intermittent fasting was also one of the beneficiaries of the past year. Other internationally successful apps from Germany include Blinkist, Asana Rebel, Kitchen Stories, N26 and Babbel.

AirTag from Apple

The iPad is becoming the new typewriter

For the Ulysses team, on the other hand, the Corona period was not a business turbo. “In the pandemic, writing books was perhaps not the hottest hobby,” jokes Seelemann. “We have grown a lot over the past few years. In some we have doubled our numbers. And in others we only increased by a few percent.” Nevertheless, he looks to the future with confidence: 50,000 people now have an active subscription that costs 50 euros a year.

From the worldwide developer conference WWDC, which will take place in the coming week (purely virtual), Seelemann is particularly hoping for many innovations for the iPad. Because the download figures show that the tablet – also thanks to keyboard covers – is being used more and more often as a laptop replacement.

In addition to the ongoing optimization of the writing program, Seelemann has another area in mind: tables. “They are not particularly now and they are not going to revolutionize the world,” he admits. “But for many of our customers this is an important feature. And it is not that easy to implement tables as elegantly as possible.”

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