The Danish wishlist app GoWish just had its best week ever, hitting #2 on the U.S. App Store while doubling its user base to 13.6 million registered users ahead of the 2025 holiday season. The company's breakout year defies recession fears and positions it as a serious player in social commerce, with hundreds of thousands of new daily signups throughout November.
The numbers tell the story of an app that's caught lightning in a bottle. GoWish didn't just grow this year - it exploded. The Danish wishlist platform doubled its user base while generating $1.7 million in net profits, according to fiscal year 2024 documents reviewed by TechCrunch. That's real money from real users, not the venture-funded growth-at-all-costs playbook we've grown accustomed to seeing.
The app's momentum is global but concentrated in key markets. In the U.S., GoWish has nearly 6.2 million users, while the U.K. contributes around 1 million. But it's in Denmark where the company truly dominates - over 50% market penetration with 3.5 million registered Danish users in a country of just 5.8 million people.
"We're very good at optimising our marketing spends across digital platforms and that makes our global roll-out very effective," Chief Growth Officer Casper Ravn‑Sørensen told TechCrunch. The company's been investing heavily across Meta, TikTok, Google, and Snap - with Snap even giving GoWish a shoutout during its Q4 earnings call as one of its partner success stories.
What makes GoWish's story fascinating isn't just the growth - it's the origin. This isn't your typical Silicon Valley startup. The app began life in 2015 as "Ønskeskyen" (Danish for "wish cloud"), a seasonal wishlist gimmick launched by the Danish-Swedish national postal service PostNord. "We might be the first state-founded tech platform to go global as a privately-owned scale-up," Ravn‑Sørensen noted.
The transformation happened in 2020 when Danish VC Dotcom Capital acquired the platform and spun it out as an independent tech company. CEO Mads Dahlerup and Ravn‑Sørensen saw potential beyond seasonal wishlists and created an international version that could compete with established shopping platforms.
The business model is elegantly simple but surprisingly effective. Users create multiple wishlists for different occasions, adding products by copying URLs, searching, or browsing inspiration feeds. When they're ready to buy, a tap sends them directly to the retailer's website. GoWish takes affiliate commissions from its 65,000 partner retailers, while over 700 brands have added "GoWish" buttons directly to their websites.
