Recession headlines aren’t slowing GoWish. The wish list and shopping app is surging into the 2025 holiday season, hitting its best day yet by climbing to No. 2 on the U.S. App Store and crossing 13.6 million registered users. This year marks a breakout moment: GoWish has doubled its user base compared to last year and has been adding hundreds of thousands of new users daily throughout November.
The growth is global. In the U.S., GoWish counts nearly 6.2 million users, with around 1 million in the U.K. and more than 3.5 million registered users in Denmark, where it has over 50% market penetration.
GoWish’s origin story is just as notable. Launched in 2015 by the Danish-Swedish national postal service as “Ønskeskyen” (“wish cloud”), it began as a seasonal gift-list tool before its potential became clear. In 2020, the product was acquired by Danish VC Dotcom Capital, led by co-owner and founder Casper Ravn‑Sørensen, now chief growth officer, and CEO Mads Dahlerup. They spun it out as an independent tech company and launched an international version while keeping Ønskeskyen as the brand in Denmark and Norway. As Ravn‑Sørensen puts it, the company may be the first state-founded tech platform to scale globally as a privately owned venture.
At its core, GoWish is built to “fix gifting.” Users can create multiple wish lists for themselves, family, and friends across birthdays, holidays, weddings, or any occasion. Adding items is simple: paste a product URL, search within the app, or browse inspiration feeds featuring millions of products. When it’s time to buy, a tap takes you straight to the retailer. To avoid duplicate presents, friends and family can reserve items from a list so the recipient gets exactly what they want—without returns.
Behind the scenes, GoWish’s business model blends affiliate and brand partnerships. The company counts around 65,000 affiliate partners and more than 700 brand partners, many of which are now adding a “GoWish” button to their websites. The approach is paying off: GoWish posted net profits after tax of $1.7 million in fiscal year 2024, which it is reinvesting to fuel expansion. The company declined to share total revenue.
Aggressive, data-driven marketing has also propelled growth. Campaigns across Meta, TikTok, Google, and Snap have been key, with Snap even calling out GoWish as a partner success story on its Q4 earnings call. According to Ravn‑Sørensen, the team’s strength lies in optimizing spend across digital platforms to make global rollouts highly efficient.
Looking ahead, GoWish plans to layer in AI to enhance the experience, with details to come. The long-term vision is to become the “global genie” of social shopping—predicting trends across generations and making it easier for people to give and get the perfect gifts.
Based in Copenhagen, the company employs around 90 people. It is backed by Capital D, which acquired a one-third stake in early 2025, with the remainder owned by Danish VC Dotcom Capital. GoWish is available on iOS and Android, with a Chrome extension that makes it seamless to add items from your browser to your wish lists.
