The News

Height, the project management app combining tasks, chat, adaptive workflows, and more, that has been founded in 2018, received $18.3M in total funding (a Series A of $14M in September 2021 being the most recent one), and has been doubling-down on AI by introducing its newest version entitled as the autonomous project management tool a couple of months ago, just announced on its website that it is shutting down operations, with September 24th, 2025 being the final day of service. Height has been publicly available for three and a half years.

My Thoughts

I have been following the development of Height for quite some time, and it always stood out to me because of its design. There is no doubt that Height was one of the most beautiful apps out there. I would have loved to get the opportunity to use their app more extensively while being part of a team, since during the short amount of time I used it as an individual it always felt a bit overkill. I got excited when they announced their new brand. However, I initially was not sure about their autonomous project management capabilities, but the reason for that might be the fact that I never had to manage such an amount of projects, tasks, and work that I had the feeling I need AI to manage it.

What feels a bit odd to me is the incredible generic announcement message on Height's website, signed by founder and CEO, Michaël Villar. It leaves anyone visiting the site with assumptions on why they had to shut down, and Villar did not provide any kind of information on what led to the decision to shut down the whole company. It seemed like a difficult decision to shut down operations, but why? According to a comment on Hacker News, it seems like Height sent out an email to users back on Sunday March 22nd, 2025, informing users about shutting down operations at Height. What is also interesting, according to the comment on Hacker News, the team of the person who commented was not entirely surprised about the news. This gives the impression that there was something that gave at least some users the impression that things were not moving into the right direction.

The only assumption I have is that they might have poured loads of their resources into Height 2.0, and with Linear, which is operating in the same realm, continuing to be the project management and issue tracking tool of choice of loads of teams and companies, Height might had a hard time to compete with that, and potentially, even v2.0 could not move the needle into the right direction.

I do appreciate the relatively early notice. Height's final day of service is September 24th, 2025. This gives teams and users a serious amount of time to migrate their project management to a different app.

Conclusion

Height's journey has been marked by its stunning design and innovative approach to project management. As someone who admired the app's aesthetics, I would have loved to explore its full potential within a team setting. The announcement of their new brand was exciting, but the shift towards autonomous project management left me with questions, perhaps due to my limited experience with managing extensive projects.

The shutdown announcement, though difficult, felt abrupt and lacked transparency. Michaël Villar's generic message left users speculating about the reasons behind the decision. Height's story serves as a reminder of the challenges in the tech industry, where innovation and competition go hand in hand.

Till next time! 👋‌‌‌‌

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