
Asana raises $50M at a $1.5B valuation - ScotterC
https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/29/asana-a-work-management-platform-nabs-50m-growth-round-at-a-1-5b-valuation/
======
jillesvangurp
I've used Asana in a couple of projects and actually like it for its
simplicity and ease of doing things like copy pasting multi line issues from a
spreadsheet, text file, or chat; easy editing with multi select; and similar
features that make the product feel more similar to a spreadsheet than an
annoying issue tracker where every click results in modal dialogs with OK
buttons and other cruft. I hate stuff like Jira with a passion and it doesn't
do anything for me that I 1) need 2) Asana does not do in a way that is more
convenient.

That being said, it's not 1.5B dollars cool and that kind of multi billion
valuation creates unrealistic expectations that cannot possibly be fulfilled
by staying humble and focusing on just what Asana does best. So, this kind of
investment smells like a kiss of death. I fear the worst here in terms of
layering on features nobody wanted, and attempts to make the product more
appealing for the masses, etc. Is this going to be an actual IPO or a lazy
acquihire by some company in need of an issue tracker?

~~~
fjp
I use it at work and as far as I can tell it's just a web app where you can
move cards around. I do like the fact that it's simple and snappy and doesn't
have a shitload of options and features no one wants that cause it to load
super slow (Cough cough Jira) However, some basic workflow enforcement would
be nice (Cards marked done when you put them in the "done" column) In its
current state it seems like it could be cloned in a week. Edit: cloned in a
day if you wanted just the functionality and not a cute little UI

~~~
pscarey
It's easy to make a (poor) copy of the product. It's hard to execute the idea,
take market share, and capture customer revenue.

Asana blogged this year about 50k organisations, 6 quarters accelerating
growth [1].

Back in 2015 they blogged mentioning the heating up 'enterprise collaboration
market'. There's countless office tools, diagramming tools, collaboration
tools. Even in software there's more CI systems than I can count.

My guess is there's a big market which the VCs think is accessible to Asana in
a way it's fundamentally not to a competitor. Combined with big growth it
makes sense.

[1] [https://blog.asana.com/2018/09/asana-company-
updates-2018/](https://blog.asana.com/2018/09/asana-company-updates-2018/)

~~~
nerdponx
Taiga.io is a pretty good facsimile, but Taiga tries to incorporate too many
of JIRA's Agile-related non-features rather than sticking to the basics. There
is no good alternative (right now).

------
Kaveren
Tried Asana, couldn't stand it. Moved to Airtable, which is vastly superior to
Asana and moderately better than Trello. Now I use Notion on recommendation of
an HN poster. Far from perfect, but beats Asana out of the park.

All of these services with these massive valuations still somehow struggle to
get their core product right, it's like it lacks vision. These products are
also mindbogglingly slow-moving. I don't know how Asana can justify a $1.5b
valuation though. On paper, maybe, but when we talk about profit or revenue,
I'm skeptical to say the least.

What exactly they need $50m for, I'm not quite sure.

~~~
pbreit
Almost every sentence in this reply seems uninformed. Airtable & Asana are not
comparable. Asana clearly has vision but possibly different from yours. A
company raising Series E obviously would have positive financials. Founder
posted hockey stick graph of revenues on Twitter. $50m is not that big of a
Series E raise and will obviously go to engineering and sales & marketing.

~~~
Kaveren
> "Airtable & Asana are not comparable."

I wouldn't say they're not comparable, Airtable is commonly used for the same
use cases as Asana, much like Trello and Notion. Airtable can also be used for
other purposes, but this doesn't make comparisons unwarranted. It even has a
Kanban view.

> "$50m is not that big of a Series E raise and will obviously go to
> engineering and sales & marketing."

I don't find that the product is good enough to warrant investment, and I
don't believe it'll be successful in the long run unless changes are made.
There's people who will disagree and love Asana.

I think Notion got it right with the focus on rich text content. The tasks you
need to get done and the information about your project can all be in the same
project. I think Notion could become a serious contender to overtake Asana.

Just for example, I dislike sorting with Asana. You can't sort in Kanban
boards. You can't sort by X and then by Y. This is what their _core product_
is. That doesn't instill me with confidence.

I guess mark-as-dependent functionality is nice though?

I must say I am very surprised by the ARR [0], which is much more than
Atlassian's $619m last year. I'll admit I was wrong there. Congratulations to
them.

[0]
[https://twitter.com/moskov/status/1068184742762229761](https://twitter.com/moskov/status/1068184742762229761)

 _Edit: Shrunk reply._

~~~
Kaveren
I was not in a aware state of mind when writing this reply, obviously if Asana
was pulling in $1b+ a year in revenue they'd be valued at an order of
magnitude more than $1.5b.

Their revenue would probably still be pretty good since they have 50k+
organizations paying $20+ per user per month [0].

[0] [https://blog.asana.com/2018/09/asana-company-
updates-2018/](https://blog.asana.com/2018/09/asana-company-updates-2018/)

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misiti3780
Am I the only one that has tried asana multiple times and given up after each
major iteration?

~~~
rixrax
Nope. I'd like to hire their sales/marketing people though, for they seem to
have an uncanny ability to solution sell it to execs who will then force it
down on their organizations. :P

Anyone here that actually had to use Asana, and somehow found it
beneficial/useful? How?

~~~
therealx
We tried a LOT of tools and Asana has been by far the best. Even just finding
a product that had dependencies, gantt charting, and decent multi-user support
was nearly impossible.

~~~
janlukacs
Have you looked at Paymo? [http://www.paymoapp.com](http://www.paymoapp.com)

------
pmalynin
>Specifically, it plans to open an AWS-based data center in Frankfurt in the
first half of next year, and it will set down more roots in Asia-Pacific, with
offices in Sydney and Tokyo.

Is it normal (in tech journalism, at least) to say "opening an AWS-based data
center?" I had to read that a few times over because I thought the article
switched to an Amazon article.

~~~
aportnoy
> and it will set down more roots in Asia-Pacific, with offices in Sydney and
> Tokyo

meaning they will provision AWS instances in these locations?

~~~
pspeter3
As far as I know, we are not planning on adding AWS instances there at this
time. Those are locations for offices we plan to open.

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SirensOfTitan
Every time the team has tried to use Asana we’ve given up. It’s slow on my
iMac Pro. It’s so slow and there’s no reason why it ought to be. It’s painful
to perform any operation with it.

...maybe it’s because I use Firefox, but even then there’s little excuse.

~~~
therealx
Super fast on my Macbook Pro. Might I suggest using Nativefier?

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Beardeddragon
Team uses Asana and hates it. Agree with them. Pretty much a half-wit beta
tool.

------
orliesaurus
I use Trello, I find it smooth experience. Tried Asana once and I didn't like
the feeling of "bloat". I am shocked by this valuation. I feel like after
AirTable's valuation few weeks back here in HN, now every other productivity
tool is getting a bubble-valuation effect?

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JonoBB
And yet they still can't solve empty tasks getting created for no good reason.
Yes, I know you can hit the delete or backspace key, but bloody hell, just
don't save the damn thing unless there is some data to actually save.

I'm sure that allocating 0.01% of this funding round to the dev will be more
than enough?

Also, how about being able to convert lists to kanban and vice versa?

Other than that, quite a happy user :)

~~~
veb
Ha! Totally agreed. Super annoying when you click somewhere randomly and an
empty task is created.

Aside from really petty annoyances, I find Asana does what I want it to. I
don't feel very strongly about it either way. If another product showed up
that was better, I'd move in a heartbeat.

It just doesn't inspire.

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jermaustin1
To me, $50M seems like a tiny amount of raise for such a high valuation. Is
this normal?

~~~
gammateam
They've raised over $200M

A proper translation of this lingo is "$50m worth of shares were sold at a
price that puts all the shares combined at a price of $1.5B"

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kbos87
I just moved to Asana because I’m joining a team that needs to manage tasks
together. There are a lot of things that just seem nonsensical to me.

Very little information exists at the project level - there’s no way to tag,
sort, or filter through different projects. It’s almost a useless level of
organization.

Custom fields seem to be accessible across teams in an organization, though
there is no easy way to carry them across projects. They also seem like they
don’t do much - you can’t filter or search based on custom field values.

The UI has a bad sense of hierarchy and important information is easily
hidden. Finding the notes associated with a subtask means you need to click a
barely visible button that doesn’t change state when information is behind it.

For how long they’ve been at it, these seem like simple problems to not have
solved.

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ForrestN
The main thing I think when I read this is "I wonder how much Basecamp is
'worth.'" A far superior product, presumably a comparable number of customers,
although I don't know, and I would guess far more profitable per customer.

------
pspeter3
Relevant Dustin Moskovitz tweet about valuation vs revenue
[https://twitter.com/moskov/status/1068184742762229761](https://twitter.com/moskov/status/1068184742762229761)

~~~
olivermarks
probably worth noting Moscovitz is worth 9.1 billion USD and Rosenstein 150
million....

------
usaphp
I have tried using Asana multiple times but always find that I need desktop
app to fully utilize a quick editing and task management. Without an app it's
always multiple clicks away from adding a todo item, it's quite annoying to go
to the website, login, select project and only then you can actually do
something.

I've recently stumbled upon Notion [1], and it's just so much better and more
convenient for me, they have desktop and mobile app as well, which helps a
lot. And their unusual free editing based on templates has been super
convenient for me so far.

1 - [https://www.notion.so](https://www.notion.so)

~~~
therealx
Using Nativefier helps most of the issues you have with there being no app.

------
haaen
In march of 2016, Asana also raised $50 million. Sam Altman led that round, at
a valuation of $550 million. Crunchbase wrongfully states that YC led it.

If Sam Altman's investment exits add such amounts to his bank reserve that the
reserve gets bigger than $10 million, he spends the surplus above that $10
million on 'improving humanity,' which I read as charity. (1)

(1) [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/10/sam-altmans-
ma...](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/10/sam-altmans-manifest-
destiny)

------
uptownfunk
Well, hopefully they’ll use these funds to improve the product..

------
ScotterC
I work at Asana - Site Lead for NYC

What I find most fascinating about this company is that something that sounds
relatively unsexy - work management for enterprise - can be so well aligned
with a truly unique mission. Enabling teams to collaborate effortlessly. For
anyone who's worked at a dysfunctional company - politics, low morale, low
transparency - it makes a huge difference when you have tools that help you
collaborate and get on the same page.

~~~
Zhyl
By the same token, good tools do not solve politics, low morale or low
transparency. I saw Justin Rosenstein and Dustin Moskovitz's talk when Asana
was announced (2010? 2011?) and was converted. The idea of ditching email,
bringing down barriers between silos and giving a greater vision between
layers was inspiring and I immediately tried to implement Asana into all areas
of my life.

It didn't really work for me as a personal organiser. Paper was just too damn
handy, didn't require a log in and I didn't need any of the collaboration
features. It didn't work for my dad and his business because he didn't quite
'get' the task oriented nature of the beast and ended up with a weird mish
mash of orders, inquiries etc which ended up being unmanageable and he
abandoned it quietly.

I tried setting it up for the production pipeline at the video society at my
uni. I thought it would help lower the barrier to entry so that people could
more easily get involved, see what was in the works, see tasks that were
available to contribute to. But no, nobody logged in. The motivated people
were just motivated and didn't require any task management and the disengaged
people were too disengaged and uncurious to find it a useful resource.

I tried setting one up at my internship - a small data shop where _surely_
things could be easily captured as tasks. We could assign things, hand things
over, track bugs in code, split up larger assignments into smaller ones. But
again, after some initial curiosity and a lot of patience from the teams, it
didn't quite take either.

It feels a bit like the slow rise of corporate instant messaging generally or
slack more specifically. Tools can enable a massive improvement to an
organisation's ability to keep in touch, react to change, collaborate and all
that usual stuff, but unless the company embraces that change or has a
mindset/culture that allows those benefits to come to fruition then even with
something like Asana you won't be able to turn things around with tools alone.

~~~
ScotterC
You're absolutely right. A mindset needs to accompany any tool in order for it
to be successful - or direct relationship to how successful

There's a great book on this topic from the first dot com age. Necessary but
not Sufficient ([https://www.amazon.com/Necessary-But-Sufficient-Eliyahu-
Gold...](https://www.amazon.com/Necessary-But-Sufficient-Eliyahu-
Goldratt/dp/0884271706)). The idea being you can adopt a tool but if you don't
understand the mental models that go along with that tool then you won't fully
reap the benefits.

As a company, this is still our responsibility. The best products educate as
well as enable.

------
dasil003
I haven't tried Asana again recently, but my early impressions were that they
were trying to target the space between project management and a todo list in
a very awkward way that could only succeed if all the stakeholders buy in to
its use. I guess that is what enterprise sales is for, but given the fact that
they just publish growth graphs with no numbers, and that I don't know a
single person in SV that both uses and likes Asana, I'm very skeptical about
their future.

A tool should either be simple and flexible enough that it invites creative
uses (Trello, Slack) or have a very clear commonly understood purpose that has
widely (if perhaps grudgingly) acknowledged value (JIRA, Salesforce). Asana is
in this uncanny valley like Google Wave where some people are impressed but
then ultimately no one knows what to do with it.

------
notjustanymike
Ah Asana. The product we try and make work like Jira, but really just end up
putting in a bunch of hacks to emulate epics, tagging, and all the other
useful features.

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Jorge1o1
Sorry. I just really like VSTS or Azure DevOps or whatever they call it these
days.

Just the fact that there’s a little button baked right into Visual Studio
where I can see all my work items, and the fact that I can literally assign a
commit to a work item as I push it makes VSTS the best IMHO

------
onetimemanytime
Question: all these multi-billion SAAS companies. Who are they replacing /who
is losing revenue because of them? Or is the pie becoming higher :) ?

And what's happening, are the companies that more efficient with Asana et al?

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wuliwong
I haven't used assana since the earliest days. Just looked over their
marketing website, wow it looks completely different! I may take another look
but at the moment, I have no issues with pivotal tracker.

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cdnsteve
A few years back there were about 5 of these products competing, and I think
all the others closed down. Somehow Asana has managed to stay alive. Are they
just buying time?

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mattbillenstein
Is this the FB-founder bump? I don't see this being worth that kinda valuation
- can they do $150MM/year in revenue in such a crowded market?

------
keeptrying
To nab a $1.5B valuation you sometimes have to raise $50M

------
easytiger
> The startup, whose products are used by millions of free and paying users,

I find it hard to believe, if im honest.

------
ykevinator
Love Asana, not sure it's a viable business (like trello) but may be a good
acquisition (like trello)

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m52go
So. This company raised $75 million less than a year ago. It just raised
another $50 million for "growth" now, 10 years after it was founded...for a
grand total of $213 million in venture capital.

What the heck will these guys do now with $125 million that they couldn't do
in the past 10 years with $88 million?

~~~
kornish
If you can get capital for cheap (i.e. minimal dilution), then having a bit of
cushion for any macroeconomic rollercoasters ain't such a bad idea. They can
also use it for M&A, early employee liquidity, and a whole host of other
useful functions.

~~~
m52go
Oh they'll use it...I have no doubt about that. If I led this company, I'd be
foolish to turn it down (without knowing anything else). I'm less sure what's
going through heads of their investors.

~~~
askafriend
Why are you making all these bold statements without mention or discussion of
any business metrics?

Without knowing things like yearly revenue growth, LTV of customers, churn,
operational costs, etc. how could you make any claims about if the valuation
or capital raised is or isn't justified?

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purplezooey
One chicken and two carne asana, please

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revskill
I prefer the original Asana color scheme (bluish) rather than current color
scheme (redish).

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gregggggsz87
Dustin Moskovitz (co-founder of Facebook and founder of Asana) is worth 10.2
billion. Why doesn't he self-fund Asana?

[https://www.bloomberg.com/billionaires/profiles/dustin-a-
mos...](https://www.bloomberg.com/billionaires/profiles/dustin-a-moskovitz/)

~~~
dbbk
Well, if other people will do it for you, why bother?

