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Open letter to Atlassian: Trello are an amazing team and an amazing product, and what makes the product so amazing is how domain-agnostic it is. They refuse at

Open letter to Atlassian: Trello are an amazing team and an amazing product, and what makes the product so amazing is how domain-agnostic it is. They refuse at all costs to add any feature that helps use Trello in one specific way over others (e.g. lists = stages in task lifetime, cards = tasks; lists = assigned people, cards = tasks; lists = dates, cards = events, ...), and that made Trello equally useful as a Kanban board, a CRM, or for a beer microbrewery tracking its different barrels and the stages of brewing they are at. The best thing about Trello is when you start organizing your board one way, then organically drift towards a more natural way to organize them, sometimes without noticing as you do. Trello is for processes that you're not sure yet about the right way to manage. Atlassian is all about development team collaboration. Trello can be used for that, but not anymore than it can be used for brewing beer. Trello shines when you don't know in advance how you will want to manage a project. If Trello became a dev collaboratin tool, I would stop using it for dev collaboration because there are better specialized solutions for that. Keep Trello general. Please.

athenot 10y ago
I think Atlassian is indeed acquiring Trello to fit it in with the rest of their suite. This is probably going to be done to the detriment of the other use cases. On the bright side, this might pave the way for a new product in this space, or some open-source tools which replicate the same basic funtionality.
- dmcginty 10y ago
  Open source alternatives are already out there. Wekan is one of the more popular ones. I'm not sure if it has all of the features of Trello as I haven't used Trello extensively. https://github.com/wekan/wekan https://github.com/wekan/wekan
  - iffycan 10y ago
    It misses a few of Trello's features (including keyboard shortcuts and checklists) but it's close.
    - tbrock 10y ago
      I'm not atlassians CEO but I'd like to think it would be cheaper to build keyboard shortcuts and checklists than to buy Trello. Those features should take at most a month and cost at most $25k to build. Yes there are other things that make Trello stand out but I don't see a justification for this purchase if not just to hire the team.
  - tbrock 10y ago
    They already have a closed source alternative built into JIRA.
  - wowtip 10y ago
    Looking at the screenshot it looks more like a ripoff than an alternative. I am an open source advocate in almost everything, but that kind of ripping of / stealing ideas leave a bad taste.
arielm 10y ago
I completely agree with the sentiment, but my gut says this acquisition isn't about Trello becoming a part of Atlassian but rather Atlassian trying to venture away from their set of dev tools. Why, you ask? As a recently public company Atlassian knows it'll need to grow beyond developers if they want to continue growing at a healthy rate, and Trello offers that exactly. I believe that's why they paid such a hefty price for it. It just wouldn't make sense to throw away all those users...
- iagooar 10y ago
  > As a recently public company Atlassian knows it'll need to grow beyond developers Why is that? Why does a company that is good at something NEED to expand beyond their area of expertise? Is is just me who sees this as American Capitalism™? Wouldn't it be better to try to make their products excellent and attract the many developers who are not using their suite? Why the always constant push to grow at any cost? I'm saying this as someone who has been using Atlassian products for a while. They seem to focus on JIRA and Confluence only, and letting all the other products be 2nd or even 3rd class citizens. Why expand if you cannot keep the software that you already own up to date?
  - oblio 10y ago
    They're public, they need to make money for shareholders.
    - pbecotte 10y ago
      The set of shareholders who would prefer a company return profits / invest in existing products vs risky investments in non-core-competency areas is certainly not empty. If I wanted to invest in a dogfood company I can- I invest in Atlassian because they make developer tools.
      - arielm 10y ago
        > risky investments in non-core-competency I disagree with this completely. Atlassian is in the business of collaboration tools. They've done that for developers, but it doesn't mean they're only capable of making developer tools. Also, where's the risk here? Other than the inflated price I don't see any risk. Trello isn't just an idea but rather a real product with a massive team and a ton of users who love it. They've iterated on their platform enough so I imagine many of both the technical and experience aspects are polished enough. What am I missing?
mhp 10y ago
Thank you for the kind words. I promise you Atlassian understands why Trello is so successful. You described Trello's core strength perfectly - and this one of the reasons they are committed to keeping it as a standalone service. (disclaimer: I'm the CEO of Trello)
- runnr_az 10y ago
  Hey... congrats, dude.
- winterweather 10y ago
  I wonder what founders who have sold their companies for a significant amount end up doing in the days after. It would be really interesting to know what's going on in your head right now.
  - ConfuciusSay02 10y ago
    You'd have to check his "Current Thoughts" Trello list :p
  - mhp 10y ago
    omg, I'm going to have a boss! I'll be working at Atlassian. Lots of stuff to still do in the future to reach our (and my) goals. And now we're going to have a lot more fuel for our engines to get there.
    - rushabh 10y ago
      SAAS founder here. Firstly congrats on such a great exit, you and your team certainly deserve it! I would love to know what "more fuel for our engines means"? How much cash you are you looking to burn? From most listed SAAS companies spend upward 80% on sales and marketing. Are you planning to do more enterprise sales?
      - cookiecaper 10y ago
        I'm sure it doesn't mean anything. He just has to sound excited to keep everyone happy. I obviously have no idea how Trello is structured and whether Michael has any real ownership or not, given its unique history, but in the case of most SaaS founders, when their golden handcuffs expire, they call in rich, because duh, why wouldn't they? Especially after watching the bureaucracy at the acquirer kill their baby.
newobj 10y ago
Please stop using this narcissistic and overwrought "open letter" rhetorical device. It has none of the intended pith. All you had to do was write "I hope Atlassian keeps Trello general." instead of "Keep Trello general. Please."
nscalf 10y ago
This was put perfectly. I didn't realize that this was the reason I used Trello to organize much of my life until I read this. I would find it a bit confusing if they started making this more developer exclusive since they already have their Jira software, which already fills that role. I'm hesitantly optimistic that they see Trello for what it is.
rebelidealist 10y ago
Have you found that non-techy people are learning Markdown to use on trello?
- SonOfLilit 10y ago
  No, they just use plaintext.

athenot 10y ago

I think Atlassian is indeed acquiring Trello to fit it in with the rest of their suite. This is probably going to be done to the detriment of the other use cases. On the bright side, this might pave the way for a new product in this space, or some open-source tools which replicate the same basic funtionality.

dmcginty 10y ago
Open source alternatives are already out there. Wekan is one of the more popular ones. I'm not sure if it has all of the features of Trello as I haven't used Trello extensively. https://github.com/wekan/wekan https://github.com/wekan/wekan
- iffycan 10y ago
  It misses a few of Trello's features (including keyboard shortcuts and checklists) but it's close.
  - tbrock 10y ago
    I'm not atlassians CEO but I'd like to think it would be cheaper to build keyboard shortcuts and checklists than to buy Trello. Those features should take at most a month and cost at most $25k to build. Yes there are other things that make Trello stand out but I don't see a justification for this purchase if not just to hire the team.
- tbrock 10y ago
  They already have a closed source alternative built into JIRA.
- wowtip 10y ago
  Looking at the screenshot it looks more like a ripoff than an alternative. I am an open source advocate in almost everything, but that kind of ripping of / stealing ideas leave a bad taste.

arielm 10y ago

I completely agree with the sentiment, but my gut says this acquisition isn't about Trello becoming a part of Atlassian but rather Atlassian trying to venture away from their set of dev tools. Why, you ask? As a recently public company Atlassian knows it'll need to grow beyond developers if they want to continue growing at a healthy rate, and Trello offers that exactly. I believe that's why they paid such a hefty price for it. It just wouldn't make sense to throw away all those users...

iagooar 10y ago
> As a recently public company Atlassian knows it'll need to grow beyond developers Why is that? Why does a company that is good at something NEED to expand beyond their area of expertise? Is is just me who sees this as American Capitalism™? Wouldn't it be better to try to make their products excellent and attract the many developers who are not using their suite? Why the always constant push to grow at any cost? I'm saying this as someone who has been using Atlassian products for a while. They seem to focus on JIRA and Confluence only, and letting all the other products be 2nd or even 3rd class citizens. Why expand if you cannot keep the software that you already own up to date?
- oblio 10y ago
  They're public, they need to make money for shareholders.
  - pbecotte 10y ago
    The set of shareholders who would prefer a company return profits / invest in existing products vs risky investments in non-core-competency areas is certainly not empty. If I wanted to invest in a dogfood company I can- I invest in Atlassian because they make developer tools.
    - arielm 10y ago
      > risky investments in non-core-competency I disagree with this completely. Atlassian is in the business of collaboration tools. They've done that for developers, but it doesn't mean they're only capable of making developer tools. Also, where's the risk here? Other than the inflated price I don't see any risk. Trello isn't just an idea but rather a real product with a massive team and a ton of users who love it. They've iterated on their platform enough so I imagine many of both the technical and experience aspects are polished enough. What am I missing?

mhp 10y ago

Thank you for the kind words. I promise you Atlassian understands why Trello is so successful. You described Trello's core strength perfectly - and this one of the reasons they are committed to keeping it as a standalone service. (disclaimer: I'm the CEO of Trello)

runnr_az 10y ago
Hey... congrats, dude.
winterweather 10y ago
I wonder what founders who have sold their companies for a significant amount end up doing in the days after. It would be really interesting to know what's going on in your head right now.
- ConfuciusSay02 10y ago
  You'd have to check his "Current Thoughts" Trello list :p
- mhp 10y ago
  omg, I'm going to have a boss! I'll be working at Atlassian. Lots of stuff to still do in the future to reach our (and my) goals. And now we're going to have a lot more fuel for our engines to get there.
  - rushabh 10y ago
    SAAS founder here. Firstly congrats on such a great exit, you and your team certainly deserve it! I would love to know what "more fuel for our engines means"? How much cash you are you looking to burn? From most listed SAAS companies spend upward 80% on sales and marketing. Are you planning to do more enterprise sales?
    - cookiecaper 10y ago
      I'm sure it doesn't mean anything. He just has to sound excited to keep everyone happy. I obviously have no idea how Trello is structured and whether Michael has any real ownership or not, given its unique history, but in the case of most SaaS founders, when their golden handcuffs expire, they call in rich, because duh, why wouldn't they? Especially after watching the bureaucracy at the acquirer kill their baby.

newobj 10y ago

Please stop using this narcissistic and overwrought "open letter" rhetorical device. It has none of the intended pith. All you had to do was write "I hope Atlassian keeps Trello general." instead of "Keep Trello general. Please."

nscalf 10y ago

This was put perfectly. I didn't realize that this was the reason I used Trello to organize much of my life until I read this. I would find it a bit confusing if they started making this more developer exclusive since they already have their Jira software, which already fills that role. I'm hesitantly optimistic that they see Trello for what it is.

rebelidealist 10y ago

Have you found that non-techy people are learning Markdown to use on trello?

SonOfLilit 10y ago
No, they just use plaintext.