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>> We need some kind of vaccine to combat it. > The vaccine is a startup that is 10x (or even just 2x) better than everyone else because they use private office

>> We need some kind of vaccine to combat it. > The vaccine is a startup that is 10x (or even just 2x) better than everyone else because they use private offices. At Trello everyone is either remote or has a private office. I'm not sure how to prove that they're 2x (I'd say it's too vague to be provable), but they've managed to do well without taking large amounts of investment, which speaks well of their productivity.

jasode 10y ago
>they've managed to do well I think you're inadvertently undermining your point. Trello wasn't profitable.[1] They were "cash-flow break even" which is also another way of saying they still had not earned enough "free cash flow" to pay back their past internal investments that got them where they currently are. Trello has private offices. Atlassian has open offices.[2] They are also profitable.[3] Atlassian was the one who bought Trello. Trello didn't buy Atlassian. Trello did not perform 2x better than Atlassian JIRA. (E.g. the ideal narrative would have been, "because Trello programmers have less interruptions than Atlassian programmers, their productivity was proven to be 2x superior and they made Atlassian JIRA obsolete.") If you want to change the hearts & minds of people like Mark Z, the Trello example is not a case study to use. [1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2016/05/23/trello-get-serious-about-big-businesses-as-it-passes-1-1-million-daily-users-and-triples-sales http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2016/05/23/trello-get... [2] http://blogs.gartner.com/tom_murphy/2012/02/25/atlassian-everyone-is-open-and-wallboarded/ http://blogs.gartner.com/tom_murphy/2012/02/25/atlassian-eve... [3] http://www.zdnet.com/article/atlassian-records-20m-profit-in-first-public-quarter/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/atlassian-records-20m-profit-in...
- jimbokun 10y ago
  Wouldn't you also need to include things like, time from founding, revenue per employee, growth rate, return on investment, etc. to evaluate whether Atlassian or Trello has been the more productive business?
  - yannickt 10y ago
    The GP's point still stands: closed offices _may_ make for more productive employees (for some classes of employees), but it is not obvious that they translate into a more productive _business_. Instead of using Trello, you could compare Atlassian against Fog Creek. Fog Creek was founded two years before Atlassian, and both companies are more or less in the same space - they make productivity tools for developers. And yet it's hard not to look at Atlassian as the more successful business so far.

jasode 10y ago

>they've managed to do well I think you're inadvertently undermining your point. Trello wasn't profitable.[1] They were "cash-flow break even" which is also another way of saying they still had not earned enough "free cash flow" to pay back their past internal investments that got them where they currently are. Trello has private offices. Atlassian has open offices.[2] They are also profitable.[3] Atlassian was the one who bought Trello. Trello didn't buy Atlassian. Trello did not perform 2x better than Atlassian JIRA. (E.g. the ideal narrative would have been, "because Trello programmers have less interruptions than Atlassian programmers, their productivity was proven to be 2x superior and they made Atlassian JIRA obsolete.") If you want to change the hearts & minds of people like Mark Z, the Trello example is not a case study to use. [1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2016/05/23/trello-get-serious-about-big-businesses-as-it-passes-1-1-million-daily-users-and-triples-sales http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2016/05/23/trello-get... [2] http://blogs.gartner.com/tom_murphy/2012/02/25/atlassian-everyone-is-open-and-wallboarded/ http://blogs.gartner.com/tom_murphy/2012/02/25/atlassian-eve... [3] http://www.zdnet.com/article/atlassian-records-20m-profit-in-first-public-quarter/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/atlassian-records-20m-profit-in...

jimbokun 10y ago
Wouldn't you also need to include things like, time from founding, revenue per employee, growth rate, return on investment, etc. to evaluate whether Atlassian or Trello has been the more productive business?
- yannickt 10y ago
  The GP's point still stands: closed offices _may_ make for more productive employees (for some classes of employees), but it is not obvious that they translate into a more productive _business_. Instead of using Trello, you could compare Atlassian against Fog Creek. Fog Creek was founded two years before Atlassian, and both companies are more or less in the same space - they make productivity tools for developers. And yet it's hard not to look at Atlassian as the more successful business so far.