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As far as I recall (and I've been a Trello user nearly since it was released), it wasn't necessarily Fog Creek's intention to build a huge monetized business ou

As far as I recall (and I've been a Trello user nearly since it was released), it wasn't necessarily Fog Creek's intention to build a huge monetized business out of Trello. In fact, at some point, users started to get anxious that Trello was free and actually WANTED to throw money at the company. I suppose part of that was the perception that if you're paying for it, it will be more likely to survive and won't go away? This was what spurred Trello to create an offering of something (via Trello Gold) - simply so people could pay for something they liked and feel good about themselves, and get something in return. Actually, I don't know this for sure, but I think they genuinely built Trello because it was a tool that they really felt should exist, and wanted to make it work as inexpensively as they could and support as many as they could, while staying permanently free. I think Trello was an experiment for them, one which succeeded at gaining the huge userbase with a simple tool (which I believe was their goal). Once the realization that the huge userbase itself was valuable, it was inevitable that someone would buy it out. Atlassian wanted to be associated with that huge userbase, to help with Jira... maybe or maybe not to actually bring Trello into the fold with their existing products. In any case, Trello is a huge accomplishment, before the buyout, and as a business, even moreso afterwards. I was thinking about building (and actually working on) something like Trello before it existed, but I didn't necessarily think the world needed something so simple. I would have been quite happy with this result!!! They made an absolute ton of users (self included) very happy with the results of their labor, and now they have a wonderful reward from it. Trello did not fail to build a $1B+ business. Trello succeeded at building a $425M business through good faith and hard work. Bravo.

guelo 10y ago
That's ridiculous, every businesses wants to grow and make more money. In their ideal world I'm sure Trello's management would have preferred to buy Atlassian than the other way around. The article does a reasonable job with 20/20 hindsight at musing on how they might have achieved that.
- graton 10y ago
  "every business"? I'm thinking of Craigslist, they don't seem that interested in making more money.
- pavel_lishin 10y ago
  > That's ridiculous, every businesses wants to grow and make more money. But not every person wants their business to grow. "Feed me venture capital, Seymour..."
  - guelo 10y ago
    They built an authentic artisanal lifestyle $425 million business. They would never think of doing anything so crass as to build a billion dollar business.
wslh 10y ago
I don't buy that narrative since Trello received $ 10M in funding [1] and you must convince investors to put that sum of money. [1] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/trello#/entity https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/trello#/entity
- cromulent 10y ago
  True, but they did say that they did that to accelerate, to spin it off and let it grow on its own faster. It was profitable at the time. https://techcrunch.com/2014/07/24/trello-series-a/ https://techcrunch.com/2014/07/24/trello-series-a/
- RockyMcNuts 10y ago
  wait, WHAT? if the investors got 16% of the company they got $80m, a ~8x return in 3 years. And more likely they did better. Twitter did a series C, raised $17.4m at $104m valuation, and it was a pretty hot company to give up a bit less than 17%. A great venture fund gets a unicorn, a legendary one gets two. A 1/2 unicorn that maybe returned most if not the entire fund is a great outcome. If 50% of the investments did that well it's a top-tier fund. People are a little demanding if only decacorns are seen as wins. It's like expecting your team to win the World Series every year.
montecore 10y ago
Agreed. Furthermore, Atlassian is a 5 billion dollar business that Trello is now helping to build.

guelo 10y ago

That's ridiculous, every businesses wants to grow and make more money. In their ideal world I'm sure Trello's management would have preferred to buy Atlassian than the other way around. The article does a reasonable job with 20/20 hindsight at musing on how they might have achieved that.

graton 10y ago
"every business"? I'm thinking of Craigslist, they don't seem that interested in making more money.
pavel_lishin 10y ago
> That's ridiculous, every businesses wants to grow and make more money. But not every person wants their business to grow. "Feed me venture capital, Seymour..."
- guelo 10y ago
  They built an authentic artisanal lifestyle $425 million business. They would never think of doing anything so crass as to build a billion dollar business.

wslh 10y ago

I don't buy that narrative since Trello received $ 10M in funding [1] and you must convince investors to put that sum of money. [1] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/trello#/entity https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/trello#/entity

cromulent 10y ago
True, but they did say that they did that to accelerate, to spin it off and let it grow on its own faster. It was profitable at the time. https://techcrunch.com/2014/07/24/trello-series-a/ https://techcrunch.com/2014/07/24/trello-series-a/
RockyMcNuts 10y ago
wait, WHAT? if the investors got 16% of the company they got $80m, a ~8x return in 3 years. And more likely they did better. Twitter did a series C, raised $17.4m at $104m valuation, and it was a pretty hot company to give up a bit less than 17%. A great venture fund gets a unicorn, a legendary one gets two. A 1/2 unicorn that maybe returned most if not the entire fund is a great outcome. If 50% of the investments did that well it's a top-tier fund. People are a little demanding if only decacorns are seen as wins. It's like expecting your team to win the World Series every year.

montecore 10y ago

Agreed. Furthermore, Atlassian is a 5 billion dollar business that Trello is now helping to build.