There are some interesting points in this article, but I can't help but feel that the author takes the final value of hundreds of millions of dollars as a given

There are some interesting points in this article, but I can't help but feel that the author takes the final value of hundreds of millions of dollars as a given. As a resut, there are several recommendations in this article that I can easily see having led to a lower valuation! > Trello could have created a stickier business product by making sure that it was so deeply integrated with other tools, teams couldn’t rip it out. But if they had focused on having even more integrations, maybe they wouldn't have been able to focus on creating simple features with broad appeal, or creating a snappy app, or they would have had to spend more money and pivot away from a robust free product. All of these things would have hurt the user base by ruining one of Trello's main value propositions: it is free and simple. I never would think about learning to use Asana for a personal project, but Trello is an easy sell to teammates for small/medium businesses and personal projects. It is even easy for one-person teams. If Trello wasn't free and easy, then they would just be another Asana competitor, and I can imagine them fizzling with no buyout, let alone an IPO. I think this sort of business case analysis can be useful, but even in hindsight, the consequences of various decisions are far from obvious.