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Asana raises $50M at a $1.5B valuation
- pmalynin 8y ago>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.
- sealthedeal 8y agoI still dont quite understand what that means
- aportnoy 8y ago> 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 8y agoAs 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.
- umeshunni 8y agoTechCruch isn't exactly known for its quality journalism
- why-el 8y agoThis is a wild guess, but mentioning Frankfurt specifically simplifies a lot of the discussions one might have with European customers, especially around GDPR and other regulations. Not sure the value of mentioning AWS though, but it does has a very good presence in Frankfurt.
- derefr 8y ago"AWS-based data center" reminds me of the way the term "data room" is used in business bookkeeping. A bunch of print-outs in a secure part of the building representing your business's books, is a "physical data room." But a bunch of digital files in a secure part of a server, if those are also a representation of your business's books, is referred to as a "virtual data room." In a similar sense, an AWS VPC is a "virtual data center."
- joejerryronnie 8y agoI just utilized my SMTP-based global communications network.
- jermaustin1 8y agoTo me, $50M seems like a tiny amount of raise for such a high valuation. Is this normal?
- aviv 8y agoSomebody needed to park money somewhere.
- gammateam 8y agoThey'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"
- wuliwong 8y agoI was wondering the same thing.
- trhway 8y agoThey may not need those money and agreed to take them only at that high valuation. There have been several pretty similar deals in the last couple of years. It's a win-win for both sides. The company gets a lot of financial power and pushes the sales up, that drives valuation up - in a year or 2 from the current 100M+ ARR they will be doing 300M and either IPO at 4B or 11th hour acquisition at 6-8B.
- rs86 8y agoYep, it is a weird deal. Any company worth 1,5bn should be able to generate cash or raise debt instead of going for expensive equity. Looks like the valuation is well out of sync with their actual financial health.
- m52go 8y agoSo. 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 8y agoIf 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 8y agoOh 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.
- tfha 8y agoThe investors probably just want a slice of Asana, and feel like $1.5b is a good price
- askafriend 8y agoWhy 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?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- albertgoeswoof 8y agoWhat does early employee liquidity mean, and how is it beneficial to the investors?
- uptownfunk 8y agoWell, hopefully they’ll use these funds to improve the product..
- haaen 8y agoIn 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-manifest-destiny https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/10/sam-altmans-ma...
- keeptrying 8y agoTo nab a $1.5B valuation you sometimes have to raise $50M
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- ScotterC 8y agoI 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.
- bduerst 8y agoAs an employee, do you have an equity package? If so, are you worried at all that these new unicorn-status investors will have priority pay-out over your equity if the company doesn't have a $1.5B exit?
- ScotterC 8y agoNot worried at all. Our value of transparency internally extends to this raise as well. Yes employees have equity packages and we're well informed of what the terms of this raise are, the dilution and our leadership team has worked hard to get employee-friendly terms. We believe in this because our team members are the main function for Asana to grow and hit these expectations so it must be a trusting and win-win partnership in order for it to last.
- AWSInGermany 8y agoIf Asana values transparency internally, then why are employees not told their pay bands as well as given a level such as senior engineer? I know engineers who have left because they could not tell if they had room to grow salary wise. The only way they could find their market rate was by interviewing at other companies.
- wakamoleguy 8y agoEx-Asana here. Asana has written about the lack of leveled titles in the past[0]. I believe the use of titles is a separate issue to pay transparency. At around the same time, there was an effort to improve the transparency in pay bands. I have since left (for unrelated reasons), and so I cannot definitively speak to whether that was successful. [0] https://blog.asana.com/2017/03/job-titles-asana/ https://blog.asana.com/2017/03/job-titles-asana/
- revskill 8y agoI prefer the original Asana color scheme (bluish) rather than current color scheme (redish).
- misiti3780 8y agoAm I the only one that has tried asana multiple times and given up after each major iteration?
- desireco42 8y agoNope. And after several times I am using it now and looking to switch. It just isn't working well. Empty tasks get generated, it takes 3 clicks to remove them for example. It is not as easy to organize work.
- ummonk 8y agoYou can click in their text field and press delete to remove them. The list view works sort of like a document, with each line being a task title.
- wj 8y agoTab + backspace to delete those empty tasks that are created when you hit enter. I love Asana though. I put everything in there and have it hooked up to Alexa. The only downside is that I put everything in there. I haven't had a morning email with less than 30 tasks in over a year.
- dawhizkid 8y agoI also don't get it and have not been on a team where it's been successfully used. But hey it looks like a great place to work.
- Beardeddragon 8y agoTeam uses Asana and hates it. Agree with them. Pretty much a half-wit beta tool.
- jillesvangurp 8y agoI'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 8y agoI 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
- mylons 8y agoweekend project
- pscarey 8y agoIt'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/
- ykevinator 8y agoLove Asana, not sure it's a viable business (like trello) but may be a good acquisition (like trello)
- orliesaurus 8y agoI 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?
- pspeter3 8y agoRelevant Dustin Moskovitz tweet about valuation vs revenue https://twitter.com/moskov/status/1068184742762229761 https://twitter.com/moskov/status/1068184742762229761
- olivermarks 8y agoprobably worth noting Moscovitz is worth 9.1 billion USD and Rosenstein 150 million....
- Jorge1o1 8y agoSorry. 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
- gregggggsz87 8y agoDustin 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-moskovitz/ https://www.bloomberg.com/billionaires/profiles/dustin-a-mos...
- dbbk 8y agoWell, if other people will do it for you, why bother?
- gregggggsz87 8y agoBecause you give up equity, that's why. He is worth 10,200 million. Surely he could have provided 50 of his 10,200 to Asana instead of giving that equity to others. All the funding Asana needs is within his means to provide and even if the company were to fail he would still be a billionaire. So, back to my original question. Why doesn't he self-fund?
- gregggggsz87 8y agoDustin Moskovitz (co-founder of Facebook and founder of Asana) is worth 10.2 billion. Why doesn't he self-fund Asana?
- SirensOfTitan 8y agoEvery 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 8y agoSuper fast on my Macbook Pro. Might I suggest using Nativefier?
- usaphp 8y agoI 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 8y agoUsing Nativefier helps most of the issues you have with there being no app.
- ForrestN 8y agoThe 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.
- notjustanymike 8y agoAh 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.
- JonoBB 8y agoAnd 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 8y agoHa! 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.
- dasil003 8y agoI 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.
- Kaveren 8y agoTried 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.
- lowercased 8y ago> What exactly they need $50m for, I'm not quite sure. To justify a $1.5B valuation.
- munchbunny 8y agoOut of curiosity, how large are the teams/projects that you're trying to manage? In my experience, that directly correlates with the "enterpriseyness" of the project management software you use.
- wpietri 8y ago> somehow struggle to get their core product right, it's like it lacks vision My theory here is that todo/work tracking apps are always doomed to end up like this. The problem is that we use the same words to talk about something that varies greatly from person to person, and even more so from organization to organization. The upshot is that a company will start out with a strong vision, find a narrow segment of users who work perfectly in line with that vision, and make them happy. But then they want to expand, so they start adding features and options that let others groups find a way to work using the tool. Eventually either the tool stops expanding or feature creep and death-of-a-thousand-cuts changes make it an all-things-to-everyone nightmare (hi, Jira!). Personally, I use Kanban Flow, which is very focused on a Kanban style approach. By the name it's obvious they're targeting a very specific niche. Since I happen to be in that niche, I love it. But I wouldn't recommend it to all comers, because for a lot of people it won't match their tasks or how their brain works.
- wuliwong 8y agoI 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.
- kbos87 8y agoI 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.
- mattbillenstein 8y agoIs 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?
- cdnsteve 8y agoA 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?
- purplezooey 8y agoOne chicken and two carne asana, please
- onetimemanytime 8y agoQuestion: 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?
- easytiger 8y ago> The startup, whose products are used by millions of free and paying users, I find it hard to believe, if im honest.