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Trello Spins Out of Fog Creek With $10.3M

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Re: Trello Spins Out of Fog Creek With $10.3M

#81

Post by chrisweekly »

uniclaude wrote: post #33

That's great! Trello is one of those apps that you can dismiss too fast because you think it doesn't do enough, but which to come back to because everything else is too complex. I've been using it extensively, and it has almost gone viral around me. As in, every time someone needs to manage a project, I hear "Hey, what was this simple project management software you told me you're using for everything you do?", and t…

At least as of mid-2012, HubSpot was using Trello exclusively for project tracking. Even then, Trello did more than enough to meet their needs. If you think you need a more complicated tool, you might want to rethink your process and workflow. /$.02

Re: Trello Spins Out of Fog Creek With $10.3M

#82

Post by 2arrs2ells »

gecko wrote: post #67
jhonovich wrote: post #47

So Trello is not currently profitably? "Fog Creek is profitable and could afford to fund Trello development to profitability." Given its growth rate and presumably low sales / marketing expenses, it would seem to be easy for them to be profitable. What is their revenue? There's 4.5 million 'members' though less than 25% have used it in the last 28 days, from what the chart shows http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/20…

I am no longer a Fog Creek employee (I left to join an education startup a bit ago), so this is not an official opinion, but anyway: Joel wants Trello to grow a lot faster than Fog Creek could bootstrap it. In my personal opinion, a big reason why Copilot and Kiln never quite made it was that we didn't have the developer resources to dominate the market when we were in a good position to do so. Because we insisted on…

Joel thinks Trello is an Amazon.com, not a Ben & Jerry's.

(http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000056.html)

Re: Trello Spins Out of Fog Creek With $10.3M

#83

Post by bryanlarsen »

crazypyro wrote: post #51
JunkDNA wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My team tried it several times over the first 1 - 2 years it was out. I have not tried it recently. That said, at that time, we could never get it to stick. It was good for high level stuff, but like all project management software, we ended up constantly working to keep it in sync with reality. This was especially acute when using github because for any stuff that was code-related, we were basically duplicating tick…

Sems like a potential opportunity for either Trello, or a third party?, to provide an easy way of combining github issues/commits with Trello lists.

https://waffle.io/

Re: Trello Spins Out of Fog Creek With $10.3M

#84

Post by juvoni »

Trello's simplicity and ease of use almost makes you feel like you're using pen and paper and that's truly powerful and why so many people can learn how to use it with so little onboarding.

Trello has a good balance of blending to your workflow and having your workflow blend to it.

I was even able to find a clever way to use trello to manage all of my personal reading: http://juvoni.com/trello-book-reading-management/

Re: Trello Spins Out of Fog Creek With $10.3M

#85

Post by fencepost »

DigitalJack wrote: post #72

I like trello and use it for personal stuff occasionally, but the work I do just can't be hosted somewhere else. Legally. So I hate web apps and cloud this, cloud that, mostly because they are no good to me. The type of work I do would change before the need for controlled local hosting will--in other words it might be that mine line of work will become obsolete or transform so dramatically that the requirement of co…

Since they're apparently planning paid Business and Enterprise versions, I wouldn't be surprised to see at least one of those be a fully in-house solution. If they're not letting people do their own installs they may follow the path of the Google Search Appliance.

On the other hand, it may not be affordable depending on the size of your shop, but that's a different matter.

Re: Trello Spins Out of Fog Creek With $10.3M

#86

Post by revorad »

petenixey wrote: post #61
johnyzee wrote: post #53

Cool to see Fog Creek succeed like this. I've been following Joel for almost fifteen years (the now defunct Fog Creek message boards were some of the best on the internet for a couple of years). From the beginning Joel made a simple assertion: Hire great people, give them a great environment, then sit back and watch them kick ass. He said this before all of this became conventional industry wisdom (and probably playe…

I agree. It's so strange now that I will often make references to Joel or his essays in talks and no-one will know who I'm talking about. I always have to explain that back in the day there were two big software essayists - PG and Joel. No youngsters knows Joel's stuff now - the internet's great at getting you today's news, yesterday's tends to get lost underfoot. Joel if you're listening please come back to blogging…

Joel is a class act. He spoke at YC's Startup School, which brings out his unique perspective - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPJf8KrvJXU

Re: Trello Spins Out of Fog Creek With $10.3M

#87

Post by afarrell »

petenixey wrote: post #61
johnyzee wrote: post #53

Cool to see Fog Creek succeed like this. I've been following Joel for almost fifteen years (the now defunct Fog Creek message boards were some of the best on the internet for a couple of years). From the beginning Joel made a simple assertion: Hire great people, give them a great environment, then sit back and watch them kick ass. He said this before all of this became conventional industry wisdom (and probably playe…

I agree. It's so strange now that I will often make references to Joel or his essays in talks and no-one will know who I'm talking about. I always have to explain that back in the day there were two big software essayists - PG and Joel. No youngsters knows Joel's stuff now - the internet's great at getting you today's news, yesterday's tends to get lost underfoot. Joel if you're listening please come back to blogging…

Youngster (age 24) here. I'm pretty sure I've read all of Joel's stuff.

Re: Trello Spins Out of Fog Creek With $10.3M

#89

Post by JunkDNA »

crazypyro wrote: post #51
JunkDNA wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My team tried it several times over the first 1 - 2 years it was out. I have not tried it recently. That said, at that time, we could never get it to stick. It was good for high level stuff, but like all project management software, we ended up constantly working to keep it in sync with reality. This was especially acute when using github because for any stuff that was code-related, we were basically duplicating tick…

Sems like a potential opportunity for either Trello, or a third party?, to provide an easy way of combining github issues/commits with Trello lists.

I definitely gave this some thought, I think it's not so straightforward though. There is a bit of an impedance mismatch between the things that a bug tracking system emphasizes and captures and the things a project management system captures. Simply porting bugs over isn't a clean solution and can lead to confusion among non-developers when the bugs are highly technical. Github makes it especially hard because there is no support for dependencies so you can't roll up a bunch of individual technical tasks under one umbrella without lots of extra effort.

To be clear: while I can describe the problem, I honestly don't have any ideas what the most elegant or clean solution is. I have never found a satisfactory solution. I end up keeping lots of stuff in my head and writing summary emails.

Re: Trello Spins Out of Fog Creek With $10.3M

#90

Post by chillingeffect »

filmgirlcw wrote: post #76

I love Trello. We use it as our editorial workflow board at Mashable (meaning it is where stories live from assignment (or sometimes conception) to the various editing/publishing phases. We use it to visually see what is publishing next, to see embargos or scheduled posts for different areas and more importantly, to see what everyone else is working on. To me, that's the hallmark of a good tool: when it can be used i…

Me, too. We started using it and it pretty much made software management as simple as managing a McDonalds. I simply put in orders for code into Trello and watch as the items move from left to right. Then, we just booted everyone who wasn't finishing during their shift so we're running lean and mean. I can't believe people used to think of writing software as a "craft," and it's frustrating to me that it took so long for people to realize it, but I guess this is kind of like the iPhone of software dev.
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