Why Trello Failed to Build a $1B Business • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Trello Failed to Build a $1B Business

#101

Post by rhizome » Sat, Mar 11, 2017, 12:39 AM UTC

officelineback wrote: post #68

andrewprock wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It feels like Trello was a HUUGE SUCCESS. Todo lists are notoriously hard, and target a very thin demographic; people who are trying to plan and track progress, i.e. middle managers or OCD contributors. Reaching $N million instead of $2.4N million, where N > 200 doesn't really feel like an obvious shortfall.

I agree with you, and others in this thread have lauded Trello's success. But the author of the page is angling for another interpretation, and I'm trying to figure out what he hopes to get out of it.

What do you think that interpretation is?

Re: Why Trello Failed to Build a $1B Business

#102

Post by rhizome » Sat, Mar 11, 2017, 12:40 AM UTC

devopsproject wrote: post #3

I look forward to the followup article: Why Trello Failed to Build a $1T+ Business.

"Why Star Wars is a terrible documentary."

Re: Why Trello Failed to Build a $1B Business

#103

Post by rhizome » Sat, Mar 11, 2017, 12:43 AM UTC

zero_shift wrote: post #6

Because it is a trivial todo app?

It is and it isn't. Simple is hard.

Re: Why Trello Failed to Build a $1B Business

#104

Post by bitexploder » Sat, Mar 11, 2017, 12:59 AM UTC

fiatjaf wrote: post #22

rco8786 wrote: post #13

What is this article, I can't. In what world do we live in where we paint a $425m exit in a bad light? > They built their servers on top of Node and used MongoDB to store data so that the web app would load really fast. I stopped reading here.

Trello is actually slow, because of that backend stack, I imagine. I thought the author was going to point to that.

Anecdotally, Trello is the most performant large scale web app I use.

From a user experience perspective it is freaky fast at updating other clients.

Re: Why Trello Failed to Build a $1B Business

#105

Post by AngeloAnolin » Sat, Mar 11, 2017, 2:41 AM UTC

Initial question that set me off upon reading the article is this: Was Trello actually aiming to get $1B off of it? I know more money makes sense for them and their investors, but the amount it already sold for is astounding to say the least.

Re: Why Trello Failed to Build a $1B Business

#106

Post by mbesto » Sat, Mar 11, 2017, 3:24 AM UTC

rhizome wrote: post #73

squeaky-clean wrote: post #64

"Let me tell you how you to build a $1B business. I've never done it, but take my word that I know how to do it better than someone who sold a half a billion dollar business." Like really, if your advice is useful, why hasn't the author built a $1B business? It seems like they missed the point that Trello became giant for what is essentially networked sticky-notes, were they even trying to become a $1B Business? Next…

Yeah, "failed" in the article title is a really douchey move.

But clearly people are reading it.

Welcome to clickbait.

Re: Why Trello Failed to Build a $1B Business

#107

Post by kdazzle » Sat, Mar 11, 2017, 3:44 AM UTC

I definitely don't remember all of the cards loading in ~250ms. Maybe like 7 seconds [1]?

Either way, failing to hit $1bn doesnt sound like much of a failure where I live outside the Valley. $400 some million is pretty respectable.

[1]: https://blog.fogcreek.com/we-spent-a-week-making-trello-boar...

Re: Why Trello Failed to Build a $1B Business

#108

Post by kdazzle » Sat, Mar 11, 2017, 3:52 AM UTC

fiatjaf wrote: post #22

rco8786 wrote: post #13

What is this article, I can't. In what world do we live in where we paint a $425m exit in a bad light? > They built their servers on top of Node and used MongoDB to store data so that the web app would load really fast. I stopped reading here.

Trello is actually slow, because of that backend stack, I imagine. I thought the author was going to point to that.

I'm with you, Trello was super slow for some larger projects that I used it with. I posted this in my own comment, but it makes sense here, too [1]. Not sure if the performance problems were related to the backend stack, though. My impression is that the api was just written really inefficiently.

[1]: https://blog.fogcreek.com/we-spent-a-week-making-trello-boar...

Re: Why Trello Failed to Build a $1B Business

#109

Post by rhizome » Sat, Mar 11, 2017, 4:01 AM UTC

jasode wrote: post #50

st3v3r wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So some VCs didn't get the crazy high returns they thought they would. So what? Calling Trello a failed outcome is still crazy. There are far, far more metrics, and I'd say far more important metrics to decide whether a company is a success than the amount of VC returns.

>Calling Trello a failed outcome is still crazy. Please read my previous comment charitably as I deliberately wrote about Trello using the "investment perspective" for discussion purposes only. It wasn't rendering absolutist judgement that Trello was a failed company. >So some VCs didn't get the crazy high returns That's only looking at one side. The other side is J Spolsky who accepted the $10m. To do that, he had t…

What is the basis for a $10M investment implying a $1B expectation?

Re: Why Trello Failed to Build a $1B Business

#110

Post by ethank » Sat, Mar 11, 2017, 5:58 AM UTC

I love Trello, but they never got enterprise sales down. SSO isn't federated, and the ACL system is leaky (much like Google Drive).

It also is too religiously adherent to the card metaphor (understandable) which works in most contexts but falls down in others where more traditional tools (Jira, Github) shine. We use Trello for a ton, but not mainline work.

I use it as a contact manager, todo list manager, and we use it a lot for card sorting/brainstorming and more "people" type stuff.