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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

#111

Post by cwilson »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #83
crazypyro wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

We implemented Trello + Github sync with Waffle.io and it was as close to perfect we could get without spending a bunch of time writing our own code to do it. It still wasn't perfect however and I spent a lot of time making sure things were in-sync, which on a normal schedule wasn't a huge deal, but when fires popped up would become a very small priority.

I'm surprised no one has built a better way to do this. We tried syncing with Zapier first (a company I absolutely love), but if I recall correctly it was a one-way sync, and we needed it to go both ways.

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

#112

Post by jimbokun »

doorhammer wrote: post #21
andr3a wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's not a simple idea, it's a deep idea refined over decades and implemented simply. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban

I think it's simple in the "simple made easy" kind of way that Rich Hickey has spoken about [1]. I think something can be deep, refined, and simple. I'd also say that those are my favorite concepts. I guess it's what I think of when I use the word 'elegant'. It's really clean and straight-forward to use, but the simple components provide a lot of flexibility and power, while being easy to teach someone. I use trello…

"Trello at its core is just a list of lists. Very simple concept."

So it's a Lisp!

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

#113

Post by te »

mhp wrote: post #57
moron4hire wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last time I worked at a company that did that, it was to dump their debts on the old company and scurry off with the more promising projects so they could raise more funding with the new company.

I'm pretty sure the 355 regs prevent you from doing something like that (not that you couldn't just do it anyway, but that you might get caught if you are trying to do something shady). In our case, we didn't want to give up ownership in Fog Creek (which is profitable) and the investors were happier with a separate entity.

How do the option holders in the parent capture their share of the equity in the spinco in a transaction like this?

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

#114

Post by krallja »

ionforce wrote: post #66
weavie wrote: post #6

It's incredible how such a simple idea could become so big. I'm sat here trying to think up some grand scheme that's going to make me my millions. Its a great lesson that really all I need is a simple idea. The key is in the execution. Take that simple idea and develop (and market) it to perfection.

I think the best ideas start with dog fooding, if at all possible. Notice a trend in the software that FogCreek makes? All easily dog foodable.

Dog fooding our own software is one of our greatest strengths: We use FogBugz and Trello to build Kiln, Trello is built from Kiln and Trello. Fogbugz is built from Kiln and FogBugz. (And Joel On Software is built with CityDesk, may it rest in peace.)

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

#115

Post by rgovind »

weavie wrote: post #6

It's incredible how such a simple idea could become so big. I'm sat here trying to think up some grand scheme that's going to make me my millions. Its a great lesson that really all I need is a simple idea. The key is in the execution. Take that simple idea and develop (and market) it to perfection.

Once in a while in HN you see the question, "what side projects are making you passive money?". From my understanding, most of them are simple SAAS ideas fetching 200-300k. Eg, patio's appointment remainder app.

Instead of saying "I need a simple idea"...I think you should phrase it as "what is a simple pain point that I can solve"

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

#116

Post by k-mcgrady »

Great news, congratulations. I'm interested to hear what people think about it's chance of survival now. As part of Fog Creek they started monetising Trello and had a chance of building a long-term business. Now with the investment there is greater risk they will end up acquired and shut down. On all the Trello threads here people have always been very worried about that scenario.

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

#117

Post by Havvy »

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…

His essays were collected into a book. One copy of the book is in the Fort Vancouver Regional Library system. Also, I somehow managed to find and read his entire blog a couple years ago. His writing is not completely lost in time.
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