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How to build the next Trello and sell it for $425M or more

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Re: How to build the next Trello and sell it for $425M or more

#31

Post by onion2k »

dragonwriter wrote: post #30
onion2k wrote: post #27

No matter how good your JIRA-alternative is, persuading people to manage a project in a different way is exceptionally hard, and has very little to do with your tech. Project Management is seen as a science, and people don't like to deviate from known methodologies. My startup was in this space (managing projects, with a focus on requirements and change), and we failed because we underestimated how hard it would be t…

> Project Management is seen as a science, and people don't like to deviate from known methodologies. It's treated more as a set of religious rituals justified by received wisdom (which, to be fair, gives even less flexibility for change than if it were viewed as a science, in which case practices would be based on systematically gathered evidence and change in response to new evidence, rather than changing mostly wh…

Actually yes, that does seem to be a more appropriate analogy. A lot of the time people follow a system without testing whether or not it's working.

Re: How to build the next Trello and sell it for $425M or more

#32

Post by tptacek »

kennyma wrote: post #26

So much BS in this article but let's start with these 3: 1) "Products based on disruptive technologies are typically cheaper, simpler, smaller, and more convenient to use." How many more benefits can he put in that sentence? He's basically saying disruptive tech is typically cheaper or better. 2) "Make something the mainstream market doesn’t want now, but will want later." Trying to predict the future is just betting…

Since this article is basically a straightforward blog-sized recap of Clayton Christensen's _Innovator's Dilemma_, which is one of the more important business books in technology, it seems unlikely to me that the whole piece is "BS".

Re: How to build the next Trello and sell it for $425M or more

#33

Post by tptacek »

dsmithatx wrote: post #24

The picture comparison of boards is a joke. Why would you show the Trello board view compared to a list of tickets in a sprint? The author must not know how to use Jira and create a Kanban board. I actually prefer Trello over Jira but, I have to use Jira at work. Still I couldn't take this article seriously after seeing that picture comparison.

I feel like this comment literally makes the author's case for him.

Re: How to build the next Trello and sell it for $425M or more

#34

Post by tptacek »

shortstuffsushi wrote: post #3

Hmm. I don't think I can get behind the idea that Trello "disrupted" Atlassian, and certainly not that it would have killed them (no more than Medium killed WordPress...). At most, it may have killed Jira, but Trello seems to capture a slightly different market. Could there be a slimmed version of Jira that could fit in place of Trello? Sure, but I don't think Atlassian would have gone that route (thus the acquisitio…

One way to look at this is that companies go upmarket from a firm base of downmarket customers. There's a lot of uncertainty in upmarket enterprise sales: the engagements can involve RFPs or bakeoffs and involve dogfights that incumbents can lose to upstarts. A company can do really well in the high-end markets without ever having a stable, defensible customer base in it.

So if Trello grows to the point where it seriously threatens Jira's downmarket base, Atlassian has two problems: first, that Trello is sapping their downmarket revenue, but second, that Trello then has a beachhead from which to start attacking their high-end prospects as well.

"Killing Atlassian" is surely easier said than done, and probably hyperbolic. But buying Trello to prevent the emergence of a credible competitor to them across all their important markets? That sounds like a pretty plausible explanation for the valuation.

I'm a little skeptical, though, if only because I think Trello has a lot more potential than Jira (and of Jira's value proposition in the abstract). I think Atlassian just bought the next Microsoft Excel.

Re: How to build the next Trello and sell it for $425M or more

#35

Post by mywittyname »

kennyma wrote: post #26

So much BS in this article but let's start with these 3: 1) "Products based on disruptive technologies are typically cheaper, simpler, smaller, and more convenient to use." How many more benefits can he put in that sentence? He's basically saying disruptive tech is typically cheaper or better. 2) "Make something the mainstream market doesn’t want now, but will want later." Trying to predict the future is just betting…

> Trying to predict the future is just betting on luck.

I don't agree. Lots of people "invent" things well before they are mainstream products. Invent in the sense that they see the problem they want to solve and know what would solve it, usually the issue is they don't have the expertise to build a product.

In that way, predicting the future is easy. If you sat 100 people down and asked them to invent (read: conceptualize) 30 products, I'm sure you'd end up with a decent number of ideas that will be worth billions in a decade or two when somebody builds them.

Building the future is hard the hard part.

Re: How to build the next Trello and sell it for $425M or more

#36

Post by abandonliberty »

shortstuffsushi wrote: post #3

Hmm. I don't think I can get behind the idea that Trello "disrupted" Atlassian, and certainly not that it would have killed them (no more than Medium killed WordPress...). At most, it may have killed Jira, but Trello seems to capture a slightly different market. Could there be a slimmed version of Jira that could fit in place of Trello? Sure, but I don't think Atlassian would have gone that route (thus the acquisitio…

>seems to capture a slightly different market.

Yes. Trello is great for non-technical and/or non-JIRA users. It's great UX means you can throw almost any user at it.

It's so simple that people can abuse it to fulfill a variety of needs.

JIRA's upside is its downside: greater specificity - joined at the hip with complexity.

Re: How to build the next Trello and sell it for $425M or more

#37

Post by currywurst »

tptacek wrote: post #33
dsmithatx wrote: post #24

The picture comparison of boards is a joke. Why would you show the Trello board view compared to a list of tickets in a sprint? The author must not know how to use Jira and create a Kanban board. I actually prefer Trello over Jira but, I have to use Jira at work. Still I couldn't take this article seriously after seeing that picture comparison.

I feel like this comment literally makes the author's case for him.

Not really .. The boards are a very basic feature in Jira. It's like not knowing that there are drawing tools in PowerPoint :)

Re: How to build the next Trello and sell it for $425M or more

#38

Post by tptacek »

currywurst wrote: post #37
tptacek wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like this comment literally makes the author's case for him.

Not really .. The boards are a very basic feature in Jira. It's like not knowing that there are drawing tools in PowerPoint :)

That's the whole Innovator's Dilemma argument: simplistic, minimal versions of the value propositions of larger products, produced by upstarts, have an uncanny way of stealing the entire market from incumbents. The key thing you said was "I actually prefer Trello over Jira".

The reason that happens is that the incumbent --- along with their most vocal customers! --- is blinded to what 80% of the market wants by the demands of the high-end 20% of the market. Yes, Trello hasn't duplicated the entire Jira product. But it might not need to to capture 80% of the revenue of the market.

Re: How to build the next Trello and sell it for $425M or more

#40

Post by sago »

dollaholla wrote: post #19
curun1r wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sounds like you're using jira wrong. So are 90% of Jira's users. That's the point.

Jira used correctly will triumph over Trello used correctly any day of the week. But for the lazy with simple needs, sure use Trello.

> Jira used correctly will triumph over Trello used correctly any day of the week.

This is a beautifully expressed indictment of bad software. The tool defines what is correct, and users with a lower tolerance for effort, a lower investment in learning, different or more simple needs are incorrectly using it, or worse they are lazy.

I've seen this so often. A delivered piece of software is underused or used in a way the developers didn't intend, and it is their fault. Don't they know, if they used to software correctly it'd be awesome?

Or, put another way, our tool is the perfect solution for people who's needs are exactly what we thought they should be.

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