How to build the next Trello and sell it for $425M or more • Hacker News Board

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

#81

Post by RockyMcNuts » Thu, Jan 26, 2017, 4:10 PM UTC

not sure if the takeaway is

- no way to improve a software product without increasing cost and complexity

- no way to protect your franchise with e.g., a lower cost entry-level product, market segmentation, a simplified freemium, etc.

- so the incumbent always has to buy up upstarts that threaten it

(which anyway you can't do once the market prices in that the upstart is going to kill you)

overall the blog post seems a bit cargo cult-y ... if there are lazy incumbents with overpriced, bloated products, yeah, you're doing God's work by disrupting them. But it's sometimes harder than it looks. Don't spend your $425m just yet.

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

#82

Post by sogen » Fri, Jan 27, 2017, 2:38 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #38

currywurst wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 d…

exactly, Atlassian bought the 'mini mills'

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

#83

Post by foobarian » Fri, Jan 27, 2017, 4:27 AM UTC

dsmithatx wrote: post #49

tptacek wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 d…

Yes I prefer the simple Trello over Jira but, only for my own personal projects. Trello is completely useless where I work and, is in no way, disruptive to the Enterprise. My point was that, if you can't figure out where a Kanban board is in Jira you should probably stick to Waterfall development. The author either didn't spend a few minutes looking at Jira or has no clue what the real difference between the two prod…

We experimented with Trello at our company before we bought into Jira, and the attempt fell flat on its face because of Trello simplicity. It's hard to describe the difference, but in a nutshell Jira was better at supporting collaboration, capturing knowledge, and supporting subtly different workflows that different teams required.

Based on that, it's kind of a neat move by Atlassian. Now they have an instant base of potential new Jira users. As these Trello customers grow and find out that their needs can no longer be met, now there is a clear upgrade path.

Presumably they will build some migration tools to make the upgrade seamless/convert the database of tickets. Or they could even build in cross-product integration so you can embed links to Jira tickets in Trello cards, or vice versa.

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

#84

Post by kennethh » Fri, Jan 27, 2017, 9:54 AM UTC

some-guy wrote: post #47

dollaholla wrote: post #18

Trello will never hold a candle to Jira for users with complex needs. Trello is deliberately simple while Jira is deliberately complex. Also the screenshots comparing a Sprint board to a Kanban board is like comparing apples and oranges.

I work in enterprise, and our use case for JIRA is so utterly complex to meet all of the requirements / standards that I cannot even imagine how a migration to Trello would work. I see this acquisition as both a) a smaller alternative to JIRA that is much easier to use (but fundamentally different) and b) a way to prevent Trello from growing into something bigger, more complex, and become a big competitor to Atlassia…

It is also a good marketing channel for Jira. If someone uses Trello and need something more complex the easy way is a board in Jira, perhaps make something which converts your board or 2 way sync. Marketing departments like Trello but would never use Jira. But after using Trello for a while they might be more comfortable using something more complex.