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Why Trello Failed to Build a $1B Business

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

#91

Post by jacquesm »

williamstein wrote: post #27

I wish the author of such posts would start with a disclaimer about whether or not they have ever built a "$1B+ business". I did some quick searches, and it looks like the author in this case has tried several times (but I guess not yet come close).

It would be more interest to read too, why 'I' failed to make a $1B+ business might have some useful lessons in it, whereas whether Trello failed at anything at all depends to a high degree on what they were trying to accomplish. By any measure (except, perhaps the author's) Trello is a huge success.

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

#92

Post by guelo »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #77
guelo wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's ridiculous, every businesses wants to grow and make more money. In their ideal world I'm sure Trello's management would have preferred to buy Atlassian than the other way around. The article does a reasonable job with 20/20 hindsight at musing on how they might have achieved that.

> That's ridiculous, every businesses wants to grow and make more money. But not every person wants their business to grow. "Feed me venture capital, Seymour..."

They built an authentic artisanal lifestyle $425 million business. They would never think of doing anything so crass as to build a billion dollar business.

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

#93

Post by beat »

user5994461 wrote: post #81
nikcub wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of companies who have scaled their revenue beyond this point without an enterprise salesforce - Trello's acquirer is one of them Its not a hard rule that to reach beyond $x you need to become an enterprise

Google had no enterprise sales for a decade. They did fine.

Completely different business model. Atlassian and Trello are much more similar. Google was selling ads, not software.

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

#94

Post by e2e4 »

kondro wrote: post #90

I love Trello and used it a lot (before we moved on to something different and easier to understand for most people). However, even when it was important to our business and we had around 12 users (I know, still relatively small) using it, we never once felt and pressure to pay for the product. Trello didn't build a $1B business because they never forced anyone to pay for their product, even when they were extracting…

What did you use after trello?

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

#95

Post by danmaz74 »

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.

"How I didn't fail reaching the front page of HN using a clickbait title"

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

#96

Post by danmaz74 »

vidarh wrote: post #74
debacle wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trello UI is also great. If you don't need the back-end features of something like Jira, trello's limited functionality greatly reduced the friction to tracking your activities.

That they were bought by Atlassian fills me with dread because of precedents set by their other products. I use Trello (and pay for it) exactly because I don't want anything like Jira.

Hopefully they are smart enough to keep the products differentiated. Otherwise, a Trello clone will surely arise.

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

#98

Post by hobofan »

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.

"Why Facebook failed to do a $200 billion IPO"

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

#99

Post by rhizome »

eli wrote: post #10
d--b wrote: post #4

Interesting, but I can't help thinking that this was fairly obvious, am I the only one? It already blows my mind that it is that big already. The app is a todo list with several columns. Todo lists don't make billion dollar businesses... and yeah, SMBs are fine with actual post-its!

I think lots of great ideas are obvious in retrospect

Case in point: the mouse wheel.

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

#100

Post by rhizome »

andrewprock wrote: post #62
officelineback wrote: post #60

I mean, I get what the guy is saying, but look at the text vs subtext here: text is "here is advice to take a burgeoning company to the stratosphere" But honestly, how many people in that position are going to read this blog post? 3? 10? If this was his true intention, he would have packaged this as some kind of super premium offering that only well-connected VCs could read or something. subtext: "I'm really smart ab…

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.

Half a billion here, half a billion there, soon you're talking about real money.
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