Asana raises $50M at a $1.5B valuation

I&#x27;ve used Asana in a couple of projects and actually like it for its simplicity and ease of doing things like copy pasting multi line issues from a spreadsheet, text file, or chat; easy editing with multi select; and similar features that make the product feel more similar to a spreadsheet than an annoying issue tracker where every click results in modal dialogs with OK buttons and other cruft. I hate stuff like Jira with a passion and it doesn&#x27;t do anything for me that I 1) need 2) Asana does not do in a way that is more convenient.<p>That being said, it&#x27;s not 1.5B dollars cool and that kind of multi billion valuation creates unrealistic expectations that cannot possibly be fulfilled by staying humble and focusing on just what Asana does best. So, this kind of investment smells like a kiss of death. I fear the worst here in terms of layering on features nobody wanted, and attempts to make the product more appealing for the masses, etc. Is this going to be an actual IPO or a lazy acquihire by some company in need of an issue tracker?

Tried Asana, couldn&#x27;t stand it. Moved to Airtable, which is vastly superior to Asana and moderately better than Trello. Now I use Notion on recommendation of an HN poster. Far from perfect, but beats Asana out of the park.<p>All of these services with these massive valuations still somehow struggle to get their core product right, it&#x27;s like it lacks vision. These products are also mindbogglingly slow-moving. I don&#x27;t know how Asana can justify a $1.5b valuation though. On paper, maybe, but when we talk about profit or revenue, I&#x27;m skeptical to say the least.<p>What exactly they need $50m for, I&#x27;m not quite sure.

Am I the only one that has tried asana multiple times and given up after each major iteration?

&gt;Specifically, it plans to open an AWS-based data center in Frankfurt in the first half of next year, and it will set down more roots in Asia-Pacific, with offices in Sydney and Tokyo.<p>Is it normal (in tech journalism, at least) to say &quot;opening an AWS-based data center?&quot; I had to read that a few times over because I thought the article switched to an Amazon article.

Every time the team has tried to use Asana we’ve given up. It’s slow on my iMac Pro. It’s so slow and there’s no reason why it ought to be. It’s painful to perform any operation with it.<p>...maybe it’s because I use Firefox, but even then there’s little excuse.

Team uses Asana and hates it. Agree with them. Pretty much a half-wit beta tool.

I use Trello, I find it smooth experience. Tried Asana once and I didn&#x27;t like the feeling of &quot;bloat&quot;. I am shocked by this valuation. I feel like after AirTable&#x27;s valuation few weeks back here in HN, now every other productivity tool is getting a bubble-valuation effect?

And yet they still can&#x27;t solve empty tasks getting created for no good reason. Yes, I know you can hit the delete or backspace key, but bloody hell, just don&#x27;t save the damn thing unless there is some data to actually save.<p>I&#x27;m sure that allocating 0.01% of this funding round to the dev will be more than enough?<p>Also, how about being able to convert lists to kanban and vice versa?<p>Other than that, quite a happy user :)

To me, $50M seems like a tiny amount of raise for such a high valuation. Is this normal?

I just moved to Asana because I’m joining a team that needs to manage tasks together. There are a lot of things that just seem nonsensical to me.<p>Very little information exists at the project level - there’s no way to tag, sort, or filter through different projects. It’s almost a useless level of organization.<p>Custom fields seem to be accessible across teams in an organization, though there is no easy way to carry them across projects. They also seem like they don’t do much - you can’t filter or search based on custom field values.<p>The UI has a bad sense of hierarchy and important information is easily hidden. Finding the notes associated with a subtask means you need to click a barely visible button that doesn’t change state when information is behind it.<p>For how long they’ve been at it, these seem like simple problems to not have solved.

The main thing I think when I read this is &quot;I wonder how much Basecamp is &#x27;worth.&#x27;&quot; A far superior product, presumably a comparable number of customers, although I don&#x27;t know, and I would guess far more profitable per customer.

Relevant Dustin Moskovitz tweet about valuation vs revenue <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;moskov&#x2F;status&#x2F;1068184742762229761" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;moskov&#x2F;status&#x2F;1068184742762229761</a>

I have tried using Asana multiple times but always find that I need desktop app to fully utilize a quick editing and task management. Without an app it&#x27;s always multiple clicks away from adding a todo item, it&#x27;s quite annoying to go to the website, login, select project and only then you can actually do something.<p>I&#x27;ve recently stumbled upon Notion [1], and it&#x27;s just so much better and more convenient for me, they have desktop and mobile app as well, which helps a lot. And their unusual free editing based on templates has been super convenient for me so far.<p>1 - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.notion.so" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.notion.so</a>

In march of 2016, Asana also raised $50 million. Sam Altman led that round, at a valuation of $550 million. Crunchbase wrongfully states that YC led it.<p>If Sam Altman&#x27;s investment exits add such amounts to his bank reserve that the reserve gets bigger than $10 million, he spends the surplus above that $10 million on &#x27;improving humanity,&#x27; which I read as charity. (1)<p>(1) <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.newyorker.com&#x2F;magazine&#x2F;2016&#x2F;10&#x2F;10&#x2F;sam-altmans-manifest-destiny" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.newyorker.com&#x2F;magazine&#x2F;2016&#x2F;10&#x2F;10&#x2F;sam-altmans-ma...</a>

Well, hopefully they’ll use these funds to improve the product..

I work at Asana - Site Lead for NYC<p>What I find most fascinating about this company is that something that sounds relatively unsexy - work management for enterprise - can be so well aligned with a truly unique mission. Enabling teams to collaborate effortlessly. For anyone who&#x27;s worked at a dysfunctional company - politics, low morale, low transparency - it makes a huge difference when you have tools that help you collaborate and get on the same page.

I haven&#x27;t tried Asana again recently, but my early impressions were that they were trying to target the space between project management and a todo list in a very awkward way that could only succeed if all the stakeholders buy in to its use. I guess that is what enterprise sales is for, but given the fact that they just publish growth graphs with no numbers, and that I don&#x27;t know a single person in SV that both uses and likes Asana, I&#x27;m very skeptical about their future.<p>A tool should either be simple and flexible enough that it invites creative uses (Trello, Slack) or have a very clear commonly understood purpose that has widely (if perhaps grudgingly) acknowledged value (JIRA, Salesforce). Asana is in this uncanny valley like Google Wave where some people are impressed but then ultimately no one knows what to do with it.

Ah Asana. The product we try and make work like Jira, but really just end up putting in a bunch of hacks to emulate epics, tagging, and all the other useful features.

Sorry. I just really like VSTS or Azure DevOps or whatever they call it these days.<p>Just the fact that there’s a little button baked right into Visual Studio where I can see all my work items, and the fact that I can literally assign a commit to a work item as I push it makes VSTS the best IMHO

Question: all these multi-billion SAAS companies. Who are they replacing &#x2F;who is losing revenue because of them? Or is the pie becoming higher :) ?<p>And what&#x27;s happening, are the companies that more efficient with Asana et al?

I haven&#x27;t used assana since the earliest days. Just looked over their marketing website, wow it looks completely different! I may take another look but at the moment, I have no issues with pivotal tracker.

A few years back there were about 5 of these products competing, and I think all the others closed down. Somehow Asana has managed to stay alive. Are they just buying time?

Is this the FB-founder bump? I don&#x27;t see this being worth that kinda valuation - can they do $150MM&#x2F;year in revenue in such a crowded market?

To nab a $1.5B valuation you sometimes have to raise $50M

&gt; The startup, whose products are used by millions of free and paying users,<p>I find it hard to believe, if im honest.

Love Asana, not sure it&#x27;s a viable business (like trello) but may be a good acquisition (like trello)

So. This company raised $75 million less than a year ago. It just raised another $50 million for &quot;growth&quot; now, 10 years after it was founded...for a grand total of $213 million in venture capital.<p>What the heck will these guys do now with $125 million that they couldn&#x27;t do in the past 10 years with $88 million?

One chicken and two carne asana, please

I prefer the original Asana color scheme (bluish) rather than current color scheme (redish).

Dustin Moskovitz (co-founder of Facebook and founder of Asana) is worth 10.2 billion. Why doesn&#x27;t he self-fund Asana?<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bloomberg.com&#x2F;billionaires&#x2F;profiles&#x2F;dustin-a-moskovitz&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bloomberg.com&#x2F;billionaires&#x2F;profiles&#x2F;dustin-a-mos...</a>