Asana becomes a Unicorn
Asana – The collaborative workplace management software company , founded by ex facebookers has reached 50,000 paying and has increased its revenue to north of $50 million in 10 years and has reached unicorn status.
Asana announced a $50 million series E round at a $1.5 billion valuation, led by London-based investment firm Generation Investment Management, bringing the total funding it has raised this year to $125 million.
This is a key!!!
The company earned the position in part because of integrations with Slack and Microsoft Outlook, enabling many businesses to use Asana’s software with tools they already rely on.
The pain
Dustin Moskovitz, and Justin Rosenstein started building Asana in 2008 after feeling bogged down by emails, spreadsheets, and general “work about work” while at Facebook. At the time, there were more traditional management tools like Yammer and Salesforce Chatter available, but not all employees in the workplace actually knew how to use them.
The painkiller
Asana’s allowed collaboration with purpose, alliwing you to easily deliver an outcome. If you were tasked with managing projects in addition to your day job, this was a much easier way to do it than trying to figure out and learn a formal project management tool.”
The Growth
Ten years after its founding, Asana has nearly 400 employees in San Francisco, New York, and Dublin.
The Values
When first starting Asana, Moskovitz and Rosenstein did two things:
- write the code for the software, and
- make a list of company values.
They took insights from their shared love of yoga and Zen Buddhism, including
clarity, responsibility, and mindfulness.
The Results
In 2018 Asana was named in the Top 5 of 2018 Best Small and Medium Workplaces by Great Place to Work and Fortune magazine, and was honored as one of Inc.‘s Best Workplaces.
The founders hope their founding principles will continue to set an example for their employees and customers in 2018 and beyond. “For us, it’s about demonstrating that great culture is a competitive advantage,” Moskovitz says. “When you have great culture, that’s not in contrast to a desire to succeed in business. It’s actually the most effective way to succeed in business.”
Inspired by Inc’s article https://www.inc.com/brit-morse/asana-2018-company-of-the-year-nominee.html by Brit Morse
