By acquiring the fast-growing project management firm Trello for $425 million, collaboration software provider Atlassian said today that it expects to fill a gap in its own offerings for workplace teams. The deal also brings together two companies with a shared goal: to put their tools into the hands of 100 million users, according to Atlassian.
Atlassian co-founder and co-CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes said Trello’s visually based system for managing everything from family projects to Red Cross emergency responses fills a gap between two of Atlassian’s tools: JIRA for structured workflows and Confluence for “free-form” collaboration. Trello’s key strength is its system for “capturing and adding structure to fluid, fast-forming work,” he added.
Launched five years ago, the customer base for Trello’s cloud-based collaboration tools nearly doubled over the past year to 19 million users. Atlassian, meanwhile, has also grown rapidly via a series of 18 acquisitions since its founding, with six new additions, including Trello, which is the largest, in a little over two years.
Trello Users Include Google, UN
“Trello will become an important part of the Atlassian portfolio, offering a fun new way for teams to organize the often messy range of information that feeds into great teamwork,” Cannon-Brookes wrote in a company blog post today. “Its card system is intuitive, easy to use, and instantly familiar, which has made it extremely popular with teams across marketing, legal, HR, sales and beyond.”
Among Trello’s wide-ranging customer base are users that include Google, Kickstarter, National Geographic, PayPal, Pixar, the Red Cross, the U.K. government and the United Nations. Developed by Fog Creek Software in 2010, Trello spun out as an independent company in 2014 backed by $10.3 million in venture capital funding.
“As part of Atlassian, Trello will be able to leverage investments in R&D that will enhance the product in…