From an internal rate of return standpoint, Trello may have come pretty close to the value of a $1billion company to its founders and employees because it only took one round of funding - $10 million for non-controlling interest [1] - and existed at $450 million. So the pool of money for common stockholders was $225 million or more.
> From the article: “We see Trello as a feature, not a product.”
That's pretty much the answer. In this case it wasn't a horizontal/vertical issue, simply that the feature was easily added by other, more comprehensive platforms.
I feel this focus on valuations, and saying that Trello "failed" just because a bunch of people who were not involved with the company at all thought they should have hit a different number is truly bad for our industry. There is zero reason to use the words "fail" and Trello in the same paragraph, let alone the same sentence. And yet, here we are.
We need to move away from the growth at all costs mindset, and go back to focusing on building world class products. It is perfectly ok to slow down once in a while, and not just chase the next quarter's numbers.
Trello was a success, and we should celebrate what they did. Not deride them because they didn't live up to some VC's hyper-inflated expectations.
It's pretty insane to use the word "fail" in the same sentence with Trello. Is "Why Amazon failed to build a 10 trillion dollar business" next?
I'd like to know how many $1B businesses has the author built.
>It looked a lot like a whiteboard with sticky notes translated into a web browser and an iPhone App.
That's pretty much it. It was an insanely easy idea to copy, you can already do it with sticky notes if you work in an office. I don't really think you can improve the service beyond that; It's a note tracker, it tracks notes.
Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13839738