Atlassian today announced that it has acquired project management service Trello for $425 million. The vast majority of the transaction is in cash ($360 million), with the remainder being paid out in restricted shares and options. The acquisition is expected to close before March 31, 2017.
This marks Atlassian\u2019s 18th acquisition and, as Atlassian president Jay Simons noted when I talked to him last week, also it largest. Just like with many of Atlassian\u2019s other acquisitions, the company plans to keep both the Trello service and brand alive and current users shouldn\u2019t see any immediate changes.
Trello launched in the TechCrunch Disrupt Battlefield in 2011 and in 2014, it was spun out of Fog Creek Software as a stand-alone company. With Trello, Atlassian is acquiring one of the fastest growing project management services. It now has about 19 million users and just under 100 employees, all of which will join Atlassian. After it was spun out of Fog Creek, Trello raised $10.3 million from BoxGroup, Index Ventures, Spark Capital and others.
\u201cWe\u2019re super excited,\u201d Simons told me. \u201cThey are a breakout product and have achieved incredible momentum.\u201d
It\u2019s easy to see how Trello fits into Atlassian\u2019s overall suite of productivity tools, which have increasingly targeted non-developers, too. At its core, Atlassian\u2019s own JIRA project management service already features a Trello-like Kanban board , for example. That\u2019s only a small part of what JIRA does, however, and for many potential users, a board is really all they need to keep track of their projects. JIRA also features a full-blown issue-tracking service, reports, and an on-premise version that enterprises can run on their own servers.
With its Marketplace, Atlassian has also built a store for plugin developers and we\u2019ll likely see many of Trello\u2019s so-called \u201cpower-ups\u201d migrate there over time. It\u2019s also worth noting that both companies have taken similar marketing approaches that focus more on word-of-mouth recommendations and a freemium model than traditional enterprise sales.
Looking ahead, Simons said that Atlassian is committed to developing Trello. The company will put more resources behind the product and help the team scale.
Atlassian is scheduled to report its Q2 results on January 19 and chances are we will hear a bit more about this transaction and how the company plans to integrate Trello\u2019s services then.<\/p>\n