The Aussie company seems to be gearing up to keep pace with some of the biggest players in the business now that they have one of the leading players in collaboration software on board. Australian software developer Atlassian acquired project management service Trello for a whopping $425 million as was announced last Monday.
Atlassian President Jay Simons noted that this is the company's 18th acquisition but certainly their biggest by far. Trello will be part of Atlassian's growing portfolio which includes Bitbucket, FishEye, Bamboo, Crucible, and Clover. Further, the software company intends to keep Trello's name and brand alive, much similar to the company's other acquisitions.
Atlassian acquires Trello for $425M https://t.co/ipxdXSRBZh by @fredericl
— TechCrunch (@TechCrunch) January 9, 2017
Forbes reported that the transaction is around $360 million cash and the remainder of the acquisition will be paid from restricted shares and stocks. Atlassian's acquisition is expected to close before March 31.
Business seems to be booming on their side of the continent as Atlassian recently had a successful IPO in 2015. Founded in 2002 in Australia, Atlassian competes with Slack using its own communication product HipChat, a chat group built for teams and business. The JIRA project is another of Atlassian's project management software that features a Trello-like board that comes with a store for plug-in developers.
But what Atlassian is missing is the sort of product Trello offers. While JIRA project is geared more towards software developers, Trello is in a way geared for all kinds of businesses. In a way, the acquisition is somewhat of a perfect match.
Trello was launched by Michael Pryor and Joel Spolsky back in 2011 as part of Fog Creek Software, the duo's first company. They were able to spun Trello off and raised $10.3 million from Index, Spark Capital, and BoxGroup, according to TechCrunch. Later on, Spolsky went on to be the head of Stack Exchange, while Pryor stayed as CEO of Trello.
Trello has become the breakout superstar in the next-generation software market solely focusing on teamwork and productivity. Pryor, Trello's CEO, said: "As part of Atlassian, Trello will be able to leverage investments in R&D that will enhance the product in meaningful ways."
Trello currently has 100 employees with around 19 million users. All will join Atlassian.
