Description
Asana is a web and mobile application designed to help teams organize, track, and manage their work. Forrester, Inc. reports that “Asana simplifies team-based work management.” It is produced by the company of the same name. (Asana, Inc.)
It was founded in 2008 by Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and ex-Google, ex-Facebook engineer Justin Rosenstein, who both worked on improving the productivity of employees at Facebook. The product launched commercially in April 2012. In December 2018 the company was valued at $1.5 billion.
History
Moskovitz and Rosenstein left Facebook in 2008 to start Asana (named after a Sanskrit word meaning “yoga pose”), which officially launched for free out of beta in November 2011 and commercially in April 2012. The company announced that they had closed a $1.2-million angel round in the spring of 2011 from investors including Ron Conway, Peter Thiel, Mitch Kapor, Owen van Natta, Sean Parker, and former Facebook Director of Mobile Jed Stremel, followed by a US$9-million Series A round in investment led by Benchmark Capital in late November 2011.
On July 23, 2012, Asana announced a $28-million Series B round of funding, led by Peter Thiel and Founders Fund, along with existing investors Benchmark, Andreessen-Horowitz, and Mitch Kapor, Thiel then also joined Asana's Board of Directors (3.1). According to an article in The New York Times and someone briefed on the funding, the investors valued the company at $280 million.
On March 30, 2016, Asana announced a $50-million Series C round of funding, led by Y Combinator's Sam Altman. Other investors ranged from Tony Hsieh to Mark Zuckerberg. The round valued the company at $600 million.
On January 31, 2018, Asana announced a $75-million Series D round of funding, led by Generation Investment Management. The round valued the company at $900M.
As of January 2018, Asana claims more than 35,000 paying customers, including AB-InBev, Viessmann, eBay, Uber, Overstock, Navy Federal Credit Union, Icelandair, and IBM.
In September 2018, Asana announced that it had reached 50,000 paying customers and a 90 percent YoY revenue growth rate.
In November 2018, the company raised $50 million during the fifth round of funding, despite having another $75 million earlier the same year. The round valued Asana at $1.5 billion. As of the same month, the company is not yet profitable.
In August 2020, Asana filed for a direct listing with IPO plans.
