Atlassian Buys Trello for $425 Million

Atlassian — the Sydney-based giant that owns products like JIRA, Confluence, HipChat, Bitbucket, SourceTree, etc. has today announced that it will be acquiring Trello — the beloved project management app. The deal is worth $425 Million according to Business Insider.

Mike Cannon-Brookes, Co-Founder and CEO of Atlassian, writes:

Trello’s pioneering use of an intuitive visual system has been embraced by all kinds of teams to do everything from managing marketing campaigns to tracking action items from team meetings. Organizations in nearly every country and as varied as the Red Cross and Google have adopted Trello to get work done.

We’re thrilled to welcome the talented Trello team to Atlassian and look forward to working with them to change the way teams work together. Deep investments in R&D have long been a cornerstone of Atlassian’s business and we will continue that tradition with Trello.

My immediate concern upon reading this was how would Trello change under the Atlassian culture. Mike clarifies:

If you currently use Trello as either a free or paid user, you can rest assured that we will continue to offer Trello as a standalone service. We’ll be working with their product team to help them accelerate development efforts.

Over on the Trello blog, Michael Pryor, the CEO of Trello writes:

We’re excited about partnering with Atlassian because we both share a philosophy of empowering teams everywhere to work in their own style. We envision a world where hundreds of millions of people collaborate in teams however they like, with their imaginations being the only constraint for what they can accomplish. As part of Atlassian, Trello will be able to leverage investments in R&D that will enhance the product in meaningful ways. Our team will be able to focus on improving the core experience of Trello for all users. We are certain that Atlassian understands the unique and novel reasons why Trello is so successful and well-loved.

Atlassian & Trello do sound like a great fit, but I’m still concerned.