how trello grew from a scrappy startup into a powerhouse brand · nurture customer champions and...

19/12/2019, 11(41How Trello Grew From A Scrappy Startup Into A Powerhouse Brand

of 15https://www.drift.com/blog/trello/

How Trello Grew From A Scrappy

Startup Into A Powerhouse Brand

⚡

Join 20k Subscribers

It all started with a sticky note.

And a long to-do list. And two developers. And a dream to make people s̓lives more organized and productive, wherever they worked and livedaround the world.

The idea to create Trello was formed between the minds of co-founders,Joel Spolsky and Michael Pryor. Their goal was to take the paradigm of asticky note on a wall and turn this concept into a collaborative, real-timetool. Their goal was to provide people with a clear, fluid, and adaptableunderstanding of their projects, without getting bogged down by processand structure. And their biggest goal was to someday have 100 millionpeople using Trello.

Within five short years, Trello has achieved the first two goals and is wellon its way to 100 million users. But along this journey, they achieved so



much more. They rapidly grew from a scrappy startup into a powerhousebrand, built a remote team with employees around the world, onboardedmore than 25 millions of users, relied on organic marketing, and wasacquired by one of the largest tech companies in the world.

Like every startup, it was a windy journey. But Trello stayed true to theirbrand and product along the way and implemented a few strategies thatcontributed to their success. In this article, weʼll explore these tactics andwill share several ways your own organization can execute similarstrategies and success.

How Trello Climbed To The Top Of The Tech World

The story of Trello is similar to many startups — two developers put theirbrains and coding expertise together to build a product that challengedthe traditional way people work.

Joel Spolsky and Michael Pryor met at a software startup in New YorkCity back in the late 90s. Instead of cruising in the corporate world, theydecided to carve their own path and created a company. In 2011, underFog Creek Software, they created the first prototype of the product, nowknown as Trello, and called it Trellis. In an interview, Michael Pryor recallsthe process of deciding on a better name for the product and eventualcompany:

“So I went back to my desk and one of the early employees who wasworking at Trello then and I just sat there and we were in this instantdomain search website where you type things and it tells you if itʼsavailable… I did this for 30 minutes and sitting with my head in myhands and Iʼm like ok thatʼs it. I guess – I typed trellis one more timeand an ad pops up for trello.com. So I ran through the office and I waslike, what do you think about Trello?”

The team liked it. With a strong product and name in hand, the team

https://businessofsoftware.org/2017/01/almost-messsed-trello-michael-pryor-trello-paul-kenny-ocean-learning-bos-usa-2016/



launched at TechCrunch Disrupt in September 2011 and the app took offfrom there. By July 2014, Trello spun off from Fog Creek, and the app hadover 4.75 million users.

Within the next three years, Trello grew exponentially. In 2017, thecompany was acquired by Atlassian (famous for creating Jira andBitbucket) and hit 25 million signups. In other words, Trello increased itsuser base by 426% in 3 years.

So how did Trello achieve this wild growth? There are several ways, butlet s̓ hone in on a few that we consider the most impactful:

[. Offering a product that is free, easy-to-use, and customizable.\. Nurturing customer champions and rallying around a lovable

brand and mascot (the mascot is a husky named Taco — how couldyou not love him?)

]. Building strong partnerships with other companies.

Freemium, Easy-To-Use, And CustomizableProduct

The main goal of creating Trello was to build a visually collaborative tool.

Trello s̓ layout focuses on the team s̓ view. It s̓ not just your view or yourco-workers view of a project. Instead, it s̓ a collective view andunderstanding of any project. Basically, anyone can hop into a Trelloboard and understand the status of a project or task without having toping someone on Slack or send an email for an update

"

Hey you've made it this far... Seems like you'reenjoying the content

We send a roundup of our best content to 20,000 of our closestmarketing and sales pals every Sunday. You look like you'd fit right in. You

https://www.atlassian.com/



should join them.

Subscribe now

The tool also had to be easy-to-use and customizable since Trello wantsa range of people to use it — at work and even at home. So the team builta horizontal app, which was different than anything else on the market.

When creating a Trello board, it s̓ like a blank page. The user can buildand customize their board to their preferences and processes. It s̓ notconstrained by a predetermined structure. It s̓ truly customizable.

People obviously liked this approach to project and task managementbecause within the first year, Trello had 500,000 users without any paidmarketing or paid subscriptions.

Just like other prized tech companies, such as Slack and MailChimp,Trello offers a freemium subscription. This means their core product is

https://www.drift.com/blog/how-slack-grew/

https://www.drift.com/blog/how-mailchimp-grew/



free, forever. Anyone, regardless of location and industry, can use Trelloto power their days.

But of course, Trello needed to monetize so they offered three tiers ofsubscriptions – Trello Gold, Business Class, and Enterprise:

Trello Gold charges one user $5 per month for one user and theyget access to 3 additional Power-Ups and custom boardbackgrounds.Business Class charges $9.99 per month per user and comes withevery feature of the free version, along with unlimited Power-Ups.Enterprise starts at $20.83 per user per month and comes withBusiness Class features, additional security, personalizedonboarding and support, and more.

It s̓ important for Trello to maintain a freemium plan for all users. Paymentcan be a significant barrier to entry and word-of-mouth marketing iscrucial to their growth and product awareness, and especially was in theirearly years.

The theory is this: users will learn about Trello, will try it, and willeventually upgrade if needed as they use and grow with the tool.However, without having to focus on monetization from day one, Trellowas able to remain authentic to its brand and goals which led to thecreation of an adored brand and die-hard customer champions.

Nurture Customer Champions And Rally AroundA Lovable Brand And Mascot

In the beginning, Trello didnʼt rely on heavy paid advertising and insteadadopted a product-driven approach. The goal was to get as many peopleas possible to sign up to use Trello. When they first launched atTechCrunch Disrupt, Joel Spolsky said that they hoped to one day have100 million users.

https://trello.com/power-ups



But instead of dumping budget into paid advertising campaigns anddirect sales to gain these users, the Trello team focused on organicallyattracting users through word-of-mouth and referral strategies.

For example, it s̓ common for people to hear about Trello because afriend or coworker uses the app. Then the love for the app catches on likewildfire and soon enough, entire departments from engineering to salesand even human resources are using it.

Trello uses a smart referral strategy to incentivize users to refer the appto their networks. It s̓ called Trello Gold. Trello Gold gives users a taste ofthe business class features, such as access to three Power-Ups andcustomized board backgrounds, for one month. Here s̓ how it works:

#

A user is on the free plan

$

She invites a colleague, who has never used Trello, to join her board

%

Trello Gold is gifted to her for one month in thanks of referring a newuser to the app

This is genius strategy since it rewards their superfans for organicallyinviting more users and gives them a chance to uncover the benefits of apaid subscription, without having to make a commitment right away.

In addition to providing a great experience with their product, the Trelloteam is excellent at building relationships with their users and champions.They do send swag to their fans (think: Taco stickers), but the real impactis through the connections they build online with their community.

They are constantly chatting with users on social media. The companyeven has a private Slack channel for its most dedicated fans where theycan chat directly with each other and Trello team members aboutannouncements, best practices, product feedback, and general topicsrelated to work, productivity, and more. With an active online presence,Trello champions and users know the team is only a tweet or Slack ping

https://trello.com/gold



away to chat or answer questions.

Trello is known for its incredible app, but the company is also famous forits mascot, Taco. Taco is co-founder Joel Spolsky s̓ Siberian husky. Theyturned him into an adorable cartoon and proudly incorporate him in allaspects of Trello s̓ branding and marketing. Even their marketing emailsare sent as “Taco from Trello.”

This is Taco, the cartoon mascot.



This is real-life Taco.

But why is their company mascot so important? Because it brings afun, approachable vibe to the Trello brand and allows users toimmediately connect over their shared love for the pooch.

For example, real-life Taco passed away (RIP, Taco

&

) in October 2017and Spolsky shared the sad news on Twitter. His tweets receivedhundreds of responses from Trello users and Taco lovers with messagesof condolences and even photos with Taco.

https://twitter.com/spolsky/status/921387638472499200?lang=en



Overall, Trello s̓ mascot keeps their brand grounded as fun, professional,and friendly. They clearly list this brand identity in their open-sourcedesign system, Nachos:

Fun, without being childish or naive.Professional, but still delightful.Friendly, but not patronizing.

Sticking to this brand ethos since day one, then nurturing and developingit over the years has resulted in Trello becoming one of the most lovedtech apps around the world.

Build Strong Partnerships

https://design.trello.com/



At its core, Trello is a collaborative tool. To make the app even moreefficient, Trello offers Power-Ups — advanced features and integrationswith other applications that turns a user s̓ boards into a productivitypowerhouse. Trello even allows companies to build their own private,custom Power-Ups to serve their unique needs and processes. Some ofthe most popular Power-Ups allow users to integrate Slack, Google Drive,Wistia, Zendesk, InVision, and Jira. This is a huge benefit of Trello – having multiple applications working together in one tool.

This Power-Up strategy is not only a benefit to their users, but it alsobenefits Trello. When they create a new Power-Up, for example withInVision, the two companies promote the partnership on their websites,blogs, and social media channels.

For example, InVision wrote a specific blog post announcing their Power-Up integration with Trello. The news and blog post were then sharedacross InVision s̓ social media channels which has nearly 300,000followers across Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

https://trello.com/power-ups

https://www.invisionapp.com/blog/confluence-trello/



This is a marketer s̓ dream — organic social media promotion andauthoritative backlinks

'

Trello s̓ partnerships expand outside of their core product through theircontent marketing. Nearly 1 million people read the Trello blog everymonth. Their topics range from productivity hacks and collaborationtricks to case studies on how to use Trello.

One of their marketing goals in 2018 was to position the company as aleader in the remote work world. Trello refers to themselves as a “remote-first” company and has 65% of their team working remotely from aroundthe world.

In order to gain thought leadership with this work style, the Trello contentmarketing team and their collaborators published dozens of blog articlesabout remote work topics, strategies, and workflows. The team then tiedit all together and created the free How To Embrace Remote WorkGuide.

https://blog.trello.com/

https://blog.trello.com/search-results?search=remote%20work

https://blog.trello.com/remote-work-team-success-guide



But instead of talking solely about their own best practices and strategiesin the guide, they partnered with 10 other companies who also supportremote work, such as Evernote, Buffer, Stack Overflow, UNICEF, andLitmus, to share these companiesʼ strategies and processes.

The guide is a beautiful piece of content that allowed Trello to positionitself as a thought leader and to support its partners who are on the samemission to promote remote work as the future of global teams. Eachcompany that was included in the guide wrote blog posts about remotework and then linked to the Trello guide to remote work within the blogpost. The content was then amplified on social media and in emails. Moreauthoritative backlinks and more free promotion — a win-win for everycompany involved.

In addition, Trello didnʼt even require readers to fill out a lengthy form toaccess the guide (kudos, Trello

(

). Readers simply clicked the“Download Guide (PDF)” button on the blog post or landing page and theguide immediately opened in a new tab.

And last but not least, Trello made the ultimate partnership in early 2017by joining forces with tech giant, Atlassian. The company was acquired byAtlassian for a whopping $425 million. But instead of becoming fullyintegrated with Atlassian, the companies decided to continue to operateTrello as a standalone service. Michael Pryor stated in this blog post whythe Trello and Atlassian partnership is a good fit:

“Weʼre excited about partnering with Atlassian because we both sharea philosophy of empowering teams everywhere to work in their ownstyle. We envision a world where hundreds of millions of peoplecollaborate in teams however they like, with their imaginations beingthe only constraint for what they can accomplish.”

Atlassian expects Trello to add $20 million USD in revenue to its 2018financial year results. And since going public in 2015, Atlassian hit a

https://www.drift.com/learn/chatbot/

https://blog.trello.com/trello-atlassian

https://blog.trello.com/trello-atlassian



market cap of $10 billion for the first time in October 2017.

Being a part of a global tech company, Trello now has the opportunity tocontinuously expand into new locations and industries. They can leverageinvestments in R&D in order to enhance the product with new andimproved features. And Trello can now focus on paid advertisingchannels and larger marketing campaigns to continue connecting withcurrent and new users (i.e. the company made it on the big screen inTimes Square).

Take a Page From The Trello Playbook

So how can you apply these lessons to your own company andstrategies? Here s̓ some advice:

)

Create a product that improves the lives of your users.Trello is free, easy-to-use, and customizable, but its most importantaspect is that it actually improves the lives of its users. It boostproductivity, reduces the need for status updates, and allows peopleto work asynchronously from anywhere in the world. When buildingand marketing your product or services, ask yourself: how is thisgoing to improve the lives of our customers? What are the benefitsfor them? What pain points can we remove from their day-to-daytasks?

*

Nurture customer champions.Customer champions become your referral army. By continuouslyproviding a great customer experience, users will want their friends,coworkers, and even family to jump onboard. Identify yourchampions and treat them like the superstars they are. After all, theyare helping you save on advertising spend.

+

Build strong partnerships with companies in your industry. Reaching your ideal customers is easier when you have a little help

https://twitter.com/mcannonbrookes/status/940438924455006209



from your friends. Identify players in your field who you can partnerwith to collaborate on promotions and content creation. Of course,there has to be a benefit for them. Bottom line: this collectiveamplification will do wonders for your reach, awareness, and leadgeneration strategies.

✍

Create content that is valuable and delightful. Trello does an excellent job of honing in on specific topics that arerelevant to their audience and diving deep into them through blogposts and guides. Follow suit by building a content strategy aroundyour customer s̓ interests, instead of always focusing on yourproduct and its benefits. Position yourself as a thought leader andthe go-to-source for topics in your industry that are relevant to yourcustomers. And consider ungating your content. If youʼre curiouswho is on your site and what theyʼre reading, you can use chatbotsto start a conversation.

⭐

Stay true to your brand. Through the growing pains of a startup and an acquisition, Trello hasalways stayed true to their brand and ethos. If anything, theyʼveimproved it over time. Establishing a company brand, values, andeven goals allows your company to connect with your customers ona deeper level. Putting in the work to develop and nurture your brandis crucial to growth.

https://www.drift.com/learn/chatbot/



☝

CLICK HERE TO TWEET THIS ADVICE

☝

Trello has an exciting future ahead and the company is projected to groweven more, thanks to the support of a global team, dedicated users, anda profitable parent company. Weʼre looking forward to following thejourney as it races on a fast track towards 100 million users!

While youʼre here, check out some of our earlier stories about othercompanies that we love:

Why Slack s̓ Growth Strategy Led to Billions Without A Sales TeamMonkey Business: The Story Behind MailChimp s̓ Wild GrowthThe 3 Secrets Behind Zoom s̓ Triple-Digit Growth

https://ctt.ac/aox64

https://www.drift.com/blog/how-slack-grew/

https://www.drift.com/blog/how-mailchimp-grew/

https://www.drift.com/blog/how-zoom-grew/

how trello grew from a scrappy startup into a powerhouse brand · nurture customer champions and...

Documents