Slack Enterprise Grid Gears Up to Compete With Trello

Smooth collaboration and project management are crucial to success across startup and corporate ecosystems. As TechCrunch reports, Slack recently introduced its Enterprise Grid to target larger companies. The web-based Trello application has a head start in this space: the company has already proven its value to over seven million users, as Frederic Lardinois writes.

What Slack’s Enterprise Grid Offered

Slack started as a chat app for small teams, and by early 2017 it had grown fast, with 5 million daily users and 1.5 million paying ones, according to TechCrunch. Enterprise Grid was its push into much bigger organizations.

The product let large companies run an unlimited number of connected Slack workspaces, with tools for IT administrators to manage teams, extra security and identity controls, and compliance features for regulated industries. Slack launched it with Capital One, PayPal and IBM as early customers.

Why Atlassian Paid $425 Million for Trello

The dollar figure of that value? Software titan Atlassian set it at $425 million in cash, shares, and options for Trello in its largest acquisition yet. The mobile-friendly tool’s ease of use and versatility, lauded by Lifehacker, and its huge user base, match up with Atlassian’s ambitions.

Most of the price, $360 million, was paid in cash, and the deal was Atlassian’s 18th acquisition, according to TechCrunch. Trello had started as a product of Fog Creek Software before being spun out as its own company.

“We’re super excited,” Atlassian president Jay Simons told TechCrunch. “They are a breakout product and have achieved incredible momentum.”

Fifty percent of Trello users work in non-technical functions, and Atlassian wants to expand beyond its traditional developer-facing user base. Part of that aim involves pulling in Trello users across business teams in finance, HR, legal, marketing and sales.

Atlassian hopes to leverage Trello’s versatility beyond office walls with personal as well as professional projects, and Simons is aiming for an “audacious” goal of 100 million monthly active users.

Read more about the Trello acquisition here.

From Rivals to Partners

The competition played out differently than many expected. Atlassian had its own chat products, HipChat and Stride, which went up against Slack directly. In July 2018, Atlassian sold the intellectual property for both to Slack, shut them down and made an investment in Slack, turning a rival into a partner.

By then, Slack was reporting 8 million active users, 3 million of them paid. Atlassian, meanwhile, could focus on tools like Jira, Confluence and Trello, which work alongside Slack rather than against it.

What Happened Next

Trello kept growing under Atlassian. In 2019, Trello celebrated 50 million registered users, a long way from where it stood at the time of the deal.

Slack’s path ended in a much bigger acquisition. After going public in June 2019, it was bought by Salesforce in a $27.7 billion deal announced in December 2020. “This is a match made in heaven,” Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said at the time. The acquisition closed on July 21, 2021.

What It Means for Startups

Both Slack and Trello grew by being easy for one team to start using, then spreading through a company from the bottom up. That’s very different from traditional enterprise software, which is usually bought from the top down after a long sales process.

The other lesson is about competition. Atlassian decided it was better off working with Slack than fighting it, and that left both companies free to focus on what they did best. For startups in crowded markets, knowing where to compete and where to partner can matter as much as the product itself.