Trello went from being bootstrapped to being acquired in a monster $425 million deal by Atlassian. They even grew their user base by 426% in just 3 years. It's a masterclass in PLG, marketing & branding. Here is what I learned from Trello:
The vision & early launch
Joel Spolsky & Michael Pryor, the founders of Trello were both developers & met working at a startup.
They started a company Fog Creek from which the first prototype of Trello was spun out Their MVP? Create a to-do list that was only 5 items long.
The Trello founders saw companies sticking notes on boards & walls to get s**t done. The value prop emerged.
Trello = An all-purpose tool that turns sticky notes into a collaborative & real-time tool for cross-functional teams.
All purpose tools are hard af to build since users request features specific to their use-case. Trello was built like lego blocks & was executed in 4 stages:
For executing more specific use cases, Trello created its Power Ups feature that could convert a simple Kamban board into an internal app solving a specific internal business workflow.
Since Trello was an all-purpose tool, the founders made sure there was ZERO friction to use Trello so they made it completely free to use.
Their goal = reach 100 million users & monetize the 1%. Their formula = Big number, charge a small fraction, make a bunch of $$$.
Freemium pricing brought in 500,000 users in the first year for Trello. They launched at TechCrunch Disrupt & were gaining 1000s of users each day with ZERO paid marketing but they ran into a big problem.
Monetizing Trello
Trello users started to churn saying since it was free, it would end up shutting down. The founders realised that not charging people became a friction point So they created an MVP Pricing Model.
Trello wanted a pricing model that supported organic growth. They dismissed charging per board or charging per card. They started by charging a flat fee of $200 per company It worked out terribly.
Flat-fee pricing grew Trello's users by 400% but they had companies paying as low as 4 cents/user/year because of the number of users they had. They were bleeding $$$ so they switched to usage-based pricing And offered 3 pricing tiers - Trello Gold, Business & Enterprise.
Trello Pricing Tier is simple.
Tier 1 = $5/ month/user + 3 additional Power Ups.
Tier 2 = $9.99/month/user + unlimited Power-Ups.
Tier 3= $20.83/month/user + personalized onboarding Trello used growth loops to trigger user acquisition & expansion revenue.
Trello PLG Strategy
Trello user acquisition + expansion revenue growth loop is simple but effective.
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 1 month for referring a new user
Trello uses Feature as marketing. The Power ups feature allow users to build integrations with 3rd party apps.
When a new Power-Up is launched, the 2 companies promote it on websites, blogs & social media.
Organic growth + high-quality backlinks + cross promotions = more users.
Trello Organic Growth Strategy
Their organic content marketing engine is insane. 1 million people read the Trello blog each month. Their topics cover
roductivity hacks, collaboration tricks, case studies, remote work.
They collab with other brands & create marketing assets & acquire high DA backlinks
Trello's mascot Taco makes brand recall value very high. Taco is founder Joel Spolsky’s Siberian husky.
They turned him into an adorable cartoon & proudly use him in all aspects of Trello’s branding and marketing. Even their marketing emails are sent as “Taco from Trello”.
Trello invests strongly in community-led-growth. The company has a private Slack channel for its most dedicated fans where they chat with each other & Trello team members about:announcements, best practices, product feedback, work, productivity.
Trello does the basics right wrt user acquisition & activation:
The vision & early launch
Joel Spolsky & Michael Pryor, the founders of Trello were both developers & met working at a startup.
They started a company Fog Creek from which the first prototype of Trello was spun out Their MVP? Create a to-do list that was only 5 items long.
The Trello founders saw companies sticking notes on boards & walls to get s**t done. The value prop emerged.
Trello = An all-purpose tool that turns sticky notes into a collaborative & real-time tool for cross-functional teams.
All purpose tools are hard af to build since users request features specific to their use-case. Trello was built like lego blocks & was executed in 4 stages:
- see feature request
- identify underlying pain point
- build for the pain point
- convert into all purpose feature
For executing more specific use cases, Trello created its Power Ups feature that could convert a simple Kamban board into an internal app solving a specific internal business workflow.
Since Trello was an all-purpose tool, the founders made sure there was ZERO friction to use Trello so they made it completely free to use.
Their goal = reach 100 million users & monetize the 1%. Their formula = Big number, charge a small fraction, make a bunch of $$$.
Freemium pricing brought in 500,000 users in the first year for Trello. They launched at TechCrunch Disrupt & were gaining 1000s of users each day with ZERO paid marketing but they ran into a big problem.
Monetizing Trello
Trello users started to churn saying since it was free, it would end up shutting down. The founders realised that not charging people became a friction point So they created an MVP Pricing Model.
Trello wanted a pricing model that supported organic growth. They dismissed charging per board or charging per card. They started by charging a flat fee of $200 per company It worked out terribly.
Flat-fee pricing grew Trello's users by 400% but they had companies paying as low as 4 cents/user/year because of the number of users they had. They were bleeding $$$ so they switched to usage-based pricing And offered 3 pricing tiers - Trello Gold, Business & Enterprise.
Trello Pricing Tier is simple.
Tier 1 = $5/ month/user + 3 additional Power Ups.
Tier 2 = $9.99/month/user + unlimited Power-Ups.
Tier 3= $20.83/month/user + personalized onboarding Trello used growth loops to trigger user acquisition & expansion revenue.
Trello PLG Strategy
Trello user acquisition + expansion revenue growth loop is simple but effective.
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 1 month for referring a new user
Trello uses Feature as marketing. The Power ups feature allow users to build integrations with 3rd party apps.
When a new Power-Up is launched, the 2 companies promote it on websites, blogs & social media.
Organic growth + high-quality backlinks + cross promotions = more users.
Trello Organic Growth Strategy
Their organic content marketing engine is insane. 1 million people read the Trello blog each month. Their topics cover
roductivity hacks, collaboration tricks, case studies, remote work.They collab with other brands & create marketing assets & acquire high DA backlinks
Trello's mascot Taco makes brand recall value very high. Taco is founder Joel Spolsky’s Siberian husky.
They turned him into an adorable cartoon & proudly use him in all aspects of Trello’s branding and marketing. Even their marketing emails are sent as “Taco from Trello”.
Trello invests strongly in community-led-growth. The company has a private Slack channel for its most dedicated fans where they chat with each other & Trello team members about:announcements, best practices, product feedback, work, productivity.
Trello does the basics right wrt user acquisition & activation:
- Identify low hanging fruit in the new user journey
- Notice how people get invited to boards
- Observe How people behave on the landing page
- Study how they get into the app.
- Create simple MVP
- Talk to users
- Use Freemium + PLG + Growth loops
- landing page + onboarding is 80-20 for PLG
- Features can work as a marketing channel
- Build a memorable brand
- Create a community
- Build content & partnerships
