[thecupisblue]

IMO this will be one of the failed IPOs of the 2020.

I understand (but not approve) 300 devs - they got a ton of integrations, enterprise client handling, lot of mobile, frontend and backend surface area to cover, lots of devops and support, teams to build new features, maintain tooling and so on... given time, any software team will slow down and scale up, unless it is specifically countered by the company. There's always stuff to be done (create, maintain, or both), pressure comes from the top and the usual response is "throw bodies at it". The less hackerish/the more corporate the company, the faster the engineering team blows up. Kinda inverse function of the red tape.

But the reason I believe Asana is going down is that their product is just what it sounds like - boring. It's a problem that's been solved a million times and they are just lucky they got on the ride in the early days. But they never evolved and the marked is getting new competition every day that is fighting to take their users away the moment they google asana alternatives. On one hand, they got Jira/YouTrack to fight on the enterprise side and Trello/Monday/Clubhouse/Notion to fight at the startup & SMB sides. If they don't evolve their product and bring something unique that will differentiate them and save their customers more time or mental context, they will remain the "boring" choice in a time where people are looking for the "fun" thing. And while it's good to be the boring choice, it's also a good way to haemorrhage users and profits.

If I was steering Asana, I'd look at stuff like Notion and JetBrains Space for inspiration and product evolution, focus on minimising users context burn rate, developer and general UX optimisation and visual noise reduction. If there is no large changes soon, grab some popcorn and watch it burn - I give it about a year before it starts tumbling downwards.

[wp381640]

You're making the mistake of valuing this IPO on its fundamentals while currently the market is largely being driven by liquidity.

It's really hard to have a failed tech IPO at the moment with all the demand which is why they're all rushing the gates.

It'll take a large, broad recession to bring tech stocks back down

I'd expect Asana, Unity, Sumo and Snowflake to all pop and stay up in the short term

I'd add AirBNB to the list considering booking is only down 10% off it's high and Expedia is up 100%+ from it's covid-low

[switch11]

This is a Brilliant comment

I was wondering who was going to hit the nail on the head

LIQUIDITY

-> looking for a return, ANY RETURN

That's why all large tech stocks are booming

that's why Tesla has 1,000 P/E

Anywhere that all this Feb Printing Press Money can park itself, that might be safe and/or give return

IT WILL RUSH TO

Anyone who can IPO, should IPO

[jolux]

We are currently in a large, broad recession. Unemployment is at 10%.

[adventured]

We were. It's doubtful that we still are. GDP growth has clearly popped back above negative for the third quarter, which will break the two quarters technical requirement. Most economic readings right now are strong, from manufacturing to retail to job creation.

It's more like we're in the equivalent of the first or second inning of the post great recession recovery now.

This recession isn't broad, it's unusual in its disjointed hit. It's primarily hammering lower income labor and specific types of small businesses. 40% of low income households lost jobs just in the March and April shutdown. That's where most of the job damage was at:

CNBC "Households with income below $40,000 were hit hardest by the coronavirus pandemic. Almost 40% were laid off or furloughed by early April, according to the Federal Reserve."

Jobs in the top 2/3 have largely been unscathed, which is why the broad housing market continues humming along in most regards (whereas housing got smashed in every way in the great recession). It's also why hiring has been so ferocious and unemployment has recovered dramatically faster than during the great recession; it's specifically because the context isn't all encompassing. The great recession didn't spare the middle class and higher income groups nearly so much, it was a very broad recession.

Which all makes sense, this wasn't a normal recession, it was a temporary forced shutdown of some parts of the economy due to a pandemic (further, not all of the economy was shuttered during the second quarter, the majority of the economy kept functioning throughout the pandemic).

[jolux]

A thousand people are dying of COVID-19 every day, it’s not a normal recession, but pretending it’s over is silly. The markets have likely priced in a second stimulus which at this point probably depends on a different president.

[james-mcelwain]

Ignoring the importance of the bottom 1/3rd for consumer spending.

[james-mcelwain]

There's no alternative to equities. These prices could continue to go up for years, even if the bottom totally falls out.

[shostack]

Where are you getting your unemployment numbers from?

[jolux]

BLS numbers for July: https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-une...

[mvkel]

By this logic, Zoom shouldn’t exist.

Product innovation and quality represent very little of a company’s value. Distribution is where value is derived, and Asana’s distribution is incredible. And their product isn’t bad!

[freehunter]

Many of the highest valuation companies are boring. Boring isn’t a bad word when it comes to enterprise software.