Atlassian spends $577 million to acquire productivity app Trello

Tech giant Atlassian is kicking off the new year with a $US425 million ($577.8 million) acquisition of global productivity app Trello.

This marks 15-year-old Atlassian’s 18th acquisition, following the Australian company’s recent acquisitions of StatusPage, Hall, and BitBucket

According to TechCrunch, Atlassion will pay $US360 million ($489.6 million) in cash for five-year old Trello, with the remaining amount being paid off in “restricted shares and options”.

Speaking to StartupSmart, Atlassian co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes says Trello is a “phenomenal product” but even more importantly, the startup has a “phenomenal team”.

With the acquisition, Trello’s team of nearly 100 employees will join Atlassian.

“[Trello’s] got great momentum, we used it a lot at work,” says Cannon-Brookes.

Massive day. Brilliant @trello team joining the amazing @Atlassian $TEAM to change how the world works. https://t.co/cVUOCYn5by

— Mike Cannon-Brookes (@mcannonbrookes) January 9, 2017

In a blog post, Cannon-Brookes said Trello is one of the few companies in the world building software to improve team work.

“In Trello we found a group that is as dedicated to helping teams get stuff done as we are. In fact, we have identical milestones towards achieving our missions: for our tools to be used by [100 million] people,” he said.

Trello, which launched at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco, boasts over 19 million users worldwide, including large organisations such as Google, Red Cross and National Geographic.

“Our small idea was to take the paradigm of a sticky note on a wall and turn it into a tool that allowed people to collaborate in real time,” Trello founder and chief executive Michael Pryor said in a blog post on Trello.

The transaction is expected to close by the end of March 2017.

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