Asana Files To Go Public on NYSE

Project management software startup Asana’s S-1 is finally here, as the company prepares for a direct listing on the New York Stock Exchange.

Subscribe to the Crunchbase Daily

Asana was founded by Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and Justin Rosenstein, who helped design the “Like” button at Facebook. The idea for Asana came from Moskovitz and Rosenstein’s experience building software at the social media giant, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. Asana’s software helps teams plan projects, assign tasks, and keep track of progress.

The company has more than 75,000 paying customers and 1.2 million paid users, according to the filing. It also has more than 3.2 million free activated accounts and customers across 190 countries.

While Asana is based in San Francisco, it has operations around the world, including in Dublin, Munich, London, Sydney, Tokyo, Reykjavik, Vancouver, and New York. According to the S-1 filing, in fiscal 2020, about 41 percent of Asana’s revenue came from customers who were outside of the United States.

For the year that ended on Jan. 31, 2020, the company reported $142.6 million in revenue, a nearly 86 percent increase from the $76.8 million it generated in revenue during the same period the year prior. 

But as the company’s revenue grew, so did its losses. Asana reported nearly $118.6 million in losses for the year that ended on Jan. 31, 2020, nearly 133 percent higher than its net losses during the same period the year prior (around $51 million). The increase in losses can be attributed to increased spending on research and development, sales and marketing, and general and administrative costs, all of which more than doubled between the years ending on Jan. 31 in 2019 and 2020.

In terms of risk, the company listed a few unique ones for itself and the time it’s operating in. It noted that the COVID-19 pandemic was an ongoing risk, given the uncertainty of the virus and its effects on the market. 

“The COVID-19 pandemic has caused us to experience, in some cases, longer sales cycles and an increase in certain prospective and current customers seeking lower prices or other more favorable contract terms, and has limited the ability of our direct sales force to travel to customers and potential customers,” Asana noted in the S-1.

Asana has raised at least $413 million in funding and is backed by investors including Y Combinator, Manhattan Venture Partners, and Founders Fund, per Crunchbase.