The Ticker

Three Reasons to Bet on Asana — and One Big Reason Not To

The company, which went public yesterday, is growing fast during the pandemic. But so are its losses.

Mario Gabriele
Marker
Published in
5 min readOct 1, 2020

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Photo illustration: Rafael Henrique/SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty Images

Welcome to The Ticker, a series that examines everything you need to know about companies going public.

In an IPO season dominated by historic valuations and political controversies, Asana’s direct listing this Wednesday seemed almost quaint by comparison. Spun out of Facebook in 2008, the task-management software firm is, in many ways, the antithesis of its alma mater, defined by a commitment to mindfulness.

Will Asana prove to be yet another blockbuster in 2020’s hit parade or a comparative fizzle? The first day of trading certainly got off to a promising start with the share price increasing 37% to value the company at $4.6 billion. Here’s what you need to know about the company.

They’re the anti-Facebook

As college jobs go, Dustin Moskovitz’s is hard to beat: he was Facebook’s first-ever CTO. During his time with the social media giant, Facebook grew from a campus project to one of the world’s most visited websites.

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