Asana Pie: Asana and Pied Piper join forces to help humanity thrive

Dear readers —

Thank you for being present. In this precious moment, I am thrilled to announce a wonderful partnership: effective today, April 1 2016, Pied Piper and Asana are helping humanity thrive together. We are incorporating as one entity to manifest our existential non-duality. I hope you’re hungry for some Asana Pie.

Today’s merger is a significant milestone in both our companies’ journeys, but we’ve long shared a greater purpose.

A love for the universe.

We’re a match made in heaven. The heaven on earth we’re building together.

Thriving Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger

Pied Piper recently joined 2016's fastest growing category of enterprise software companies: Those that preface their mission statements with “Help Humanity Thrive.” Seeing more companies join us in this commitment gives me hope. There was a time when our industry was obsessed with mindless engagement, but these days the tech industry is killing it on thriving.

This shift towards thriving in our industry is a direct result of honest cultural conversation. Pied Piper’s platform has empowered Silicon Valley to make the world a better place. Asana has been watching Pied Piper for a while, and we think it’s time they’re recognized for who they are.

The Directly Responsible Individual (DRI™) for Helping Humanity Thrive (HHT™).

We don’t mean to claim successes unrealized. It serves us to be mindful that our sincere intention not become self-aggrandizement. Luckily, we’re the most mindful of all time.

With both our teams working tirelessly to help humanity thrive, humanity might thrive too much. How will robots respond to human over-thriving? Fear not. Our friends at Good Ventures have agreed to consider this as part of their research on global catastrophic risks.

So, after we’re done helping humanity thrive, what are we going to do?

Software Engineering in a Post-Thriving Society

We’re going to make Asana really, really fast (again). How, you might ask? By making our bytes smaller.

We learned from our previous infrastructure, Luna1, not to try to build everything on our own. In our brand new infrastructure, we’ve used open-source standards everywhere. With one exception: there’s no open-source reactive database that met our requirements for thriving, so we’ve built one for everyone.

But we couldn’t have done it alone. In Pied Piper, we had not only a bunch of mission-oriented enthusiastic collaborators, but a really dope Weissman Score.

Better compression means getting more done. When it comes to performance, less is more, more or less.

Over the last year, a team led by Asana engineer Malcolm Handley and Pied Piper engineer Dinesh Chugati has been working around the clock to build a middle-out compression algorithm for your work graph. The algorithm understands that work actually happens at the center of the work graph, not at the top of the management hierarchy. By detecting patterns in collaboration dynamics and encoding them for maximal efficiency, we’ve seen dramatic reduction in wasted work. Behold the power of middle-out management.

The results are phenomenal, with response times that are 4–10x faster. We’re still productionizing the system, but starting soon, you’re going to have to ask yourself: “Did someone turn my thriving up to 11?”

Negotiations were pretty straightforward.

One Small Bite of Asana Pie, One Giant Leap for Humanity

I’ve oft dreamt of a union with Pied Piper, but I always thought that was a (pied) pipe dream. Amazingly, after returning from Bali, I began to see that possibility exists in every moment. First the owner of Asana’s M&A AoR went on sabbatical for a vision quest, leaving responsibility for our acquisitions strategy un-owned; I swooped on that like an Asana employee on some kale chips. Then, this week, we raised an additional $50 million in funding. I’m confident this is exactly what our investors had in mind for that money.

yoink!

Due to convex non-linearity effects, Asana Pie’s mission must be greater than just our previous respective missions combined. It’s time for the greatest mission.

This is our manifest destiny.

You’ve never seen task management this delicious.

Half Pipe, Half Asana

My fellow Asanas: As we’ve grown as a family, we’ve celebrated many launches, weddings, and babies together. But this is truly a special moment. I can’t wait to share my love for y’all at our next company all-hearts meeting.

My fellow Pipers: I’m confident I speak for every Asana when I say I’m excited to collaborate with each and every one of you. Let’s bring the dream of Silicon Valley to life together.

Namaste,

Jack Heart, Chief Pipe Officer, Asana Pie

We like to commemorate every new addition to Asana with a wooden tile to serve humanity’s need for more coasters.

Many thanks to the many Asanas who offered their due diligence throughout this process, and to Pied Piper for being a true thriving company.