Facebook共同创始人要做电子邮件终结者

    2008年，Facebook的共同创始人达斯汀•莫斯科维茨离开Facebook，进军没那么光鲜的企业软件界。当时，他的决定闹出了不小的动静——同时也为他引来了不少投资。罗恩•康维、彼得•泰尔等知名投资人和安德里森霍洛维奇（Andreessen-Horowitz）、基准资本（Benchmark Capital）等风投公司都为莫斯科维茨的创意投入了不少资本。莫斯科维茨推出的Asana是一个致力于取代商务电子邮件的任务管理工具。他的这家小公司前后共募集了3,850万美元资金。

    Asana的另一名创始人贾斯汀•罗森斯坦是Facebook的一名前技术主管。莫斯科维茨和罗森斯坦花了几年的时间才发布了Asana的初始版本。现在研发团队给Asana添加了一些企业级功能，使它做好了步入行业第一阵营的准备。比如，Asana新增的管理控制工具可以让企业IT部门在网站上设置安全性政策并管理用户的行为。Asana不仅有望获得小企业的青睐，还有可能吸引那些拥有几百、甚至数千名员工的大企业。另外，Asana还有一个更宏大的计划，就是彻底取代电子邮件。当然，对于大部分时间只是用来传送电子表格的电子邮件来说，Asana并不是唯一一个想取代它的产品（说真的，电子邮件是个非常早期的产品）。虽然在Facebook的光辉经历无疑让莫斯科维茨和罗森斯坦成了投资者眼中的香饽饽，不过Asana并不一定能轻松搞定那些大企业客户。

    研究机构Constellation Research公司的分析师艾伦•利奥波夫斯基表示：“他们收获的很多东西靠的都是达斯汀•莫斯科维茨的名头。”

    到目前为止，Asana吸引的主要是一些小公司，包括Dropbox、Uber和Airbnb在内的一些知名的硅谷创业公司也选择了这款网络软件来管理他们的程序。不过科技企业并不是Asana的唯一客户。用户可以使用Asana管理包括活动规划和筹备董事会会议等在内的几乎任何任务。用户可以给团队成员设置特定的任务职责和日期限制，需要与团队沟通的时候，可以像在Facebook上一样发布每个团队成员都能看到的消息更新。另外Asana在本周三早上又发布了一些新功能，对于多个团队共同完成同一个项目的情形，这些团队成员可以浏览所有团队的进展情况。另外，如果你同时参与了多个团队的工作，你也可以在一个单独的收件箱里看到所有团队的任务情况。而且重要的是，IT管理者可以看到、管理用户的行为，而且有权批准或者拒绝员工的访问。

    折价公司表示，现在已经大约有10,000个团队在使用Asana，其中还包括某些财富500强企业（不过需要再次提醒的是，许多所谓提供“在线增值”服务的企业软件公司都声称自己有一些大用户，实际上可能只是某个大公司里有几个使用者注册了它们的产品）。Asana公司还表示，一半左右的频繁使用用户对Asana的使用强度已达到了对电子邮件的使用强度。但现在我们还不知道用户是不是真的因为有了Asana而降低了对电子邮件的使用。财富管理软件提供商Addepar公司的运营总监亚当•劳伦斯表示，他的公司已经使用Asana两年了，而且他总是把Asana的图标“和我的Gmaill一起放在一个单独的标签里。”他还说：“Addepar的每个员工都在用它，甚至连那些不爱额外登陆系统的员工也在用。”

    Asana可以发展到多大？显然，莫斯科维茨和罗森斯坦具备把一款产品做大的能力。Constellation Research公司的分析师利奥波夫斯基说：“这帮小伙子知道怎样为几百万人打造产品”。但是在企业软件行业里，许多规模更大的公司（包括Salesforce和Citrix等）都把他们自己的项目管理工具打包到了一个更大的产品系列里。它意味着Asana不仅要开发新功能以吸引各大企业的兴趣，同时还要提高与其他一些软件工具的合作水平，因为它们已经被企业界广泛采用。此外，它还需要作为插件程序与其他大软件进行合作。这正是Asana需要管理的另一个任务。（财富中文网）

    译者:朴成奎

    Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz generated a lot of buzz -- and funding -- when he left the social networking giant in 2008 to take on the less glitzy world of enterprise software. High-profile investors like Ron Conway, Peter Thiel, and venture capital firms Andreessen-Horowitz and Benchmark Capital all poured money into Moskovitz's idea: Asana, a task-management tool that aspires to replace office email. In total, the small company has raised $38.5 million.

    It took Moskovitz and co-founder Justin Rosenstein -- a former tech lead at Facebook (FB) -- a couple of years to launch the initial version of their product. Now, the team is readying Asana for the big leagues, adding enterprise-grade features like administration controls that let IT set security policies and manage user activity on the site. The hope is that the startup will now be able to attract not just small teams but groups of hundreds or even thousands of employees at a time. And the larger plan: to replace email altogether. Of course, they're not the only ones hoping to position their product as an alternative to sending spreadsheets back and forth (seriously, email is so early aughts). And while the Facebook credentials no doubt helped Moskovitz and Rosenstein land an impressive roster of investors, it won't necessarily seal the deal with large corporate customers.

    "They've got a lot riding on Dustin's name," says Alan Lepofsky, an analyst with Constellation Research.

    Until now, Asana has mainly attracted smaller companies, including Silicon Valley startups likeDropbox, Uber, and Airbnb, which have all signed on to use its web-based software for managing projects. But it's not just for technology companies. Users can manage any type of task -- from event-planning to prepping for board meetings -- by assigning members specific duties and deadlines and communicating with their team by posting updates for everyone to see. With Asana's new features --announced Wednesday morning -- employees will also be able to browse through all of the teams (groups of people working on joint projects) in their organization. Those who are part of multiple teams can now get all of their tasks in a single inbox. And, importantly, IT administrators will be able to view and manage user activity and allow or deny access for employees.

    The company says tens of thousands of teams already use Asana, including some Fortune 500enterprises (then again, many so-called "freemium" business software companies claim large corporate customers -- all it takes are a few registered users within a company). Asana also claims that half of its weekly users use it as much as email. But it's not clear whether customers are actually decreasing their use of email because of Asana. Take Adam Lawrence, director of operations at wealth management software provider Addepar, who says his company has been using Asana for two years and that he always has the web-based task management tool "up next to my Gmail in a separate tab." On the plus side: "Every employee at Addepar uses it," says Lawrence. "Even those that refuse to log into extra systems."

    So how big can Asana get? Clearly, Moskovitz and Rosenstein can scale a product. "These guys know how to build for millions of people," says Lepofsky, the Constellation Research analyst. Then again, Asana is a standalone product in an industry where many larger companies (including Salesforce (CRM) and Citrix (CTXS)) have folded their own project management tools into a larger set of offerings. That means the company will not only have to keep adding features to entice corporations, they'll also need to increase partnerships and plug-ins with other software tools already in use within companies -- yet another task for Asana to manage.