Asana Is Preparing To Go Public Through A Direct Listing

By Amit Chowdhry ● Feb 4, 2020
  • It has been confirmed that project management company Asana has filed to go public through a direct listing

It has been confirmed that Asana — the project management company founded by Dustin Moskovitz and Justin Rosenstein — has filed an SEC document about going public through a direct listing.

Direct listings involve a company going public without necessarily raising a new set of funds. Spotify popularized a direct listing IPO when it public back in May 2018. And Slack also went public last year via direct listing last year. Benchmark Capital partner Bill Gurley has been a major advocate of direct listings since he believes the banks “fleece” companies by pricing shares low so that the prices substantially jump on the first day. By going public through a direct listing, Asana will be able to save money from not having to spend as much in banking fees.

Asana originally launched in 2009.  And the company has raised $213 million in funding since then, according to Crunchbase. Moskovitz is also known as being a co-founder of Facebook and Forbes estimates his net worth at about $13 billion. And Rosenstein previously worked as a product manager at Google (March 2004-April 2007) and as an engineering manager at Facebook (May 2007-November 2008).

Asana’s other executives include chief financial officer Tim Wan, chief operating officer Chris Farinacci, general counsel Eleanor Lacey, head of product, Alex Hood, head of people Anna Binder, head of engineering Prashant Pandey, head of marketing Dave King, and head of global sales & partnerships Oliver Jay.

And Asana’s board includes Moskovitz, Rosenstein, Sumologic CFO Sydney Carey, Benchmark Capital partner Matt Cohler, Quora CEO Adam D’Angelo, Lead Edge Capital operating partner Lorrie Norrington, and Guru chief customer officer Anne Raimondi.