Asana vs Atlassian: Founders, CEOs and History
Asana was founded in 2008 by Dustin Moskovitz, Justin Rosenstein and is led by Dan Rogers. Atlassian was founded in 2002 by Mike Cannon-Brookes, Scott Farquhar and is led by Mike Cannon-Brookes.
Company facts
Founders
Asana
Dustin Moskovitz
Dustin Moskovitz is a US entrepreneur, a co-founder of Facebook, and the co-founder of Asana, which he ran as chief executive officer from 2008 until July 2025.
Justin Rosenstein
Justin Rosenstein is a US software engineer and entrepreneur who co-founded Asana with Dustin Moskovitz.
Atlassian
Mike Cannon-Brookes
Atlassian was founded in 2002 in Sydney, Australia, by Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar. The founding of the company is a notable departure from the traditional Silicon Valley startup narrative.
Scott Farquhar
Scott Farquhar co-founded Atlassian in 2002 and served as co-CEO alongside Mike Cannon-Brookes until he stepped down on August 31, 2024, one of the longest co-CEO partnerships among listed technology companies.
CEOs and their tenures
Asana
- Dustin Moskovitz2008–2025
Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Ran Asana for its first 17 years, from incorporation in December 2008 to a platform with more than 180,000 paying customers, and retains a majority of the company's voting power through its dual-class structure.
Source - Dan Rogers2025–present
Chief Executive Officer
Second chief executive in Asana's history, brought in to restart growth by rebuilding the platform around AI agents while holding the margin gains that produced non-GAAP operating income of $56.7 million in fiscal 2026.
Source
Atlassian
- Mike Cannon-Brookes2002–present
Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Cannon-Brookes has led Atlassian since founding it in 2002, taking it from a $10,000 startup to $6.57 billion of fiscal 2026 revenue, and has been sole chief executive since Scott Farquhar stepped down on August 31, 2024.
Source - Scott Farquhar2002–2024
Co-Founder and Co-Chief Executive Officer
Farquhar served as co-CEO alongside Cannon-Brookes from 2002 until August 31, 2024, overseeing technical and engineering areas of the company as it grew from the original Jira issue tracker to a cloud platform serving more than 350,000 customers.
Source
Timeline: Asana and Atlassian side by side
2002Atlassian
Company founded by Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar in Sydney
Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar founded Atlassian with $10,000 in credit card debt while students at the University of New South Wales. They launched Jira, a bug-tracking and project management tool for software developers.
2004Atlassian
Launch of Confluence team collaboration platform
Atlassian launched Confluence, a team collaboration and documentation platform that complemented Jira and expanded the addressable market beyond software development into general team collaboration and knowledge management.
2005Atlassian
Reaches $1 million in annual revenue with no salespeople
Atlassian reached $1 million in annual revenue entirely through self-service online sales, validating the product-led growth model and demonstrating that enterprise software could be sold without a traditional sales force.
2008Asana
Asana incorporated in Delaware: Dustin Moskovitz and Justin Rosenstein left Facebook and incorporated the company in Delaware on December 16, 2008, initially as Smiley Abstractions, Inc., renamed Asan…
2009Asana
$9 million Series A from Benchmark and Andreessen Horowitz: Asana raised a $9 million Series A round in November 2009 led by Benchmark, with Andreessen Horowitz participating and Benchmark's Matt Cohl…
2010Atlassian
Raises $60 million from Accel Partners
Atlassian raised its first outside investment, $60 million from Accel Partners, after eight years of bootstrapped growth. The money went to product development and international expansion, not to building a sales force.
2011Asana
Product opens to the public for free: After about three years of building a custom web framework called Luna and the Work Graph data model behind it, Asana opened its platform to the public at no char…
2012Asana
Paid plans and a public API: Asana began charging for the platform in April 2012 and released its API to third-party developers the same month, with Twitter and LinkedIn among the early companies runn…
2012Asana
$28 million raised to expand the team: Asana raised $28 million in July 2012 to build out engineering, support and sales as paid usage started to grow.
2012Atlassian
Acquisition of HipChat for real-time messaging
Atlassian acquired HipChat, an enterprise messaging platform, entering the real-time communication market and expanding the product suite beyond project management and documentation.
2015Atlassian
Initial public offering on NASDAQ
Atlassian completed its IPO on the NASDAQ Global Select Market, raising $462 million at a valuation of $4.37 billion. Shares were priced at $21 and rose 32% on the first day to close near $28.
2016Asana
$50 million Series C led by Sam Altman: Asana raised $50 million in Series C funding led by Sam Altman, then president of Y Combinator, at a valuation of about $600 million.
2017Atlassian
Acquisition of Trello for $425 million
Atlassian acquired Trello, a visual task management platform built on Kanban boards, for $425 million in cash and stock. The deal extended its reach to non-technical teams and smaller organizations, complementing Jira.
2018Asana
Portfolios and the Asana Business tier: Asana launched Portfolios alongside a new Business plan in November 2018, giving executives a single view of progress and resourcing across many projects and pu…
2018Asana
$125 million raised at a $1.5 billion valuation: Asana raised $75 million in Series D funding led by Generation Investment Management and a further $50 million in November 2018 that valued the company…
2018Atlassian
Launch of Jira Service Management
Atlassian launched Jira Service Management, entering the IT service management market and extending Jira from software development into IT operations and service desk work.
2019Asana
Workload capacity planning ships: Asana released Workload in August 2019, letting managers see how individual team members were staffed across projects and rebalance assignments without leaving the pl…
2020Asana
Asana Goals links execution to strategy: Asana released Goals on July 15, 2020, a goal-tracking layer that connects company objectives to the projects and tasks underneath them so progress updates aut…
2020Asana
Direct listing on the New York Stock Exchange: Asana went public on September 30, 2020 through a direct listing rather than an IPO.
2020Atlassian
Acquisition of Mindville for asset management
Atlassian acquired Mindville, an IT asset management company, to add asset and configuration management to Jira Service Management for enterprise customers.
2021Atlassian
Acquisition of Chartio for data visualization
Atlassian acquired Chartio, a cloud data visualization and analytics company, to improve reporting across the product suite. The standalone Chartio product was later discontinued.
2022Asana
Workforce cut by 9%: In November 2022 Asana cut about 9% of its global workforce in a restructuring aimed at operating costs after two years of rapid hiring during the remote-work boom.
2022Atlassian
Acquisition of Percept.AI for AI virtual agents
Atlassian acquired Percept.AI, an AI virtual agent company, to add automated ticket handling to Jira Service Management ahead of its broader AI push.
2023Asana
Asana Intelligence brings generative AI into the Work Graph: Asana announced its first generative AI features in June 2023 and packaged them as Asana Intelligence on October 3, 2023, covering smart st…
2023Atlassian
Acquisition of Loom for approximately $975 million
Atlassian acquired Loom, an asynchronous video messaging platform, for about $975 million, its largest acquisition by announced value, adding recorded video to Jira and Confluence workflows.
2024Asana
AI Studio opens agent building to non-developers: Asana launched AI Studio in October 2024, a no-code builder that lets teams embed AI agents in a workflow and deploy them inside Asana.
2024Atlassian
Launch of Rovo AI assistant
Atlassian launched Rovo, an AI assistant embedded across its products, providing search, summarization, automation, and agents that draw on the Teamwork Graph.
2024Atlassian
Server end-of-life forces cloud and data center migration
Atlassian ended support for its Server product line in February 2024, requiring remaining on-premises customers to move to either Cloud or Data Center subscriptions.
2025Asana
Dan Rogers succeeds Dustin Moskovitz as chief executive: Moskovitz announced his retirement as chief executive in March 2025.
2025Atlassian
Launch of Atlassian Collections
Atlassian began selling Collections, bundles of apps and AI agents priced around an outcome rather than per product: the Teamwork Collection, Software Collection, Service Collection, and Strategy Collection.
2025Atlassian
Announces end of life for Data Center products
On September 8, 2025, Atlassian announced the end of life of its Data Center products under a migration program called Atlassian Ascend.
2025Atlassian
Acquisition of The Browser Company of New York
Atlassian completed the acquisition of The Browser Company of New York, maker of the Dia and Arc browsers, on October 20, 2025, for a total purchase price of $488.3 million, taking the company into enterprise browsers.
2025Atlassian
Acquisition of engineering intelligence vendor DX
Atlassian acquired A Software Company, which trades as DX, on November 10, 2025 for $720.4 million in cash. DX measures how engineering investment turns into delivered work and is being folded into Atlassian Collections.
2026Asana
StackAI acquired for $75 million: Asana completed its acquisition of StackAI, a no-code AI workflow platform, on May 28, 2026 for $75 million.
2026Asana
Repositioned as an operating system for human-agent teams: At its Work Innovation Summit in June 2026 Asana unveiled a product suite built so employees and AI agents work from the same plan, context a…
2026Asana
Dan Rogers named board chair: Effective September 25, 2026 Rogers added board chair to the chief executive role, Dustin Moskovitz moved to director, and Jerry Ting and Tom Berquist joined the board.
2026Atlassian
Restructuring eliminates roles covering about 10% of the workforce
Atlassian initiated a second restructuring plan in the third quarter of fiscal 2026, eliminating roles covering approximately 10% of its workforce to fund investment in AI and enterprise sales.
2026Atlassian
Rovo reaches over 80% of the Fortune 500
Atlassian reported that Rovo was in use at over 80% of Fortune 500 companies and that its MCP server and Teamwork Graph CLI passed one million monthly active users in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2026, more than doubling in a quarter.
Acquisitions
Atlassian
- The Browser Company of New York Inc.2025$488.3M
- A Software Company (DX)2025$720.4M
- Loom, Inc.2023$975M
- Percept.AI2022Undisclosed
- Chartio2021Undisclosed
- Mindville2020Undisclosed
Questions about Asana vs Atlassian
Who is the CEO of Asana, Inc. and Atlassian Corporation?
Asana, Inc. is led by Dan Rogers and Atlassian Corporation is led by Mike Cannon-Brookes. Both serve as the top executive responsible for the company's strategy, operations, and financial performance.
When was Asana, Inc. founded vs Atlassian Corporation?
Atlassian Corporation was founded in 2002 — 6 years before Asana, Inc., which was founded in 2008. Atlassian Corporation's longer operating history gives it a deeper track record but also potentially more institutional inertia compared to the younger Asana, Inc..
How many employees does Asana, Inc. have compared to Atlassian Corporation?
Asana, Inc. employs approximately 1,767 people, while Atlassian Corporation employs approximately 13,301. Atlassian Corporation has the larger workforce at 13,301 employees, compared to Asana, Inc.'s 1,767. A higher headcount does not necessarily imply greater efficiency — it often reflects differences in business model (e.g., manufacturing vs. software).
Where are Asana, Inc. and Atlassian Corporation headquartered?
Both Asana, Inc. and Atlassian Corporation are headquartered in United States, meaning they operate under the same primary regulatory and tax environment.
Who founded Asana, Inc. and Atlassian Corporation?
Asana, Inc. was founded by Dustin Moskovitz, Justin Rosenstein. Atlassian Corporation was founded by Mike Cannon-Brookes, Scott Farquhar.
Which company has a longer operating history — Asana, Inc. or Atlassian Corporation?
Atlassian Corporation has been operating for approximately 24 years, making it the more established of the two companies. Asana, Inc. has been in operation for around 18 years. A longer operating history often signals greater institutional resilience and brand recognition, though it can also mean slower adaptation to new market conditions.
Figures come from each company's filings and the sources linked beside them. Amounts reported in another currency are shown in US dollars at an approximate rate and marked with ~. Back to the Asana vs Atlassian overview