With a name borrowed from a Yoga sitting posture, Asana, the work-collaboration startup founded by two Facebook brainiacs, is putting its first software product on sale today that is designed to help remote teams operate together more effectively and easily.
The Asana product offering is described as a collaborative information manager Web 2.0 application designed for workplace efficiency.
Asana was co-founded by Facebook billionaires Dustin Moskovitz and Justin Rosenstein who apparently are out to “change the world” with their new work productivity software package for boosting project management.
Moskovitz and others helped Mark Zuckerberg launch Facebook in 2004. Rosenstein came to Facebook from Google in 2007, and the duo left Facebook in 2008 to form Asana with $9 million of venture capital. Dustin and Justin apparently got the idea for Asana while developing applications to improve Facebook’s internal workstream.
Asana, according to the San Jose Mercury News , is about “boosting and speeding communication among team members. Using a simple, word processor-like interface, the software gives people working together on a given task a central place to discuss the project, share files and keep track of to-dos in real-time. ”
The Asana software has been available in a free beta version since November 2011. Today, a premium version (suitable for 30 or more users) enters the marketplace for a sliding fee of $300.
The software is already being used by “biotechnology researchers, software developers at Foursquare, professional sports teams and church groups” among others. The founders, who obviously don’t need the money, say they anticipate big profits ahead for the company especially given that employees and contractors in the contemporary workplace are seldom in one centralized office.
Asana is based in San Francisco’s mission district and currently has about 23 employees.
