Great! Well, welcome everybody to day two of the Citi Technology conference. Steve Enders is part of the software research team here at Citi. And with us today, we have Tim Wan from Asana. Tim, thank you so much for being here.
Thank you, Steve. Nice to be here.
Yeah. Maybe just to start out, you know, maybe just talk a little bit about, you know, Asana in the marketplace, kind of what's the Asana differentiation and maybe some of the background for maybe those who are a little bit newer to the Asana story.
Yeah, sure. Asana is a work management platform to help teams organize their work and collaborate together. I think what's really unique about Asana is the founder of the company, Dustin Moskovitz, was the co-founder of Facebook. And if you're familiar with Facebook, you know, one of their core strengths was this concept called the social graph, which is essentially a data model. And Dustin brought that data model to the foundation of Asana in terms of how work is interrelated to one another, how that work is connected to different projects, to different portfolios, to different goals. And that, you know, in many ways is the secret sauce of Asana, this architecture behind the scenes that allows teams to collaborate in a much more effective and more flexible way.
I think going forward for us, it's gonna be... I think it's really gonna be transformative for many of our customers, because when you can, when you layer on AI on top of the data model, what you can surface and what you can bring about in terms of value and effectiveness for team and highlights, I think our customers are really gonna see the benefit of that.
Okay, great. Yeah, I think we'll definitely be digging into that a little bit more, later on in the conversation here.
Yeah.
I do wanna ask about, you know, just the most recent quarter reported two days ago-
Yeah
... two days ago now. How should we be thinking about the key factors that impacted demand in the quarter? And I guess what changed that led to, I guess, a little bit of the implied guide down in Q4 here?
Sure. You know, I think the things that change or the things maybe that hasn't changed is the fact that we're continuing to see some macro pressure on the business. About 30% of our business is tech. And if you look at our business, tech versus non-tech, you know, you see a noticeable difference in terms of that, the segment's growth between companies that are non-tech. So we have been weighted down by this 30% on the business. And we think it'll take time. It'll probably take some more time for the tech business to return. Hopefully, you know, we are a seat-based business, so both layoffs has impacted the expansion and the downgrades in our net expansion rate.
So I would say that's, that's one, just like, just continued macro headwinds. And two, we did bring on a new CRO, Ed McDonnell from Salesforce, and we wanted to... You know, we, we know he's gonna make some changes. I think he's gonna be a force for good for us, and we just wanna make sure that he had adequate, air cover to make the necessary changes for the long term.
Okay. So, I guess with that view, is there, like, an added degree of conservatism that's being baked in from maybe before? Like, if we think about the puts and takes of, you know, Q4, how much of it is, like, just continued weakness on tech that maybe was a little bit more outsized versus the changes that you're anticipating Ed making?
Yeah, I mean, I think to the degree that he can implement his changes sooner, I think, you know, then hopefully things will end up being better than we expect. So, you know, I think it's really thinking about and framing the guidance in a way that gives him the air cover to do the necessary things to kind of make sure we're set up for FY 2025.
Sure. Okay.
Yeah.
Makes sense. Maybe just thinking about the outlook for 4Q FX rate, I think it's now kind of in the low teens area. Is this maybe how we should be thinking about the growth outlook going forward? And I guess as you think about the tech part in particular recovering, what does the shape of that-
Yeah
... look like as you start getting to the other side of the downgrade activity?
Yeah. Certainly, I hope, I hope that's not the case. I mean, I think if, if we step back, you know, when we even look at, like, our, our top 100 customers, we're still single digit penetrated, and many of them, less than 10% penetrated within their, within their employee base. So we think there's still a lot of headroom to grow the business. And to the degree that... You know, I think one of the things that we've—you know, for those that's not familiar with Asana, the company grew up primarily as a product-led business, meaning, we, we didn't have a sales team. It was a lot of product-driven sales motion.
And then over time, we've evolved the sales motion to be product-led, and I think at one point you can kinda say it was maybe more inside sales. And now we've really transitioned and pivoted with Ed's onboarding, the company to be much more enterprise-led. Our largest deployment, we have over 200,000 seats deployed at one of the most valuable companies in the world, but we also have companies that are, you know, with a team of 10 using Asana.
Mm-hmm.
There is this pretty wide spectrum of customer usage. But when you really kinda dig in, we're still very early penetrated in many of our customers.
Okay. No, makes sense. I do wanna come back to the changes that Ed is making-
Yeah
... in a minute, but-
Okay
... just last question on the outlook and some of the downgrade behavior. I think you talked about net retention coming down a bit more. I guess, what are the implications of customer downgrade behavior on renewal cycles, and how should we be thinking about where net retention can, you know, bottom from here, and the factors that will then lead to expansion after that?
...Yeah, I think one of the, you know, one of the things that we've seen, especially in tech, is even in Q1, in some of the Q1 customers this year, where they thought they would actually grow their business. And instead of growing their business, those companies actually had a layoff. So in anticipation of, like, maybe you're growing 250, you end up laying off 250. Instead of getting that renewal at 100, we're now getting the renewal of 250 less seats.
Yeah.
So, you know, I think we're gonna have to work through some of those renewals. I think, you know, peak layoff probably was Q1 of this year, when Salesforce and a couple of other large companies did their layoffs.
Mm.
And I think, you know, we'll have to kind of go through that trough, and then I think after that, I think, you know, we can kind of expect things to kind of rebound from there. You know, I think the thing that I think will help our net expansion rate over time is, I think we mentioned this on the call. We have an investor as well as a customer event where we'll be launching new packaging on October third. I think that one will be a really strong catalyst for getting teams to really think about Asana and deploying Asana in a different way. Two, you know, I think with some of these functionality that we're incorporating into the packages, the AI will help with adoption.
So I think that will be another accelerant. And three, I think certainly the changes that hopefully we'll see on our sales team will also help. You know, we saw some early indication in EMEA where productivity started to stabilize and actually improve on a year-over-year basis.
Mm.
We're really encouraged by that. And I think, you know, the changes we've made there hopefully will translate to next year. And, you know, I expect some of those changes will be happening as well in North America for us.
Okay. All right, that's great to hear. Maybe we can kind of dovetail off of the EMEA positive trends there.
Yeah.
I guess, what was it that, you know, you necessarily changed in that market that- that's helping lead to this recovery? I guess, is it more about the market itself recovering, or is it something that was, that was in your control? And then kind of on top of that, what are the learnings there that maybe Ed can apply-
Yeah
... to some of the other regions here?
Yeah, we've had a new leader there now for about nine months. Sanj, Sanj, who came from Salesforce, I think he was, like, a 12-year veteran from Salesforce. I think he just implemented a lot more disciplined, a playbook that's much more focused around, not just inbound, but and also an outbound motion. You know, I think he was just, you know, predictability is very important to him. So just really working on the pipeline, in a disciplined way and holding our reps much more accountable than they've been used to before. And I think that's just an evolution of some of the... You know, we also updated, you know, transitioned out some talent, and upgraded some managers in each of the countries.
I think all those things cumulatively shored up the team and, you know, helped the team kind of see this productivity increase on a year-over-year basis.
Okay.
Yeah.
And so with Ed now coming in, also from Salesforce-
Also from Salesforce.
A lot of, a lot of talent at Salesforce, apparently.
A lot of... Yes.
How should we think about the changes in, you know, what he's gonna end up doing as he comes in, and what that means strategically for the go-to-market function?
Yeah, I mean, I think, I don't think it'll be dramatically different than what Sanj has been doing. One, I think certainly, I think he'll be upgrading the talent, or and updating some of the management teams, beneath him. I think he's gonna have a lot more focus around the outbound motion. You know, the one thing that's really changed over the last year and a half is, you know, we had this motion where, the buyer or the user or the champion was the budget owner. Meaning, a marketing director or marketing VP can add their whole team, and the spend with Asana sat with that person.
I think over the last year and a half, what's happened is, while they can be a champion, they no longer control their budget.
Mm.
The budget line item moved to the CIO, and I think one of the things that Ed is really focused on is: How do we speak to the CIO? How do we sell into the CIO organization? How do we value sell and prove ourselves in a different way than where we focus much more on the end user? They're, they're an important voice, but I think the dollars now reside with a different part of the company, and learning to sell into that part of the company, and understand their needs is gonna be much more important.
Okay, so I guess functionally, what does that mean for the actual go-to-market? Like, how does it change going from the, you know, the person who-
Yeah
... loves Asana to the person who now is controlling the purse strings?
Yeah, I mean, I think from how we market to how we sell will change. So I think if you go back a couple of years, you'll see a lot of our marketing much more focused around the end user.
Yeah.
The marketing will be much more focused around the buyer. There'll be much more executive events, getting CIOs into the room and having dinner with Dustin-
Yeah
... and having Dustin sell a little bit more. The messaging, just what you see, will be much more targeted at the budget owner. And then on the sales side, I think there'll be two things. You know, in addition to upgrading the talent, certainly I think there will be some verticalization, meaning how we verticalize the motion-
Mm
... within different segments. Potentially down the road, you'll see something like a healthcare team and then a financial services team. And I think, like, more, those are the types of things that you'll see us focus on.
Okay.
Yeah.
With the idea of a verticalization of the go-to-market, does that mean there might be need to be some verticalization of the product itself, or?... Yeah, how do you think about the-
Yeah
- use cases?
Yeah, I actually think, like, the product is, like, when we, when we and I actually, like, do prepare for earnings, like, the amount of use cases is so broad and so deep, it's actually quite a lot. We already have a lot of biotech companies. We have healthcare companies already using the product. We, to some, you know, we have financial services using our product. We have, like, some of the top professional services using the product. So, so I think what we haven't done a good job of is, like, creating that playbook within those verticals, and just having it be a repeat, rinse, repeat type process.
Mm-hmm.
And I think, you know, Ed is much more focused on, like, "Okay, now that we have these wins, five of the top 10 retailers, how do we translate that from the top five to, like, the top 20?
Gotcha. Okay. Okay, that makes sense. With the idea of the CIO becoming a little bit more in control of this category, what does it mean for consolidation opportunities out there?
Yeah
... and how prevalent is that, you know, currently taking place in the market?
Yeah, yeah, so maybe for just for clarity, when we talk about consolidation, it doesn't necessarily always mean wall-to-wall. Consolidation can also mean consolidation within a department. So, I, you know, we're seeing more consolidation, but I don't... I wouldn't say enough where it's, like, a material number in our billings. But, you know, we recently had a very large win with a large cybersecurity company. And, you know, there's still room to grow even within that account.
Mm.
They consolidated off of seven different applications. I think they had... My understanding is they had Monday, Airtable, Smartsheet, Workfront, Wrike, kind of, like, spread out all across their company.
Wow!
And I think in this environment, where the CIO, when they look across their software spend, and they've identified, "Hey, we have four or five vendors essentially kind of doing the same thing, but across different departments, how do we consolidate onto that?" One, and two, how, what, "Who's the vendor that we wanna pick that's, that's gonna grow with us, that's flexible enough to grow with us, and serve all these different constituents across my organization?" And we generally win in these scenarios, primarily because, one, the usability of the product, the cross-functional nature, the Work Graph really helps with that. I think, certainly I think, like, scalability, the fact that we can demonstrate we... Our largest deployment is 200,000, I think that helps.
Mm-hmm.
And then I think, like, our roadmap, certainly, like, when we demonstrate, when we talk about our roadmap to this customer, I think they were really encouraged by what they're seeing.
Okay. So I guess within this example specifically, I mean, is it fair to say the trigger point was, you know, a budget question or a budget concern that then led to them deciding it made more financial sense to bring it all under one vendor? Or I guess, what was it that led to, led to this?
Yeah, I think, I think like, in this environment, there's certainly maybe not budget, but maybe a sprawl...
Okay
... that if they didn't address it now, it would only get worse. So maybe it's a combination of those two things, some combination of budget and sprawl. I think, you know, we've gone through it ourselves, just as buyers of a lot of software, and even when we ask the team, "Hey, give me a, give me a list of all the SaaS companies that across Asana," it's over 100. And you find that, oh, we have three marketing email platform, like, tools. And like, okay, like, how do we rationalize this? Like, this doesn't scale.
Yeah.
So I think, I think it's really out of those, that type of intention. I... The budget is one element, but it's really, like, "This doesn't make sense. You can't, you can't, you can't, like, scale with multiple vendors across the company.
Sure.
Yeah.
Sure. I guess, in these deals with, I guess, the macro sensitivity that's out there, how much is price becoming a factor in the purchase decision? Or, like, what is it about, you know, Asana that differentiates and maybe insulates a little bit from, from some of those pricing discussions?
Yeah, I mean, I think I wouldn't say price is the most important thing, but it is, it is, it's certainly a driver. And generally, like, when I, when I look at the RFPs, even for many of the wins that we had this past quarter, price is one of 10 things that they look at.
Yeah.
I feel like really scalability and security are kind of the things that a lot... The buyer, especially, and the CIO, care deeply about, and then admin controls. Like, who can see what, and how I can deploy certain things? Price is one element, but I feel like price predictability is the piece that they care deeply about. Because I think-
Mm
... many times they expect a larger footprint over time, especially if they're... You know, generally, we're even in a company that might be 15,000, and we're selling 2,000 or 3,000 seats, they recognize that the cross-functional nature of work, we're gonna be adding more seats. So what we've learned from some of these CIOs now is, like, "Hey, you have to give me some predictability around the next tranche of seats we're gonna deploy," and they care deeply about that.
Okay.
But, you know, I wouldn't say, you know, we're not gonna lose a deal on price, but it's certainly we feel like we can also hold firm, relatively speaking, to our competitors on price.
Okay.
Yeah.
We're gonna go about halfway through, and I do wanna make sure that there are audience questions, that we're able to get to those. So if there's anything, raise your hand, and we'll make sure to get to you here. I guess on the go-to-market side, kind of coming back to the enterprise execution, 'cause that still continues to be really strong for Asana. What has underpinned that success at market? How much of it is just more focused on go-to-market to target that, versus maybe some of what you're doing on the product side to really capture those large opportunities?
... Yeah, it's probably a combination of both. I mean, we, I feel like, you know, when we look back at the functionality and many of the launches this past year from the product team-
Mm-hmm.
They were really driven from what our customer, our enterprise customers wanted. So I, so I think that's one. Two, I think, you know, it's just a much heavier focus on moving upmarket for the company. You know, on the lower end of the market, we've diverted a lot of our resources and marketing. Either we cut that spend, or we diverted those resources back on, like, "Hey, we want, we wanna move upmarket." And I think that's helped kinda focus the team on helping companies move up and expand... larger companies move up, and upgrade from either Premium to Business or Business to Enterprise . Because when we look at our enterprise segment, even within our business, that's the business that's actually growing north of thir- you know, like, north of 30%.
Sure.
and growing the fastest.
Sure.
Yeah.
So, looking at the quarter in particular, I mean, the business tier, enterprise tier, I think-
Yeah
... accounted for more than the incremental dollars on, on the revenue line. How should we be thinking about this? Is it primarily about, you know, really strong conversion rates and, and people recognizing the value of the tier, or is there, you know, maybe more of a lower market's a little bit tougher and, and upper market's just performing better in this environment?
Yeah. Lower market is less of a focus, so maybe, yeah, maybe it's tougher. It's generally... When I look at the data, like the unit economics, it's the more high churn-
Mm-hmm
... higher churn, lower unit economics. So we focused much less on that. So I think even if you look at the dollars on our Premium SKU , it, I think it either didn't grow or was, went backwards a little bit.
Okay.
But if, I think, if you look at the growth of our Business and Enterprise tier , which is also a good proxy for, like, our enterprise business.
Yeah
... that grew north of 30%. And that's been the strength. That's really been the strength of the business.
Okay.
Yeah.
Okay, that makes sense. Maybe shifting gears a little bit, you know, talked earlier about AI and the work graph kind of coming together and, and that really being a driver of the value, value proposition for AI. So I guess, I guess, first of all, where does the AI strategy sit today, and kinda what is the, the future of Asana and AI together kinda look like?
Yeah, so, as you know, Dustin is probably one of the earliest investors in many of these AI companies, and he's been thinking about this for a long time, and-
Mm-hmm
... it's a passion for him. I think we'll share more on Investor Day on October third, but it's essentially it. I think, like, if he was here, I think he would tell you he now thinks he can accelerate the product roadmap much sooner than he ever thought.
Okay.
And I think that's really exciting, and the value that we can deliver to our customers much earlier than we had thought. So I think it's gonna be critical to everything that we do. We recently did a reorg also in our R&D organization, and stood up a separate AI team. And the goal is to have this team really quickly launch AI functionality, test it, refine it, over time, rotate them back into the core platform team, and then rotate other engineers into this AI. So almost an AI training ground, if you will, for an R&D organization.
Sure.
We haven't had an R&D reorg this big in many years. I think it just really shows how deep and how passionate Dustin's thinking about this.
Okay.
Yeah.
Interesting. I guess maybe from the engineering perspective, understand that the, I guess, AI training ground, if-
Yeah
... if you will, but how much is AI changing your own internal efficiencies, and how much are you able to, you know, drive productivity, drive margin out of the business because of, you know, how AI could be changing things operationally for Asana?
Yeah, it's a great question. I think, I think there are, different parts of the departments are at different phases, if you will.
Sure.
You know, an example, like our SDR team's already using ChatGPT to craft their outbound emails and customize it, and, like, something that would've taken them two hours, it's taking them, like, two minutes now.
Wow!
They can quickly get a lot of emails and communication out. I think the engineering team is, you know, I think they're testing, like, how to write code faster.
Mm-hmm.
I think that will help. I think in finance, I think we're still honestly kinda learning our way on how we think it can help. Mm-hmm. For a long time, especially in G&A organization, like find low-cost center, and now there's, like, this other, this other, solution where you may not have to outsource. That actually may be more efficient, and we actually have to rethink, "Okay, well, if we don't use an outsource provider, how will we actually get this work done?
Mm-hmm.
So, remains to be seen, but I, but I think the teams, like, we, we have projects internally for the finance team to even think about that.
Got it. And I guess, as we think about the efficiencies in the model, I mean, I think you're showing a ton of skill right now and really kinda closing the gap to get towards break even. Can you maybe walk us through, like, what have been the biggest changes that you've made so far since this bigger push, and how many more levers are there to really pull until you kinda reach that break-even target?
Yeah, so, you know, the thing that I think we really... One of the things, we made some hard trade-offs about our go-to-market. About, maybe a year and a half ago, we were still, we were still aggressively pursuing the lower end of the market.
Mm-hmm.
So I think we made a hard decision in terms of like, "Hey, we're gonna redeploy those resources. Either we're not gonna spend the money, or we're gonna deploy resources and focus much more on the higher end."... and I think you saw that sales and marketing, it might have been in the high 70s before, but now it's probably like maybe 50% or 52% of our revenue. We still have work to do, obviously. I think, given our growth rate, I think we're—I don't think anybody's happy. You know, hopefully we can re-accelerate, and then we would feel good about the investment. I think R&D and G&A, we still have some room.
Mm-hmm.
I think you can expect our R&D. I think over time, I think with AI, I think you'll see more efficiency, and I think you see the same with G&A.
Sure.
But we've made pretty, pretty good progress, I would say, this past year on sales and marketing and G&A. And then I would expect kind of the next lever to be R&D contributing more over time.
Okay.
Yeah.
Maybe on free cash flow, I mean-
Yeah.
really strong in the quarter. I know that there were maybe some one-time things in there-
Yeah
... that impacted that. So I guess walk us through what happened in 2Q.
Yeah.
How we should be thinking about free cash flow through the rest of the year and maybe into the back end?
Yeah. I wouldn't, I wouldn't call it one time thing. I mean, we'll, we'll certainly have this customer pay us again next year-
Sure
... at this time.
Yeah.
Our largest customer signed a large deal with us in Q1. It's for one of our... It's for our largest deployment. We collected that money in Q2. We're having expansion conversations with them, and, you know, certainly it was outsized from a, from a billings perspective for us.
Sure.
But, you know, I think if you look at our free cash flow margin, and then if you look at our operating margin, you've seen about a 40-point improvement, and I think you can kind of expect that to narrow over time. And we've, you know, we committed again to being free cash flow positive by the end of next calendar year, and, you know, we feel like we're on track to do that.
Okay.
Yeah.
I guess I think we already talked a little bit about, like, some of, you know, the changes in-
Yeah
... in the model that we'll need to kinda hit to get there. But as we think about break even, what does the path, I guess, beyond that look like, and how do you think about the balance of growth and profitability, and you know, kind of how all that will coalesce once we're kind of at a break-even level?
Yeah, I mean, I think... Gosh, I have to go back and look at our, the listing, but I think, like, our gross margins are 90%.
Yeah.
We think, you know, over time, R&D, you know, will be in the twenties, and then I think it really depends on what we think the growth rate will be. We think G&A obviously will continue to kind of trend down, but I think it really comes down to the growth rate.
Yeah
... of how much we invest in sales and marketing. And I think that, that's the lever that we're gonna be working on over the next, this year, next year, and understanding like, Hey, what's the longer term trajectory? But, you know, we certainly believe the free cash flow, the free cash flow margin that we kind of shared with folks at the direct listing, hasn't really changed. Like, our, our ideal of where the long-term model is really hasn't changed.
Okay.
Yeah.
Okay, that makes sense. Maybe shifting gears a little bit to the competitive environment.
Okay.
I know that consolidation, we've already kind of touched on that and how much it's going on in the marketplace, but, you know, as you get into those opportunities where that is happening, how much is the Work Graph, like, a real differentiator? How, like, how much does that come up in the conversations with those customers, or I guess, what are the other factors that are contributing to Asana becoming the, the-
Mm
... winner there?
Yeah, it's interesting you bring this up because I think the Work Graph doesn't come out of our customer's mouth. Like, they're not telling us, "Oh, I love the Work Graph.
Yeah.
But now with AI, we, you know, in the EBCs and in the customer conversations, what we're hearing is the term like, "Oh, that common data model? Oh, what the AI is being trained on, on this common data structure? Oh, okay, I get it now." So I think, like, their understanding of the importance of how the data, how the models are being developed-
Mm-hmm
... and trained and what we're using is adding, like, a new level of sophistication with the customers. The Work Graph by itself doesn't like mani- it just manifests itself in different ways, like the cross-functional nature-
Mm
... of how we show the work is being completed from one user to an executive.
Yeah.
Like, those things are really, especially at the executive level, where they can see the reporting, like, those things, like, they understand visually. Like, "Oh, this project is only 80% complete, and I can drill down, and I can see what team's done what." They understand that. And I think more and more, they're, they're understanding the Work Graph, especially with kind of, like, the whole AI backdrop.
Sure.
Yeah.
I think one of the things that come up when we have conversations with investors, and I think comes up pretty frequently as people think about the space, is Microsoft in the collaboration area.
Yeah.
I guess, how are you viewing how Microsoft kind of fits in with everything they're doing with, with Teams, with Loop-
Yeah
... with other parts of the collaboration stack? I guess, how does that maybe change with the relationship with OpenAI and how they work in the AI ecosystem?
Yeah, it's a great question. I think, you know, we, we've always, you know, Microsoft is always out there. I think they're... I think any productivity app, if you don't have somebody, an investor doesn't ask you about Microsoft, then you're not important enough, I guess. You know, I think the one thing for us is you know, people or investors and customers need to understand that we're the coordination layer for the work. And the surface area is quite broad and quite wide, right? To really do this well, you need to have a common data model.
Mm-hmm.
I think with Office, Loop, Project, Planner, Teams, there isn't necessarily a common data model in the back end.... Now, that's not to say Microsoft can't do it.
Yeah.
I mean, they're incredibly talented. But you have to have a point of view. You have to be organized in the right way as a company. And, you know, we feel like, you know, this is something Dustin and the team's been thinking about for the last 10 years, since the founding, in terms of this data model and architecture. We think, you know, it's gonna give us enough runway. But, you know, you know, you just... You know, who knows? Microsoft has a lot of cash and a lot of engineers.
Yeah.
If we, you know, we feel like we have a product that our customers love. We feel like we have traction with some of the largest enterprise and most valuable companies in the world, and to the degree we continue to do that, we think that we can create distance.
Okay.
Yeah.
No, makes sense there. Maybe going back to some of the product side, and, you know, again, we talked about premium and business-
Yeah
... or business and enterprise doing really well in the market. What tends to be the trigger that leads to somebody going from some of the base functionality in Asana to then going up to the higher tiers? How should we think about AI kind of coming in and helping further monetize that?
Yeah, I think a lot of... It's, it's maybe less trigger, more use case.
Okay.
I think when it's much more cross-functional, those users or those teams say, "Oh, I actually need to move to business or enterprise," because they need more projects, they need portfolio, they need resource planning, they want goals. So I think those, generally, when you're going beyond just your immediate team-
Yeah
... and you're going into other parts of the organization, you want more different controls and different reporting functionality, and I think that's, those are generally the triggers. And then from Business to Enterprise is really driven by, security and admin controls-
Okay
... and single sign-on, and things like that.
Okay. How much is those wall-to-wall deployments and the cross-functional deployments happening within the Asana customer base today?
Yeah, I mean, wall to wall. We've had wall to wall, but I would say there. You know, we generally probably see more wall to wall, like, the mid-market.
Okay.
Like, a mid-market, like, 500 employee type size company. We're much more, like, in some of these larger enterprise, the wall to wall is more around a consolidation within a department, a very large marketing department. Yeah.
Okay. Okay.
Yeah.
Makes sense. We're coming up on about five minutes left here. I just wanna see if there's any questions in the room, and we can make sure to get those. No? Okay. I do wanna ask on the guidance a little bit here.
Sure.
A little bit, a little bit deeper. How should we be thinking about the various elements of conservatism that that's being baked in, either from the top-line perspective or from some of the margin assumptions you're making here?
Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, the top line again, I think it's, you know, we wanted to create enough cover for Ed to make the necessary changes.
Yeah.
To the degree that some of the changes accelerate, and they are positive this year, I think there's upside, and to the degree that some of those changes will take longer to manifest. It could create, you know, I don't expect... I wouldn't expect any upside then.
Yeah.
I think on the bottom line, you know, I think we've generally had a history, I think, of, you know, trying to, to the degree that we beat, drop that as much as we can to the bottom line.
Mm-hmm.
And, you know, we've committed to getting to free cash flow, and I think you see it in the operating margin, even with this quarter's free cash flow margin being positive. But I think if you look at the operating margin, it's a pretty substantial, measurable improvement from last year-
Sure
... and I think you can kind of expect that improvement to continue. Maybe not as great, primarily we've made so much headway already.
Yeah
... but I think you can expect that trend to kind of continue.
Okay. I guess as we think about that, how much of that is coming from maybe, like, slower hiring or reprioritization of hiring or, like, marketing used to be a pretty big, you know, spend category for you. Like, what have been the areas where maybe you've pulled back some of the spending that have really driven that margin improvement?
It's a combination of probably marketing spend.
Mm-hmm.
But maybe two-thirds of it would probably be, like, headcount related-
Okay
... and just refactoring, and just essentially every headcount is scrutinized-
Okay
... in the company at this point.
Okay.
Yeah.
From the new dollars coming in, new ARR, how should we think about the attribution of that from performance marketing versus, you know, some of the investments you've made in sales headcount, and, you know, especially that push upmarket?
Yeah, I would, I would say, you know, we, we have less salespeople today than we did a year ago, primarily because we did the RIF,
Yeah
... back in November. And we're looking to, like, you know, looking at, you know, sales capacity now for, for FY 2025. So in many ways, I would say, you know, it's starting to stabilize on the sales-led and the, sales-led motion. And then the PLG, you know, even with the, even with the cuts that we've made to marketing, I'm actually kind of surprised how well it's held up.
Hmm.
I think that just really speaks to the virality of the product and network effect. We, you know, what we've learned is to have the team not necessarily focus on small companies, but on teams at larger companies, even if they're just a team of five.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Okay. Back on sales productivity, I think you laid out a goal to exit the year at kind of, like, a 20 percentage-
Sure
... improvement, you know, in sales productivity rates. I guess, how is that kind of trending versus your original expectations, especially in some of the framework-
Yeah
... of, the guidance, where it's at now?
Yeah. Yeah, I think it was always about the exit, and-
Yeah
... we didn't feel like we needed to hit that to hit the guidance. I would say outside of the US, we're not fully at 20%, but we're seeing noticeable improvements on productivity across, kind of in Europe, and Asia Pacific, and Japan.
Okay.
I think in the U.S. we have, we have some work to do.
Yeah.
We have some work to do. We, we haven't seen the same progress, and we also have new leadership.
Yeah.
But I would expect that we will see progress in a short amount of time.
Okay.
Yeah.
Do you still see, like, I guess, line of sight to, you know, the potential for that, or is there maybe a different view, from how the year has played out?
I think it's gonna be mixed by geography.
Okay.
Maybe not as across the board as I had hoped.
Okay.
Yeah.
And then on the new leadership you brought in, new CMO, new CRO, and new-
Chief Customer Officer.
Chief, okay.
Yep.
What's been the progress outside... We've already talked about CRO, but what's been the progress of-
Yeah
... of the other two new hires, since they've come in?
Yeah, I mean, I think Shannon has been amazing. She's the CMO. And if you all join us for October third, you'll get to meet her. She'll be there. I think she's much more focused on just how we message and the events that we bring. It's much more... We won't do any Dreamforce-level type of event. But just bringing executives on board, bringing executives to the table, focusing much more on the buyer, helping the team move up market, versus I would say, like, the prior marketing was much more end-user focused.
Mm-hmm.
So I would say that's one, and then the CXO is much hyper-focused on customer success and scale, helping customers scale as quickly as possible.
Okay.
Yeah.
in the last few, you know, few seconds here-
Yeah
... before we have to go, just what should we be expecting from the analyst event, and what are the highlights here to talk about?
Yeah, I mean, I think come and meet our customers. I think it's, it's always hard for me to sometimes talk about Asana, and I encourage investors to talk to our customers. I think that's, that will tell you the level of enthusiasm and how much they really enjoy using the product, one. And then two, come and meet the new executive team, from Salesforce. All of them actually are from Salesforce. And you know and that we're really committed to moving up market and building this muscle.
Yeah, perfect. Well, we'll leave it there, Tim.
Thank you.
Thank you so much for being here today, and thank everybody in the room as well.
Thank you. Thanks.