Thank you. We'll go ahead and get started. I'm Brent Bracelin, the Co-Head of Technology here at Piper Sandler. We have Asana and Tim Wan, CFO. Thank you so much for joining us today.
Thank you for having me.
-in Nashville.
Yeah.
Thank you so much.
Great. It's great to be here.
Absolutely. So let's maybe start the discussion today with the industry. Think about, like, the cloud tracker. We have 100 cloud software companies we track.
Yeah.
We look at growth rates. We've had this two-year moderation, environment that we've been in. Looking like growth across the software industry could stabilize, starting in maybe the second half of the year, and has a glimmer of hope of maybe re-acceleration, next year. Now, part of that's easier compares, but let's talk a little about Asana-
Sure
and Asana's potential growth levers, thinking about next year.
Yeah. I mean, I think one of the challenges that we've had over the past year and a half is, you know, about 30% of our business is in tech. And as many of you know, tech has been disproportionately impacted really with a lot of layoffs. So I do think once we kinda lap where companies have resized their spend, resized their seats, the tech segment, the macro behind that, as those companies start thinking about growing, building capacity, hiring employees again, I think we will expect that as to be a tailwind. That's one for us.
Yeah.
I think, too, we are making a conscious effort to move upmarket. Historically, the company has been much more, probably, I would say, a product-led first company with a product-led sales engine. We recently hired Ed McDonnell from Salesforce, as well as Shannon Duffy from Salesforce. Ed's our new CRO, Shannon's our CMO, to really build our muscle and help us move upmarket. Our largest deployment has over 200,000 seats. Our smallest deployment sometimes could be a seat of 10. And the reality is, when we, when we look at the unit economics of our Fortune 500-type customers, and customers that are spending more than $100,000 with us, the net expansion rate and the unit economics are much better. So they're gonna help us kinda continue to move upmarket.
And we've been on that journey, probably the last 2.5 years, but I think now we've brought in some real new leadership to help us with that. And then I think third, we're gonna talk a little bit about this, invite you all to our October 3rd event. We have an investor event where we'll be both an investor and customer event, where we will be sharing kind of the new packaging that we'll be offering, and then also talk about AI and our roadmap. And I think, like, those are the types of things, you know, especially with AI, will be a catalyst for how companies think about work management, how they wanna increase productivity, and the value that we can bring to them.
Mm-hmm. Perfect. Three very clear areas that you could expand. Let's double-click into the tech layoffs. I mean, 'cause we're starting to see those tech software layoffs in Q3, Q4 last year, but there is a lag, right? If I think about a typical software company's renewal process. So, if we think the tech software layoffs maybe peaked in Q1, when does the renewal lapse to the point where you start to go into easier compares with that 30% tech-exposed vertical?
Yeah. I think for us, you know, even so long ago, I was just reminded, even some of the largest tech players had layoffs in January and February this year. So I do think for us, it'll be kind of, I would say, past Q1, and-
Okay
... when we'll see that expansion rate starting to stabilize and improving. That's kinda how we've been thinking about it, at least internally. But, you know, if I look at... The thing that's really been interesting for us is when I look at our Logo Churn, that's been relatively stable.
Mm.
So, our logo retention has been relatively healthy. And then also, when I look at our net seat expansion, that's been relatively. Now, that has decelerated primarily because we've had downgrades of seats and lower expansion of seats, primarily because people are not hiring as much. But when I compare that to maybe two years ago when the pandemic first started, it's still much healthier than even that period. So I think those are, like, continue to be encouraging sign for us as a business, primarily because we're a very seat-focused base. We want. You know, we're still less than 10% penetrated in our top 100 customer, less than 5% penetrated across our entire customer base. So we feel like we have a lot of runway to continue to penetrate and get more, more cross-functional use cases across those companies.
To the degree that we can get more seat deployments, over time, we figure we know that we can monetize them more effectively.
Helpful. One side of the coin is tech, the other side of the coin is non-tech.
Mm-hmm.
Clearly, on the software side, saw a lot of layoffs already. On non-tech, do you see a more stable environment outside of the tech world? What are you seeing there in general, and or is it similar challenges you face in both parts of the business?
Yeah, I would say the slope of deceleration isn't as dramatic, for sure, when we look at every metric between tech and non-tech. We've had— What's been interesting is we've had one of the largest freight shipping company in the world continue to expand with us. We've had one of the largest system integrator in Japan continue to expand with us. We've had, you know, some of the biggest sports league and teams continue to expand with us. So, you know, it's— I'm always fascinated and kind of encouraged by the fact that when I look at our new customers, and logos, and expansion, that... you know, even our 80% of the customers of our 100,000 paying customers were non-tech related.
So I think like it is certainly the non-tech segment has been much healthier.
Yeah. The MLB, I know,
Yes, MLB.
Big believers,
Yes, NCAA.
Yeah.
There's others, yeah.
But I believe that the Giants are struggling a little bit this year relative to the Mariners, so, just kidding. Had to get a little shot in there. And then just thinking through the new hires, right?
Yeah.
That second area, again, very product-led, growth-driven company from day one. But you are kind of pivoting a little bit. We saw this at Freshworks, where they've seen really good success putting in a field sales and moving upmarket. Where are we at in that process? Are we maybe six months away from kind of having a rollout, or is it probably still another year away from maybe starting to show some success for you?
Yeah. I would say different geographies are kind of on different timelines. We've had a new leader in EMEA from Salesforce who worked with Ed McDonnell before, and he joined about six months prior to Ed, and I would say we saw stabilization in EMEA. We actually saw some pockets of productivity increase across some of the sales, the sales team, which is really encouraging. So I would say, like, EMEA is further along. I feel like APAC, not a big part of our business, but we've seen productivity increase-
Okay
... in those geographies as well, and some stabilization. I think Americas is kind of where we need to do some work, a little bit more behind. And I expect Ed to make some changes-
Mm
... to really kind of build, rebuild that muscle.
It makes sense.
Yeah.
It feels like the product is resonating with large enterprises. Maybe double-click into the product advantage-
Yeah
... that you have maybe. I don't know if it's the graph database or what is it?
Yeah
... that really is resonating with those larger enterprise customers? 200,000 seat deployments-
Yeah
... largest freight shippers that are continuing to lean in on the platform.
Yeah.
Something's resonating there. What is it?
Yeah, and a great example is this very large cybersecurity company recently consolidated onto Asana. Even when I say consolidated, it's not even a wall-to-wall, it's probably only about a third of the company, but it's multiple functions and department consolidating. They had—they were using seven different work management companies, primarily decided, you know, the CIO decided, "Hey, if we're gonna grow with one, we should pick the one that is gonna scale over time." And I think that it's really twofold. I think, one, the Work Graph is extremely scalable. Our customers don't talk about the Work Graph, but I think more than ever with AI, the way we position how we will integrate AI, understanding the data model and having a common data model is really important to our customer.
So I think that's resonating. That's one. Two, security functionality, admin, and ability. You know, obviously, being able to demonstrate that you can have, you know, a company with 15-20,000 employees, they wanna know that they are partnering with a company that can get really sizable deployment. So having a 200,000 deployment obviously helps us in that scenario. So I think all those things. And then obviously, I think, like, with, having champions internally and ease of use, having great user interface and being able to surface things in different ways, and the cross-functional nature and the horizontal nature of the platform, I think bodes well for us. Yeah.
The data model is interesting. Like, we always talk about graph, but-
Mm
... it's the data model.
It's really the data model, yes.
Yeah, that people are appealing to, at least the CIO, and then obviously the security and data governance stuff...
Sure
... that you guys built in from day one certainly make a difference. So let's talk a little bit about those are the growth drivers of the business. We've been in this new normal, right? We've, I don't know, survived a lot. We had a pandemic.
A pandemic.
I don't know, it wasn't too long ago, we had a great recession.
Yes.
We have the highest spike in interest rates. This is all new normal for-
Yeah
... for kind of the world we live in today. What keeps you up at night thinking about risks to the downside next year? You walk through the upside levers. What keeps you up at night for next year?
Yeah, I mean, certainly, I'm really encouraged by just, like, I still feel like the category is early.
Yeah.
There's a lot of runway for us with many of our customers, the conversations are strong. I think, you know, like most CFOs, I suspect, it's always the unknown, and it's always the geopolitical is like the one thing that you-
Cannot predict
... you cannot predict. You can't predict timing, you can't predict human nature sometimes, you can't predict the leadership. And I think those are the things, those are the things that honestly just, I would say, keep us probably... We talk about more internally about, like, the type of risks that we can't control. But for the most part, I think we know that, you know, we need to execute better. We know that there's a lot of opportunity for us to grow with our customers, and if we focus on our customers, continue to deliver value, like, over the long arc, those things will work itself out.
Being a PLG company, I think it's distorted a lot of our traditional SaaS metrics that we look at.
Yeah.
I think you saw this initially with Monday, where it looked like they were losing a lot of money, but turned the ship pretty quickly. You surprised me last quarter, meaningful improvement in profitability. I know the metrics are different per PLG than we should think about, but walk me through, like path to profitability as you think about, like, the internal cost savings, how much more is left?
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think we, we wanna get more leverage by growing the business faster, you know, first and foremost. But the things that, the things that we've really made a conscious effort to change is focusing much more of our resources, moving upmarket. I would say maybe even a year and a half ago, two years ago, we, we had this dual motion, and we were investing heavily both in PLG and our go-to-market, enterprise go-to-market. And I would say we've pulled back on some of the PLG motion, focused around like the PLG motion that was focused on the small SMBs or VSB, or very small businesses.
We're much more focused on diverting much of that resources on building out sales capacity, sales enablement, playbooks, and really giving both Ed and Shannon the resources to rebuild the go-to-market to sell to the office of the CIO. The one thing that we've seen change in the market is, in a world where, you know, the PLG motion or the collaborative work management in general, that the champion or the budget owner used to be the user.
Hmm.
What's happened probably over the last 12 months is that budget has now shifted to the CIO or central buyer, who's thinking much more holistic, especially in the enterprise, much more holistically about how they wanna grow the collaboration stack, where they wanna invest, and the use cases. We're much more focused on that, having Asana resonate with the office of the CIO and that buyer, than we have been in the past.
As you think about that champion shift, how has that impacted competition? Like, as you think about, like, maybe everyone trying to appeal to the user-
Yeah
... and now everyone having to pivot to now focus on a new champion, which is the CIO buyer, particularly the enterprise. I get that. Have you seen a change in competitive or maybe other competitors that you used to see a lot when you focus on the user not showing up in that CIO buyer?
Yeah, I wouldn't say competition-wise. I don't think we've seen. You know, most of our competition historically, and continues to kind of be, somewhat greenfield, meaning it was the status quo of their. You know, maybe they were using Google Sheets, they might have been using email, they might have even been using PowerPoint or some combination of those things. So it doesn't feel like competition has changed dramatically, and I think for the most part, because I think it's still relatively greenfield, there's just a lot of runway for all of us. But the conversations are different.
In a world where, you know, two years ago, companies were just growing, head count like crazy, a salesperson may have just had to sit back and, "Hey, here's a purchase order." Now, it's much more about value selling, demonstrating the benefits of the platform, why they want... And, you know, why they want to expand with Asana.
Super helpful to have this discussion. I'm proud that we made it 20 minutes without talking about Generative AI, but let's talk about Generative AI.
Okay. Sure.
So one of the questions we get is just existential risk. As we think about, like, what changes in the app stack, what happened changes in the tools, as you start to think about some of these, copilots and assistants, and, and how does that change the opportunity for you? Do you, do you see a new competitor potentially coming in to your world tied to these assistants and, and a change in workflows or not?
Yeah, I mean, I think this is where the Work Graph is incredibly powerful, and having that common data model will allow us to surface both the reporting and the insight in a way that we don't think competitors or even more traditional productivity players can do, primarily because they don't have a common data model in their back end. Now, it's not to say that they can't do it. It will take them time. So we think we're strategically much better positioned than some of these other players.
What about, like, a Microsoft Copilot? Then they have, you know, Exchange, you know, you have Word, you have Calendar. That's all under a common data model with a large language model or Copilot-
Yeah
... assistant. Couldn't that also do that?
In some ways, yes, because they're primarily focused just... If you kind of watch the Copilot demos or even what they've talked, it's very end-user focused. But because of the Work Graph, what we can actually surface to not just the end user, but also to the C-suite in terms of like, "Hey, which teams are most productive? Which teams are most effective at doing these tasks or these projects?" So I think, and that's primarily because we have a common data model about on who's doing what, which team, when did they complete it, what are all the interdependencies across those units of work. So that allows us to kind of surface things in a way that some of the other players can't do.
But, you know, I think this is all the realities, this is all new for many companies. And, you know, we'll be experimenting, we'll be adding a lot of AI functionality we'll talk about at the October event-
Yeah
... into the platforms, and we'll be watching how our users attract value or receive value from the platform in different ways.
Sounds like there's a lot of interesting things coming out at this, the October 3rd event, so we'll stay tuned for that. My last question on Generative AI from a revenue opportunity perspective is the packaging. When you talk about, like, packaging, is that a tiering model that you're kind of thinking through? Is it more around bundles? Just trying to think through what you mean-
Yeah
... by ... packaging?
Yeah, I think with AI, I think the way we've, there's really two, two major benefits. One, I think it'll certainly help with adoption and help potentially with, bringing more teams on board on existing customers in terms of how they, how they invite other users. We think that's one.
Okay.
The second, obviously, is we think teams will get more productive and get more value out of the platform. So a lot of it will be. I think what you'll see at the event is there will be AI functionality in all the platforms.
Sure.
We'll be introducing some new packaging.
Okay.
But then we'll also have. We'll talk about what packages will have certain limitations. We'll, so some packages may have certain functionality, but up to an X amount of quantity, that forces you to upgrade into a business or enterprise tier. So kind of, you know, we've done a really good job. If you, like, look at our business, our enterprise and business tier, those SKUs grew north of 30% year-over-year.
Mm-hmm.
And that's really kind of a indicative of how we've moved our base. If you, if you look back even multiple years, the base is primarily on the premium SKU. So we've moved, and I think that's really indicative of, like, the motion that we've been able to create, of moving people up, up the value, not just by expanding seats, but moving them up the tiers, by creating more value within the higher priced tiers.
Yeah. I mean, listen, I think, I think we are in this great experiment stage.
Yeah.
I think Workday talked about 1,000 AI features on their roadmap. I think HubSpot last week talked about 25, you know, AI features. Like, they also, I think, trademarked AI included, with this idea that-
Okay
... like, it's gonna be included in a lot of their offerings. But like most software companies do, extract value via tiers, right?
Okay.
We have limitations on these tiers, and that seems very logical for the environment we're in. My last question for you here is really around harnessing AI to further improve margins.
Yeah.
Where are we at in that process? Would you say you're a fast follower? Are you seeing specific areas of either engineering or marketing or support, where you're actually seeing real-world cost savings by leaning into AI?
Yeah, I mean, certainly I think, like, our marketing sales team, especially with, in terms of how they're doing outreach, especially on the SDR side-
Okay
... how they're using ChatGPT.
Yeah.
The amount of emails. Sorry for some of you who get a lot of emails from us. The amount of emails that they can produce now in a given day is probably 5x more than what they could do before.
Okay.
But I think the way we tend to think about AI is, AI is not separate. So even to the degree that we have a lot of SaaS vendors, it's really understanding their functionality and then experimenting over time. So I think it's really in partnership. It's not, you know, even as a company, we've talked a lot about, historically, we've looked for low-cost development areas to where we would invest. I think the conversation is now, before we even do that, we talk about, "Hey, how will we leverage AI to do that?" Before we would even think about moving work to a low-cost development center. So pushing the team to think about different ways.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, it, it certainly is moving very fast.
Yeah.
Pleased to see the progress on profitability. Certainly pleased to see kind of the momentum, continuing momentum at the enterprise. It seems like you-
Yeah. Thank you.
... you're resonating there with those enterprise customers-
We are
... and look forward to see what happens next year. Thank you so much for your time.