Inside ClickUp: From 2017 to Now Into a $535 million business
Founders: Zeb Evans, Alex Yurkowski
Founded Year: 2017
Investors: Andreessen Horowitz, Tiger Global, Lightspeed Venture Partners
Funding Raised: $535 million
What Is the business model of ClickUp?
Productivity software that combines project management, docs, spreadsheets, chat, and goal tracking in one platform, following a freemium model to attract teams then converting them to paid plans
How ClickUp got started?
Launched in 2017, ClickUp was born out of Evans’ frustration using multiple tools to manage his prior business, he and Yurkowski created a single app that aimed to be “one app to replace them all,” and gained traction by rapidly adding features based on user feedback
what growth strategy has ClickUp followed?
Executed an aggressive development pace, releasing new integrations and features weekly, which garnered a passionate user community, used generous free offerings and highly targeted online ads to draw in startups and SMBs, achieving unicorn status within four years as remote work trends drove productivity tool adoption
what are the top products/features of ClickUp
ClickUp project management platform, Goals & OKR tracking, Docs and Whiteboards, ClickUp Automations and integrations
what was the biggest challenge faced by ClickUp?
Challenged by the breadth of its ambition—covering so many functions means competing with specialized products (Asana, Trello, Notion, etc.) in each category, and the risk of becoming complex or cluttered for users