Three years ago, Asana grew revenue 66% year over year. Last year, it was 10%. The company isn't dying — but something in its customer base is shifting.
The SMB segment is where the churn is heaviest. These are the clients that consultants know best: teams of 5 to 50 people who adopted Asana during COVID and are now quietly looking for something that fits their workflow instead of making them fit Asana's.
What the data says
Asana's own investor materials are specific about where pressure is coming from. Net revenue retention — the measure of whether existing customers are spending more or less over time — has dropped below 100% for SMB accounts. Customers in that segment are spending less than they were a year ago.
That's a signal worth paying attention to. It doesn't mean Asana is broken. It means there's a gap between what the tool does and what small teams actually need.
The principle at work
Generic SaaS tools are built for the median customer. Asana's median customer is a company with hundreds of employees, a project management office, and a dedicated IT administrator. That's not your clients.
The Build to Fit principle is simple: the closer a tool is to the specific workflow it's meant to support, the more value it creates per dollar. Asana optimizes for a customer they don't have yet. A custom-built task system optimizes for the team that's using it today.
What this means for consultants
The clients leaving Asana aren't going to Jira. They're consolidating into simpler tools — or, increasingly, asking someone to build them something that actually fits.
This is the opening. It's not a sales pitch to make. It's a pattern to recognize. When a client says "our project management is a mess," they're rarely asking for a different SaaS subscription. They've already tried that. They're asking for something that works the way they work.
A consultant who can identify that need and deliver a scoped custom tool is solving a different problem than one who recommends switching tools.
The market is not moving toward more SaaS. It's moving toward fit.
I'm running a free workshop on building the first custom tool for a client — from discovery to deployment. Register here.