Back in 2014, the main problem for Fog Creek, the 15-year-old software business where I work, was Trello. It was a good problem, actually. Since launching in 2011, it had grown quickly. We wanted to raise venture capital to support further growth, but investing in Fog Creek wasn’t an option—it was too confusing a proposition for investors, and we didn’t want to give up ownership.

So after some consideration, we decided to spin off Trello as its own business. It wasn’t our first time taking this approach, having successfully done the same in 2010 with Stack Overflow, the Q&A site for developers that we co-created.

Image: Flickr user Luke Hayfield