>they've managed to do well I think you're inadvertently undermining your point. Trello wasn't profitable.[1] They were "cash-flow break even" which is also another way of saying they still had not earned enough "free cash flow" to pay back their past internal investments that got them where they currently are.
Trello has private offices.
Atlassian has open offices.[2] They are also profitable.[3]
Atlassian was the one who bought Trello. Trello didn't buy Atlassian. Trello did not perform 2x better than Atlassian JIRA. (E.g. the ideal narrative would have been, "because Trello programmers have less interruptions than Atlassian programmers, their productivity was proven to be 2x superior and they made Atlassian JIRA obsolete.")
If you want to change the hearts & minds of people like Mark Z, the Trello example is not a case study to use.
[1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2016/05/23/trello-get...
[2] http://blogs.gartner.com/tom_murphy/2012/02/25/atlassian-eve...
[3] http://www.zdnet.com/article/atlassian-records-20m-profit-in...