Why Ex-Facebookers Chose ‘Asana’, Just a Part of the $9M Software Startup’s Yogic Values

YogaDorks want to know…

You heard it here first! Whether they’ve kept this under wraps (or we’re the only dorks who care to know!) we at YD can reveal to you the meaning behind big time ex-facebooker’s, Justin Rosenstein and Dustin Moskovitz (fb co-founder), choice in the word ‘Asana’ for their new software start-up. We totally called them punks ( oh in jest of course) and Captain Asana himself, Justin Rosenstein, left us a comment! Here’s his response to clear things up for the ‘dorks.

Hi, YogaDork!  Just wanted to say that it’s definitely not our intent to exploit yoga.  We’re very serious about incorporating yogic values into the company’s culture and product vision.  Doing this while also trying to achieve capitalist objectives may seem like a contradiction, but I’m hoping it will feel more like stretching between opposites 🙂

As for the choice of “Asana” (other than being short, available, and easier to pronounce than most Sanskrit words), the idea was that postures provide an opportunity for the body to achieve ‘form in flow’ much as our software aims to provide form/structure for your data to help you achieve mental flow in your work.  Our yoga teacher also suggested “Drishti,” which also has a nice ring to it and some good meaning, but is harder to spell.

– jr

Ha! There you go. You heard it here first – just providing a little structure for your data, see? Though he seemed to leave out the part about flying us over to California to launch the yogadork consulting dept.

ps. that illustration is ours, not the Asana logo.

Earlier…New Start-Up, Asana, Gets $9 Million More Than Yoga