A Former AWS Executive Helps Smartsheet Grow Up

Gene Farrell, Smartsheet’s chief strategy and product officer. Photo by Bloomberg

When Gene Farrell left Amazon Web Services four years ago to join a company called Smartsheet, his former employer sued Farrell for violating his noncompete agreement. Apparently, the hard feelings didn’t last: Amazon is in talks with Smartsheet to officially sanction the company’s workplace collaboration app for use by Amazon employees, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter.

The Amazon talks indicate how Smartsheet, which went public in April 2018, has evolved from its early focus on getting people inside companies to download its product on their own, to getting IT departments to bless it for official use. Now, though, Smartsheet is facing competition from a younger breed of competitors, including Asana, Airtable and Monday.com—which went public last week—and the company believes that earning approval from IT departments in large businesses is becoming increasingly important.