Atlassian Success Story: How Did It Become One of the Most Successful Startups in Australia

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Atlassian Success Story

Imagine the following: It's 2002, Sam Raimi's Spider-Man is now in theatres, the term "Facebook" has no meaning, and smartphones are nothing more than futuristic gizmos. However, two recent college grads in South Wales, Australia, are probably chugging a few drinks, unwilling to dress up for a job they don't want to get up for, and in the middle of it all, a startup concept is simmering. Mind you, back then, startups were hardly household names in the US, much less in Australia.

College friends turned business partners, Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar founded Atlassian, a company that the Sydney Morning Herald referred to as "a tech giant nobody understands" just a few years ago. It was founded in an aspect of the market that was scarce in Australia at the time, and to top it all off, what it produced wasn't particularly 'sellable,' as some may put it.

At present, Atlassian has more than 10 offices worldwide, employs over 7,000 people, and serves more than 200,000 clients. Today, 83% of Fortune 500 firms use Atlassian's products. Because its history defies what you may refer to as "regular," we might like to think of Atlassian as the Forrest Gump of startups.

Due to the COVID-19 outbreak, many businesses now operate online. This is made feasible by digital remote work tools, and one of the most popular tools used by businesses is project management software. Atlassian is a company that has made remote working more convenient and interesting.

Here's the success story of Atlassian that covers all about the company, the Startup Story and Growth, its Products, its Competitors, its Revenue, its Business and Revenue Model, and more, you can check ahead!

Atlassian - Company Highlights

Startup Name-Atlassian
Headquarters-Sydney, Australia
Industry-IT Software and Services
Founded-2002
Founder-Mike Cannon-Brookes, Scott Farquhar
Revenue-$2.8 billion (FY22)
Valuation-$55.47 billion (September 2022)

Atlassian - About and How it Works?

Atlassian is a technology company based in Australia that creates tools for software engineers, project managers, and other application development projects. The corporation has its legal residence in the UK, its international headquarters in Sydney, Australia, and its US headquarters in San Francisco.

For teams, Atlassian is a dominant producer of software for communication, development, and ticket management. They are extending the collaboration power with solutions including Jira, Jira Service Desk, Jira Ops, Confluence, Bitbucket, Trello, and more.

The organisation is on a journey to unlock the power of every team thanks to its authentic principles, incredible culture, and steady revenue progress. Jira, a project-tracking platform that supports software teams in addressing internal issues and evaluating progress, is the product for which Atlassian is best remembered. HipChat, which enables employees to talk anonymously and in groups, and Confluence, a platform that makes it simpler for teams to collaborate, share projects, and communicate across both mobile and desktop devices, and Stride, a new workplace communication tool developed by the corporation, enables teams to interact effectively and achieve their goals as a group, are some other products of Atlassian.

In addition to having over 2,000 plugins for developers, Atlassian has over 200,000 customers, 7,000+ employees globally, and a commitment to contributing 1% of company ownership and profit to charity.

Atlassian - Industry

In 2021, the project management software market generated US$5,359.6 million in sales. The project management software market is anticipated to reach $20,420.6 million in revenue by 2032, expanding at a CAGR of 13.1% between 2022 and 2032.

Nearly 35% of sales in the whole business process optimization industry are presently made by software for project management. Using a set of integrated tools like task management, collaboration tools, budget management, and document management that are highly customizable based on enterprise business requirements, project management software incorporates features like planning, working collaboratively, supervising, and delivering a project.

The market is anticipated to grow significantly in the upcoming years as businesses use automated project management software to carry out fundamental project management duties and functions automatically.

In addition, all businesses, regardless of their size, are constantly utilising the advantages of enterprise project management to enhance productivity, increased communication, raise project quality, and lower total budget estimates.

Are you looking for the Best Project Management Tool for your business? Then here we’ve listed the top Project Management software to make your life easier.

Atlassian - Founders

Mike Cannon

Mike Cannon-Brookes is the co-founder and co-CEO of Atlassian, a collaboration software startup that assists teams in organising, debating, and completing shared work.

Mike is a board member of Zoox and a technology investor outside of Atlassian, with interests in software, finance, agriculture, and energy. He is a board member of Room to Read and has a solid commitment to giving back. Mike, a fervent advocate for sustainable energy, played a key role in the "Fair Dinkum Power" movement as well as Australia acquiring the largest lithium-ion battery in the world.

He earned a Bachelor of Science in Business Information Technology from the University of New South Wales in Australia and works as an adjunct professor there in the School of Computer Science and Engineering.

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Scott Farquhar

The co-founder and co-CEO of Atlassian, Scott Farquhar, is a developer of collaboration tools that aid teams in planning, debating, and completing shared work. A corporate philanthropy initiative called Pledge 1%, which aims to make the community a significant shareholder in every firm, was launched in 2015 with Scott's assistance.

Along with co-founder and co-CEO, Mike Cannon-Brookes, Scott received the Ernst & Young award for "Australian Entrepreneur of the Year" in 2006 as the youngest recipient ever. The Australian Financial Review recognised Scott and Mike Cannon-Brookes's "Australian Business Person of the Year" in 2016, and Forbes included them on their list of "Global Game Changers" in 2017.

Outside of Atlassian, Scott co-founded Skip Capital. This private investment fund concentrates on rapidly expanding technology firms and has a special interest in the nexus between big data and health. Scott graduated from the Australian University of New South Wales with a BSc in Business Information Technology.

Atlassian - Startup Story

We are all aware of startups in the year 2020. If you don't work for one or have a close buddy who does, you're living under a rock. However, when university grads Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar established Atlassian in 2002, the reaction they got from other tempting offers wasn't as common. And it was virtually unheard of in Australia, a nation that was reluctant to catch on to the digital revolution.

Like many strong friendships, Mike and Scott's cooperation began in college. At the University of New South Wales in 1998, they were both enrolled on the same scholarship fund. They formed an intellectual and ambitious friendship and collaboration. They were required to join one of the Australian corporations funding the programme, much like the rest of the program's students.

Instead, they developed Atlassian.

The majority of startups receive funding from cash that is sought out from outside investors. After all, venture capital now constitutes a separate business. Scott and Mike decided against going in that direction.

They borrowed money to pay for their endeavour; $10,000 of it was put on credit cards. The majority of people who incur large amounts of credit card debt do not emerge as ground-breaking billionaires, but they have demonstrated that they are not typical of most people, much as Atlassian has distinguished itself from the majority of businesses.

This also applies to the way they promoted their new product. Instead of having a large sales team, Atlassian relies on online sales. Going to developer meetings and buying them beer with an Atlassian sticker on the bottle was the first marketing tactic.

Their marketing approach depended on offering a high-quality product at a competitive price and positive customer reviews. And it succeeded. That stayed the case when Atlassian took off. Even now, Atlassian only spent 19% of revenue on sales and marketing, a much lower percentage than other software businesses in a comparable position.

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Atlassian - Name, Logo, and Tagline

The name Atlassian is derived from the Greek mythological figure Atlas, a titan destined to hold up the heavens or sky forever.

The Atlassian logo represents two folks giving each other a high-five, a mountain that is ready for teams to climb, or even the letter A made up of two pillars supporting one another.

Atlassian's tagline says, "Connect globally, meet locally."

Atlassian - Mission and Vision

Atlassian's mission statement says, "Atlassian believes in the power of teamwork. Behind every great human achievement, there is a team. From medicine and space travel to disaster response and pizza deliveries, our products help teams all over the planet advance humanity through the power of software. Our mission is to help unleash the potential of every team."

Atlassian - Products

The following Atlassian-owned and operated products are included in the Atlassian product family, together with any associated web applications and mobile applications:

Atlassian Cloud Products
Jira Software
Jira Service Management
Jira Work Management
Confluence
Bitbucket
Atlassian Access
Atlassian Cloud Apps
Trello
Trello Power-Ups
Statuspage
Halp
Jira Align
Opsgenie
Atlassian Server / Data Center Products
Jira Software
Jira Service Management
Jira Work Management
Confluence
Bitbucket
Analytics for Confluence app (Data Center)
Crowd
Automation for Jira (Server and Data Center) and Icons for Jira (Server)
Sourcetree
Bamboo
Fisheye
Crucible

Atlassian Server/Data Center Apps

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Atlassian - Business Model

Its solutions may be utilised in many ways across various business activities within the same company since Atlassian has a mass market business model with a multi-sided market. The majority of its consumer segments reflect specific business operations rather than sectors. The firm has benefited from this by creating software ecosystems for different business segments, each of which represents a unique business function.

IT (JIRA Software, IRA Service Desk, Confluence, HipChat) - The JIRA suite, which includes JIRA Software and JIRA Service Desk, enables IT, teams to swiftly respond to the needs of their organisation by maintaining effective feedback channels (through the Service Desk) and enabling efficient and managed workflows (through the Software).

Marketing (JIRA Core, Confluence, HipChat) - Marketing teams may handle data and marketing materials using the company's project management tools, such as JIRA Core and Confluence.

Legal (JIRA Core, Confluence, HipChat) - JIRA Core enables legal teams to produce and manage legal materials, such as contracts and policies, and Confluence can be used to share these materials.

Finance (JIRA Core, Confluence, HipChat) - JIRA Core is used to handle financial activities including procurement and financial reporting by some of the top financial institutions in the world.

Software (JIRA Software, BitBucket, Bamboo, Confluence, HipChat) - JIRA Software, the company's main product offering, is designed to speed up software development. A few of the company's other products, such as Bamboo and Bitbucket, are especially geared toward programmers and software engineers.

Atlassian - Revenue Model

Direct online sales through Atlassian's website are the company's only sales channel. It spends only 15% to 20% of its income on sales and marketing and lacks a sales force. Contrast this with the typical average of over 100% of sales spent by IT companies on marketing expenses during the first few years following an IPO.

Atlassian's primary method of customer assistance is self-service; the website offers a variety of self-help resources, such as product manuals and live training. Additionally, it relies on the community by maintaining an experts programme that allows independent expert partners to sign up to help Atlassian clients while promoting their goods or services, as well as by providing a community Q&A forum where users can post questions that can be answered by other users or by Atlassian's staff.

For individualised help, Atlassian provides enterprise support services that charge a fee and enable technical account management through direct contact with top engineers within the business.

The development and upkeep of an integrated platform that clients may utilise for a range of business operations is Atlassian's primary activity.

Atlassian - Competitors

Competitors and Alternatives to Atlassian are:

Microsoft
Google
Slack
Salesforce
Yammer
Zoho
Adobe
Jive Software

Atlassian - Future Plans

The founders haven't become less grounded as a result of their success. Within the first four years of operation, the Atlassian Foundation was established along with a commitment to contribute 1% of business profits, employee time, and stock to charitable organizations.

Mike, the founder, has personally donated USD 350 million to groups working to combat climate change. He aspires to be more than just a successful philanthropist and is convinced that Australian businesses must put sustainability at the forefront of their strategies going forward. Given how quickly infrastructures are developing, he believes that those with the power to bring about meaningful change ought to acknowledge their obligation and seize control before it's too late.

Human relationships have always been the most important thing to the founders. What their brand initially set out to be gradually evolved into an image with certain ideals at its heart that was presented during a meeting in the early days of the firm.

The notion of a community emerged from the principles that guided Atlassian's gradual expansion. The business turned into a community-powered engine and became incredibly people-centric.

Stephanie, the Head of Global Community at Atlassian said in an interview, “If you don’t invest in things, you can’t expect them to do well. The reason that we’re successful now is that we put our money where our mouth is, and there’s actually an investment being made by the company.”

FAQs

What does Atlassian do?

Atlassian develops software that helps teams to work together more efficiently. It provides collaboration, development, and issue-tracking software to teams.