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Atlassian / Mike Cannon-Brookes / Scott Farquhar
- I suspect JIRA / Confluence was started after these guys saw Salesforce and applied the same idea (SaaS) to a new product.
- Contact them!
- Transcript.docx Transcript.pdf
- I need to divide up the stuff he talks about here and organize it.
So today I’m going to run through ten things that I’ve learned running a software company.
1. First thing is, I think you should start with two founders.
2. Second thing is you need a business model.
3. Use your own product.
4. Fourth point is measure everything. (...) The trick to that is that you have to test everything.
5. ABM- always be marketing. (...) we always try to sponsor the beer at conferences
6. Your first idea as a business will fail. (...) Over time, our website morphed and our company morphed and we moved from a support company to a one product company, and now we’re a software portfolio company so don’t be afraid to let your first idea fail.
7. You need to think about when to switch gears. For example, from being scrappy to paying more for better quality. (...) [M]oving from generalists to specialists was a very painful process for us.
8. The most painful process is letting people go.
9. Build somewhere where you want to work. (...) Our initial hire, we hired a British backpacker, the interview took place in the pub, he lived with the local backpackers for six months before sleeping on my floor
10. Give experiences. People remember experiences that you give them.
2011.05.06 - Startup Smart - Success on a shoestring
Farquhar says Atlassian couldn’t afford to spend too long honing its offering, which meant it went to the market with a relatively simple product, which resonated with consumers. “We weren’t venture-backed, so we couldn’t spend two years developing the software. We had to sell something quickly. We produced a simple-to-use product when there was nothing simple to use,” he says. That’s not to say it was an easy road. For the first three years, Farquhar and Cannon-Brookes pumped all their earnings into the business, surviving off their university scholarship money of about $300 a week. According to Farquhar, surviving on a shoestring budget – with no major overheads – can often prove to be an ideal way to start-up. “The biggest thing preventing people from starting their own thing is, ‘I need to get some more money behind me, or I need to flesh out my idea more’,” he says. “No, no, no. Just go and do it, because when I was at university, the biggest downside risk for me was I’d have to go back and live with my parents for a few months. The downside risk is so much lower when you’re young.”
2012.01.16 - TechCrunch - Atlassian’s 2011 Revenues Were $102 Million With No Sales People
Revenues for calendar year 2011 (which is different than its fiscal year) were $102 million, up 35 percent, Farquhar tells me in the video. And the company has been profitable for years. The company employs 450 people worldwide, mostly in Sydney and San Francisco, where it just opened cavernous new offices. But none of them are in sales. “We have no sales people,” says Farquhar.
Atlassian was bootstrapped for 8 years before it took a huge $60 million dollop of venture capital from Accel in 2010. The company boasts 17,000 paying enterprise customers with between 5 million and 10 million daily active users.
In October, Atlassian dramatically reduced its entry-level pricing from $150 a month for 10 users to $10 a month for 10 users.
2013 - From Australia to the World: The Atlassian Experience - Complete Interview
8:00 - Interview starts
9:45 - Their goal was to be making $45k at the end of year one (I think? I'm not sure I understood him.)
10:10 - They worked out of their bedrooms, then they were able to work out of the offices of a friend, and then they grew to the point where they got kicked out, and then they got their own place.
10:50 - Q: Why'd you stay Australia?
11:10 - They didn't even try to raise money. They had no chance of raising money. It took them a lot longer to grow, but it put them in a solid state.
11:50 - They funded themselves with credit cards and personal funds (maybe $10,000?).
- They bought two big desktop PCs, that was the initial outlay.
12:50 - Q: Tell us about your biggest mistake.
- There were a lot of them. Probably not understanding people enough, and how important they are. Actually, probably not firing people quickly enough. (This is worth transcribing.)
14:10 - Q: How do others respond when you fire someone?
- Sometimes you'll have people
- Another thing happens is you'll get these guys who are like the suburban soccer coach, who everyone likes but the guy doesn't really know how to teach
15:50 - He brings up the idea of people having limits on their experience (what part of the growth they're best at).
18:00 - He brings up that he's had employees that have left and then tried to compete with them.
19:20 - Q: What makes a great CEO?
- The good ones have an ability to never stop learning. They pepper you with questions.
- They've got to be understanding about people dynamics. Engineering CEOs can have trouble dealing with people.
21:20 - Some companies get a really good start with the first 200-300
21:50 - Q: You had an aversion to recruiters
- The problem with recruiting is that it's a sales job.
22:50 - He actually got rejected from Google when he applied as a joke.
- 23:20 - We haven't had a good experience with out-house recruiters.
23:45 - They give feedback to the recruiters to save the time of the organization so they don't spend time interviewing
24:10 - In the top 50-100 positions we still interview people, but we don't interview everyone anymore.
24:50 - Q: How'd you compete with Google for talent?
- He references Salesforce's "No Software" campaign.
- They tried to get across the message that you could apply to two companies in Sydney: us and Google.
- They also tried to provide a better hiring decision. Google's famous for taking months to make a decision.
- They've had situations where they were able to snag an employee because Google took too long to make a decision.
26:35 - Q: You guys spent a fortune on lawyers dealing with stock options to teams.
- We've had a lot of problems dealing with people all over the world, dealing with Australian laws. It's complicated because of the international law.
28:20 - We did believe that giving options was important.
28:40 - We were big on cash bonuses.
29:50 - The interviewer shows a t-shirt that they'd give out.
30:10 -
31:00 - Q: In the '80s and '90s a lot of AU companies tried to global and it was really hard because there wasn't the Internet. Has the Internet changed that?
- I think it depends on what your company is trying to do. The more localized it is, the less it helps.
32:15 - Q: How did you find it, expanding from AU?
- We still have some issues with Japan. We've done well in Germany and Western Europe. The only issue there is their privacy concerns.
34:35 - We weren't on the radar of our competitors until it was too late. (or something like that)
35:55 - You can't ignore your competitors completely; you have to know what they're up to. (This is worth transcribing.)
38:50 - There's a great presentation from the CEO of a company called "Constant Contact" called "The Long Slow Valley of Death".
- We had the advantage spending 5 years slowly gaining customers and organizational learning that we've benefited from. We didn't have any investor pressure to grow too quickly.
41:00 - Interviewer combines Atlassian with Jive.
43:10 - The classic mistake is to try to carbon-copy another company.
43:50 - They talk about a charity called "Room to Read"
44:20 - He straight-up says they copied a lot of what Salesforce did, including their charity format.
45:00 - he mentions reading an autobio
49:20 - The interviewer brings up some BRW (magazine) article showing him and his cofounder listed as the richest young entrepreneurs in AU.
- He says he wasn't happy to see that, that nothing good can come from that.
51:40 - He explains what he looks for when evaluating a company.
- Smart teams, technical teams, people who really care about the
- People who can solve the problems that are in front of them.
- He thinks developed a gut sense that
- He doesn't think he would have given himself any money.
54:20 - Interviewer: You gave me some wisdom:
- No one over 30 should start a company.
- Software is eating the world.
- Something else
55:25 - I don't think it's impossible over 30, I just think it's much harder if you have a wife and kid and mortgage. The odds are stacked against you much more. There's a lot of competition.
58:00 - Q from audience: (inaudible)
- A: If you follow advice blindly and fail, you're a mug. Your ability to start companies in AU is fine. They try to hire iOS engineers and they ask for $200k.