Atlassian in Sydney: Beating the Tyranny of Distance

Abstract

Atlassian is an enterprise software company providing collaborative software for product teams founded in Sydney, Australia, in 2002, by Scott Farquhar and Mike Cannon-Brookes—then both in their early 20s—who first met in 1998 when they were recipients of the Business IT Co-op Scholarship at the University of New South Wales (UNSW). A little more than a decade after Atlassian’s launch, the company had almost 40,000 customers worldwide, close to 1000 employees across 6 offices around the globe, annual turnover nearing US$250 million, and an estimated valuation in the vicinity of US$3.3 billion (Michal 2014; Schetzer 2014). Atlassian’s large market size, high growth rate, its approach to marketing and its ability to maintain profitability from the outset had made it unique amongst software companies. The company’s client list also read like a business who’s who and included NASA, BMW, Pfizer, Samsung, eBay, Harvard, MIT, Visa, Procter & Gamble, Shell, American Express, Cisco, Honeywell and the New York Stock Exchange, to name just a few.