20 years of Atlassian, 20 lessons learned
2002
Jira is a play on “Gojira,” which is the Japanese title for the original 1954 Godzilla movie.
2003
Software should be bought, not sold.
I like this quote, software should be bought, not sold.
one morning in 2003 to find an order from American Airlines lying on the fax machine. According to company lore, they looked at each other and said, “Did you talk to them?” “No, did you?” … “Holy shit! American Airlines saw Jira on our website and bought it just like that!”
2004
Atlassian set up a tiny office in New York. But our leadership team realized quickly that we’d over-extended. Closing that office so soon was hard
2005
Our quarterly hackathon tradition, ShipIt, began in 2005. Even Jira Service Management, Atlassian’s fastest-growing product today, originated here.
2006
they pledged to donate one percent of profits, product, equity, and employee time to social impact organizations.
2007
Culture changes, but values don’t.
2008
Invest in your user community. Atlassian started supporting them with pizza, beer, and t-shirts, then basically stayed out of their way.
2009
Take the time to connect with customers. In 2009, we hosted the first Atlassian Summit (now rebranded as Atlassian Team) in the ballroom of a San Francisco hotel.
2010
Getting funded isn’t worth “selling out.”
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
acquired Trello
- Acquired HipChat, release Stride
2018
Make your big bets early, or not at all.
2019
Sell Stride to Slack.