Bronte Media

While anything I say is likely to have incredible bias (I went to University with Mike and Scott, lived with Mike and Mike is an investor in Homethinking), Atlassian is an incredible story of success.

They haven’t raised a dime of capital, angel or venture and have been able to grow to a US$20m-$30m a year company (in the video, Australian financial years end in June) within five years. And not only that they have Microsoft like profitability.

They started out as a support company for an Java application server called Orion in 2002. The video says the company was started with a $1k loan but - at least in my memory - the company was really jump-started when Scott worked in a fat consulting engagement at a Dutch telecom firm on a troubled Java project that helped them fund JIRA, a project management app, and keep the lights on in their first year.

They also develop Confluence, an enterprise Wiki that nearly every large firm who uses an enterprise Wiki has. Jotspot and Socialtext may have won the press war but Atlassian has clearly won the customer and product war. I’d say Atlassian is worth - in a financial sense - ten times what Jotspot and Socialtext combined is worth (even if Google paid $50m for Jotspot).

Happy 5th Birthday Atlassian and here’s to another five years!