We all love Atlassian ... the $60B SaaS leader that came out of Australia, not SF ... with 2 co-CEOs ... that was basically bootstrapped ... that spends its $$$ on R&D, not sales
Atlassian has now crossed $2B in ARR
5 Interesting Learnings about where Atlassian is now:
#1. SEO, brand and content continue to work at scale.
Atlassian had 21m unique viewers to its website last year, up 30% year-over-year.
A vivid reminder that investments in content and brand pay dividends … forever.
#2. It’s never too late to add a Free edition -- if it's great
Atlassian was relatively late to adding free editions for some of its products, starting in March 2020 (!). But it’s working now. Sign-ups tripled
Atlassian sees Free as key engine of growth for the next decade
These numbers aren’t a surprise, but they are still top-tier ... and what you should aim for as well if you sell similar products.
#4. A long path to multi-product revenue streams, but today, 40% of Atlassian's revenue comes from newer products, not Jira+Confluence — & that’s growing
A top learning from this series is that to continue strong growth past $1B in ARR, you probably need >1 core product
#5. Atlassian, too, is going more enterprise now. One of the biggest changes from IPO to $2B ARR is just how enterprise Atlassian has gone.
$50k+ customers are growing 44%
$500k+ customers are growing 56%
$1m+ customers are growing 76%.
They now have over 100 $1M+ ACV customers.
We’ve seen Slack, Asana, PagerDuty and Zoom all go much more enterprise post-IPO.
Two bonus points:
#6. Channel partners drive 63% of revenue (!)
A lot of Atlassian’s sales efficiency is driven by its channel partners doing the heavy lifting on sales — and it’s still working well at $2B in ARR. Atlassian only spends 15% of its revenue on sales & marketing.
#7. Atlassian is a cash-generating machine.
Yes, it can be done in SaaS, especially companies that are very efficient in sales and marketing like Atlassian and Zoom.
Atlassian is generating $500m+ a year in free-cash flow:
I really don’t care at all losing all my money on any investment
So long as
The founders truly gave it all
Never quit
Didn’t just do it “on their terms”
Went wherever customers took them
Never left a lead on the table
Never stopped recruiting
Spent it like it was their money
Actually I’ve never lost money when this was all true
Where I’ve lost money:
- Founders burned money just to hit the plan
- Founders fired people they shouldn’t have
- Founders argued among themselves
- Founders blamed others
- Founders thought money would solve their problems
Where I’ve had a mediocre outcome:
- Founders didn’t want to go enterprise when customers did
- Founders didn’t drive down churn
- Founders didn’t talk to customers every single week
- Founders didn’t recruit VPs after $2m-$3m ARR
- Founders too arrogant in fundraising