Scott Farquhar, co-founder and co-CEO of Atlassian, details how Atlassian offered Benchmark's Peter Fenton the chance to match Accel's higher valuation bid to split their initial venture capital round.
“And actually like we went back to Peter Fenton at Benchmark was, I think the runner up bidder. And we went back to Excel and said, Hey, look, all things considered, maybe we should get two VCs or, you know, in there, even though there was a huge difference in valuation. And we went back to Peter Fenton and told him if he matched Excel's price you know, Excel were happy to split the deal with him.”
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More from Scott Farquhar
Opinion
Farquhar: AI startups without customer data move slower than incumbents
“If you're an AI startup and you don't have access to customer data and customers to test with, that can actually make you move slower.”
Scott FarquharOct 9, 2023▶ 26:57Scott Farquhar: Founding Atlassian; How We Scaled to a $50B Valuation; The 4 Jobs of a CEO | E1070 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
AssertionPartly supported
Farquhar: Accel won Atlassian's initial round at $405M valuation
“And the valuations we got back varied between, there was one sort of high hundreds. There was three of them ended up in the two to three hundred million dollar range. And Excel, who ended up you know, winning for us came back at four hundred and five million U…”
Scott FarquharOct 9, 2023▶ 12:39Scott Farquhar: Founding Atlassian; How We Scaled to a $50B Valuation; The 4 Jobs of a CEO | E1070 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Opinion
Farquhar: Atlassian built a better product than Slack in many cases
“In, in many cases, I think against Slack, we had a better product.”
Scott FarquharOct 9, 2023▶ 16:57Scott Farquhar: Founding Atlassian; How We Scaled to a $50B Valuation; The 4 Jobs of a CEO | E1070 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
PredictionNot checkable as stated
Farquhar: AI will significantly alter top tech company rankings within five years
“I do think that there's going to be a big change in how technology works and change the landscape, honestly. I think you'll walk in five years time, and the list of top companies may look very different to today, so I don't think you can avoid having an AI str…”
Scott FarquharOct 9, 2023▶ 22:24Scott Farquhar: Founding Atlassian; How We Scaled to a $50B Valuation; The 4 Jobs of a CEO | E1070 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
PredictionOpen · timeframe Oct 2028
Farquhar: Atlassian will never require employees to return to offices
“We made the decision that we would never require someone to come back into an office”
Scott FarquharOct 9, 2023▶ 27:47Scott Farquhar: Founding Atlassian; How We Scaled to a $50B Valuation; The 4 Jobs of a CEO | E1070 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Insight
Farquhar: Doubling a 10-person engineering team yields zero net productivity gain
“And when you double that team, You actually don't get any more productivity because when you double the team, they now need to document things. They now need to work like, you know, separate the code out. They needed to start micro, you know, microservices and…”
Scott FarquharOct 9, 2023▶ 32:46Scott Farquhar: Founding Atlassian; How We Scaled to a $50B Valuation; The 4 Jobs of a CEO | E1070 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
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