Jay Simons
General Partner, BOND. On 3 shows, 3 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
investorexecutiveoperator@jaysimons ↗LinkedIn ↗bondcap.com ↗
Jay Simons served for 12 years at Atlassian, including nine years as President, scaling the company through its 2015 IPO. He is currently a General Partner at BOND, where he invests in growth-stage software and technology companies.
3shows
3appearances
39statements
17resolved
13supported
2contradicted
76%fully supported
36said about them ↓ Everything Jay Simons said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Atlassian Refused to Manually Complete Enterprise RFPs, Building a Self-Serve Database
“RFPs is another one. You know, like, we've been selling it to the enterprise for a long time, and, you know, you often get a lot of requests for, hey, help me fill out this, you know, this RFP document or this questionnaire that I basically have to provide to …”
Simons: Needing human onboarding assistance is a bug in product-led growth
“The difference is, is that in our model, we identify that as a, kind of a bug in the model, right? It's something that we need to fix in the future. We don't want every single customer, if we're targeting 500,000, to have to raise their hand and for us to enga…”
Jay Simons: Atlassian spends twice as much on R&D as on S&M
“We spend twice on R&D, you know, that, that we do in sales and marketing.”
Simons: Atlassian has 2,000 channel partner salespeople in the field
“And if you think about it, like, our sales force, you know, we've got 2000 salespeople that are out in the field. They're not employed by us, but they effectively do the same job. They're salespeople.”
Simons: Atlassian never followed the 'triple, triple, double, double' growth model
“And, you know, Atlassian, you know, was never a triple, triple, double, double, double company. It was this kind of methodical, reasonable grower.”
Simons: The best-run companies are public companies
“We believe that the best run pub, you know, best run companies are public companies. And so I think, you know, operating as a public company applies some pressure, but also I think some discipline to how you run your business.”
Simons: Pulling customer revenue forward damages long-term software company value
“Oftentimes, like, you know, when you do that, you create worse long-term value for your company, better short-term value because you're pulling all that revenue forward.”
Simons: Founders should plan ecosystem economies from company formation
“I think in the earliest days of the company, in the formation of the company, you know, as you're building the product, I think you should be thinking, What are the economies, the extensions of our business that we can invest in that will have transitive prope…”
Simons: Partner ecosystems and certifications made Microsoft a generational business
“I think if you look back on time before they had the brand and direct reach that they have today, they had reached through this incredibly durable partner ecosystem and the customer economy built around getting Microsoft certified and having that sort of crede…”
Simons: Atlassian built a partner network instead of direct enterprise sales
“We invested at Atlassian, we invested early on, we had built this self-service online e-commerce flywheel for customers to buy the product. And as we moved into the enterprise, we had an opportunity to either invest directly in building an enterprise sales org…”
Simons: Software firms need established market demand before building partner networks
“You need market there. I mean, you need market for the partners to be able to grow their businesses, and then I think you need alignment around what they do, and what you do, and where you work together, and where some of the rubs will be.”
Simons: Ecosystem extensions drive higher core SaaS product retention
“If they do get access to that and it does solve a problem, it means that both the core product is more valuable to them. And the core product from a retention perspective is even stickier because you've got JIRA and then you have three or four things that are …”
Simons: Atlassian wouldn't be the same company without an early second product
“We added a second products really early in the company's life cycle. That was a very unconventional and risky choice. But I think if I look back, had we not done that, we probably would be a very different company. Who knows? Like if we were just the Jira comp…”
Simons: Atlassian grew 40% to 50% annually for 15 straight years
“Atlassian grew between 40 and 50% for more than 15 straight years.”
Simons: Startups more commonly fail by waiting too long for second products
“I think it's more common, a more common mistake is companies probably wait too long. Versus doing it too early. I think history is littered with examples of great companies that didn't invest in, you know, a durable second act, and they're putting all their en…”
Simons: Generational companies require multi-product portfolios built organically and via M&A
“If you're going to be a big generational company, you actually have to have more than one thing, and you probably have to have the ability to build them organically and acquire them.”
Simons: Atlassian wouldn't be as successful had it targeted enterprise early
“We made choices where we could have really early on invested in the enterprise segment, and instead of selling a 10,000 dollar product, chose to sell a 200,000 dollar product. And again, the counterfactual is tough to paint what Atlassian would have looked lik…”
Simons: Capital scarcity forces early-stage companies to build ROI discipline
“Capital scarcity can also benefit you. You know, we were forced to kind of fund the business from the cash register, and I think that created, you know, a discipline. It created a compelling need to really, really materially understand ROI, and so anywhere we …”
Trello Required In-Office Staff to Join Zoom Meetings From Separate Rooms
“They had pretty hard rules around when you joined a zoom or when you joined a meeting and there were maybe five people in a room, everybody went to five different places and joined a zoom from five different locations. And so the people that were outside of th…”
Atlassian Raised Zero Primary Capital Until Its 2015 IPO
“I mean, the first time that we raised primary capital was when we went public in 2015, 13 years after founding. We did two secondary rounds. We did a secondary round in 2010 with Excel, and then we did a secondary round with T. Rowe Price in 2013.”
Atlassian Achieves 98% Logo Retention on Customers Spending Over $50,000
“You know, one thing that we've shared publicly is, is retention at a logo level for companies that spend 50 grand or more with us is 98%.”
Simons: Atlassian could have gone public two to four years earlier
“So I think we had the profile of a company that could've gone public two or three or four years earlier.”
Simons: End-user NPS is the key leading indicator of SaaS growth
“So like end user NPS is probably like the important, ah, leading indicator of future growth. Like if your end users aren't happy, you know, even if I'm a Workday user, and if I'm not happy, long term that's not a great thing for Workday, even if the HR person …”
The other half of the tape: Jay Simons's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 35 times in 15 episodes across the shows. 1 statement on the record names them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 11Nathan Latka 6David Meyer 5Jason Lemkin 3Brian Halligan 3Nick Mehta 2David Darmanin 2Andy Cook 2
Statements about Jay Simons, by other people (1)
Suter: Atlassian's non-quarterly, linear revenue model is an awesome strategy
“I think the revenue model that they went public with is awesome. Very linearity. You know, they don't depend on quarterly sales normal kind of like quarterly sales traction at all. So they focus, you know, four to five quarters out instead of next quarter.”
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
20VC 19
Top Founders 11
the Official SaaStr Podcast 5
2025 6 mentions in 1 episode
2024 3 mentions in 1 episode
2023 7 mentions in 2 episodes 4 per episode
2022 3 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
2021 8 mentions in 4 episodes 2 per episode
- 20VC: Scaling Zapier To $140M ARR and a $5Bn Valuation on $1.4M of Funding, What Founders Misunderstand About Fundraising & How Founders Should Think About Secondaries Today with Wade Foster, Founder & CEO @ Zapier
- Gamers contribute GPU To this SaaS Marketplace Raising $15m at $70m Valuation with $5m in Revenue
- Prediction: Freshbworks IPO Coming Next Month? Founders Thinking in 2018
- Bootstrapped Employee Performance SaaS hits $3.6m ARR, Up from $2.4m, Valued at $40m
- every mention in 2021, scene by scene →
2019 3 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
2017 5 mentions in 3 episodes 2 per episode
- Twilio: The Inside Story with Jeff Lawson, CEO/Co-Founder
- EP 558: 2 yr Old HotJar Passes $500k MRR Helping 10,000 Customers See What Website Visitors Are Doing with CEO David Darmanin
- EP 529: $10m Raised, Pre-Revenue, Notion.ai Adds AI to Email Messaging with Co-Founder Guy Suter
- every mention in 2017, scene by scene →
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Jay's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20VCLEDGER | General Partner, BOND | 1 | 17 | 83% 5/6 | full record on 20VC → |
| SAASTRLEDGER | General Partner, BOND | 1 | 12 | 80% 4/5 | full record on the Official SaaStr Podcast → |
| TOP FOUNDERSLEDGER | General Partner, BOND | 1 | 10 | 67% 4/6 | full record on Top Founders → |