Mike Cannon-Brookes
Co-Founder and CEO, Atlassian. On 3 shows, 4 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderexecutiveinvestor@mcannonbrookes ↗LinkedIn ↗atlassian.com ↗Wikipedia ↗
He co-founded enterprise software giant Atlassian in 2002 alongside Scott Farquhar, scaling products like Jira, Confluence, and Trello globally. Outside of software, he is an active climate-tech investor known for backing Sun Cable and driving shareholder campaigns to accelerate decarbonization.
3shows
4appearances
71statements
6resolved
4supported
0contradicted
67%fully supported
86said about them ↓ Everything Mike Cannon-Brookes said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Cannon-Brookes: Not Every SaaS Company Will Survive the AI Shift
“And look, the reality is, as I've said, not every SaaS company is going to thrive through the next decade, right? Just like a bunch didn't make it to the cloud. A bunch didn't make it, you know, from, I don't know, Windows to the internet era or whatever, whic…”
Cannon-Brookes: AI Is the Best Thing to Happen to Atlassian
“This is the best thing that's happened to our business, right? We're in a knowledge world. We have tools to play with that knowledge, to act on that knowledge, to do all sorts of other things, to solve the jobs our customers have always hired us for.”
Cannon-Brookes: Knowledge businesses are process networks, not static databases
“To me, businesses are a set of processes. They're not a system of record. Like, these are all process-based systems, right? Everything Alex has just said is totally true, but there are processes like reference checking or other things, and your ability to coor…”
Cannon-Brookes: Software AI gains will increase output rather than cut headcount
“But then I have kind of output-constrained work, if I think about anything creative, marketing, I would argue software development, technology, where I can theoretically do an unlimited amount of tasks, right? I'm constrained by my creativity, if you like, and…”
Cannon-Brookes: AI Vibe Coding Makes Enterprise Software Stickier, Not Obsolete
“That actually makes Workday stickier in the enterprise and more valuable because you can build all these applications on top, which is the power of AI and vibe coding and creativity to make it more tailored for what I need.”
Cannon-Brookes: Consumption Pricing Won't Dominate Enterprise SaaS
“I definitely do not believe that it will be the majority pricing manner for all software or all SaaS based software, because when you talk to customers, they hate it.”
Cannon-Brookes: Outcome-Based Pricing Friction Escalates in Year Two
“The problem with say customer service where I've saved you know, you used to spend 20 dollars on customer service with our tool, you'll only spend 10. That's a great sales pitch in year one. In year two, the customer goes, but I only spend 10. Now I want to sp…”
Cannon-Brookes: Most businesses will run 3 to 5 AI agent platforms
“Most businesses, I think, will have three to five large scale agent platforms running internally, and they say, hey, I use Agent Force for this, or I use Gemini for this.”
Cannon-Brookes: AI models are far ahead of actual value delivered
“I feel like in the technology world, sometimes we get so obsessed by, like, model quality, you know, it's almost trite now to say the models are far ahead of the actual value they're delivering now. The underutilized capabilities are so big.”
Cannon-Brookes: Enterprise AI agent adoption is a design problem, not technology
“These are all, I would argue, a fundamental foundational design and experience problem. They're not a technology problem, right?”
Cannon-Brookes: The idea that software is dead is ludicrous
“The idea that software as a category is dead is ludicrous to me.”
Cannon-Brookes: Technology's fundamental role is to change and expand TAM
“Our whole job in technology is to change TAM, actually.”
Cannon-Brookes: VCs back OpenAI at huge valuations for logo marketing
“One thing that they don't say is a lot of VCs want the loose side on the wall, so when you walk into the office, on the wall is a nice logo that says, oh, you invested in OpenAI. You invested in Anthropic. Well, if you put money at three hundred fifty billion,…”
Cannon-Brookes: Being public makes Atlassian a better company
“We're a better company because we're a public company. Like we have become a better business, right? We're better at forecasting. We're better at planning. We're better at executing.”
Cannon-Brookes: Most tech assets are currently vastly overvalued
“One of the only predictions I think I would make accurately is 10 years from now, we'll look back and say, man, you remember that era? That was crazy. Most of the things are vastly overvalued.”
Cannon-Brookes: Atlassian will employ more software engineers in 2030
“Five years from now, we'll have more engineers working for our company than we do today. More software developers working for our companies. We will create far more. They will be more efficient.”
Cannon-Brookes: Co-CEO success requires equality in age, life stage, and equity
“Having two equal parties, I think, in motivation, experience, we've always talked about this, is a really important part of what made it successful. And by equal, yes, equal, I don't know, shareholding-wise, equity-wise, but equal in terms of age, life stage, …”
Cannon-Brookes: Outlier AI Winners Will Outweigh Overvalued AI Losses
“Most of the things are vastly overvalued, probably true. Some of the things will be worth far more and are undervalued, and the far more is probably overweight all of the things that are overvalued, like as classically happens, right?”
Cannon-Brookes: Anyone claiming to know AI's long-term business model is lying
“Where the monetary value and the fundamental value lies on the far end of it, in terms of how the business models shake up, if you think about the search era and advertising and all these things, right, I don't think that's known. I think anyone who tells you …”
Cannon-Brookes: Specialized apps won't be replaced by a single AI agent
“I don't think we know in the AI era if all those apps just disappear into some godlike Siri agent that we just talked to. I, I'm not a believer in that world view. I don't think it's likely to happen. I do think AI is going to have to change all of those appli…”
Cannon-Brookes: Tech industry will hire far more entry-level software engineers
“I think we'll have far more of them. Maybe that's a bold bet.”
Cannon-Brookes: Atlassian won't pay 10x for AI tools without 10x productivity
“No, probably not. I mean, maybe if they gave me 10 times the productivity.”
Cannon-Brookes: Proliferation of AI software will scale startup services tenfold
“If you have far more technology, you're going to have, instead of running, I don't know, say you're a medium sized startup and you have a hundred different services running, you're going to have a thousand services. So the permutations and combinations and fin…”
Cannon-Brookes: Enterprise AI deployment will take longer than expected
“The speed with which AI can be understood and deployed successfully by companies, customers, is something that is going to take a lot longer to really play through. Because the delta between magical demos and actual value delivered is quite high in a lot of ca…”
The other half of the tape: Mike Cannon-Brookes's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 81 times in 26 episodes across the shows. 5 statements on the record name them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 31Jason Lemkin 15Scott Farquhar 9Jeff Lawson 6Miles Clements 5Rory O'Driscoll 2Jean-Michel Lemieux 2Heather Fernandez 2
Statements about Mike Cannon-Brookes, by other people (5)
Clements: Never bet against Atlassian co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes
“Never bet against Mike Cannonbrooks. Absolutely not.”
Lawson: Atlassian and Mike Cannon-Brookes will stay aggressive on acquisitions
“So I think Mike will be one of the more aggressive on the acquisitions front because they've always been and so I think it's in the DNA of Atlassian, so I do think we are looking at one of those, even if I am not fully on board with the most recent.”
Farquhar and Cannon-Brookes originally just wanted a $48,500 salary without wearing suits
“The thesis was if we can earn 48,500 dollars and not have to wear a suit to work and a tie to work and work with, you know, kind of average people, then, you know, we've won.”
Atlassian's first shareholder agreement designated rock-paper-scissors to resolve founder disputes
“And we put in Rochambeau or rock, paper, scissors into our shareholders agreement. And so it's changed now. We're a public company. We can't solve problems like that anymore. But you know, for the first few years, if we disagreed it would have ended up at rock…”
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
20VC 81
2026 36 mentions in 15 episodes 2 per episode
- "Cursor is Dead" is Total BS: Here is Why | Miles Clements · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Thrive Raises New $10B Fund | OpenAI Buys OpenClaw | Stripe at $140B: Is Adyen Wildly Undervalued? · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Canva Slashes Growth | Talent Exodus at Google | Revolut's $50B CEO Package | Musk's $55B Terrafab
- Anthropic Raises $30BN at $900BN Price | SpaceX Files S1: How Does it Trade | Cerebras Smashes Day 1 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Citrini Research Breakdown: Agents, "Ghost GDP", Consumer Spend | Figma Earnings Beat · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Anthropic Buys Compute From Elon & Commits $200BN to Google | Cerebras IPO | Ramp Raises at $40BN · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Anthropic's Raise & What It Means for Potential IPO? Mag7: Google & Amazon Up, Meta & Microsoft Down · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Anthropic Raises $45B but Falls Short on Compute & Thoma Bravo Hand Back Medallia Keys to Creditors · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- 7 more episodes that year, every mention in 2026 →
2025 17 mentions in 5 episodes 3 per episode
- OpenAI’s $10BN Secondary Sale, Ramp Hits $1BN ARR & Brex Hits $700M · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- OpenAI's Multi-Billion Deal with AMD & Polymarket, Vercel and Supabase Raise Mega Rounds · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- The Impact of H1B Visas on Startups in the US & NVIDIA Invests $100BN Into OpenAI · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Base44’s Founder, Maor Shlomo on How Vibe Coding Will Kill SaaS · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- OpenAI Restructuring: Who Wins and Who Loses & Mercor Raises $350M at a $10BN Valuation · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- every mention in 2025, scene by scene →
2024 2 mentions in 1 episode
2023 21 mentions in 1 episode
2021 1 mention in 1 episode
2018 2 mentions in 1 episode
2017 1 mention in 1 episode
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Mike's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20VCLEDGER | Co-Founder and CEO, Atlassian | 2 | 47 | 80% 4/5 | full record on 20VC → |
 a16zLEDGER | Co-Founder and CEO, Atlassian | 1 | 15 | — | full record on the a16z Podcast → |
 HOW I BUILT THISLEDGER | Co-Founder and CEO, Atlassian | 1 | 9 | 0% 0/1 | full record on How I Built This → |