The Exchanges

Q When you were growing up a teenager, did you feel compared to other kids you knew or places you saw that you guys didn't really have a whole lot?

A I didn't really notice the difference in, you know, our economic status. I guess when, when you're growing up, you go to a school and everyone in Australia wears a school uniform. So there's no real difference in fashion. Um, I remember in high school, I ended up dating a girl who was from one of the private schools in Sydney and we would go to lots of different people's houses. And I do remember, you know, quite a few of those houses looked very, very different to the house we grew up in, you know, the house, uh, and, and particularly my parents got divorced. We ended up moving into much smaller houses and, uh, When your entire house could fit in someone else's living room, you sort of realize that there's a very different way of people living out there, but I never felt that we missed out on anything. Um, I think maybe with one notable exception, which I remember, um, clearly is that, uh, I remember my friends had computers and I remember kind of asking my parents, why couldn't we have a computer? And I do remember, you know, crying as I went to sleep one night of like, dad, why can't I get a computer?

AI assessment note: “I didn't really notice the difference in, you know, our economic status.”

Q Yeah. So you guys have, you've got this service business, this tech support business for this one product, and how long does that last? How long are you in the service business before you realize it's not working?

A I think it was less than a year that we were in the service business. I would have my computer running 24 hours a day under my bed, you know, so I had the sort of fan spinning up and, and down while you're trying to sleep. Both our mobile phones were turned on to the loudest ringtone they possibly could. We'd alternate which nights we were on call, and you'd get up at two in the morning and try and answer, you know, the phone call. It's like, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem You know, trying to sound like you're a cogent at that time in the morning, and then, you know, trying to sound like you're a big company. We realized that actually, uh, it was just such a terrible business that almost anything would be better, and our true passion was not supporting software, it was building it. And from that, we then started exploring where we wanted to, you know, build software.

AI assessment note: “I think it was less than a year that we were in the service business.”

Q So Scott, alright, you are still in the program, you do not drop out of it, and while you were in this program, did you start to have thoughts about what you would do when it was over? Did you just assume that you'd end up working for one of these companies that sponsored the scholarship?

A I worked for three, uh, companies during my, uh, scholarship. It was, um, IBM, then PwC, then ASX, the Australian Stock Exchange. All three were the acronym companies, and my experience of that was working in a large organization was just full of people that were trying their best, but didn't seem to be really on the path to success, and I remember during my IBM process, it was the middle of the year 2000 Y two K problem, and my job was not, you know, to go into the code and fix the Y two K Problem. Um, if it existed, it was really to go and make sure that all the contracts that they had with their customers excluded that so that they wouldn't be legally liable if they had any problems. And I, you know, roughly similar experiences at the other companies that we worked at. And so after that, it was definitely not a, um, encouraging sign in terms of working for corporate Australia.

AI assessment note: “it was definitely not a, um, encouraging sign in terms of working for corporate Australia.”

Q Right. And this is where the two of you met, because Scott had been accepted into the same program, right, Scott?

A Yes, and, uh, there's quite, quite a lot of luck involved in, um, where Mike and I have ended up, and one of the lucky things was that the programming languages that we got taught, um, and the skills we got taught were actually pretty in line with what we needed to build a software company. We weren't being taught, you know, esoteric programming languages that, you know, you couldn't use or, you know, compiler, you know, details where you were sort of down in the bowels of a computer, uh, you know, uh, trying to get it to work. We're actually building, uh, Languages, you know, programming languages that could be used to build applications and build, specifically build web applications, which of course is where most software is, is these days.

AI assessment note: “Yes, and, uh, there's quite, quite a lot of luck involved”

Q you didn't grow up with money, and you got this scholarship, and I'm sure everyone was really proud of you. I'm sure your parents were really proud of you, and you were gonna be set. You were gonna have a really good, solid, stable job. You were gonna make decent cash, and you were giving that up. So why? Why were you willing to take that risk at that point?

A It sounds trite, like, but it didn't feel like a big risk to, to give up, you know, a corporate job. Maybe we were young and naive, but I always felt that it landed on my feet with whatever I'd done, you know, as a smart kid, I could, you know, there will always be jobs for smart kids out there, and if I didn't get a job with this particular graduate year, I'll get a job in the next graduate year, and I just felt like, wow, I've got better things to do in my life than, you know, kind of, Be downstream of a whole bunch of poor choices, and I remember the local, um, Thai place, and three satay chicken skewers and rice was four dollars 50, um, at the, at the local Thai place, and I, I, if I could get dinner for four dollars 50, and you don't, you don't need much money to live, um, and Mike was a really smart guy.

AI assessment note: “it didn't feel like a big risk to, to give up”

Q Was that common in 2002, 2003 to, uh, you know, update software that regularly?

A No, it was, it was very unusual, and it's almost like a, back then, it's like CDs, right? Every person, you'd buy your CD, and once you bought it, that's, you know, the artist had to go out and produce more soft, you know, more, more music, and very early on, we said, well, that's not a great model, because that means we're incentivized to hold back all the new features. It's like, you know, if Adele had a great album, and she had great songs, she's like, well, actually, I'll keep it half of them in the good album, And I'll save half of the good songs for the next album because I only get paid by, you know, selling albums. Whereas we thought the model was, it was better if you're aligned by, hey, if you use our software and continue using it and being happy with it, you pay us to go. But that was incredibly unusual back then.

AI assessment note: “No, it was, it was very unusual”

Q And, uh, you've got a lot of life ahead of you. You're really rich. You can just stop working right now and have a, you know, foundation and give away a bunch of money and, you know, whatever you, wherever you want to do. You do whatever you want to do. What's stopping you from doing that? Why, why wouldn't you just kind of walk away now?

A I think that, you know, with everyone's life, you try and work out how do you have the biggest impact in the world, or at least for Mike and my wife, that's been a big part, and like our mission at Atlassian is to unleash the potential of every team, and I keep thinking, okay, well, if I, if I left Atlassian, where would I go, or what would I do to have a bigger impact? You know, the teams that use our products put people in space, like they create electric cars, they, you know, decarbonize the planet, they're, you know, the American Red Cross, like our customers, and we get to help them do their They work better, and I don't know, I feel if there was something better out there, you know, I'd be tempted, but like the, it just doesn't seem a better opportunity to have a big impact in the world.

AI assessment note: “it just doesn't seem a better opportunity to have a big impact in the world.”

Q It sounds like you guys really had it together. I mean, I, and I guess I shouldn't be surprised, but it sounds like you really had this plan. Did you feel different from your peers? Did you feel like you guys were kind of oddballs in that way?

A I felt different to our peers on a couple of different fronts. One is, you know, they've all taken safe jobs, and there's a high pressure of, man, if we fucked this up, we're going to look like the idiots, right? Like, you know, we're the ones that Kind of are going to be working for these people when we kind of crawl back to corporate world, and they'll be our bosses in a couple of years. And so I think there's a high level of kind of anxiety around, you know, proving that you've done something, especially when your peers have all taken a very different path. Um, but also I think in, in Australia, like the idea of an entrepreneur just didn't really exist. And so, um, there wasn't even really a category for, you know, to be even, to be Yeah. My girlfriend at the time, my now, now wife, she is an investment banker and was back then, and all her investment banking friends would tell her like, why are you dating Scott? He, he doesn't really even have a job. And, uh, you know, and so it was just such, so unusual. And I think you have something to prove.

AI assessment note: “I felt different to our peers on a couple of different fronts.”