Mike Cannon-Brookes, co-founder of Atlassian, reflects on how Jira expanded from software engineering teams to other corporate departments.
Insight
Cannon-Brookes says demonstrating direct product value eliminates the need for sales reps
“If you can demonstrate value to someone
We had to figure out how to sell things online.
And once we had done that and saw the effect of that patience, all we did is kind of continue to double down on that model every year, right?
We would hire more engineers i…”
Insight
Cannon-Brookes explains how enterprise software virality spreads through cross-functional team members
“We want to get one team to solve one problem with our application brilliantly, because most people in companies don't work on one team. They actually work on three or four different teams and different projects, different things.”
Insight
Cannon-Brookes argues distributed teams should use in-person gatherings exclusively for social bonding
“Do the work at home when you're remote from each other, and when you're meeting, build the social bonds, go out to dinner, like run exercises, whatever you're going to do, but don't meet to do work.”
Insight
Cannon-Brookes argues startup leaders must scale their capabilities faster than company growth
“If our business is going to double every two years, as individuals and as leaders, we can only justify our positions if we are more than doubling our capabilities every two years. Because logically, otherwise, you end up with a kind of constraint at the top, r…”
Assertion Partly supported
Cannon-Brookes sold his first startup to competitor Blink for hundreds of thousands
“Anyway, Blink raised thirty-five million dollars. And we were sitting in Sydney and we were just like, holy shit, we're gonna get smoked. There's no way. So we called up the two or three guys that had raised a big bunch of money and said, look, we got a couple…”
Disclosure
Cannon-Brookes' father passed on investing in Atlassian after an early startup underperformed
“The worst, or the funniest part about that story, my dad would hate me saying this, is he, I think my dad put in five or 10 grand, and you know, barely got his money back kind of thing, and decided that maybe I wasn't worth backing, and so he never invested in…”