Cannon-Brookes acquired his first computer at age eight using frequent flyer points
Mike Cannon-Brookes · Atlassian: Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar · Feb 8, 2021 · at 7:34
Atlassian co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes describes attending boarding school in the UK and getting his start with computing as a child in Sydney.
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“So I was flying from Sydney to London four times a year back and forth and racking up lots of frequent fly points as a seven year old, eight year old, nine year old. And my parents gave me the catalog one, you know, Christmas or end of year and said, Hey, you know, you've earned all these points. What do you want to get? And you kind of look into like bottles of wine and Holidays, and there's an eight-year-old kid, none of this is really good for me, and the back was this computer, an Amstrad PC-Twenty, four-color, masterful device, and so I was like, I guess I'll get that, and it was how I got my first computer of myself, my own at eight, eight and a half, three freaking fly points.”
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