Jay Simons, President of Atlassian, explains why Atlassian inverts the traditional SaaS cost structure by prioritizing product development over outbound sales.
Insight
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…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
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.”
Opinion
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.”
Insight
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.”
What-if
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.”
Insight
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 …”