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Mike Cannon-Brookes & Scott Farquharniche developer design utilities Généré par l'IA - En attente
From $10,000 in Credit Card Debt to a $40 Billion Developer Software Juggernaut
"We just didn't want to get a real job."
story_timeline
January 2002
Founded Atlassian in Sydney
April 2002
Launched Jira 1.0
December 2015
IPO on the NASDAQ
story_struggle
Fresh out of university in Australia, Mike and Scott dreaded the idea of wearing suits and working for traditional corporate firms. They started a third-party IT support business, but it failed to gain any real traction.
To survive and keep their dream of "not getting a real job" alive, they racked up $10,000 in credit card debt. They were building an issue-tracking tool just to manage their own support tickets, completely isolated from the Silicon Valley ecosystem and its abundant venture capital.
story_breakthrough
They realized their internal issue tracker, which they named Jira, was far more valuable than their failing IT services. Instead of hiring an expensive enterprise sales team, they priced Jira cheaply online and allowed anyone to download a free 30-day trial.
This bottom-up, product-led growth strategy was revolutionary in 2002. It allowed them to acquire customers like American Airlines globally while sleeping in Sydney. This automated sales engine built a massive, highly profitable, bootstrapped empire long before they ever accepted outside funding.
story_metrics
story_revenue
$1M ARR in 2005, $3.9B+ ARR Today
story_capital
$10,000 (Credit card debt)
story_time
3 Years to profitability
story_skills_before
- Computer Science
- Basic Programming
story_skills_learned
- Product-Led Enterprise Sales
- Global Team Management
