Bootstrapping to IPO, product-led growth, & scaling SaaS with Atlassian's Scott Farquhar | E1800
This Week in Startups
Jason Calacanis
4.2 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 1 September 2023
⏱️ 67 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This Week in Startups is brought to you by…
Squarespace. Turn your idea into a new website! Go to Squarespace.com/TWIST for a free trial. When you’re ready to launch, use offer code TWIST to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.
Supergut is the only nutrition brand clinically-proven to improve digestion, balance blood sugar, sustain energy, and manage weight. Save 25% on their delicious shakes, bars, and prebiotic mix at Supergut.com with code TWIST.
Miro. Working remotely doesn’t mean you need to feel disconnected from your team. Miro is an online whiteboard that brings teams together - anytime, anywhere. Go to https://miro.com/startups to sign up for a FREE account with unlimited team members.
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Today’s show:
Atlassian Co-CEO Scott Farquhar joins Jason to break down how he and his Co-Founder bootstrapped Atlassian to an IPO (1:34), his lessons from acquiring, growing and eventually selling HipChat (13:43), thoughts on product-led growth (29:27), generative AI tools for the enterprise (39:43), and more!
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Time stamps:
(0:00) Atlassian Co-CEO Scott Farquhar joins Jason!
(1:34) Atlassian origins, bootstrapping to IPO
(12:22) Squarespace - Use offer code TWIST to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain at https://Squarespace.com/TWIST
(13:43) Lessons from HipChat: Acquiring and growing the service, selling to Slack, what Scott would do differently
(19:39) Atlassian's two playbooks: bootstrapping and aggressive growth
(27:57) Supergut - Get 25% off with code TWIST at https://supergut.com
(29:27) How product-led growth leads to a sharper product team, how Atlassian is thinking about LLMs and generative AI
(38:20) Miro - Sign up for a free account at https://miro.com/startups
(39:43) Remaining flexible re: AI tools, utilizing customer data, when to expect major knowledge work breakthroughs in AI
(47:27) How Scott thinks about AI, remote work, and efficiency
(1:01:39) Staying motivated in Atlassian's third decade
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Check out Atlassian: https://www.atlassian.com
FOLLOW Scott: https://twitter.com/scottfarkas
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Read LAUNCH Fund 4 Deal Memo: https://www.launch.co/four
Apply for Funding: https://www.launch.co/apply
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Great recent interviews: Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland, PrayingForExits, Jenny Lefcourt
Check out Jason’s suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@calacanis
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Follow Jason:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/jason
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LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis
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YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin
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Subscribe to the Founder University Podcast: https://www.founder.university/podcast
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Our biggest competitor back then was a company called, was a product called Bugzilla, which was made by Apache |
| 0:06.1 | and it was an open source product out there. And the word Bugzilla came from Godzilla, |
| 0:11.2 | which was the sort of Japanese film. And but it turns out that actually Godzilla was the, you know, |
| 0:17.1 | anglers, anglicized Western name, Go Jira. He's actually the Japanese name, Go Jira. And so we dropped |
| 0:25.3 | the go and Jira became, you know, the product. And back then you could buy forwarded domain names, |
| 0:30.9 | you know, just on your credit card without any problems. And yeah, maybe I should have given, |
| 0:35.6 | not not started a software company and just bought a board of domain names, |
| 0:38.5 | where we should be more profitable. For sure. But we bought, yeah, boardjira.com and, you know, |
| 0:43.9 | we started building the product. This week in startups is brought to you by Squarespace. |
| 0:49.2 | Turn your idea into a new website. Go to squarespace.com slash quiz for a free trial. |
| 0:55.3 | When you're ready to launch, use offer code twist to save 10 percent off your first purchase |
| 1:00.2 | of a website or domain. Super gut is the only nutrition brand clinically proven to improve |
| 1:06.5 | digestion, balance blood sugar, sustain energy, and manage weight, saved 25 percent on their |
| 1:13.5 | delicious shakes, bars, and prebiotic mix at super gut.com with code twist. And Miro helps take |
| 1:22.4 | ideas from in your head to out there in the world with his ability to democratize collaboration |
| 1:27.7 | and input. Sign up for free at Miro.com slash startups. Hey everybody, welcome to this week in startup. |
| 1:36.2 | Some companies just so influential, they define a category or a region. And at Lassian, |
| 1:43.5 | really became the anchor, the foundation of the Australian startup industry. A lot of the great |
| 1:48.6 | startups are alumni of Atlassian. And if you're in the tech space, you know, the firm, |
| 1:53.8 | today we're joined by the co-CEO and co-founder, Scott Barquhar, on the program. How are you, sir? |
| 2:01.2 | Great. What year is this for Atlassian? You're obviously in the second decade. I'm not sure |
| 2:05.2 | what year it is, though. This is year 21 or 22 depending on where you count the starting points. |
... |
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