Atlassian strikes gold

Hard cash for software: Scott Farquhar and Mike Cannon-Brookes

Two young entrepreneurs are on their way to securing a place on the Rich 200 list with the announcement that software development powerhouse Atlassian has raised $US60 million ($68 million) in venture capital from Palo Alto, California venture capital company Accel Partners.

Founded in 2002 by BRW Young Rich listers Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar, Atlassian has expanded rapidly since it’s inception and now boasts 20,000 enterprise customers in 140 countries. Atlassian’s suite of hosted software development tools such as Jira and Confluence earned the company revenue of $US49 million in the past financial year.

“The funds will enable us to establish ourselves more deeply in Europe and Asia, and provide us with a a firmer base in the US as well,” explained Cannon-Brookes in the run-up to the announcement. “Some of the funding will assist us in making more acquisitions to broaden our customer base, and will also help us attract a really world-class board.”

Although the two are keen to maintain the Atlassian headquarters in Australia, Cannon-Brookes says the ultimate goal is to list Atlassian on the tech-heavy NASDAQ securities exchange, and says the size of the Accel investment reflects the level of confidence investors have in the company.

“This is the largest investment Accell Partners have made in a company for the last decade, they have taken a minority stake in the company, so the ownership structure has not changed significantly,” Cannon-Brookes says. “We are under no illusion about the amount of work it’s going to take to continue to build the company, but we have been profitable since we began in 2002 – we have a strong customer base and recurring revenue stream and we believe we have a model which can scale.”

The news of Atlassian’s coup comes close on the heels of Monday’s announcement that mobile games company Tapulous, founded by local entrepreneur Andrew Lacy, has been acquired by Disney for an undisclosed sum.

“It’s great to see the Australian software industry gain momentum like this. We’re getting to the point where we have a really strong software start-up community in this country – we’re globally competitive, and we’re great at turning ideas into practical products,” Farquhar enthused.

BRW

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