Reflections & analysis about innovation, technology, startups, investing, healthcare, and more .... with a focus on Minnesota, Land of 10,000 Lakes. Blogging continuously since 2005.

Defrag 2010: A Chat With Atlassian

On day two of the Defrag conference, I wanted to stop by the booth of Atlassian, a Gold Sponsor of Defrag. I was anxious to learn more about what I was hearing is a pretty freaking amazing company. Atlassian-logo You have to love the story: a couple of 22-year-old university dropouts in Sydney decide to start a company together, because they see problems with the state of enterprise software — it's expensive, difficult to configure, and requires huge investments in consulting to implement and years to deploy. So, they launch Atlassian in 2002, ship their first product, JIRA, and become profitable that first year. Fast forward to today: Atlassian has more than 20,000 customers and some 250 employees, on three continents. A few months ago, the company raised its first outside funding, to fuel even more growth: a $60-million investment from Accel Partners. You just don't hear too many stories of such rapid software startup success as this, certainly not coming out of Australia. (My own home country, I'm proud to say!) The company does so much to give back to the community, too, which is touched on in my interview, linked below. Atlassian-products Atlassian is really a different kind of software company, one that's rewritten the rules of enterprise software development and sales. Its bug tracking, collaboration and software development tools allow companies to work smarter and faster — and these tools are especially attractive for startups and small teams. Altassian offers a special package of six of its products, generally for up to 10 users each, for just $10. It's called the Starter program. But, get this: at Defrag 2010, I picked up on an even better offer for cash-strapped startups: how's free? Yes, lucky readers, it's the Free Starter program, which gets you fully functional licenses to all six products, including 12 months of support and updates. The promo code is ATLDEFR10 (and note the offer expires April 1, 2011). Now, let's get right to my interview so you can hear more about this amazing new breed of sofware company: Atlassian….

Download or listen to my interview with Matt Hodges, a Product Marketing Manager for Atlassian who is now based in San Francisco… (MP3)

(UPDATE: For more on what Atlassian is doing to give back, I meant to inlude this link to a post on one of their blogs: Freemium is Dead…Long Live Causium.)

 

2 Comments

  1. Musing

    Atlassian is my absolute #1 favorite company I’d like to emulate. Their corporate values are second to none. http://www.atlassian.com/about/values.jsp

    Been a user since about 2005, and currently leverage most of the “starter” licenses for TelemetryWeb.com. Confluence and Jira are awesome. FWIW, I highly recommend NOT taking advantage of the free promo code. Atlassian donates every cent of your $10 starter license to charity. For $10, I can skip two trips to Starbucks.

    Oh, and BTW, fans of the Minnesota Wild just made the Guinness Book a few weeks ago by having the most “mo”-wearing men on the ice at one time for Mo-vember.

    Thanks for the interview!

  2. Jack S Winslow

    I found this article very helpful

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