Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar founded Atlassian in 2002.[3][4] The pair met while studying at the University of New South Wales in Sydney.[5] They bootstrapped the company for several years, financing the startup with a $10,000 credit card debt.[6]
The name is an ad hoc derivation from the titan Atlas in Greek mythology who had been punished to hold up the Heavens after the Greek gods had overthrown the Titans. (The usual form of the word is Atlantean.) The derivation was reflected in the company’s logo used from 2011 through to the 2017 re-branding through a blue X-shaped figure holding up what is shown to be the bottom of the sky.[7]
Atlassian released its flagship product, Jira – a project and issue tracker, in 2002.[8] In 2004, it released Confluence, a team collaboration platform that lets users work together on projects, co-create content, and share documents and other media assets.[9]
In July 2010, Atlassian raised $60 million in venture capital from Accel Partners.[10]
In June 2011, Atlassian announced revenue of $102 million, up 35% from the year before.[11]
In a 2014 restructuring, the parent company became Atlassian Corporation PLC of the UK, with a registered address in London—though the actual headquarters remained in Sydney.[12]
Atlassian has nine offices in six countries: Amsterdam, Austin, New York, San Francisco and Mountain View, California,[13] Manila, Yokohama, Bangalore, and Sydney.
The group has over 4,000 employees serving more than 130,000 customers and millions of users.[2][4][14]
In November 2015, Atlassian announced sales of $320 million,[15] and Shona Brown was added to its board.[16] On 10 December 2015 Atlassian made its initial public offering (IPO) on the NASDAQ stock exchange,[17] under the symbol TEAM, putting the market capitalisation of Atlassian at $4.37 billion.[18] The IPO made its founders Farquhar and Cannon-Brookes Australia’s first tech startup billionaires and household names in their native country, despite Atlassian being called a “very boring software company” in The New York Times for its focus on development and management software.[3][19][20]
In March 2019, Atlassian’s value was US$26.6 billion.[21] Cannon-Brookes and Farquhar own approximately 30 percent each.
In October 2020, Atlassian announced the end of support for their “Server” products[22] with sales ending in February 2021 and support ending in February 2024 in order to focus on “Cloud” and “Data Center” editions.