There’s a lovely bit of symmetry in Fleet Space Technologies being crowned the winner of the AFR Fast 100 list for 2023. The company, which uses satellite earth-scanning technology to hunt for lithium, rare earths and other minerals, happens to count one of the legends of the Fast 100 list among its backers: Mike Cannon-Brookes.

In 2005, Atlassian, the Sydney-based software business that Cannon-Brookes founded with his mate Scott Farquhar, joined the Fast 100 for the first time. After spending four years on the list, the company went on to list on the US Nasdaq stock exchange, and today has a market capitalisation of $US45 billion ($71 billion).