Atlassian eyes US stock market listing

THEY turned their backs on uni to start a company with credit cards. Now the young Aussie pair is about to clean up on the world stage.

Mike Cannon-Brookes Atlassian co-founder predicts that Australia needs to import ÔÕmasses of talentÕÕ in the coming years to avoid becoming a technology backwater with an economy that could be ÔÕstuffedÕÕ in two decades time.

SCOTT Farquhar and Mike Cannon-Brookes were two university dropouts who started a software company in a garage with $10,000 on a credit card.

Since then, they have established themselves as the leaders of Australia’s tech industry. The pair have topped BRW’s Young Rich List and their software development company regularly appears on best places to work surveys, but today marks the most significant milestone to date.

Atlassian, the company they founded in 2002 — today valued at more than $4.3 billion — is heading for a stock market listing in the United States, putting it alongside the likes of Twitter, Facebook, Microsoft and Apple.

The duo, each worth $1.1 billion, met while studying at the University of New South Wales when they were 22.

For the first three years, all money was pumped back into the business, and the pair had to survive off their university scholarship money of $300 a week.

They soon dropped out of uni to devote themselves to their start-up, which last year pulled in $215 million in revenue — up from $148.5 million the previous year.

The Sydney-based company has filed documents relating to an initial public offering and expects to make its US stock market debut by the end of 2015, The Australian reports.

The company filed its US prospectus under the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act, which allows companies with less than $US1 billion ($A1.42 billion) in annual revenue to file their IPO paperwork confidentially, the newspaper said.

Comment was being sought from Atlassian, which builds software to help IT departments, computer programmers and other businesses collaborate online.

Since founding the company in 2002, the business has gained some impressive customers, today counting NASA, eBay and Deutsche Bank among their clients.

Analysts said the decision to list in the US rather than on the Australian Securities Exchange was the right move for the company.

“If Atlassian listed on the ASX, it would be the only pure software company listed on the market, while in the US it would be one of many such companies. There’s a level of maturity there that’s very important,” technology entrepreneur Sam Chandler told The Australian.

“One of the problems with the ASX is that all technology businesses get bundled into one. We have had some successes but they are either online marketplaces or IT-managed services.”

In an interview with news.com.au last year, Mr Farquhar explained how the company’s unconventional business model uses no sales staff, has as little to do with bankers as possible — the company funded its growth entirely through profits and not by seeking investors — and gives away 1 per cent of its profits each year.

“If you look at how the world used to work 10-20 years ago the most important part of selling is the distribution model — it’s how you get products to market. Products themselves are secondary,” he said.

“We’ve almost inverted the model and spent more on building products … we can now afford to build a great product and word of mouth spreads. [It’s about] getting out of the way of the customer.”

Originally published as Atlassian eyes US stock market listing