Richest 250: How Scott Farquhar could have joined the army instead of Atlassian
Billionaire Scott Farquhar is worth $21.95bn. But he once tried to join the Army, which would have meant Australia’s biggest tech company may not have been born | THE LIST: Our richest 250
It was the moment when Australia’s $21 billion tech phenomenon could have become an Army officer, changing the course of Australian business in the process.
Scott Farquhar, the quietly spoken co-founder of software sensation Atlassian, was in Year 11 in Sydney’s west — and still a boy scout. With a dream to become an engineer, Farquhar applied for a scholarship at the Australian Defence Force Academy in Canberra.
An offer to become an officer in training, a university degree fully paid for, and a $1000 cheque awaited.
Farquhar took a Friday off school and got through some physical testing.
A big opportunity awaited.
“And (then) I sort of forgot about it,” Farquhar reveals for the first time in an interview for this year’s edition of The List: Australia’s Richest 250, published in The Weekend Australian today.
His parents would divorce, Farquhar moved house and the mail was redirected. It would take months for the ADFA offer to reach him, by which time he had won a scholarship to study at UNSW — where he would meet Mike Cannon-Brookes.
Farquhar still remembers finally reading the ADFA letter.
“I remember just standing there and thinking, ‘Oh, wow. Shit. This is an alternative life that, you know, I don’t get to explore’. It’s a sliding doors moment. It’s a very different life.”
Farquhar chose study, and ultimately Atlassian, over the Army.
In June 2001, he would be the only classmate to respond to a Cannon-Brookes email that read in part: “Bored of studying, Atlassian is far more interesting.”
THE LIST: Australia’s richest 250
That email, which successfully reached its destination, set off a sequence of events that would lead to a global collaboration company now worth north of $80bn.
Farquhar and Cannon-Brookes are today joint chief executives of the software company they co-founded 20 years ago.
The pair, both aged 41, are now each worth more than $21bn thanks to their surging shares in Atlassian, which has enjoyed boom times as their collaborative software is used by more workers doing their jobs from home around the world during COVID-19.
They run Atlassian from Sydney — where they live in adjacent Point Piper mansions that cost a combined $170m — and have built a global software sensation from home.
In that way, they are leading the Australian tech boom.
There are 28 members of The List this year from the tech sector, up from 19 a year ago.
Notable tech debuts include Ruslan Kogan, of fast-growing e-commerce outfit Kogan.com with a $543m fortune, and Laurence Escalante, who vaults into the billionaire ranks at $2.15bn thanks to his extremely profitable Virtual Gaming Worlds business.
A year after COVID-19 smashed sharemarkets around the world, the wealthiest Australians are richer than ever thanks to a combination of iron ore mining, cardboard box making and food deliveries, and the relentless rise of those tech companies.
Mining magnate Gina Rinehart tops The List with a $36.28bn fortune, up more than $20bn from $16.25bn in last year’s edition.
Her rival Andrew Forrest is second at $29.61bn, while Cannon-Brookes and Farquhar are third and fourth respectively at $21.99bn and $21.95bn.
Fifth is last year’s number one, cardboard box manufacturing king Anthony Pratt, whose wealth has risen more than $4bn to $21.27bn.
Total wealth on The List is $470.07bn, up from $377.77bn a year ago, meaning the average wealth of the 250 members is $1.88bn. The number of billionaires in Australia rises by six to 122, and there are 20 newcomers.
The youngest member is Nick Molnar, co-founder of fintech sensation Afterpay, who is now worth $3.2bn. The oldest is Len Ainsworth, the 97-year-old founder of Aristocrat Leisure and Ainsworth Game Technology, who still goes to the office everyday.
Rinehart, Forrest and Pratt are proving there is plenty of life in “older” industries such as mining and manufacturing.
After spending two decades building Atlassian up, Farquhar and Cannon-Brookes are readying for what they describe as the company’s second act.
Farquhar wants to help nurture the next generation of Australian tech leaders, hoping to help Atlassian employees and other emerging entrepreneurs go on to bigger and better things.
