Be competitive and cut the cord with California, says Atlassian co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes

Atlassian’s Mike Cannon-Brookes says Australia needs to build its own Netflixes and Ubers to remain globally competitive.

Atlassian co-CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes speaking on Zoom. Source: The Australian.

Australia needs to build its own Netflixes and Ubers to remain globally competitive and keep the country's tax revenue onshore rather than sending it to the US, according to the billionaire Atlassian co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes.

Speaking in a fireside chat with Morgan Stanley's US lead software analyst Keith Weiss on Wednesday, Mr Cannon-Brookes said Australia's technology industry is as well placed as it's ever been, but warned against “celebrating too much”.

He said Atlassian has done a great job at “spitting out lots of people” who go on to build their own technology companies, but that as a nation, Australia is over-reliant on the Californian tech giants.

"There are many countries around the world who are realising their technology industry – their start-ups, their large technology companies and small technology companies, are really critical for their core economies and long-term economic success," he said.

"A lot of people in Australia are upset that we send a lot of money to Netflix and Uber and to Apple and to Facebook, and we're sending all our Australian money overseas and the answer is actually not capture more of that money.

"Where do you expect the Netflix money to go? The answer is we need to create our own Netflixes and Ubers, and that's the way that we kind of need to do that in terms of thinking. We have to be competitive on a global technology scale in Australia as I think every country will increasingly need to be, you know, otherwise we all end up living in California or effectively paying taxes to California."

As The Australian previously reported, Atlassian paid zero tax in Australia despite drawing in more than $1bn in local revenue, after using research and development (R&D) tax credits to offset $137m in taxable income.

Mr Cannon-Brookes in a previous interview with The Australian defended the company's tax practices.

“We spend a huge amount of income on R&D to create new things and create jobs in Australia and that’s what we try to do,” he said.

The executive, who was interrupted in the Zoom chat by his children a number of times, said Atlassian's goal was to be the “chocolate and vanilla” of work management software, in that it's boring and predictable, but works with a lot of other flavours, or tools.

"We don't want to be strawberry with balsamic glaze, which might be good occasionally but it's not how you get a lot of customers. It's not a standard, it's not a regular thing, and vanilla sells a lot and it's how you get more collaborative applications," he said.

"The more people have experienced a tool beforehand, the more they understand how it works, the more likely they are to choose that tool.

"Our goal is to be appealing to the most number of people."