How free beer powered Atlassian

Many great Australian success stories start with a beer, and tech giant Atlassian is no exception.

Atlassian co-founders Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar at Summit in Las Vegas. Picture: Supplied.

Many great Australian success stories start with a beer, and tech giant Atlassian is no exception.

The software company, which briefly passed Telstra in terms of valuation last week, draws crowds of thousands to its annual Summit in Las Vegas but only 10 years ago had to give away beer to get its name out.

Back when Atlassian was only a handful of employees, Scott Farquhar — who today is worth an estimated $9 billion — crashed a podcast recording at a tech conference in Belgium to make sure every attendee knew the word “Atlassian”.

“We couldn’t afford a booth, but we still wanted to make an impact,” Atlassian co-founder Mr Farquhar said.

“There was a podcast called Java Posse, it was recorded in front of a big live audience and we thought it was a good opportunity for us: everyone would want a beer while listening to the podcast being recorded.”

Mr Farquhar and his co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes bought about $2000 worth of beer — enough for every single member of the audience — and stood at the entrance and handed out free beers with Atlassian stickers.

“There would have been 1,000 people in that room,” Mr Farquhar said. “And the presenters also wanted a beer, so they sat up the front with Atlassian-sponsored beer. The presenters went and told people in the audience, and the people listening at home, that ‘thanks to Atlassian for sponsoring the beer’, and ‘everyone should check out Jira, it’s fantastic’.

“We got tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of free advertising … the naivety of youth sometimes has its benefits.”

The executive added that in the company’s early days, Atlassian would regularly deploy guerrilla marketing tactics, like covering university walls with Atlassian posters or showing up at community events.

“If your market is the world, tackling it one customer at a time isn’t scalable,” he said. “Everything we’ve done from day one has been about scale. We used to do weekly demos, for example, when it was on at an appointed hour, and people would join the stream and ask us questions about our products and we would answer them.

“I thought this seems like a waste, we do the exact same demo every week. What if we record it, and then people can play it 24 hours a day. I’m always thinking about what can we be doing to operate at that big, global scale.”

Atlassian chief marketing officer Robert Chatwani, who served at eBay for 12 years before joining the Australian company, told The Australian his focus in marketing to customers was keeping the relationship authentic.

“We don’t have a traditional sales organisation, so we love doing stuff like giving away free swag, free T-shirts, and materials,” he said. “I call it a ‘bottoms up’ approach. Whether it’s free beer, free T-shirts or paying for pizzas, that stuff is in our DNA and it’s part of who we are.”

Mr Cannon-Brookes said it was significant for Atlassian to overtake Telstra in total valuation. “Growing up in Australia, obviously Telecom Australia was an industrial giant,” he said. “It’s an interesting point on the journey and it’s mind blowing that we’re joining these great Australian perspectives.

“From a global perspective it shows software and technology is the biggest industry in the world and continuing to grow really, really fast. Everything is becoming a technology problem now, and that’s something we’re right at the centre of.”

David Swan travelled to Las Vegas as a guest of Atlassian.