Atlassian billionaire Scott Farquhar helping make unicorns as Aussie tech booms

Atlassian’s Scott Farquhar has made several canny private investments, as he racks up an increasingly impressive record of picking start-up winners.

Atlassian co-founder Scott Farquhar is also an impressive tech investor. Picture: Justin Lloyd

Forget the big success of Australia’s largest technology company, Atlassian.

Co-founder Scott Farquhar and wife Kim Jackson also have claims to be among Australia’s most successful tech investors.

Their Skip Capital investment vehicle has stakes in no fewer than four Australian tech ‘‘unicorns’’, the name given to start-ups that have achieved the mythical $1bn valuation, and also has shareholdings in overseas firms that are achieving huge valuations.

The latest is Talkdesk, a provider of cloud-based contact centre software based in San Francisco, which last week announced a Series D funding round that trebled its valuation to $US10bn.

It means a healthy paper profit for Farquhar and Jackson’s investment business, given Skip was part of Talkdesk’s Series C fundraising round in July last year when it raised $US143m for a $US3bn valuation.

Closer to home, Skip has had a big hand in the impressive growth in valuation for no fewer than four of the 20 local unicorns recently identified by The Australian in what is fast becoming a golden era for this country’s tech scene.

Farquhar has long been an investor in SafetyCulture, the safety app and checklist start-up headed by Luke Anear that cracked the $2bn valuation mark in May when it raised $99m in a funding round led by New York’s Insight Partners, including Tiger Global, Index Ventures and Blackbird.

Anear has also described Farquhar as a mentor, recently telling The Australian that “Scott has certainly been the person who has put the most time into myself and the company in order for us to scale and grow. The best advice mostly comes from operators and people who have done it before.”

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Scott Farquhar

• Age: 41
• Lives: Sydney
• Estimated wealth: $21.95bn
• Source: technology
• Secrets of success: Helping build Atlassian from a start-up to a global giant and then investing in other fledgling companies.

Source: The List – Australia’s Richest 250

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Skip also has stakes in Canva, the digital graphics giant co-founded by Melanie Perkins that is now worth $19.5bn after its latest raising, $96m, in April, and reportedly poised for an even higher valuation if it takes on more funds, Culture Amp and Airwallex.

The last two start-ups are worth $2bn and $3.4bn respectively after raising $265m combined in the past three months.

SafetyCulture and Airwallex also feature in The List: 100 Innovators magazine, published this Friday in The Australian.

Brighte, a solar finance provider, is also understood to be close to unicorn status after raising $100m from investors such as Farquhar last December. There are dozens of other companies in the Skip Capital portfolio, which committed about $100m to various investments last year and is reportedly doing the same this year, including a $100m infrastructure fund that has already reportedly put money into solar and other assets.

Farquhar has talked about helping nurture the next generation of Australian tech leaders, hoping to help Atlassian employees and other emerging entrepreneurs go on to bigger and better things.

“I couldn’t be more proud,” Farquhar told The Australian earlier this year when talking about start-ups that have already sprung from Atlassian’s ranks, such as workplace communications provider Pyn and customer feedback form Dovetail.

“And I would love Atlassian to be the 10th biggest tech company in Australia. That would be a great outcome. That’s success to me.”

For now though, Atlassian is by far the largest. Its share price up 45 per cent this year and has more than doubled in the past 12 months.

The shares in the collaborative software company, which are traded on the Nasdaq in the US, are up about 30 per cent alone since its latest financial results at the end of July, when it announced a 30 per cent increase in revenue.

At its current level, shares held by Farquhar and co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes are each worth about $25.9bn – and up about $5.4bn since the results.

While that figure puts both within the top five of the ranks of The List – Australia’s Richest 250, the Atlassian duo lag the market in another aspect: executive pay.

Atlassian’s latest annual report shows they paid themselves $74,653.20 each last financial year.

Farquhar’s public shareholdings also include Australian e-commerce business Adore Beauty. It is down almost 7 per cent since January 1, and its shares have fallen about 27 per cent in the past 12 months. Skip Capital is among the company’s top 20 shareholders.