Zoox boss axing a tough call, says Atlassian chief

Atlassian boss and rich-lister Mike Cannon-Brookes has shed light on the difficult decision to remove the Zoox chief executive.

Atlassian chief executive Mike Cannon-Brookes. Picture: Hollie Adams

Atlassian boss and rich-lister Mike Cannon-Brookes has shed light on the difficult decision to remove Zoox chief executive Tim Kentley-Klay, who was suddenly axed from his $4.5bn self-driving car start-up last month.

Mr Cannon-Brookes, speaking exclusively to The Australian on the sidelines of the Atlassian Summit in Barcelona, revealed that it was a tough thing to let the Australian-born executive go.

“Tim did an amazing job for four years,” he said. “He’s done a great job, and worked thoroughly to get the company to where it is. The board made a decision to go a different way with a CEO. Obviously I’m the newest board member there. And those board level decisions are always hard.

“It’s the tough part of growth businesses I suppose.”

Mr Cannon-Brookes had only joined the Zoox board in July after it raised $US500 million from investors in July for a $US3.2bn valuation, describing it at the time as “the most ambitious company I’ve ever met” and tweeting that “Tim and (co-founder) Jesse Levinson are building for the future”.

The Zoox board made the decision to remove Mr Kentley-Klay unanimously, according to reports.

Billionaire Atlassian co-founder Mr Cannon-Brookes also put in $US100m of his own money into the raising through his Grok Ventures, adding to a string of start-ups he has investments in.

Mr Kentley-Klay tweeted on the day of his removal that “today was Silicon Valley up to its worst tricks” and revealed “the shocking reality is that this morning — without warning, cause or right of reply — the board fired me”.

“Rather than working through the issues in an epic start-up for the win, the board chose a path of fear, optimising for a little money in hand at the expense of profound progress for the universe.”

Mr Kentley-Klay has since kept a low profile on social media. He is also a member of the rich list with a fortune that was estimated at $580m before Zoox’s last raising. Zoox is building an on-demand electric robo-taxi, which is planned for release by 2020.

Mr Cannon-Brookes, who is frequently outspoken about technology policy, said he’d take a “wait and see” approach to new Prime Minister Scott Morrison and what he can do for Australia’s start-up ecosystem.

His predecessor Malcolm Turnbull prosecuted an “innovation boom” technology agenda, but it failed to cut through with voters and Mr Morrison has named a cabinet without an innovation minister.

“I can’t believe we’ve had five prime ministers in 10 years, or whatever it’s been,” Mr Cannon-Brookes said. “It doesn’t feel good, or sound good. But we’ll see.”

Atlassian used its annual European conference to announce Jira Ops — a new incident management software for IT teams — and the acquisition of a Turkish-American tech firm, OpsGenie.

David Swan travelled to Barcelona as a guest of Atlassian.