SaaStr Annual 2018: Tales of a Modern CEO , Mike Cannon-Brookes, Atlassian
Over the past 15 years, Mike Cannon-Brookes has grown Atlassian from the maker of Jira into a $12 billion, publicly traded, multi-product global powerhouse. The full Atlassian story below from Liz Tay with Business Insider (https://twitter.com/liztayau).
If you read it, notice the shoutout about his Superman socks and please observe my, purely coincidental, attire as I wrote this article:
What Mike Shared:
3 things Mike does every week as CEO of Atlassian
1. Builds the human element: People, recruiting and culture
2. Drives alignment and accessibility: As the company continues bringing new team members into the fold, Mike travels the globe telling the Atlassian story internally to small groups of people who can ask whatever they want
3. Looks forward: Setting the North Star and strategizing on how to get there
What are Values?
“Values are not just things you put on your website.”
Mike thinks of values as an engineering scaling problem. Without having real values as a foundation, your company is going to fall down at some point.
The DO NOTs of setting values:
- DO NOT write down things you aspire to
- DO NOT write down basic human values (ie, integrity, that’s stuff you get hired/fired for)
- DO NOT think/communicate that values for the company are axiomatic (definition); instead, they are lenses to look through
On Acquisitions
Atlassian’s growth and product diversification has been fueled by acquisitions. According to Crunchbase, the company has made 9 acquisitions since 2010.
Most recently, Atlassian acquired Michael Pryor’s company, Trello, for $400M. While Atlassian now has a $12BN market cap, that’s not chump change.
So, by now, Mike knows a thing or two about how to get acquisitions right.
Vision Alignment
The acquisition process can be long, highly emotional, and exhausting. Time kills deals they say, so does unresolved conflict. So, first and foremost, you need vision alignment. Both acquiring company and target company must turn “us vs. them” into “we”.
Learning
“We’re spending a lot of money to buy something, let’s learn something”
Acquisitions don’t only bring in revenue/profits and people. They also have the intangibles of bringing in product/market expertise and culture, which may or may not be reflected in the purchase price. Holla at me Goodwill.
2 things Mike as an investor tells founders:
1) Treat it as a marathon, not a sprint
2) Remember that these are the good old days. This was the 2nd time in three weeks I’ve heard this a Founder who has IPO’d say this. The other was Todd Davis, Founder/CEO of LifeLock.
Miscellaneous
- Lean into your decisions with passion and show people why it’s exciting
- Mike as activist CEO: Australia exports a lot of shit: coal, uranium, gas and their electric grid is not performing. Mike got Elon musk to install the world’s largest battery in South Australia. Via Twitter.
- Scaling challenge: Constantly have to find ways to reduce the distance between the employee and the customer. Mike used to talk to customers every day, now it’s twice a year at their customer conferences.
