Silicon Beach #1 Mike Cannon-Brookes on making it as an Australian-based start-up
Welcome to the first episode of the Silicon Beach Australia podcast, hosted by Bronwen Clune and Elias Bizannes.
We’re joined in the show today by Mike Cannon-Brookes, one of the founders of the hugely successful enterprise software company Atlassian.
Things that we discuss include:
- Mike shares his lessons from his first startup: a social bookmarking site in 1999.
- The history of Atlassian: they started the business with no idea what they would sell but rather with an idea of ‘how’ they’d sell it.
- How they’ve grown the business, with no external funding, to a US$35 million a year business with 200 employees.
- Ideas or execution: which matters more in a startup.
- Starting a company in Australia or overseas: the difference, the benefits and the costs.
- What is means to be successful.
- Revenue models in for web-based technology.
…and a lot more! Thank you Mike for sharing your insight with us, you have some valuable advice to share.
If you have any ideas for what you’d like to see discussed and who you’d like us to interview let us know. We have a general idea of what we want to achieve with the show, but we’d really like to hear from you about what you want out of it.
In the meantime, go forth and innovate.
September 25th, 2008 at 12:12 am
Guys,
Fantastic podcast. Keep em coming. I agree with both Elias and Mike on why there are no “rush” among ausie entrepreneurs. Its the culture as well as the incentives. Also I am assuming Mike meant that (around 27:27) Israelis who had made money had put back money in “Israel” not “Australia”??
Cheers
Sri
September 25th, 2008 at 8:43 am
I agree. Fantastic to hear Mike in such a wide-ranging interview.
He mentions a great blog post by Ari Parparo that’s brutally honest about why Blink (a social bookmarking site that preceded del.icio.us) failed.
For anyone who’s interested, it’s here. Well worth scrolling down to Mike Wexler’s comment, too.
http://www.aripaparo.com/archive/001456.html
October 15th, 2008 at 7:06 pm
Nice work. Keep it up.
It would have been interesting to hear his thoughts on the open source alternatives to his company’s products.
November 5th, 2008 at 8:42 am
[...] Mike Cannon-Brookes from Atlassian [...]
December 7th, 2008 at 10:27 am
[...] remarked by Mike Cannon-Brooks in a SiliconBeachAustralia podcast, the sheer volume of eyeballs required to generate a sustainable business, assuming generous [...]