Scott Farquhar: Founding Atlassian; How We Scaled to a $50B Valuation; The 4 Jobs of a CEO | E1070

1. 0:00 – 4:53

   The Early Days of Atlassian

   1. SFScott Farquhar0:00

      ... could I look my staff in the face and say that the next five years of their life was gonna be the biggest impact to humanity working on this product?

   2. HSHarry Stebbings0:08

      (instrumental music) Scott, I am so excited for this. I've wanted to do this one for a long time. So first, thank you so much for joining me today.

   3. SFScott Farquhar0:16

      Of course. This is our pleasure.

   4. HSHarry Stebbings0:18

      Now, 20 years, it's an incredible journey. I just wanna go back to the very beginning. You and Mike sitting in a room together. Just take me to that founding moment before we dive in.

   5. SFScott Farquhar0:29

      So Mike and I started Atlassian graduating out of college, and neither of us wanted to get a real job. He had dropped out of his degree to do a startup that he eventually sold, uh, and then he worked in a tech company for a bit. Uh, I was coming out cold, but I didn't have any entrepreneurial experience, but I didn't want to go work for a bank and insurance company. And so we tried a bunch of different things, uh, around software. We tried doing third-party support and eventually we built a product called Jira. And, uh, 22 years later, 250,000 customers, 11,000 staff, like it's sort of grown a lot, uh, since the two of us.

   6. HSHarry Stebbings1:05

      Did you love the problem of Jira? You said there about kind of working on software and bouncing around different products to find what worked. Did you love the problem of Jira? I'm always trying to understand whether you do have to focus on something you love.

   7. SFScott Farquhar1:19

      Look, I'm a firm believer that two things. One is that you've gotta love what you do, uh, otherwise someone else out there who's just as smart as I am, who is more passionate about what I'm doing will beat me, like every single day of the week. So I'm a firm believer you need to be passionate about what you do. At the same time, I think there's an aspect of you, when you get good at something, well, you learn to love it more. And, uh, I think you need to, you know, try something on for size. And so for me specifically, I've always loved building software, like loved the idea that you can create something out of nothing, uh, write some code, and it, you know, controls this thing called a computer. So I've always loved that. And, you know, if you said, "Hey, would you," you know, "Is bug tracking like your, what your life is gonna be, you know, like for the next 20 years," you know, that's wh- which is what Jira originally started with, I don't think I would've said, "Yes, that's my life's calling." But when I look at what we've done around, you know, turning that, you know, initial starting point into a great company that people love to work at, and our mission now is, uh, to unleash the potential of every team. And so I get super enthused about that mission.

   8. HSHarry Stebbings2:19

      I totally agree with you in terms of getting jazzed about that mission. I was actually chatting to my girlfriend last night, and I was telling her about having you on the show today, and naturally she was very excited being an Australian. (laughs) Um, but she was like, "It's so huge in Australia, like it is all over, but did they know it was gonna be as successful in the early days?" And my question to you there is like, The Trade Desk, a very famous company in the US, it's public, didn't raise money early on 'cause they didn't think it would (laughs) actually be very big. When you started, did you always know that it would be this behemoth that it is today, or did that come over time?

   9. SFScott Farquhar2:53

      Before I answer that question, I just, just really wanna give you credit for that, um, Australian accent you tried to attempt just then. I thought that was very, very well done.

   10. HSHarry Stebbings3:01

       Do you know, you know what? I, I actually do it quite a lot, so I would be, uh, lying...

   11. SFScott Farquhar3:05

       Yeah. (laughs)

   12. HSHarry Stebbings3:05

       ... if I said it wasn't very rehearsed at this point. (laughs)

   13. SFScott Farquhar3:08

       (laughs) Um, we started in what I would say is the nuclear winter of technology, which was the dot-com crash of 2001. We had that with September 11, like no one was raising money, uh, to start a company in 2001, which was great because we got to bootstrap Atlassian for a long, long time. It took us 10 years before we put, you know, we r- we brought VCs on board and we didn't take any money onto the balance sheet for 15 years. So, you know, we really, really did bootstrap Atlassian for a long time, and I think it's because the world was changing and no one else was raising, uh, money at the time. I think companies grow up in their environments like in a symbiosis and, uh, you know, the environment we grew up in was one where you could build a company without raising venture capital. I think today if you were doing an AI startup, the environment's slightly different, right? Like, you're not gonna be bootstrapping your AI startup, uh, these days. And so, like for us, like we were just really lucky to grow up in that era.

   14. HSHarry Stebbings4:01

       Do you think your pathway would still be possible today given the abundance of funding that we have today, even in a tougher economic time?

   15. SFScott Farquhar4:08

       I think it depends on what you're going after and the, the niche, uh, or niche as Americans say, uh, that you're going after because if there are thousands of other companies or dozens of other companies going after the same customer that you are and they've raised 10 times, 100 times like more money than you have, they're gonna be able to solve their customer's need a lot quicker than you are. But there are many markets like, uh, that go after very, very small like niche software. Constellation Software is a c- a public company out there that does a lot of this where they literally invest in, um, you know, reservation systems for dog kennels or something, right, like very niche stuff. And in those situations, I do think you can bootstrap businesses, uh, you know, still today 'cause there is not much competition

2. 4:53 – 6:21

   Biggest Myth About Startups

   1. SFScott Farquhar4:53

      there.

   2. HSHarry Stebbings4:53

      Can I ask you, what do you think are the biggest BS myths about startup and company building? Some is y- you know, you have to raise funding very early, otherwise you're gonna be out-competed. Uh, m- many say you have to love what you do is one. I disagree with that one. Do you think there are any like real startup BS myths that you hear and you're like, "Fuck no"?

   3. SFScott Farquhar5:13

      I think there's a belief that, you know, startups are glamorous, and, uh, I don't think that is necessarily the case. I think there's a survivor bias there, uh, you know, as people you talk two or three years in, but most startups are really freaking hard, most startups really f- fail hard. I think the glamorous aspect of a startup nature is, uh, a bit hyped, uh, th- you know, and it definitely wasn't glamorous when we started. Like, uh, there was, there was no companies that did what we did. Startup meant I didn't get a real job, which meant you were unemployed. And, uh, I actually remember my, my girlfriend, uh, was, was an investment banker at the time. People would say, you know, a female investment banker is very, very rare even today, like and it was very rare back in, you know, 20 years ago. And people would ask her, "What does your boyfriend do?" And she'd say, "I..."... he's, he's doing a startup. And then they would s- say, "Well, that, that's..." Do you mean he's unemployed? Uh, a-and so that was kind of the belief th- back then. And so, anyway, I don't think... It's not as glamorous as people make out today.

   4. HSHarry Stebbings6:08

      I, I think my girlfriend says the same, and they say he's unemployed too, and that's in London. So I'm not sure we've really (laughs) progressed that far. Actually, I think she says he's a podcaster, ignores the venture fund, ignores everything else-

   5. SFScott Farquhar6:18

      (laughs)

   6. HSHarry Stebbings6:18

      ... which is even more insulting. Can I ask you, you mentioned

3. 6:21 – 16:02

   Atlassian’s Near Death Experience

   1. HSHarry Stebbings6:21

      it being hard. What's the most striking near-death experience? I spoke to Mike before the show, and he said about the incredible times together, but also very challenging times. When I say near-death experience, which comes to mind first?

   2. SFScott Farquhar6:34

      Let me tell a story, um, about, um, what happened on my honeymoon, actually is, uh, an interesting one.

   3. HSHarry Stebbings6:40

      (laughs)

   4. SFScott Farquhar6:40

      Yeah.

   5. HSHarry Stebbings6:40

      You told me to ask about this one. (laughs)

   6. SFScott Farquhar6:42

      I did hear. Okay, good. In 20... It was a bit... 2010, um, I, we got married. I did a destination wedding with my wife in, in Vietnam. Um, no affinity to the country, apart from w- we loved it. We had 50 of our closest friends there at a resort, and five-day affair. And, and from there, we flew to Africa, to Botswana, to do, um, safaris, basically. Um, and I wouldn't recommend, uh, you know, safaris on a, on a honeymoon. You sort of get up at 4:00 in the morning. Uh-

   7. HSHarry Stebbings7:12

      (laughs)

   8. SFScott Farquhar7:12

      ... you're taking malaria drugs. You see animals really early in the morning, and you just try and sleep through the day. Then, hours of the afternoon, and, uh, we were in, uh, unseasonal mosquito territory. Like, uh, one of the deserts had rained for the first time in 20 years. And so, you know, quite a few-

   9. HSHarry Stebbings7:26

      This is a confluence of really sexy events coming together. (laughs)

   10. SFScott Farquhar7:30

       Yes, totally. Like, and so I'm literally killing mosquitoes on the tablecloth of our, like, dinner, you know, thing, and killing 100 of them. So we sort of have this not great, like, you know, honeymoon, in terms of the a- the location. Um, and then we were just about to head to, uh, a really lush, verdant, green, like, beautiful, uh, you know, place, like, outside of the, the safari. That night, I got a, a message from Mike. And the message, it had to go from Australia, to South Africa, to Botswana, to then on a radio signal to someone who then drove, I don't know, 20 miles in a truck to give it, give us this message. Like, it was kind of in form of whispers all the way along. And the message literally just said, "Call me urgently. Mike." And Mike was the only person in the world who knew how to get in contact with me. So if my parents had died, that's the message I would get. Like, if my, you know, my siblings had died, like, you know, whatever bad things in the world could happen, uh, that, that was the message I would have got. So then, I had to sleep through the night, because there was nowhere to get out. And the next m- morning, um, we were... It was, was that we were tra- transiting. And so we traveled back into a, you know, a place where I could get telephone reception. And I called Mike from the tarmac of the, uh, the airport, and, uh, you know, "Wha- what's going on, man?" And it turned out that, uh, back then, um, uh, a solo hacker had got into, uh, you know, one of our systems. Back in 2010, you know, the concept of there being hackers and, you know, that type of stuff happening was really unknown. Like, you know, th- there hadn't been, you know, hacking scandals or anything like this. Um, and a bit I forgot at the start of the story was that, after the honeymoon, I was actually flying directly from the honeymoon to the US to raise our first dollar of venture capital. And so we had lined up five VC interviews for that week, you know. So we were sort of like, "Oh, hi, I just got married. I was about to do, you know, go raise money for the first time." Uh, we'd run Atlassian for 10 years and hadn't really taken money in any, off the table in any way, so this is gonna, you know, secure my kids' financial security. So we go from that to standing on a tarmac, and, you know, Mike is saying that, "Hey, um, we've, we've been hacked in some way, but we've got all hands on deck." And, uh, we had, uh, people sleeping in the office. We actually took up a hotel next door to the office, the coffee cart. It was basically, "If you say you're from Atlassian, you know, like, we'll fix you up." Like, and everyone got free coffee. And for about three or four days, like, the entire company had been on 100%, you know, like, working through this. And, uh, uh, we got experience about how, how to deal with this. So then, I have to turn to my wife, uh, and be like... Yeah, my new wife, it was only, you know, a few days, and say, "Hey, I think we need to cut our honeymoon short because I need to go back, uh, and deal with this crisis that is happening in the company." If there's any conversation you want to have with your new- new- newlywed wife, it's not, "We're cutting our honeymoon short," to, to go back.

   11. HSHarry Stebbings10:29

       What did she say?

   12. SFScott Farquhar10:30

       Uh, she said, "If that's what we need to do, that's what we need to do." So we got to have one day at this beautiful resort, and, uh, while we waited for the, the flight out, and then I flew directly back to Australia, and basically we relieved Mike. You know, kind of, we tag-teamed and, uh, yeah, ran the investigation. We called these VCs up to tell them what had happened, because we felt, you know, openness and transparency was important. Even though it may have never come out, may have never, like, c- come out publicly, um, you know, we, we told VCs, we told customers, um, because I guess that's who we are. And it, it turned out the VCs were very non-postive about it. They said, "Well, actually, this happens all the time, just no one talks about it." Like, "Oh, wow, we didn't, we didn't know." So then, the next week, uh, I, I was back working for three or four days, then jumped on a plane, and we, we did back-to-back VC interviews, uh, for five different companies.

   13. HSHarry Stebbings11:19

       Can I interrupt and ask, where was the company at, at this stage? 'Cause I- I've never heard this. Like, we often hear, like, "Oh, you raised one, you know, this round of funding 10 years in, and how amazing..." Like, where was the company at?

   14. SFScott Farquhar11:29

       About a $60 million run rate, I think. Like, um-

   15. HSHarry Stebbings11:32

       Okay.

   16. SFScott Farquhar11:32

       ... actually, we'll come back on that later about rocket ship growth. But, like, I think we were maybe a bit more than that, like, um, but s- something in that range, like sub-hundred million dollars.

   17. HSHarry Stebbings11:40

       And how much were you going out asking for in the raise?

   18. SFScott Farquhar11:43

       So when we did this, we...We told people that it's one-shot, closed envelope bidding because I believed that was the best way to get, uh, a, a result. Because the way most VCs do it is they give you an indicative offer and then they sort of talk amongst themselves and then they kind of agree on a price, and there's a bit of collusion that can often happen there. And they sort of do a price that's enough to get in the door and then, you know, they get a second chance to up the number. And I felt that that was not the right way to do it, there was not enough game theory involved in, in that. And I had a fight with my CFO at the time about this because he said, "It's not the way these things are done," and I said, "I don't care about the way things are done." So we actually got closed envelope bids. We, we said, "Hey, we wanna raise, you know..." I don't know, "You tell us how much, we'll raise, you know, tens of millions of dollars, but you tell us how much money you'll put in, and then you tell us what the valuation was." So we're on 60 million dollars of revenue, I think we were doing 20 or 30% profit margins, so we're making decent money at the bottom line. And, uh, the valuations we got back varied between there was one sort of high hundreds. There was three of them ended up in the two to $300 million range, and Accel, who ended up, uh, you know, winning for us, uh, came back at $405 million US dollars, uh, which, you know, looks bat crazy. That's like a, what's that? A, a five times value a- like five or six times revenue, like, you know, valuation, like, uh, on, on, on what we were doing back then. Back then, that was a lot of money, you know? They put $60 million into the company.

   19. HSHarry Stebbings13:11

       Did you take it because of the price being the highest?

   20. SFScott Farquhar13:14

       So we, we pre-screened them. We only invited people that we thought we w- would have a- on our board and be happy to grow with and, you know, go on this journey with. So once we'd pre-screened them all, we then told them that, like, we would choose the highest bidder.

   21. HSHarry Stebbings13:26

       Can I ask you, when you think about that, bluntly, there's brands and then there's actually people. Sometimes people are different to the brand, um, and Accel and Ryan are amazing, but trust in a relationship, I think, is important. When you take your approach, you don't have time to build that trust, that authenticity in a partnership. Is that a problem or do you think VCs aren't really your partner and so fuck it? (laughs)

   22. SFScott Farquhar13:50

       No, VCs is definitely our partner, but we spent all that time upfront, um, you know, VCs had been knocking on our door for years to invest in Atlassian, and so I'd had multiple conversations, breakfasts, dinners with all the people, all five firms that were bidding and all of the partners that were bidding. We had Peter Fenton over at Benchmark, we had Byron Dieter over, like, at, um, Bessemer. We had Rich Wong at Accel, who ended up being, like, the company we went with. So I, like, knew these people really well, we'd spent a lot of time with them, and so it was like, "Hey, there's not, you know, we can choose any of them. Like, put your best foot forward." And actually, like, we, um, went back to Peter Fenton at Benchmark because I think the runner-up bidder. Um, we went back to Accel and said, "Hey, look, all things considered, maybe we should get two VCs or, uh, you know, in there, even though there's a huge difference in valuation." And we went back to Peter Fenton and told him if he matched Accel's price, um, you know, Accel were happy to split the deal with him. I don't know how much Accel's made off us, like, it's a hundred times I think, um, something like that, um, when they distributed, so, uh, uh, you know, Peter Fenton could have put in $30 million at a hundred times, that's three billion dollars back, 30% for Benchmark is a billion dollars, like, six partners, probably $160 million each, like, I guess. So anyway, I think Peter regrets, uh, that, uh, that second chance draw that he, we gave him.

   23. HSHarry Stebbings15:10

       I'm gonna be honest, I don't think they need the money, but fuck, that is a mess. (laughs) I mean, I love Peter, he's come on this show many times and he's a friend, but woo, that is one that keeps you up at night. Woo.

   24. SFScott Farquhar15:24

       Yeah, but, but, but again, we, we, uh, I think if we hadn't asked people to put their best foot forward, we would have got a, a valuation in that sort of two to $300 million range because that's where most people averaged to, um, and we got the outlier. We actually raised money from before we went public, the year before we went public, to give some employees some liquidity and to get in a public market investor, we ran the same process. And actually, the numbers were almost exactly the same, just added zero. We got, uh, I think five firms to bid then as well, and we got a couple valuations in the billion dollar range, a couple in the two to three, and then one in the $4 billion range. We kind of ran the same process later on, uh, as well, and it did work

4. 16:02 – 18:05

   The Decision Scott Most Regrets

   1. SFScott Farquhar16:02

      really well.

   2. HSHarry Stebbings16:02

      Can I ask you, like, that's obviously a, a mistake that one regrets not paying up for clearly, when you think about decisions that you've made that you regret, what stands to mind as the biggest?

   3. SFScott Farquhar16:13

      When you're small as a company or I found when we were small as a company, the mistakes are mistakes of commission, like you do something stupid that didn't make sense or you invested time in something that ultimately was a waste of time. I think when we get larger, most of the mistakes I've made are of omission, you know, not doing something that we should have done. And most of the opportunities or biggest mistakes we've made are not going hard enough against about new opportunities. You know, we built a ... We're about a $4 billion business, like, revenue-wise and valued at 40 to $50 billion, you know, today, in 2023. But, you know, we had a competitor to GitHub, like, that we built, um, you know, called Bitbucket. We had a competitor to Slack that we built. And in both cases, um, I'd argue we had as good a product. Uh, in, in many cases, I think against Slack we had a better product, but we didn't invest enough, um, behind these new opportunities. And so, my biggest mistakes are being in the right place in the right time, but not betting hard enough behind, you know, the opportunities that we've had in front of us.

   4. HSHarry Stebbings17:12

      How does that make your change go forward? Do you invest more aggressively than in everything? Like, how does that change your mindset moving forward?

   5. SFScott Farquhar17:19

      Investment has to come from somewhere and so the hard part is you've got to starve something else to invest in, in the new thing. And we started a program we call Point A and, uh, where we incubate new products inside Atlassian. And those new products, we've got one called Atlas which is about OKRs and projects, um, we've got one called Compass which is about really a developer, a portal that basically tracks everything developers do these days in components and micro-services. And I could go down the list, we've, you know, created, like, four or five of these things and, uh, we just made sure that we've invested sufficiently behind these new areas such that, you know, in five years' time, we're not sitting here saying, "We created a category and someone else stole it from us." Um, we've created these amazing categories and we're investing heavily behind them.

   6. HSHarry Stebbings18:01

      Do you think the single biggest job of a CEO is resource allocation?

5. 18:05 – 21:18

   The 4 Jobs of a CEO

   1. SFScott Farquhar18:05

      I've got a, uh, an article basically, uh, that I bring up, uh, every couple of years, and I'll, I'll put it, link in the show notes. Basically it's like the four things a CEO should do. And, um, one of them is, you know, effectively hire and fire the management team. Two is, uh, basically set the vision for the company. Three is set the culture for the company. And four is basically the resource allocation, where you put the dollars and the bets. And those four things are the most important, and I go back to that article probably every single year to remind myself, or look at my diary and say, "How much of my time am I spending on those four areas?" And so yeah, resource allocation is one of those four.

   2. HSHarry Stebbings18:47

      Should they be equally weighted, timewise? Should it be 25% each?

   3. SFScott Farquhar18:51

      I don't think resource allocation is something you do every single day. I, I think if you're doing that you're probably not gonna see the forest for the trees. And so it depends on the size of the company you are, but I'd say quarterly is a more reasonable cadence for resource allocation, and the larger you get, the pr- you know, the harder it is to, to steer the ship. We at Atlassian went through a huge process to move it from annually to quarterly, uh, a couple of years ago, and so we still do it quarterly.

   4. HSHarry Stebbings19:15

      Scott, what are you best at, what are you worst at? If you do a report card for yourself on those four.

   5. SFScott Farquhar19:20

      I don't know that's my b- if I did best and worst I'm not sure I'd categorize in those four categories, so if you let me deviate from that question, the, the things I'm best at in the world, I think, is systems thinking, like, really understanding if I change this knob over here, what's gonna happen to the entire system? You know, I read a lot of physics books all the way up to psychology. I try and, like, just map how does the universe work and, like, that's, that's a real, uh, strength of mine.

   6. HSHarry Stebbings19:45

      Can anyone be a systems thinker? And what does it take to be a good systems thinker?

   7. SFScott Farquhar19:50

      I think to be a good systems thinker you have to be incredibly curious, and incredibly curious across a wide range of disciplines, I think. Systems thinking is, it involves the people that need to be involved and, like, our customers, and the market dynamics, and the great thing about running a business is it's rewarding and complicated and just changing every single day in a way that n- n- almost no other field does. And so I love running a business because it's, like, rewarding and intellectually challenging and stimulating, but I also spend a lot of time, you know, curious about, you know, how things work.

   8. HSHarry Stebbings20:21

      Is that challenging for you as a CEO also? 'Cause, like, y- I- I heard (laughs) from Mike, from Kim, from many, that you are so intellectually curious. But you have to be focused. Is it difficult to reign in your curiosity and remain focused?

   9. SFScott Farquhar20:34

      Oh, you just hit on my worst, uh, my, uh, my weakest point which is prioritization of what is important, and I really have to step back 'cause I can get so excited by almost anything. I can get excited by the UI mock-up in a product. I can get excited by the next great marketing idea that, uh, you know, I come up with. And so, you know, I need to surround myself with other people who are really good at helping prioritize.

   10. HSHarry Stebbings20:58

       How do you think about this as a leader, say, with AI? Like, bluntly, as a public company everyone's told, "You have to have an AI story, you have to have an AI narrative." I get it, but you're also a very successful sustaining business with great customers already. How do you think about that need to have an AI narrative, an AI story, but also just remembering the amazing business we

6. 21:18 – 27:05

   How Atlassian is Using AI

   1. HSHarry Stebbings21:18

      have?

   2. SFScott Farquhar21:18

      The history of technology, least the way I would write it, is that, um, it's very much a winner takes all market, and once there's, I mean, a winner established in a market, it's hard to disrupt them except when there's a technological change. And if I go back through the waves of change I would say we went from mini computers to... Well, mainframes to mini computers were just before my time, then we went to desktop PCs in the '90s, and you saw, you know, you see companies emerge and see companies decline, right? Like you saw, you know, DEC, D-E-C, and a whole bunch of, you know, mini computer people didn't make it to the PC and instead you saw a sort of IBM and Microsoft, uh, rise. And then the internet came around and, uh, you saw Microsoft wane a little bit, um, you know, and you saw the rise of Netscape and Google then eBay and PayPal and so forth. And then mobile came around and didn't really displace anyone but Apple suddenly came back into the fore and Microsoft continued to sort of miss that, that, uh, that area. And then you saw, I guess, cloud, public cloud, which, you know, changed a lot of enterprise stuff but not much for the consumer. They didn't care what, where, where things were running. Um, and now we're seeing AI, and I think again at each of these changes you see some companies continue to survive, some companies, you know, ri- rise from the, the ashes like, um, and some companies don't make the transition. And so as much as it's the next greatest buzzword, uh, out there, I do think that there's a, a g- gonna be a big change in how technology works, uh, and change the landscape honestly. I think you'll walk in five years time and the list of top companies may look very different to today so I don't think you can avoid having an AI strategy as a, as a company.

   3. HSHarry Stebbings22:49

      What do you think will separate the existing incumbents who adopt AI winning versus losing?

   4. SFScott Farquhar22:54

      Look, I think we're still in phase one of, uh, AI where people are adding AI to existing products out there. And so, like, everyone needs to do that, but a lot of people are doing the simple parlor trick which is like, "Let's just summarize some text," or, "Let's, you know, give me 10 bullet points." And well, that is a commodity now. Like, you know, whether you're using OpenAI or any other ones it's gonna be a commodity. I think the real interesting things happen where you've got multiple unique data sets and you can bring them together to do different things. For example, I think getting help from someone else, like another human, is gonna become much more a search problem, uh, than it used to be because, y- you know, to solve someone's problem the data probably exists somewhere in a knowledge base in someone else's support ticket or whatever to solve your problem, and I think Atlassian's in a unique spot to be able to, you know, to solve those types of workflows. Or if your, you know, bug report comes in, like, you know, from... Or even just a log file, like, you've got a, an iPhone application and it, it, it has an error, great. That error, let's go back and work out, like, who wrote the code and why did they write it and can we fix that error? Can we fix that error and automatically deploy it to a customer? What happens, like... So once we can tie workflows across large, uh, you know, surface area and tie datasets across large surface area, I think that's where magic happens. It's still unclear what the UI looks like for those things. Is it chat interface? Is it the traditional interface? Is it voice? Like, uh, is it just b- bots talking to each other? I don't think we know, but I do think... the data and the workflows are gonna be really important.

   5. HSHarry Stebbings24:21

      To what extent do you aggressively allocate towards AI today, versus appreciating we're still in phase one, a lot of the money will be burnt? In- in, you know, productive ways, but still burnt because you need to burn it for progression to happen often. To what extent do you aggressively allocate, versus do but tentatively in the knowledge that we're still in phase one?

   6. SFScott Farquhar24:42

      We have, uh, you know, multiple thousands of engineers in Atlassian, and we have multiple hundreds of engineers working on, you know, AI, uh, you know, things at the moment. What we do, if you look at, um, our data, our data is our customers' data. Like, we don't control our data. We're not like Bloomberg where it's like we have, you know, 50 years worth of trades that we can, you know, put into a large language model. Like, we have our customers' data and we need to help our customers access it better. So, we don't have to make the huge lifts and investments of, uh, you know, building our own large language model or building, you know, our own thing across companies, uh, across, you know, datasets. So, what we do need to do is integrate them in interesting new ways. And so I think that's not wasted work because, you know, if we can work out what the most useful way of doing that is, I think that's gonna be, um, you know, time well spent. And yes, you could wait, I guess, till that paradigm has been s- sh- you know, sorted out. But, uh, you know, I think by the time like Uber worked out the exact way to order a car and that it was cars and not limos and stuff like that, it was hard for other people to catch up because, you know, they had an advantage. And it's not just understanding what works, it's often understanding what doesn't work (laughs) . Um, and, uh, you can't really buy your way into knowing what doesn't work. You can buy your way into what does, but still have to go through that process of, like, walking r- random walks to work out what doesn't work.

   7. HSHarry Stebbings25:59

      Is Atlassian able to be fast enough to move with the speed of AI changing today? Just out of respect to stature, public company status, size of team, are you able to move fast enough?

   8. SFScott Farquhar26:12

      There's some interesting things there. Look, o- obviously, you know, as small- the smaller the company is, the faster y- you can move. There's a saying that, like, if you wanna go fast, go alone. If you wanna go far, go together. Uh, and I think that's the difference between small companies and big companies. Like, if you wanna go far, if you wanna have a big impact, you know, we have a whole bunch of advantages that we can do. When we run AI experiments, we can run them with 250,000 customers. Like, we wanna find, hey, how can this work with a, you know, a search problem work? We've got customers with 20 years worth of data, you know, and terabytes worth of data that we can, you know, work with them, uh, to run experiments on. And so yes, we've got, you know, more overhead than a- a normal company, you know, a smaller company would have, but if you look at, you know, can we move fast? Yes, we have these other advantages that allow us to move fast, particularly in the AI area where it's about data. If you're an AI startup and you don't have access to customer data and customers to- to test with, that can actually make you move slower.

   9. HSHarry Stebbings27:03

      I mean, that's one thing. The other thing is how you set

7. 27:05 – 37:34

   How to Structure a Remote Work Team

   1. HSHarry Stebbings27:05

      up your teams. Something that's very unique about Atlassian also is the remote work nature of it. Will that persist? How do you think about that, and what do- what do you mean when you talk about when you say about the team structure being remote?

   2. SFScott Farquhar27:16

      Early on in the pandemic, so I don't know, March, April of 2020 when the world was still kind of trying to work out what this, you know, new world would look like, Mike and I, um, you know, had both not been to the office for a month or two because we'd shut our offices down, and we knew that COVID was gonna go for multiple years, and we knew that during that time we wanted to keep hiring people. And if we did that, like, are we gonna hire people who were gonna work from home but have to live within 25 kilometers of an office, 50 kilometers of an office, 30 miles of an office for your American listeners? We decided no, we wanted to hire people. And given we had offices around the world, we had people in Australia, the UK, the US, Europe, we wanted to basically allow us to continue hiring. And so we made the decision that we would never acquire someone to come back into an office. Which is probably not too similar to other people, like, out there who sort of made that decision by abdication, like, that kind of ended up w- what's happening is, you know, during COVID people could work anywhere. They didn't stop it. But we were very deliberate about saying to people, "That is the path we're choosing," and we're- went on public record. So, we had people who, you know, work for Atlassian, we have people in New York where we didn't have an office, like, would come, uh, you know, work for us. Um, people in, uh, you know, rural locations. We... 80% of our staff in the UK live outside of London. So, we have these people around the world who get to work for us. And, you know, we get the best talent as a result. They stay longer, our attrition is lower. 92% of them say that they think our remote policies help them to do their best work. And so for me, the opposite is true. Like, I think you have to make the argument why being in an office is the- the right choice rather than saying why- why is remote the right choice?

   3. HSHarry Stebbings28:52

      It's so funny, every CEO I speak to says today, and they say this behind the scenes, "We just see that actually in person it's so much better. The engagement's there, the collaboration's there, the culture's there," and there's this real binary flip back. And so it's fascinating to hear yours. Is there anything that you know now about remote that you wish you had known when you and Mike made that decision?

   4. SFScott Farquhar29:13

      Well, so one thing we've been s- working on is, we- we believe that you do need to get together as humans to build human contact, and, you know, human connection. And we didn't do that- do that during COVID. And so people, you know, take the, "COVID is what remote work was, and gee, it was terrible. We didn't get to see anyone." You're like, "No, that- that's great. Like, but you can still see people and work remotely. You just don't need to see them every single day." And so we've done some research now which wish we'd known earlier that, uh, you know, when you get together, people together, we see our team connectivity boost by 30%. So, we ask our staff, "How connected do you feel to your team? How connected do you feel to the company?" And then we get people together, what we call intentional togetherness. So, um, and- and then we ask them, "How connected do you feel before and after?" And it was just part of our normal monthly cadence and we cross-referenced that with in-office participation. And so the people who intentionally get them together get a 30% spike in connectedness to company and connectedness to team. Now, the interesting thing is if you look at it from a- an atrophy perspective, right, like- like, how long does it t- take to return to baseline? It's four to five months, actually, before that returns to the- to the baseline. And so if you actually say, okay, well, if you get together people, like-... three, four, five, six times a year, you know? Not, not that frequently. Um, you can maintain a very high connectedness ratio and we found that the people who work in the office every single day, don't actually exceed that. So it's not like, oh, people in the office are here and everyone else is po- below. No, actually, like, that office, being in the office doesn't build intentional togetherness. And so we still need to work out exactly how to maximize that over time and what types of intentional togetherness, you know, build the best bonds. And like, is it in an office? Is it doing philanthropy together? Or is it going for a hike together? Like, what, what actually forms the best social bonds? But like, we're running all these experiments now that like, of course, if we'd known them earlier, we would have been in a much more optimized than we are today.

   5. HSHarry Stebbings30:59

      It's a very big decision to go full remote and to remain full remote. When I spoke to Mike, he said the biggest risk decisions that've been a success have been made by Scott, not by me. (laughs)

   6. SFScott Farquhar31:10

      (laughs)

   7. HSHarry Stebbings31:10

      When you reflect ... I thought it was very humble of him. But when, when you reflect on, like, the biggest risky decisions that you've made that have worked out, which one is the biggest for you and what did you learn from that?

   8. SFScott Farquhar31:22

      There's a couple ones that we've made that are risky. I think, well, Team Anywhere is obviously a huge one because, you know, it's not always a one-way door, but like, we would burn a whole bunch of, you know, employee trust if we changed that now and we've got about half our employees don't live near an office. So like, it's pretty close to a one-way door decision, a- as you can make, and uh, we made that relatively quickly. And so that was one. Another decision we made was to shut down Stride, which was w- our competitor to Slack. That was a product that we had been, you know, operating in the market for multiple years and uh, um, if I could share some of the lessons of things that we, you know, made mistakes on, we acquired this product, it was growing really fast, it was used by us, it was used by devs, and then it shared ... you know, went through the entire company. And there's a couple of things that I would do, have done differently with that. Um, one is that, uh, Stride was $2 a month per customer. Like, which is cheap. We're like, "Enterprise software is $2 a month? A- a user a month? That's incredible." But Slack was free and $10 a month, and free is a lot cheaper than $2 a month, even though on average, Slack made more wea- more dollars from us because they eventually converted people. And so, you know, the freemium model basically, um, you know, can win over time and you actually get more dollars per customer. So one, I wish we had changed our pricing model. Two is that when you have a small team of like 10 to 12 people, which is what it was when we acquired it, um, that team runs really, really fast because they don't have overhead and rituals and they all know each other and they all know where the code is. And when you double that team, you actually don't get any more productivity because when you double the team, they now need to document things, they now need to work like, you know, separate the code out, they needed to start micro- you know, micro-services and subsystems and stuff like that. So we doubled the team thinking that we would get more productivity, and we ended up basically staying the same, and so what we really needed to do, you know, was actually triple or quadruple th- that team in order for us to actually get the productivity that we needed. And lastly, is that, um, you know, we ... It was growing fast, like it ... that, that, that product was growing three or four times p- you know, year on year, which again, if you're growing 300%, 400% year on year, you're like, "This is a rocket ship. Awesome. We're doing great stuff." What we didn't realize is we probably should've been growing 1000% per year or, or more because like, the market was so big and so we didn't invest enough behind it. So anyway, that's the lessons for, for your, for your listeners.

   9. HSHarry Stebbings33:36

      Was it a tough decision? 'Cause there's a lot of sunk cost fallacy there. Acquisition, team.

   10. SFScott Farquhar33:42

       Not only had we acquired it, we'd also then rewritten it from scratch, like, on our platform, and so we'd done a full rewrite. It ended up not being a hard decision because the way I looked at it was, you know, could I look my staff in the face and say that the next five years of their life was gonna be the biggest impact to humanity working on this product? And I couldn't look that staff in the eye and say that, you know, "Hey, working on HitChat Stride, which is the rewritten product, is gonna have the biggest impact on the world. Actually, I could repurpose you and move you onto other products that we've got, new ideas that we've got." You know, blue oceans, like, uh, to borrow a phrase from the book, you know, where we're not competing head to head against, uh, you know, uh, two, two players out there. And so in the end, like, you know, deciding to shut down that product, we had a couple hundred people working on it, um, it was hard 'cause a lot of people had poured their li- you know, heart and soul into it. We sold it to Slack, but in the end it was easy 'cause I could look at the staff and say, "No, you're gonna have a bigger impact on the world doing something else."

   11. HSHarry Stebbings34:39

       Scott, do you pay attention to competition?

   12. SFScott Farquhar34:42

       I think you have to pay attention to competition. Like there's, uh ... I think anyone that says they don't is probably, uh, a bit silly in terms of how they spend their time. But when I look at the, um, the ways we win, like, it's, it's often by ignoring the competition and doing something 'cause we listen to customers. And so, releasing your product with Jira Product Discovery for product managers and it's in a space where there's two big competitors out there, and what we actually built in that space for product managers is actually a different take on solving that problem. And I think if we just copied the competitors, we wouldn't have been as successful, but instead we saw there was a market there and we built something different. But yeah, we, we track like, you know, competitors and see where they're going and how we're growing compared to them.

   13. HSHarry Stebbings35:21

       Scott, I'm loving this conversation. I feel a fast friendship and so I'm, I'm hesitant to bring this up, but I'm going to anyway. When we look at, like, Jira today, it's a polarizing product and I, I spoke to a couple of the biggest CPOs in the world and they said the challenging thing is its trended towards catering to power users while upstarts have appeared that simplify the experience and it makes it much easier for that new onboarding for new customers. How do you feel when you hear that?

   14. SFScott Farquhar35:51

       As every product-led CEO wants, like, I want my product to appeal to every single user and be the best thing for them to use every single day. One of the benefits of Jira is it can do a lot of things for a lot of people. The great part is you never grow out of Jira. So, you know, no matter what size your engineering team, whether you've got 20 people or 20,000 people working in engineering, like, you never grow out of it. So that's the benefit, uh, of it. The downside is that, you know, that complexity can sometimes be overwhelming for, you know, some customers. There are two parts of that. One is, you know, the product itself, like, we can continually do, and if you look at-... Jira now versus five years ago, versus five before that. We continually simplify the product. The other part, unfortunately, is sometimes how it gets set up by people. And sometimes people, you know, complain, "Hey, Jira's got 14 fields I need to, you know, fill in before I can raise a bug." And you're like, "Well, we don't ship with 14 fields out of the box. Someone has configured it that way, you know, because they, they've done it over time." And so, you know, sometimes you have to tease out which is the inherent, you know, Jira complexity, and like which is the sort of complexity 'cause the Jira admin has decided that you need to fill out 14 fields. But we, we have a huge investment by continually simplifying that, um, that will ... We're never gonna be as simple as something that, you know, is built from scratch for five person team. What we do though is wanna do the things that only we can do, which is, hey, we scale with you and we integrate with all the other products that you integrate with, right? We integrate with code, we integrate with build systems, we integrate with security tools, like all the things we can do at scale because, you know, people will build those integrations and we can build those integrations. And so, you can, you know, start using a simpler product, um, but then you don't get like the amazing workflows that, uh, that we can provide.

   15. HSHarry Stebbings37:31

       You mentioned scaling with teams there, and you mentioned

8. 37:34 – 39:40

   How AI Changes the Per-Seat Pricing Model

   1. HSHarry Stebbings37:34

      the, the lesson on, on Stride being actually the per seat pricing. I've had many guests on the show, including like Miles Grimshaw from Benchmark obviously, where Peter Fenton is, who said that per seat pricing would, would not exist in a world of AI, or would change. Do you agree with that, that AI changes the per seat pricing model? And how do you view the evolution of pricing with the instruction of AI as a foundational pillar?

   2. SFScott Farquhar37:57

      AI will put pressure on per seat pricing. I, I agree with that premise in general. For example, if you provide help desk software and it's, you know, licensed on a per agent basis, and in many cases these ... Our competitors have these things that are $100 an agent a month. You know, if you're Salesforce, it can be $140 a salesperson a month. Um, you know, these are high, you know, per seat costs. And in a world of AI, well, if customers can solve issues themselves because an AI agent solved it for you, or search solved it for you, then you've got a problem because, well, I can't charge per AI agent, that doesn't make any sense. Like one AI agent is infinite AI agent, so I can't charge that way. So over time we are gonna have to work out how we solve for value. And previously, you know, per user was a good proxy for the value that you provided. I don't think people have worked out what that looks like, and I think it will change based on how many seat, you know, how much you charge per seat. If you're, you know, $150, $200 a seat, like you've got a, a much bigger pricing model change to, to worry about than if like Atlassian does, we charge $10 a seat. And then how much is gonna be augmented by AI versus replaced by AI? So in come- some cases like yeah, you'll still need half as many seats. Cool, we'll just, you know, we'll augment them with AI and charge twice as much per seat and everyone, you know, kind of is getting the same value they did before. In some cases it might be like, "Hey, we're gonna be 99% of the people," and that's not gonna make sense. So in general, the premise is true. I don't think we know what we move to, and I don't think software's suddenly gonna become free because, you know, per user pricing just, uh, doesn't work.

   3. HSHarry Stebbings39:27

      Can I take a, a different tact, but I do want to cover one more thing before we move into a quick fire. Uh, and it's, it's more personal, but obviously with the immense success of Atlassian, finances change. I, I always ask this one, but I think it's really important.

9. 39:40 – 42:04

   Scott’s Relationship to Money

   1. HSHarry Stebbings39:40

      How do you think about your relationship to money today?

   2. SFScott Farquhar39:42

      I think about this a lot 'cause I've got young children, and I remember actually once, uh, um, Peter Fenton used the words that post-economic, what does that mean, right? I thought about that a- a lot and I wouldn't use those words, but there's a relationship between time and money, I think, that you have throughout your life, and I know when I was a, you know, teenager and through university, I had a lot more time than I had money. But with most, most things in life, you can trade time and money. Like if you want to get great concert tickets and you don't have money, you stand in line out the front, you know, stay overnight like to get the concert tickets. So I think that trade-off actually exists a lot, uh, in, in life, um, and it doesn't change, you know, if you've got a lot of money, you just ... The trade-off, the, the slider moves a lot more and if you have a lot of time, it goes the other way. I haven't, wasn't born from a family that has had a lot of money, um, and so for me, um, moving the slider of money and time, um, has actually been a bit of a struggle. Good example, um, when you take a rental car, uh, you can fill it up before you go back to the, uh, rental agency or you can get them to fill it up for you, right? And if they fill it up, they charge a premium on the fuel that you put back in there. But it probably saves you 20 minutes of running around trying to find the fuel station or whatever, and at the end of the day, it might only cost you $5 more, uh, you know, to get them to fill it up. And so things like that, I've really struggled to, to, to move that. And over, you know, over time-

   3. HSHarry Stebbings41:00

      Have you sti-

   4. SFScott Farquhar41:00

      ... I guess I've, I've-

   5. HSHarry Stebbings41:00

      Have you still or have you got better?

   6. SFScott Farquhar41:02

      I'm getting better. Like I think that if you achieve a lot in life and, uh, you know, you have more money then, you know, getting the time back to be able to devote it to other things is, uh, is useful. And particularly with kids, it's like, hey, if I spend money, I can spend more time with my kids. That's, uh, that's a great trade-off.

   7. HSHarry Stebbings41:17

      Is it difficult with children? I have David Velez on the show from NewBank, and he said his number one concern right now is bringing children up in a world of huge wealth and retaining humility and ambition and hunger.

   8. SFScott Farquhar41:30

      I think it is a very difficult thing to do, I don't think I've cracked the code o- on that. You know, even if we try and isolate our children from that, um, you know, I bought an expensive house in, in Sydney and, uh, my kids' friends at school talk to them about it and how much it costs. And so that, like, no matter how much you try and isolate your kids from that, it, it can, uh, be, you know, something that you just don't have the opportunity to do that. And so for me it's just trying to teach kids the value of money and like, um, and also just being a good human being. I definitely haven't cracked that and my kids are still young, so I don't know if I'll have done a good job for another decade or so.

   9. HSHarry Stebbings42:01

      Final one, I promise, and then we do a quick fire.

10. 42:04 – 44:30

    The Secret to a Happy Marriage

    1. HSHarry Stebbings42:04

       You have an amazing relationship with Kim, your wife, through an incredible journey with Atlassian. What's the secret to a happy marriage?

    2. SFScott Farquhar42:11

       I think putting your partner on a pedestal is really important, like, to do that, and, uh, there's a great book actually talks ... It's The One Thing, I think it's The One Thing You Need to Know or The One Thing, I can't remember, by Marcus Buckingham. But whole bunch of research that shows that, you know, couples that put each other on a pedestal actually-... do better than couples that are realistic about their, you know, the opposing person. And, uh, I don't know, I feel like I've always put my wife, Kim, on a pedestal. Like, she's the most amazing person, um, on every front, like whether it's work or friends or family or our own nuclear family. And so, she's my b- my be- best friend by, by a long way, like. And, uh, we've had a shared journey. Um, and then lastly, um, I've learned how to say sorry quickly, uh, when I screw something up. And, uh, I feel like, uh, that's something she taught me. She taught me to just ... so, you know, I'd do something bad or whatever and she'd just tell me, "Say sorry." And for about five years, I'd, I'd, like, dig my heels in and be like, "No, no, why would I do that?" And then I think for the last, uh ... We celebrated 20 years, uh, a month ago, so, uh, for the last 15 years, I think I've learned that, uh, when you're wrong, just say sorry.

    3. HSHarry Stebbings43:16

       I asked another very famous tech billionaire the other day what's the secret, and he said, "Compromise and patience. You must compromise and you must be patient." (laughs) I was like, "Okay, good stuff." I'm glad this is one way. Listen, Scott, I wanna move into a quick fire. So I say a short statement, you give me your immediate thoughts. Does that sound okay?

    4. SFScott Farquhar43:33

       Let's do it.

    5. HSHarry Stebbings43:34

       What's your vision for the future of education? Mike said I had to ask this one.

    6. SFScott Farquhar43:38

       About a decade and a half ago, um, we needed a ... We, we were doing some experiments, so two things came together. One is I read a book called Leaving Microsoft to Change the World, which is sort of ... A guy named John Wood started a, a foundation, um, nonprofit called Room to Read and their, their motto is, "World change starts with educated children." So I read this book and I was inspired by it, but wasn't sure how to impact it in any way. Um, and then the second one was that we needed to ... We were experimenting with changing our pricing model at Atlassian 'cause, uh, though most software cost six figures at the time, like, uh, you know, the cheapest version of Atlassian was $1,200. And we thought, "No, it should be free or should be cheap or should be ..." You know, like, "How do we change that?" And so we ran an experiment. Like, in the sort of true lean startup way, we ran an experiment to work out what our new pricing model should be. And, uh, so we said, "Let's make our software $5 for five users

11. 44:30 – 52:03

    Quick-Fire Round

    1. SFScott Farquhar44:30

       for five days only." And we ran basically a one-week campaign to just see, well, is there a desire for a five-user version of our, our, our, our, our software? Um, and by the way, all the money goes to charity. And so we, as a company, then had bets like, "How much are we gonna raise in five days? Is it gonna be $3,000, $5,000?" The highest bet we had was $20,000. So the end of five days, in $5 increments, we raised just over $100,000, uh, for charity, which is crazy when you think about, like, 20,000 transactions, like, 4,000 a day. I think it's like ... If I can do the math, it's about one every 20 seconds over- averaged over that period of time, so totally crazy. And then I called up John Wood after reading this book and said, "Hey, we've, we've got this big check, like one of those ones you see on TV, um, for a $100,000 US to your charity." And he's like, "Hey, you're from what country?" Like, uh, and, uh, "I've never heard of you." And, uh, so he flew down to, to Sydney and, uh, we gave him a big check for $100,000, and that started our relationship with Room to Read. You know, that kind of has been multi-million dollars, uh, over time. And of course, all the philanthropy stuff ended up inspiring me to start Pledge 1%, which is a, you know, a foundation that encourages startups and companies to give 1% of equity, product profit, and employee time to nonprofits, and that's inspired about 18,000 companies to, uh, to pledge as well. So I, I guess it's a long answer, um, but like, uh, effectively, um, you know, a few things came together, um, to, to start our philanthropy journey.

    2. HSHarry Stebbings46:05

       Listen, I, I had Cliff from Canva on the show, and he spoke about giving away most of his wealth. And as a venture investor, I naturally asked, "Why?" (laughs)

    3. SFScott Farquhar46:16

       (laughs)

    4. HSHarry Stebbings46:16

       It seemed we had some differences of opinion, but, uh, I appreciate his philanthropic mind. Tell me, Scott, what have you changed your mind on in the last year?

    5. SFScott Farquhar46:23

       Don't think I have a really good answer for what I've changed my mind on, i- in the last year. I think I take a while to make up my mind, um, so I don't run to, to snap judgments o- on things. Like, it takes me a long time to get certain about things, so that's either a blessing or a curse, but I, I, I don't really change my mind very often.

    6. HSHarry Stebbings46:39

       What have you been wrong on in the last year?

    7. SFScott Farquhar46:42

       I don't have a good answer. Well, it's more than I used to be, I think is the answer.

    8. HSHarry Stebbings46:46

       Yeah.

    9. SFScott Farquhar46:46

       Because I made a-

    10. HSHarry Stebbings46:47

        I thought public markets would be hit way worse than they have been. They've been a lot more resilient. We're actually in a better place than I thought.

    11. SFScott Farquhar46:54

        For me, that's, that's gonna be what it's gonna be. Like, I, I, I don't, you know, make b- bets about that or, or have opinions. Uh, and we made a bet. We thought that it would go down roughly this and we were, you know, roughly right in terms of where we made our investment. So the public market stuff is not, not a big thing, but on the being right part, like, I, um, you know, I'm trying to get better at basically saying, "Well, someone else might be right and we'll find out in the future," um, and sort of disagree and commit a lot more than I, I used to be. I think that was a- an area where I would, you know, dig my heels in a lot and, and try and prove that I was right. But these days, I'm like, "Actually, more often than not, the other person is right," so I'm trying to let go of that.

    12. HSHarry Stebbings47:30

        Scott, with respect, you're a pretty calm guy. How do you retain serenity when things are really going to shit?

    13. SFScott Farquhar47:37

        For me, daily exercise and I get, you know ... I try and be in bed for eight hours a, a night. They make a big difference to me. Like, I, uh, wasn't al- always like that, but I have been the last decade or so.

    14. HSHarry Stebbings47:49

        You could have dinner with anyone, dead or alive. Who do you have dinner with and why them?

    15. SFScott Farquhar47:53

        I've got three boys, and if I could have dinner with them when they're six years old again, you know, individually or together, like, that would be, like, who I'd love to, you know, have dinner with.

    16. HSHarry Stebbings48:06

        What has being a great father mean to you?

    17. SFScott Farquhar48:08

        I wanna have a great relationship with my kids and I want them to speak daily ... Or sorry, I speak weekly with my kids, like, when in 20 years time. And so for me, like, I want them to make great life choices, I'll be proud of their life choices, and I want them to want to spend time with me in, in a decade or two.

    18. HSHarry Stebbings48:25

        Is there a trade-off between being the best in the world at something and being a great father? Respectfully, the travels, the intense demands, the quarterly reporting, the, the pressure that comes from being a public CEO.... and being there for bedtime and stories.

    19. SFScott Farquhar48:39

        Everyone has the same 168 hours in a week, and there will be people out there who are way better fathers than I am because they spend more time and that, that is their life's calling. So for me, it's making all the trade-offs between all the different things I have of being fit and my responsibilities to family, responsibilities to work. And so, if I devoted 100% of my time to all the things, but I chose not to have a family, I would probably be better at work, uh, than I am today. And if I chose not to do work, I'd be a better father. But I just try and make the balance between all the different things that, uh, uh, that I have.

    20. HSHarry Stebbings49:09

        Scott, what's the kindest thing anyone's ever done for you?

    21. SFScott Farquhar49:12

        I think believe in me, like, I think is the, is the nicest thing. So whether that is Mike, um, or, you know, who believed in me to, you know, start Atlassian and invite me, like, you know, kind of to, like, start a company with him, you know? Or our first chairperson, who, um, you know, w- was a very, very successful business person. But the times I think that I feel the biggest kindness are where people, you know, believe in, believe in your ability or believe in the potential.

    22. HSHarry Stebbings49:41

        I spoke to Mike before the show. It was just clear the, the, the true depth and bluntly love you have for each other in terms of friendship. What do you think makes you such great co-founders and partners?

    23. SFScott Farquhar49:52

        I think co-founder relationship's much like a marriage. Like, it's a very, like, you know, um, you know, in- intense relationship. I think both Mike and I have very, very diff- we're very different people, uh, in terms of how we see the world. Like, you know, Mike will have a hundred ideas in a, in a day and be comfortable if he goes to bed and one of them survives the, the day till the next one. And, you know, I'm probably much more methodical and thoughtful about how we do it. And but I think the success has been that we both complement each other incredibly well, and I think we both know that Atlassian wouldn't be the success it is today if it, if it wasn't for the two of us.

    24. HSHarry Stebbings50:27

        When we look forward at the next 10 years, final one, if everything goes to plan, where are we then? 2033, we're chatting, Byron Bay, Noosa, wherever we wanna be.

    25. SFScott Farquhar50:38

        I am just super excited, like, about the opportunities that we can do for, like, uh, helping teams work together. And so some parts are AI, some parts just doing more for our customers across the board. And so, if I think about, you know, how much busy work happens every single day across an organization, how much content you need to do, or how much work there is about work. It's like, well, what do I need to get done today? What's the best thing I should do next? There is so much of that that happens. There are so many dysfunctional teams where, you know, if we all had better emotional intelligence, uh, and we could work together better, like, we would love our work more. There's so many people being dragged into the workplace and commuting in two hours each way to turn up to a desk and sit on a Zoom call. Like, there's so much we can do to improve how work happens for people, for our teams, for organizations, and we're just getting started really in, in doing that. And so, some of that'll be AI, some of that'll be just training people, some of it helping people have higher emotional intelligence. Like, there's so much stuff we can do there, and uh, we'll never be done, never be done with that. But hopefully in another, you know, five years, 10 years, uh, 20 years time, we'll, uh, be better than we are today.

    26. HSHarry Stebbings51:46

        Scott, as, as you heard before, I did my work, but I so enjoyed this. This was a- and it's shows like this where you actually have real conversations, the script is kind of left aside, it just reminds me why I'm so lucky to do what I do. So thank you so much for being so great, and I've loved doing this.

    27. SFScott Farquhar52:01

        I appreciate that, Harry. Thanks for the time.

Episode duration: 52:03