SaaS: Deconstructing Atlassian $320M in Revenue

[Weaponize]

I'm fascinated by the internals of companies and this overview delivers (for me):

http://tomtunguz.com/atlassian-s-1/

Atlassian, such a sleeper company. I've used some of their products in the past and meh, thought nothing special of them. Definitely not the new Silcon Valley hotness.

Definitely overlooked:

Yesterday, Atlassian filed their F-1, a document preceding their IPO, and revealed how efficient a software company they have built. In 2015, the company will generate $320M in revenue.

Smart:

Though Atlassian counts more than half of the Fortune 500 as customers, no single customer accounts for more than 1% of revenue.

Stands Out:

Atlassian spends aggressively in research and development, investing more than 40% of revenues of late into improving their products, optimizing the funnels which fuels the growth

Amazing:

Perhaps the most impressive part of Atlassian’s business is their go-to-market efficiency. While the median SaaS company spends between 50-100% of their annual revenue on sales and marketing, Atlassian has spent between 12 and 21% of their revenue on customer acquisition in the last three years. These metrics simply unheard of.

The data makes clear that Atlassian employs a fundamentally different go-to-market than the classic sales development rep to inside sales model championed by books like Predictable Revenue and popularized by Salesforce.

Atlassian operates at 83.4% gross margin

And this post deconstructs a lot of it's, less than stellar onboarding:

http://appcues.com/blog/atlassian-5-billion-dollar-user-onboarding-magic/

Atlassian has grown to $320M in annual revenue with virtually no sales team. Damn.

Anyone in SaaS can tell you that there’s only one way of doing that: a low-touch funnel that converts new signups to paid users at a ridiculous rate.

So how did Atlassian do that? What do they know about user onboarding that the rest of us don’t? Is there a silver bullet, afterall?

Curious, I signed up for 4 Atlassian products—JIRA, HipChat, Confluence, BitBucket—to find out how Atlassian is onboarding new users. What I found may surprise you.

Interesting... and definitely well worth the read...

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Kingmaker]

I use Atlassian's JIRA for working with software freelancers. Powerful yet intuitive, easy learning curve, good price for the value. I can see why they're successful.