
Atlassian sold $320M worth of software with no sales staff - frostmatthew
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-05-18/this-5-billion-software-company-has-no-sales-staff
======
seizethecheese
From Peter Thiel's CS183 class notes:

"People say it all the time: this product is so good that it sells itself.
This is almost never true. These people are lying, either to themselves, to
others, or both. But why do they lie? The straightforward answer is that they
are trying to convince other people that their product is, in fact, good. They
do not want to say “our product is so bad that it takes the best salespeople
in the world to convince people to buy it.” So one should always evaluate such
claims carefully. Is it an empirical fact that product x sells itself? Or is
that a sales pitch?"

[http://blakemasters.com/post/22405055017/peter-thiels-
cs183-...](http://blakemasters.com/post/22405055017/peter-thiels-
cs183-startup-class-9-notes-essay)

------
stevebmark
Atlassian has a sales staff.

Atlassian has a sales staff.

Atlassian has a sales staff.

Atlassian employs many people whose job it is to be on the phone all day with
potential customers.

This is just marketing. Take it with a grain of salt.

~~~
t0
[https://www.glassdoor.com/job-listing/head-of-sales-
operatio...](https://www.glassdoor.com/job-listing/head-of-sales-operations-
atlassian-JV_IC1147401_KO0,24_KE25,34.htm?jl=1835372015)

------
aresant
This is one of Atlassian's go to PR pieces - here's one example a year, you
can find multiple:

\- April 2014 "Australian tech company Atlassian valued at $3.5 billion
despite having no sales staff" (1)

\- August 2015 "Atlassian ignored bad advice, avoided sales staff and grew
fast" (2)

\- February 2016 "How Atlassian built a $4.4 billion business without sales
staff" (3)

And while it's true that they have a different sales "culture" I wonder if the
people they interviewing for Head of Sales Ops, Loyalty Advocacy, and Field
Enablement may consider themselves salespeople?

"Head of Sales Ops" \-
[https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/131036087](https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/131036087)

"Loyalty Advocate" AKA "Sales Retention" \-
[https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/136717830](https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/136717830)

"Head of Field Enablement" \-
[https://www.smartrecruiters.com/Atlassian/92170329](https://www.smartrecruiters.com/Atlassian/92170329)

(1) Australian tech company Atlassian valued at $3.5 billion despite having no
sales staff

(2) [http://www.afr.com/technology/startup-war-story-atlassian-
ig...](http://www.afr.com/technology/startup-war-story-atlassian-ignored-bad-
advice-avoided-sales-staff-and-grew-fast-20150809-giv9s0#ixzz49RqGV1Xg)

(3) [http://www.sugarux.co/blog/how-atlassian-
built-a-44-billion-...](http://www.sugarux.co/blog/how-atlassian-
built-a-44-billion-business-without-sales-staff)

------
dantiberian
When you want to buy 50k licenses of JIRA, there is a "Contact Us" button. The
person who is responding to that email is a salesperson.

------
desdiv
>Tesla doesn't have sales people, You go into an apple store, [and] they don't
have sales people.

God, I love these word games. Tesla doesn't have sales people; they have
_Product Specialists_ [0]. Tesla doesn't have sales people; they have
_Specialists_ [1] and _Experts_ [2].

[0] [https://www.teslamotors.com/en_GB/careers/job/product-
specia...](https://www.teslamotors.com/en_GB/careers/job/product-specialist-
fulltime-37953)

[1]
[https://jobs.apple.com/us/search?job=USASP#&openJobId=USASP](https://jobs.apple.com/us/search?job=USASP#&openJobId=USASP)

[2]
[https://jobs.apple.com/us/search?job=USAEX#&openJobId=USAEX](https://jobs.apple.com/us/search?job=USAEX#&openJobId=USAEX)

~~~
hkmurakami
Palantir doesn't have salespeople. They have forward deployed engineers.

~~~
Grue3
I fully expected the punchline to be "hobbits" or something.

------
twoarray
Analogously, The title could have been changed to

>"Atlassian sold $320M worth of software with no engineering staff"

They just have to change job titles from _software engineer_ to _software
expert_

------
trjordan
They don't have a sales team, but don't think for a minute they don't have
humans helping out.

They invest heavily in their customers success, and they do this by hiring
people to talk to the customers. Yes, on the phone, and sometimes even in
person. They're closely in touch with how to sell to developers, and one of
the best ways to drop the idea of big-up-front sales. If you can get one small
zero-friction sale, the rest of the sales with people become "support upsells"
and "customer success", and you can tell the world you don't have a sales
team.

They might not be called sales, but there are people at Atlassian who's
primary job it is to talk to people and sell them software.

~~~
maroonblazer
>They might not be called sales, but there are people at Atlassian who's
primary job it is to talk to people and sell them software.

And we're through the looking glass...

------
cialowicz
Atlassian does have a sales team, but it's an external one, their
"Experts"[1]. These companies get a cut of each Atlassian license sold, and
also charge for setup, configuration, and custom add-on development.
Personally, I think it's a brilliant strategy... external, technical
salespeople!

[1]:
[https://www.atlassian.com/resources/partnerList](https://www.atlassian.com/resources/partnerList)

~~~
dublinben
This has been Microsoft's model for many years. It's not clear whether it
works very well for anyone in the relationship other than Microsoft.

------
smaili
Awesome graph comparison -
[https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/i6bkJnp_y46...](https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/i6bkJnp_y46c/v1/-1x-1.png)

------
marak830
If I were to say my priduct has no sales staff, it would be technically
true(it's only me and word of mouth), but it really wouldn't at the end of the
day as I try and push it every chance I get.

In the same way, Atlasan doesn't have sales staff, they just go under a
different name(reference the comments in this thread).

I couldn't sum it up better than madeofpalk or aresant(from this thread).

It is an interesting view of attempted virul marketing going wrong though :-)

------
forgottenacc56
There are at least two kinds of sales but in this case there's "Order taking"
versus "product pushing"....

Is the boasting about"no salespeople" suggesting that they do not do outbound
sales I.e actively working to drive sales?

Either way, wearing "no salespeople" as a badge of honor seems misguided, only
technical people would value that. A well run sales operation is a key
component of a healthy company.

~~~
nickpsecurity
I learned that from Lawhorn's books on selling. Always curious if it was his
or some long-time categorization in sales.

------
nickpsecurity
Idk about Atlassian but this is part of the Costco model. They're at $100+bil
a year without direct advertising. They pay the ad budget to staff instead
with results getting word of mouth sales.

[http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/reasons-love-
costco_n_4275774...](http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/reasons-love-
costco_n_4275774.html)

------
onurozkan
OFC they have, but;

Sales team means, people who try to sell product aggressively or try to
convince you with calls, emails etc.

They dont need that kind of team. As they said, product already speaks for
itself. They dont need to focus sales.

How many JIRA owners get a mail/call from Atlassian? For sale?

~~~
nedwin
Sales team means different things to different companies. To you it means an
aggressive person hunting you down, to me it means a consultative person to
follow up a lead.

How many JIRA owners get a direct contact from Atlassian? Every one which is
likely to turn into an enterprise client.

------
blazespin
To be fair, other companies are taking notice. Oracle is now allowing people
to pay for cloud computing with a credit card and no contact with sales staff.

------
chengiz
So the guy who sent me free swag was what a developer? I mean I have got some
irate bug reports but I never sent no one a tshirt!

------
curryhowardiso
Jesus christ the "Sydney tech scene" got absolutely reamed by Bloomberg in
this. Was that really necessary? Do we even hold ourselves out to have a tech
sector worth mentioning as such (as opposed to a few lucky breaks that would
be successful independently of location).

Does this reveal something about how venture capital interacts with software
and software business models in general?

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kukabynd
This page is the case where HN comments provide better value then the provided
article.

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zenlikethat
It could've been more if they had one ;)

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dontscale
That was then. This is now.

