
Atlassian gets IPO share price of $27 - prostoalex
http://www.businessinsider.com/atlassian-gets-ipo-share-price-2015-12?op=1
======
rifung
It's refreshing to see a tech company IPO that isn't VC backed and actually
can sustain itself with its profits.

Maybe I'm just naive but I find it strange how so many companies focus so long
on acquiring users and not on making money, thus forcing them to continue to
get outside funding. For something like Facebook I can understand how this
makes sense, but it seems as though this strategy is currently the norm rather
than the exception.

~~~
xenadu02
Full disclosure: I'm on the iOS team at PlanGrid.

We're a YC-12, VC-backed company. We were profitable within a year of the seed
round. We still have the bulk of our Series A in the bank but went ahead and
raised a $40 million Series B because terms were extremely good (low dilution
plus we can ride out any downturn). I suspect some of these high valuations
are simply investors paying a premium to buy in, not an expectation that the
company is or isn't worth that much.

When I walk around SF with my PlanGrid shirt on it isn't other people in tech
that say hello or know who I am... it's the guys working at construction
sites. People in hard-hats and boots who tell us our software has changed
their lives.

The tech press and insular SV community obsesses about the ultra-unicorns.
Some of us are just busy quietly solving people's needs (usually in industries
that have been long-ignored by SV/tech) and we're doing quite well for it.

There may be a bubble but if you build something that provides real, immediate
value to customers then the rest of it is just noise.

~~~
semi-extrinsic
I see PlanGrid is aimed squarely at professional constructors. Is there any
benefit in using it for small, private projects, or is it too "enterprisey"?
Say you're building e.g. a garage. And can you ELI5 what "free for 50 sheets"
means?

~~~
rsuttongee
PlanGrid co-founder here. It's definitely useful for a project of any size,
but the value definitely scales non-linearly with the size of a project.

If nothing else, if you have a construction project that has paper plans,
PlanGrid is the best way to make them digital, shareable, usable by multiple
people.

~~~
abduhl
This wasn't readily apparent to me after watching your video so I guess I'll
ask here - what do you think is the core value of PlanGrid?

Is the point to be a full document control type solution (e.g. - in the same
vein as Aconex) or is it a collaboration tool focused on construction? It
appears to be the latter?

I guess I could just ask one of the guys I know from DPR...

------
richardlblair
Has anyone looked at the prospectus? The founders are going to do very well.

Michael Cannon-Brookes Shares - 69,732,090 Percentage - 37.7%

Scott Farquhar Shares - 69,732,090 Percentage - 37.7%

Well done, gents. Well. Fucking. Done.

~~~
kzhahou
How many employees get to split the remaining 20%?

Well done, founders.

~~~
tajen
* How many employees get to split the remaining $1.1bn?

(The new valuation, according to the OP)

~~~
kzhahou
Actually (and please correct my arithmetic wherever it's wrong), the
prospectus shows 96.1% to founders, directors, officers, and VCs (page 146).

At $5.8B, the founders stake is $2.1 billion each, and the 1300 employees
share $226 million.

It's good to be a founder!

~~~
benjaminRRR
Australia makes it incredibly difficult to give equity to your employees -
they literally get double punished and it's often better for the employee not
receive. The Australian Taxation Office will charge on receipt.

So you get 1% of the company and it's last investment round was $10M - Boom
you get a $100,000 tax bill that year! Even though it's all only paper value.

Then if you do liquidate you're taxed again on the gain!

It's a huge problem and there are a lot of folks in the startup community
trying to get it rectified.

~~~
1stop
That's not true. The company gets 10M. The shareholder still received nothing,
and thus has no tax liability.

When the shareholder sells their shares they will be taxed.

I don't understand your scenario at all... :\

~~~
tim333
His scenario was the company raises at 10M and afterwards gives 1% of it's
shares to the employee. Actually I think most countries would treat that as
taxable income which is why companies usually give options not shares once
they get going.

~~~
1stop
That is still not a taxable event. Even if it's shares and not options.

The shares won't be taxed until they are sold.

I know this, because I've worked in an Australian company and been given
shares and they made no difference to my tax liability.

------
myth_buster

      Atlassian was founded in 2002, but it hasn't taken any outside 
      investment. The last two funding rounds from Accel and T. Rowe Price 
      were done to let employees sell some of their shares, and Atlassian 
      says the cash wasn't used for operations.
    

That's impressive!

Pre-IPO discussion
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10708908](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10708908)

------
phantom_oracle
This is interesting because the valuation is:

\- Either driven partly by what Slack is valued at (and then you add the other
parts of Atlassian to get its total value)

\- It really is this valuable, which would make Slacks billion-dollar +
valuation a lot more legit than when people were nay-saying about it

\- Just investors throwing money around because money is still 'cheap'

I still think that some savvy retail investors understand the tech market a
lot more better now. This company is not burning through cash and shooting for
super, super long-term growth (Twitter and it's ilk) so this feels more like a
Microsoft listing than a Facebook listing.

Good on them for building something legit and something people would pay for
(instead of advertising revenue).

~~~
ryanackley
Slack seems like a great product but here are some interesting facts:

\- Atlassian has more than 10x the revenue of Slack[1]

\- JIRA and Confluence account for substantial amount of Atlassian's revenue.
Two products that don't even compete with Slack[2].

I think Slack is a current silicon valley darling so people love to make this
comparison but it doesn't directly compete with Atlassian's core business. It
also has an order of magnitude less revenue.

[1] [http://www.businessinsider.com/slack-expects-30-million-
reve...](http://www.businessinsider.com/slack-expects-30-million-
revenue-2015-7)

[2]
[https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1650372/000155837015...](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1650372/000155837015001685/filename1.htm)

~~~
wslh
I really like Slack but I think it will be troubled in the short/long term in
the same way Dropbox is now. It is innovative but many others will catch up it
soon.

~~~
beamatronic
In my experience, HipChat / Jira / Confluence is a nice stack to work with.
What advantages does Slack offer over these?

~~~
Natsu
Jira is definitely a pleasure to use. We only just started it a while ago and
I'm often pleasantly surprised by the things I can do with it and just how
convenient it is to work with. It's quite a change given that we previously
used Mantis.

------
ghuntley
There's a global hackathon going on right now at Atlassian. Keep a eye on
[https://twitter.com/hashtag/shipit33](https://twitter.com/hashtag/shipit33)

Memorable tweets so far:

1) Founder of the company last night calling it quits and heading out for a
beer.
[https://twitter.com/mcannonbrookes/status/674734326571921409...](https://twitter.com/mcannonbrookes/status/674734326571921409?s=09)

2) Insanely clever marketing by the jira team:
[https://twitter.com/Atlassian/status/674964465717260288](https://twitter.com/Atlassian/status/674964465717260288)

Reply with your favourites! ;)

~~~
caspar
Having a bit of fun with the building lights during that hackathon:
[https://twitter.com/sebr/status/674917395798949888](https://twitter.com/sebr/status/674917395798949888)

(Disclosure: am an Atlassian employee, though not in the photo or that team.)

------
medlazik
Maybe HipChat will finally have chat notifications on iOS [0]. A messaging
app. Probably one of the many reasons people migrated to Slack.

Meanwhile, latest update reads: _" New: Scumbagify support! Prefix any
emoticon with (scumbag) to show how you really feel"_

[0][https://help.hipchat.com/forums/138883-suggestions-
ideas/sug...](https://help.hipchat.com/forums/138883-suggestions-
ideas/suggestions/3830661-iphone-don-t-seem-to-be-receiving-any-notification)

~~~
paulddraper
Atlassian is quite slow to move forward on their products, including their
acquisitions.

In some cases -- Bitbucket Cloud -- they really never do. Whenever I think
about Bitbucket, I think of
[https://bitbucket.org/site/master/issues/8548/better-ci-
inte...](https://bitbucket.org/site/master/issues/8548/better-ci-integration-
add-a-build-status)

------
neals
Tech IPO's of any kind always have my interest, but I have a hard time finding
out what IPO is happening and when it is happening.

How do some of you track these things?

~~~
icebraining
The stock markets have trackers:

[http://www.nasdaq.com/markets/ipos/activity.aspx?tab=upcomin...](http://www.nasdaq.com/markets/ipos/activity.aspx?tab=upcoming)

[https://www.nyse.com/ipo-center/recent-ipo](https://www.nyse.com/ipo-
center/recent-ipo)

------
azinman2
How much could they grow? It's not clear to me, unless they suddenly have much
more ambitious plans and new categories of product, how big the market is that
can sustain infinite growth over time for them. The market is very specialized
for them, and if they try going after non tech their products directly then go
up against many other players already entrenched (and it's not like JIRA is
some shiny beacon of ease and apple-like perceived simplicity -- if they
rebuilt from scratch maybe they'd have a better chance)

~~~
klodolph
My impression is that they're after dominance and becoming utterly entrenched,
and that they've got a pretty good shot at it. They've had stellar growth over
the past couple years. They currently strike a good balance between "creating
value" and "extracting value", from a business perspective. Compare to older
companies, like Oracle, which are much more focused on extracting value.

They're also used both in startups and in established firms, which makes me
feel confident about their growth.

~~~
hitekker
Confluence is used quite a bit internally at Oracle and given the extent of
the company's usage, I wouldn't be surprised if they're making a killing off
it and other enterprises.

~~~
jozzas
My employer (large financial institution, 15000+ employees) uses confluence
and jira enterprise-wide, as well as others that are more developer-centric.
I'd say we're paying some of their bills on our own.

------
gohrt
On the one hand, it's great to see a company do so well making solid basic
development tools.

On the other hand, I recall that everybody hated using JIRA. It was sooo
slooow and so many little input boxes in the UI. Has it improved in the past 5
years?

~~~
joshstrange
We use self-hosted so YMMV but I've never really considered it to be that
slow. It's a solid tool and at the top of it's field IMHO. I'd love
(seriously) to hear what others are using we looked at a few alternatives but
none of them held a candle to JIRA and that's before you consider the
integrations with other Atlassian products.

~~~
flavor8
I've started to use Youtrack on recent projects and like it. A few quirks, but
it's a breath of fresh air compared to the most recent JIRA version. (As
context, I've advocated and run JIRA installs as an eng lead for ~10 years.)

------
cooperadymas
As someone who knows relatively little about how the stocks works, and this
stage of a business' lifecycle... what benefit does Atlassian get by going
public?

~~~
Tossrock
Liquidity. You can't buy a house with stock certificates.

~~~
rosege
not much of a problem for the founders
[http://www.domain.com.au/news/billionaire-mike-
cannonbrookes...](http://www.domain.com.au/news/billionaire-mike-
cannonbrookes-buys-centennial-park-mansion-20150415-1mlle0/)

~~~
charlesdm
Depends.

He can now take out a loan against his shares for $300m if he wanted, which is
something he probably couldn't do before, since the stock wasn't that liquid.
And he might not have been interested in selling more.

------
michaelcampbell
The ticker is TEAM for those wanting to play along at home.

~~~
jasondc
And don't use Google Finance, since they can't seem to add new listings until
several weeks after the IPO

[http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=team](http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=team)

~~~
fluxquanta
[https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3ATEAM](https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3ATEAM)

Looks fine to me?

~~~
tedmiston
With the NASDAQ: prefix it's good now, but yesterday morning at IPO the data
was missing. It seems like they get it within 4-8 hours of an IPO, at least
that's been my experiencing following MTCH and FIT.

------
omginternets
I'm 28 and I've never invested so much as a dime. I quite like Atlassian, and
I think I could afford to lose $27 if it came to that.

Forgive me for the really elementary question, but how do I actually go about
buying shares?

~~~
mcherm
Open an account with any stockbroker and they will purchase the shares "on the
market" and hold them for you until you want to sell. They charge for this
service so you want one that caters to beginning investors and has low fees
for the kind of purchase you want.

Personally, I use Charles Schwab, which is one of the largest US consumer
brokerages and has a pretty good reputation. For beginners I usually recommend
ShareBuilder (no, wait: recently renamed "Capital One Investing") as they have
lots of features for beginners including purchase plans with little to no fees
for small amounts and no maintainance fees. But (full disclosure) I may be a
biased source: I work for Capital One.

~~~
omginternets
Thanks for the info! I take it there's no DIY approach here, and that for all
intents and purposes, I must go through a broker?

~~~
karanbhangui
Online discount brokers like Etrade, Schwab, Ameritrade, etc are about as DIY
as it gets. Load up funds from your bank account and pick your stocks!

Notably, Robinhood is a new startup that doesn't charge any fees and has nice
mobile apps: [https://robinhood.com/](https://robinhood.com/)

------
pkaye
Interesting that it seems they IPO'd in US though they are mostly located in
Australia? Can employees in other countries cash out on their stock options or
are they compensated in different ways than in the US?

~~~
skeletonjelly
I know a big issue we have here in Australia is that you're taxed on stock
options before they're actioned.

[http://www.brw.com.au/p/business/tax_on_start_up_share_optio...](http://www.brw.com.au/p/business/tax_on_start_up_share_options_unjust_46LLxyUfnvXJINrZCwYt6O)

------
jbrad7354
I like Atlassian and we use JIRA, Confluence and Stash.

Do I think Atlassian is worth $6bn? No. I planned to buy ~100k in stock at the
open, saw the $27 open price, and cancelled my trade.

Is this a nice result for the founders? Yes. :)

Starting price on IPO day means little. It was flat the entire day. The way to
judge these is in a couple of weeks (2-3 weeks) to see where the market really
values it. See RACE for an example. That had a stronger IPO day "pop" and...
here we are. :)

~~~
puredemo
$6bn valuation isn't that much for a product suite that seems integral to so
many in the tech sector.

------
bjacks
Once a company has gone public is it common for lots of staff who have stock
to quit?

~~~
tajen
Want in?
[https://www.atlassian.com/company/careers](https://www.atlassian.com/company/careers)
;) When a company has had 30% growth per year according to their F-1 filing
(This is a ballpark - please check the filing), you don't need to wait to get
hired. More seriously, in a Forbes article last year Scott Farquhar said some
employees would be able to buy a house, so there are probably some people who
want to pursue some personal projects. I expect Syndey real estate to become
very expensive, but I also expect such companies to have some retention
policy, like progressive vesting and post-IPO lock-in period.

~~~
oliyoung
“Scott Farquhar said some employees would be able to buy a house“

To be fair, it _is_ Sydney ;)

~~~
Cogito
Sydney is one of the most expensive housing markets in the world [1].

It was actually much higher in the list, but the weak Australian dollar means
that the US dollar stretches quite a bit further.

I seem to recall that cost of living in Sydney is also one of the highest in
the world, but didn't find any sources on that.

[1] [http://www.globalpropertyguide.com/most-expensive-
cities](http://www.globalpropertyguide.com/most-expensive-cities)

~~~
krzyk
Sydney 7,250 per m^2

Prague 4,569 per m^2

And now add earnings to that and Sydney is not that expensive. Pure price per
m^2 says nothing, the important thing is how much m^2 I can buy with my
average salary.

------
jarjoura
As a side question, I wonder if this means GitHub will go for their own IPO.

------
rrtwo
Can someone please explain what would be the reasons for Atlassian to IPO? Is
it to return money to investors? fund new things (such as?)?

