Scaling SaaS -- from SaaStr
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | Investors
SaaStr 045: Atlassian President, Jay Simons on The Inside Story Behind Atlassian's $5bn IPO
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As VP of Sales and Marketing at Atlassian for three years before becoming President, Jay Simons has a broad perspective on what it takes to build a successful company. Sometimes, ignoring conventional wisdom is what will differentiate you from the competition. Bootstrapping from day one, launching and supporting multiple products, and doing it all without traditional Sales team - Atlassian's approach (and wild success) has always been a curious anomaly in SaaS. After 13 years of being an exception to every rule, Atlassian went public in late 2015 with a total market capitalization of $4.37B at the time of the IPO.

In this session, Jay answers our burning questions:

1.) Why does Jay believe in most cases the best run companies are public companies? What does being public bring to the organizational structure of a firm?

2.) How important is it for early stage startups to have board members and outside perspectives? How should they select those inputs?

3.) How important a role does customer support and success play in the conversion of customers from trial to paid versions?

4.) How does Jay focus on 4 products with such a differentiated suite of products? Does this not contradict the often cited fundamental, focus.

If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here:

Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings SaaStr

Scaling SaaS -- from SaaStr
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | Investors
The Official SaaStr Podcast is the latest and greatest from the world of SaaStr, interviewing the most prominent operators and investors to discover their tips, tactics and strategies to attain success in the fiercely competitive world of SaaS. On the side of the operators, we center around getting from $0 to $100m ARR faster, what it takes to scale successfully and what are the core elements of hiring. As for the investors, we learn what metrics they hone in on when examining SaaS business, what type of metrics excites them and what they look for in SaaS founders.