I’ll never forget the time a client first mentioned to me that he had heard of two college buddies who had started a software company on a maxed-out credit card. I laughed! Ten thousand dollars and a dream sounded like the setup for a bad joke, not a company that would one day sit on the Nasdaq worth tens of billions of dollars.
That company was Atlassian. The two mates were Scott Farquhar and Mike Cannon-Brookes.
After 35 years in the business, one thing I know for sure is that people with the best ideas are rarely the ones who succeed. They are the ones who keep showing up after the idea stops feeling fresh. Farquhar’s story is one of the clearest examples of that in Australian history, and I want to walk you through it the way I would tell it over coffee, not the way it reads on a Wikipedia page.
The Credit Card That Started It All
Farquhar and Cannon-Brookes met studying information systems at the University of New South Wales in the late 1990s. They graduated into a job market full of safe corporate offers. They turned them down.
Instead, in the year 2001, they put around ten thousand dollars of software development on a credit card and built a tool for tracking bugs in code. They called it Jira, a shortened play on “Gojira,” the Japanese name for Godzilla. A second product followed: Confluence, a workspace for teams to write and share.
Twenty-five years later, that company employs thousands of people, serves customers that include Costco, Delta, and NASA, and made Farquhar one of the richest people in the country. Forbes put his net worth above seven billion US dollars in mid-2026. He stepped down as co-CEO in 2024 to spend more time with his family and his philanthropy, and he still sits on the board as an adviser.
None of that happened because two young men picked a lucky idea. It happened because of how they built it.
Lesson No.1: Stop Trying to Be the Next Someone
Atlassian was not the first company to make collaboration software. It was not the flashiest. What set it apart was a refusal to copy the playbook everyone else was using. No traditional sales force. Clear pricing published on the website, no sales call required. Software built for developers, by people who understood developers, because they were developers.
Farquhar has talked about a moment when a journalist compared tennis player Maria Sharapova to Anna Kournikova. Sharapova’s response stuck with him. She was not interested in being the next anyone. She was the first Maria Sharapova, full stop.
Here is what I tell founders who walk into my office wanting to be “the next Canva” or “the next Atlassian.” Study those companies all you like. Then close the laptop and ask what only you can build. In the competitive Australian tech market, successful companies are those who can clearly articulate what sets them apart – and those who can secure grants, talent, and funding. Clones and copies don’t get funded. Originals do.
Lesson No.2: Take the Job You Are Not Ready For
Before Atlassian had real revenue, Farquhar and Cannon-Brookes took on contract work to keep the lights on. Farquhar accepted a large project in Amsterdam despite having limited experience running something that size. He went anyway.
I have watched hundreds of Australian founders face this exact choice, usually dressed up as a client who wants more than the founder has ever delivered, or a market the founder has never sold into. The instinct is to say no until you feel ready. You will never feel ready. Farquhar didn’t either. He took the work, figured it out under pressure, and came out the other side with skills no course could have taught him.
Lesson No.3: Never Stop Being Curious
Complacency is the quiet killer of good businesses. Farquhar has spoken often about treating learning as a daily habit, not a phase you grow out of once you have a bit of success. Podcasts on the commute. Articles at night. Asking questions in meetings that make you look like the least experienced person in the room, on purpose, because that is how you actually get smarter.
The founders I work with who spot a grant opportunity before their competitors, or who pivot six months ahead of a market shift, are not smarter than everyone else. They just never stopped reading.
Lesson No.4: Go All In, Or Do Not Bother
Atlassian did not become a global software company overnight. It took the better part of a decade of grinding, cash-flow-positive growth before the world noticed. Farquhar has said that if you want to be among the best at what you do, you need real dedication, not a part-time version of it.
To every entrepreneur who seeks my advice on leaving their current job, I always advise: first, evaluate your level of commitment, then think about how much money you have. Sacrifice is perceived as a loss when it is not accompanied by real motivation. Sacrifice is a driving force when it is driven by motivation.
Lesson No.5: The Job Changes Under Your Feet
Here is something founders rarely get warned about. The role you are good at on day one is not the role the business needs by year five. Farquhar has talked about how his own work shifted from personal conversations with early customers to running a strategic, boardroom-driven operation as Atlassian scaled through selective outside funding, a sixty-million-dollar raise from Accel Partners in 2010, a public listing in 2015, and now a wave of new product work built around software that assists teams directly.
You are not the same founder you were at the start, and you shouldn’t be. Check in with yourself every year and ask what your business actually needs from you now, not what it needed eighteen months ago.
Lesson No.6: Your People Are the Business
No one builds a company this size alone. Atlassian’s internal values, things like “open company, no bullshit” and “play as a team,” were not slogans for a poster. They influenced the actual decision-making processes, and the company has received multiple awards for its approach to human resources.
Hire well. Then don’t just hire well and walk away. Give people the tools, the trust, and the room to do good work, because your best people are your only real advantage once your idea stops being a secret.
Lesson No.7: Cash Keeps You Alive
More Australian startups die from running out of cash than from having a bad idea. Atlassian stayed cash-flow positive from very early on. The founders lived frugally, joked about surviving on instant noodles, and avoided leaning too hard on venture capital, which let them keep control of their own company.
I’ll speak to what I know best in business. Building a cash buffer is not just about cutting your spending. It’s about being aware of every dollar available to you, including the ones that are left unclaimed in government programs by most founders. We have helped Australian businesses secure over three billion dollars through R&D Tax Incentives and grants, money that often makes the difference between a founder who has six months of runway and one who has eighteen.
Lesson No.8: Build Something People Buy Without Being Sold To
For years, Atlassian ran without a traditional sales team. Instead, they built software simple enough that small teams could try it, buy it, and start using it the same afternoon. Sometimes for as little as five dollars in their early self-service model. One of the more remarkable moments in the company’s history came when American Airlines placed an order over fax for around eight hundred dollars, with no salesperson ever involved in the conversation.
If your product needs a great salesperson to convince someone it is worth buying, you don’t have a great product yet. Make it obvious. Make it easy to try. Let the software do the convincing.
Lesson No.9: Let People Disagree With You
Farquhar also emphasised the importance of what he termed creative conflict. This requires an environment in which good ideas can come from anywhere in the company, and where people feel safe enough to challenge each other openly. Atlassian famously used its own tools internally so that information moved freely instead of getting trapped in someone’s inbox.
Very strict hierarchies eliminate potentially great ideas even before they are suggested. The most successful founders are those who form solid teams by allowing everyone to express their thoughts, even if it is “I believe you are mistaken about that,” in a discussion, and who take those comments into account.
Lesson No. 10: Build for Decades, Not Quarters
For more than 25 years, Atlassian has been focused on unleashing the potential of every team. And they believe the story and the success they’ve had so far only set the stage for what’s possible in the future. The founders helped start Pledge 1%, a movement encouraging companies to give back equity, time, or product from day one rather than waiting until they feel rich enough to be generous. Farquhar completed an Ironman triathlon in late 2025, a fitting picture for a man who has always treated business, and apparently fitness too, as something you train for over years, not weeks.
Create a business as if you intended to keep it running for the next fifty years. Even if you end up selling it far before that, thinking this way will influence each decision you make now.
Also read: 8 Warren Buffett Lessons Every Australian SME Owner Needs
Zoom Out
Some days, running a business feels like nothing but small, grinding problems. A late invoice. A hire that did not work out. A grant application that got knocked back on a technicality. Those days are real, and they will keep coming no matter how big your company gets.
What Farquhar’s story shows is that the founders who last are the ones who can zoom out, remind themselves what they are actually building, and keep walking. Entrepreneurship rewards people who play the long game and use every resource on the table to get there, including the government support that exists specifically to help Australian businesses grow.
At Pattens Group, we have spent over thirty-five years helping ambitious Australian founders access that support, from R&D Tax Incentives to competitive grants, with a success rate above ninety-nine percent. If you are building something with real staying power, we would like to talk about how government funding can help you get there faster. Get in touch for a free eligibility assessment.
Bruce Patten is a qualified CPA, former Group Financial Controller at Cochlear, and founder of Pattens Group, Australia’s leading grants specialists with 35+ years of experience and a 100% success rate.
