Atlassian is 20 years old and unprofitable

Netflix, has recently excited the fundamental/rationalist investor camp. The huge valuations hot tech companies enjoy must eventually be justified by a "Thiel Monopoly." That's the only way to earn the 20%-50% margins that Google/Apple/Meta can achieve. Netflix sells a cheap consumer product. One product among several similar options. Consumers are savvy, with many jumping between subscriptions for deals and variety. Content producers have market power, because multiple buyers.

In short, textbook microeconomics is afoot. That means competition, efficiency and low margins. That means "startup economics" don't apply. The market is not going to let Netflix sit on massive margins and monopoly market share. Newschool tech investors see this as an abomination. Old schoolers see it as cosmic justice.

Anyway.. those who desire market rationality love Netflix and are applying the Netflix analysis to everything.

Atlassian is a different story entirely. They actually sell software. Enterprise software, really. There are no content producers squeezing them for a bigger cut. The companies who pay them aren't price sensitive, and they are locked in enough. This is not the "microeconomic normality" monster that bit Netflix. Atlassian's business model is fine. Competition isn't the problem, and neither is consumer bargaining power.

Atlassian's problem is that they haven't done good enough. The bar, set by both tech history and the $150bn peak valuation, is that Atlassian becomes a microsoft.. at least a SalesForce, IMB or somesuch. Where's Atlassian's challenge to AWS? When is Atlassian leading the WFH revolution. How will Atlassian become the organisational nervous system of the modern knowledge firm?

It just doesn't look likely that Atlassian is going to achieve that kind of big-hairy-goal. The products have a crusty, uninspiring feel. The take over the world vibe is missing.

So... Atlassian's valuation is down. I doubt the share price will ever approach "rational." Software companies have value, and the floor is set by opportunistic M&A. If stock markets don't want TEAM @ 10X revenue or more... someone will buy them.

[0] https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JSWSERVER-20097

Jira - Everyone has the performance issue, to avoid it they tell them to carefully choose extensions and not randomly litter it, especially with extensions that conflict each other.

Confluence - They recommend to establish a proper structure in advance that everyone follows with templates that everyone can use(not the default ones), so that the cemetery issue doesn't happen.

That said, I haven't seen any company who's confluence wasn't a knowledge cemetery. But regardless of how much I dislike Jira, I'd still pick confluence over google docs.