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Atlassian is 20 years old and unprofitable

smartcompany.com.au

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Re: Atlassian is 20 years old and unprofitable

#321

Post by vhiremath4 »

> that is, users can switch to a competitor product like Asana, Basecamp or Monday.com with minimal cost (other than the initial hassle of switching to a new system).

I can tell the reporter has never used or operated something as integral as a ticketing system at scale. These systems are integrated everywhere to automate operations flows. They’re used to continuously enforce compliance. The list goes on. Ripping them out at an enterprise company is very painful. Then on top of all that, you have to re-train everyone on how to use a new system.

Re: Atlassian is 20 years old and unprofitable

#322

Post by zeroonetwothree »

astrange wrote: post #213
jokethrowaway wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article talks about this. The problem is that growth is not there. What you're left is a company with 8000 employees and a system to problematic to change. With the recession incoming, the time for free money is over and tech startups are bound for a correction. I'd sell or get ready to wait 10-20 years. Even in the wait scenario, you're basically hoping that a huge corporation will transform itself and rediscove…

Atlassian isn't a US company, and if the US is going to have a recession (which I think is doubtful), Australia certainly has a good record on avoiding them.

Seems like a US recession is 1/3 chance based on current estimates.

Re: Atlassian is 20 years old and unprofitable

#323

Post by zeroonetwothree »

sien wrote: post #28

So with Slack there is Mattermost and Zulip. What are the equivalents for Jira ? Is there an openish source piece of similar software ? Jira cops a lot of hate on HN, but really to paraphrase Churchill on Democracy - "Jira is the worst issue tracking software, except for all the others". The comparison on Wikipedia has so many of them : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_issue-tracking_s... Are any of them a…

Linear and Asana are far better.

I refuse to work on any project using Jira. It’s the first question I ask in interviews.

Re: Atlassian is 20 years old and unprofitable

#324

Post by rmbyrro »

dx034 wrote: post #186
threeseed wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More like trying to remove an invasive cancer that has spread to all parts of your body whilst you're still needing to move around, be productive and live your life.

I'd say that for many large companies, Jira is better than the alterntive of having multiple systems that need to be kept in sync. Steering any large company will be a mess, no software will ever make that easy. And any software designed to be that flexible will end up being slow eventually.

I guess the cancer is analogous to JIRA itself, not to the migration of JIRA.

Migrating out of JIRA is analogous to "trying to remove an invasive cancer".

Re: Atlassian is 20 years old and unprofitable

#325

Post by new_here »

sien wrote: post #28

So with Slack there is Mattermost and Zulip. What are the equivalents for Jira ? Is there an openish source piece of similar software ? Jira cops a lot of hate on HN, but really to paraphrase Churchill on Democracy - "Jira is the worst issue tracking software, except for all the others". The comparison on Wikipedia has so many of them : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_issue-tracking_s... Are any of them a…

Linear.app is awesome. We switched from Jira and our team's participation on issues went through the roof. It's fast, clean, has keyboard shortcuts and replaces agile terminology with simpler, familiar paradigms. We activated Slack, Sentry and GitLab integrations too. It's a beautiful piece of software to use and part of the reason we chose it was to inspire ourselves to try build something of similar quality in our own domain. Seriously, it's that good.

I've also used Redmine a few years ago. It gets the job done but nowhere near as slick and fun to use.

Re: Atlassian is 20 years old and unprofitable

#326

Post by xbar »

serial_dev wrote: post #313
tarsinge wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that choosing to be unprofitable is a strategy that maybe worked (or just was fashionable) the past decade under very specific circumstances (lot of free money chasing higher returns in a context of very low rates), but otherwise obviously makes no sense, it's antithetic to the very idea of a business. It's not to be confused with the sane version that is reinvesting profits for growth instead of distr…

In the space Atlassian is in, choosing to be unprofitable while quickly growing could make sense. It is not necessarily true for other sectors (e-scooters, different delivery services, maybe even Uber), as there is no stickiness in those areas. Whenever a cheaper Uber would come to my city, I'd drop them within a second. They are usually cheap while they can burn VC money. If Atlassian can keep their system for a cou…

You have it nailed: they offer low-churn products.

Atlassian is well-managed. Their revenue is fine. Their cash flow management is good. Their compensation plan is effective at retaining employees--the stock employees receive is likely to be more valuable at the end dof the vesting cycle than it is today.

Atlassian has got a collection of offerings that are industry standard. When used at large companies, they become quickly entrenched, with very low churn.

It is also a collection of offerings that is chosen by startups. Last quarter through a year from now, I expect that stream to be dry. But they are on 3-year contracts at an awful lot of got-my-Series A startups that will have to tighten their belts in other ways before trying to rotate off of Atlassian.

Re: Atlassian is 20 years old and unprofitable

#327

Post by omnibrain »

carlsborg wrote: post #303

I suspect the following is built into valuations of many software companies with subscription revenue models: they can reduce headcount dramatically and keep a relatively tiny headcount of staff around to sustain the existing recurring revenue and be highly profitable even in a slowing economy. For example how many people would MongoDB, with close to a billion dollars of annual revenue, need to keep the lights on, as…

Just take a look at the portfolio of companies like Idera. That's their business model. Buy products "in the long tail" and squeeze them dry.

Re: Atlassian is 20 years old and unprofitable

#328

Post by zerkten »

naravara wrote: post #305
gwbas1c wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm paraphrasing here but he essentially said, you're leaving growth on the table. His thesis was growth is more important than profits. But, you can't grow forever. At some point you hit things like the maximum market size and there's no longer any way to invest your profits back into growth. Or, to hit a lot closer to home: As a stockholder, your stock won't appreciate in value forever. Software companies very ra…

> But, you can't grow forever. At some point you hit things like the maximum market size and there's no longer any way to invest your profits back into growth. Atlassian is probably a fair bit away from that. Amazon is much closer to that mark today but they got there after following exactly this strategy since the 90s.

>> Atlassian is probably a fair bit away from that.

How do you justify that?

One way Atlassian's market size gets limited is by being viewed as a competitor to Microsoft (or other large incumbent's) products. Some customers can choose both, but not everyone can. The feature and experience differences don't matter much to the buyers (procurement), so if something is cheaper elsewhere, then it's a harder sell. It also increases risk in a potential recession where Atlassian is viewed as a luxury option. I feel like JetBrains play a smarter game here.

It feels like folks have forgotten how bad a niche developer tools have been. Circumstances have meant that VCs have been throwing money at developer tools and developer experience has been in vogue. Things will probably be better in this wave than previous ones, but it's still much riskier than other markets. Developers may rule the world, but the software powering their day-to-day is very different between software companies and the majority building line-of-business software.

Re: Atlassian is 20 years old and unprofitable

#329

Post by exyi »

zeckalpha wrote: post #247
exyi wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on how you define "better". I'd say that anything else I used (github/gitlab issues, asana, trello, even a spreadsheet) works better *for me* - i.e. it is faster and easier to find things in a small team. I only add things or focus on one issue and then remove it. I still don't understand why mid managers love it, but I guess they have different use cases than me...

Trello is also an Atlassian product.

I know, but it was usable when I last used it. (and it was not designed by Atlassian AFAIK... and even if it would, I don't have anything against Atlassian except that they make really terrible software which I was quazi-forced to use)

Re: Atlassian is 20 years old and unprofitable

#330

Post by CuriouslyC »

naravara wrote: post #305
gwbas1c wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm paraphrasing here but he essentially said, you're leaving growth on the table. His thesis was growth is more important than profits. But, you can't grow forever. At some point you hit things like the maximum market size and there's no longer any way to invest your profits back into growth. Or, to hit a lot closer to home: As a stockholder, your stock won't appreciate in value forever. Software companies very ra…

> But, you can't grow forever. At some point you hit things like the maximum market size and there's no longer any way to invest your profits back into growth. Atlassian is probably a fair bit away from that. Amazon is much closer to that mark today but they got there after following exactly this strategy since the 90s.

Amazon is a bit of a unicorn in this regard though. They've been able to consistently pivot profits into expanding services into new (but highly related) areas. Most companies are overly aggressive in trying to chase exponential growth, they end up outgrowing their competence.
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