I retired from personal blogging in July 2008.
But you can find me over at http://blog.xero.com.
The highlight of the Morgo conference for me so far is meeting and hearing from Mike Cannon-Brookes, one of the founders of Australia Enterprise software company Atlassian.
I’ve mentioned them before.
After doing AfterMail, which was Enterprise software, I’ve been focussed exclusively on SaaS. Atlassian has a very different model in the Enterprise space, which is worth looking at closely.
I define Enterprise Software as software that its sold to an Enterprise and installed behind their firewall. Atlassian sells a few products that include issue tracking and enterprise wiki - software that would normally be installed behind the firewall.
The scaling issues around building an Enterprise Software business include building a global sales force and a professional services team.
Atlassians Enterprise Software model is quite different:
- Sell the product at price that is low enough to be below discretionary spending limits (Say $1-5k)
- It needs to be self installed/self service
- Rather than focus on selling to customers, make it easy for customers to buy
- Invest big in service, using word of mouth as a primary sales channel
- Be very open about where you are at. For example: the bug lists are visible to customers
Another important tip was scale slowly at the beginning. Very relevant to what we are doing now. You need to make sure your processes and systems are nailed before you turn on the taps.
Mike is one of those young (sub 30 guys) who completely gets it. Very impressive and they have built a great global company. (Check out life at Atlassian for clever recruiting). They are funded out of revenue so very similar to TradeMe pre acquistion with similar decisions to make. The Atlassian model plays to the strengths of companies in New Zealand and is a model well worth understanding and considering.
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Great summary Rod. Mike certainly was very inspiring.