Australia’s biggest startup success story now has the world’s attention.
Atlassian’s IPO last week was the biggest ever IPO for a local tech company and one of the best for the year worldwide, with shares surging by more than 30% to value the workplace collaboration software at nearly $8 billion.
The landmark moment is a “beacon” for local entrepreneurs, but has also been covered widely around the world and used for everything from disproving the existence of a ‘tech bubble’ to being the one “bright spot” of the year.
A bright spot for a battered market
According to the Wall Street Journal, Atlassian’s successful float ended a disappointing year for tech IPOs on a “high note”.
It says the Aussie startup marked the first time since July that a tech company float raised its share prices and put more on offer, and is a “bright spot in an otherwise dim US IPO market”.
It also says the listing offers hope for the coming year.
“Bankers, tech company founders and investors are hoping a strong Atlasssian debut has broader implications for the health of the IPO market in 2016,” the article says.
Christmas cheer
Reuters also took a similar route, focusing on Atlassian’s impact on the wider US tech community.
“Atlassian brought some cheer to the end of a dour year for technology public offerings…demonstrating that investors are eager to reward growing tech companies that can reliably turn a profit,” it says.
“The performance shone some light on a bleak stretch for IPOs, on pace to have their worst year in terms of dollars raised since 2009.”
The full package
Tech Crunch looked into just what made Atlassian so “enticing” for investors.
“Atlassian has showed expanding revenue, profit, and now cash,” the piece says.
“When you have the full package, the story from an investor standpoint writes itself. Atlassian has therefore shown that the IPO window remains open but perhaps also that the bouncer of public sentiment may still exist – just for the other companies.”
Not a referendum
Despite many pointing to Atlassian’s listing as proof tech companies can still go public successfully, Wired points out that the startup is a rare breed.
“Don’t take the success as a referendum on unicorns,” it says.
“Atlassian isn’t particularly representative of that fabled creature. The country has been profitable for more than a decade and was mostly bootstrapped.”
The secret sauce
A piece in Fortune tries to pinpoint Atlassian’s “secret sauce”.
“Atlassian is all about teamwork,” the piece says.
“Atlassian is benefitting from the software-changes-everything movement. It believes its special sauce is that software developers can use Atlassian’s products to communicate with non-developers on their team.”
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Denham Sadler is a freelance journalist based in Melbourne.
