Atlassian After the Co-CEO Era: What Comes Next?

0:00You're listening to a DayOne.fm show. I think billionaires are more sensitive than you think, right? So if you're not writing nice things about them, well... And this is the guy... These two guys are working with each other. They're running a$100 billion company and they're not talking about what they're doing property-wise.

0:15Georgie Healy: I'm so sick of this apocalypse. January 1 and the stock price, you know, it more than halves, right? So why wasn't he there? Why wasn't he there? You know, I know people that say, look, it should be a$10 billion company. should be a$20 billion company. But do you think that Atlassian can navigate AI and be kind of like a 2.0 version of itself? It's hard to go past this. I've got the private jet. So I think that if you're using the technology, you need to know who's behind it.

0:51Georgie Healy: Hello and welcome back to In the Blink of AI. Before I get into today's episode, I want to unpack the biggest AI headline this week. And if you want to get right into the interview, we do have timestamps below so you can dive right in. So this one is really close to home for me. An open AI agent got into Australia's public health system. So Medicare is what every Australian uses to see a doctor, to get tests, to be treated in a hospital. and our Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, has just spoken to the public and said that on June 18th, an OpenAI agent gained unauthorised access to Medicare Statistics Reporting Service.

1:34Georgie Healy: So it accessed public and non-public files. It wrote files onto an internal server. And though there's no evidence that anyone's personal Medicare records were touched, There's three things I think are really important to know about this. One is that Australia never detected this happening. OpenAI told us three months after it happened. Two is that we still don't know all that's happened here. Apparently three other health and statistics systems may have been affected. And the last thing is that who's at fault? Australian laws target human hackers, real people with intent to do harm. So when an agent breaks out on its own, no one knows if this is a crime or not.

2:23Georgie Healy: And if so, who's at fault? I shared this on social media and most of the many responses to this say that the responsibility lies with the AI company. You created it. It's your fault. but plenty of people are also saying that Australia carries the blame for not having secure systems. We need to have better security to prevent this from happening. The latest is that a new task force, including the Australian Signals Directorate and the Australian AI Safety Institute is looking to this further. I'll keep you posted. Okay, now to the interview. If you've been here for a while, you know, I love a deep dive on people in tech.

3:08Georgie Healy: I have covered Elon Musk on this show. I have covered Mira Morati, but I have never had two of Australia's best journalists who wrote the story of an Australian tech company. And this is important. Any of you who's used Jira, who's used Confluence, my favorite Trello, you need to know the story behind Mike Cannon-Brooks and Scott Farquhar. Now, John Stensholt has ranked Australia's richest people since 2008. Perry Williams has been at Bloomberg, the AFR. They're both at The Australian, the most incredible and prestigious publication we have here. And together, they wrote Tech Bros, which blew up my group chats when it landed.

3:52Georgie Healy: In this episode, we get into Atlassian's share price, which more than halved earlier this year and has since come roaring back. We've talked about John and Perry and what they think Australia's next billionaires might be. Frankly, they would know. They cover this stuff day in, day out. But it's not apps. They think it might be data centers. And we have a prediction. And it involves Suncable, Anthropic, and Scott's family office Skip Capital. Most importantly for my amazing listeners, John and Perry in the interview not just signed a copy of the book, but put a bespoke prediction each in the front cover.

4:30Georgie Healy: This is not a prediction we cover on the show. And if you go to YouTube now, even if you're listening on Spotify, just open up the YouTube version of this episode and write any comment that comes to mind. I'm going to be picking a selection of those. John and Perry are going to choose their favorite. And if you're in Sydney, I'll hand deliver the book to you. Or if you're overseas, I will send it. That will not be a factor that stops me sending the best comment the book. So may the best comment win. I'm so excited to read them all and I'll be responding to all of them. Let's dive in. You're listening to a day one dot FM show.

5:10Georgie Healy: In the Blink of AI is proudly sponsored by Deal, the global HR and payroll platform that's behind the expansion of companies like Revolut, Shopify, or fans of the show Eleven Labs who quadrupled their workforce in 54 countries. Build your global team with Deal.

5:36Georgie Healy: Look, we get it. Global hiring and payroll can be a headache. Companies like Shopify, Revolut and Eleven Labs already scale internationally with Deal. And Airwallex, the leading AI finance platform. They manage and pay over 1 ,185 employees across 16 countries, and they build their global team with Deel. So visit deel.com slash day one and start expanding your business today.

6:13John and Perry, thank you so much for joining in the Blink of AI. Very excited for this. My listeners are very excited for this. I have finished listening to the entirety of Tech Bros. We will get into it. But before we do that, John, can you tell us about in August 2024, there was a Greek restaurant and there was a particular event that happened at the Rocks in Sydney. Take us to that night. Who was in the room and what was that about? It's a restaurant called Plews. It's actually not around anymore, would you believe? So maybe that's a bit of a porthead of what was to come. It's a worry. That's right, lovely.

6:46It's a nice setting down there, to be honest. It's, you know, it's near, you can see the harbour bridge sort of one way and you've got the passenger terminal nearby as well, you know, with the big cruise ships coming in. So it is pretty nice. And, yeah, a certain Scott Farquhar was holding a farewell or a farewell was organised for Scott, his wife and his PA, because he was leaving Atlassian, who's the company that we've written about in our book, the, you know, billion-dollar, you know, tens, hundreds of billions of dollars at one stage, So, you know, tech sensation that Scott co-founded with a certain Mike Cannon-Brooks.

7:18So Scott has his farewell at Plews and there's a few billionaires in the room. There's people like Brett Blundy, who's a retail billionaire. There's a few others as well. You know, Luke Aneer, who's pretty close to, he's not a billionaire, but he's pretty close to Scott. He's a safety culture founder. A few other people like that too. There's a certain billionaire that's not there though. And his name is Mike Cannon-Brooks. And he's the guy that co-founded Atlassian with Scott. So why wasn't he there? Why wasn't he there? Weren't quite as friendly, we found out, as had been portrayed probably for a couple of decades up to that point.

7:49The Atlassian stories, one of collaboration, one of teamwork, one of two great mates, you know, building this incredible company together. When it comes time for one of them to leave, the other guy's not there. And that set off a few sort of, you know, question marks in our head and here we are. 100 % and we're going to dive into, you know, the rise and the fall and the potential rise again. And it really like cast me there, especially a lot of the listeners are founders and they work in the startup ecosystem. Many of them worked at Atlassian and it was seen as, you know, one of, if not the company to work for in my circles, at least.

8:26Perry, do you think that that dinner with, you know, the farewell dinner for Scott, was it a celebration? Was it sombre? What if we were invited and we were in the category of people that worry about the CGT tax? What do you think the vibe would have been? It's a good question. I think it would have been a real set of mixed emotions for Scott, actually. Yeah, look, not having his co-founder there, but by design or otherwise, is, you know, quite stark and quite hard to get by. But as we sort of, you know, originally detailed in The Australian, and, you know, we go into a lot more detail in the book, you know, there'd been this falling out between Mike and Scott, you know, that hadn't been divulged at all.

9:09you know, even within the company, really. And so I imagine sort of Scott, you know, was pleased to be surrounded by some friends, obviously some family, people he'd known in that sort of startup ecosystem for years. But it was probably a little bit bittersweet as well. You know, he is a guy at the time, you know, mid-40s, and he's out of the company, which he co-founded. In the book, I remember very distinctly before IPO-ing and they're getting asked all the time, When are you going to IPO? When are you going to IPO? And Scott says in your book, I plan on being at this company for another 50 years.

9:45It's not that far after he's saying that, that he's, you know, at his own farewell dinner. I can't help but feel a little bit sad about it in some ways. It was the culmination of quite a fascinating day because they have a farewell at Atlassian, right? But Scott is not in the office for the farewell. Now, by this time, it's only a couple years ago and we've gone through COVID and so there's the work from anywhere policy that Atlassian instituted so you know the guys aren't necessarily in the office a lot right so okay that's sure you have a big town hall and obviously a lot of people dial in over zoom or whatever it is right teams whatever their choice is and so they they have this sort of virtual celebration and you know Mike says things but Scott's not there but then he does journey in to town for this farewell dinner and there's all these people there that he's you know these guys have sort of paved the way for over time like Mel and Cliff from Canva for example like Luke and Neera said as well there's there's there's a whole bunch of these sort of you know tech entrepreneurs that look up to these guys but you know Mike's missing and so that really as you say painted a quite a vivid picture for us it's a very I think important sort of moment of what's gone down between the two You can be humble, but I'm not going to be humble for you.

11:02John, you've been ranking Australia's richest people since 2008. BRW, then the AFR, eight editions of the Richest 250. Perry, you've been at Bloomberg, the AFR, now a business editor at The Australian. Between the two of you, did it sting that Mike and Scott didn't want to talk to you after many years of accolades and prestige in Australian news and media? I think billionaires are more sensitive than you think, right? So if you're not writing nice things about them all the time. And we do write nice things about people at times. The Rich is 250 is probably a bit of a celebration of success in that regard, right?

11:38Not every story is in those editions, but yeah, these guys are pretty sensitive. They doesn't sting. I'm not surprised. I mean, you take the good and the bad in journalism, right? We've had plenty of people slam doors in our faces or swear at us over time, right? Of course, yeah. It goes with the territory, yeah. We were obviously hopeful that they'd sit down with us. We'd get their side of the story. It also wasn't a big surprise that they didn't. Quite early on, the reception to our first couple of stories in The Australian was pure panic within Atlassian. I mean, they hadn't really dealt with any sort of period of negative news, to be honest.

12:14Tech, I think the tech industry generally, you know, there's a, sure, there's been a bit of a reckoning in the last few years. But there's also years and years of positive press. you know whether it's you know the geniuses of the startups the the money they've made the wealth making our lives easier and so on so yeah I think this sort of really caught them on the back foot and you know sort of tested the relationship. I'm just going to say it I loved this book I really loved this book I mentioned I read the whole thing I mentioned that I've got friends that worked at the company I've worked in tech for 15 years and there was so much that I wasn't aware of that you guys covered, including the falling out, but including many other things.

12:53I want to talk about what I would call only in Australia. Like there are certain things that even for billionaires, I'm like, wow, this is the most Australian thing I've ever read. Number one is property. You guys really like the exact properties, the suburbs, the costs, the spending spree. I would love, Perry, for you to tell me a little bit about the$71 million house that was next door to a$100 million house. What went wrong there and what happened there? You're right. It's a classic Australian story. So just to set the scene, Point Piper in these eastern suburbs, the most luxurious mansions and housing in the city.

13:37New Southhead Road, So, you know, as you're coming down New South Heads Road, there's two landmark properties next door to each other, both owned back in the day by members of the Fairfax dynasty, I guess. And Scott Farquhar had, as you say, paid$71 million for a lane. Pretty run down, magnificent setting, huge ground, private access to its own beach, quite beautiful, but crumbling. He thought, look, this is the perfect family home. a bunch of kids, and they were at the nearby Cranbrook School as well. So he was sort of, that was going to be their forever home. They were never going to live in it as is.

14:13There was always going to be a reno, hence we were sort of coming to the Aussie connection. Classic. They want a veranda on it. It was about a year later, Mike then spent, what were you,$100 million, John? $100 million, yeah. $100 million on Fairwater, which was literally next door. And at the time, I think it was the Sotheby's real estate agent. It was like, wow, this is a real moment for Australia. You know, this is the new money flowing into the top echelons of Australian real estate. It's tech money. You know, these billionaires and, you know, how incredible that they're living next to each other.

14:50All seem to be amazing. As I think we detailed in the book, they knocked a fence down so the kids could play between the two gardens and so on. And it was all going well until the Farquaad, the original inhabitants at Point Piper, put in plans for quite an expensive reno. Most Australian thing I've ever heard. Just a mere$37 million they were going to spend revamping the house and doing all sorts of things. I'll put a pool in. There was going to be one room of the original, I think it was the dining room, that was going to sort of stay there. And it's pretty much in its original. It's a knockdown.

15:26It was pretty much a knockdown job. I'll let John carry on with what happened from there. Take it away. So we've got the$37 million. That's all it's going to cost to redo this. There was talk of a rooftop tennis court and so on as well. And then, you know, as Perry says, there's that quintessential Australian moment where the neighbours sort of go, oh I don't know about this what's going on here who are the neighbours it's the Cannon Brookses this is the issue right so they see these plans or they hear about the plans because the plans are never lodged with the council right they put them out in the media just sort of you know and look as we've detailed in the book this comes at a time or just after a time where Mike and Scott have basically spent a year not talking to each other at Atlassian so the cracks are starting to form at work they're not getting along as well as they had in the past and they were best men at each other's weddings right.

16:17So these guys were close at a stage. And maybe it was sort of a marriage inconvenience, so to speak, but they built an amazing company. They, you know, the narrative is we're going to live next door to each other. We're great mates. But actually, it turns out one of them is quite worried about what the other's doing across the fence. It gets to a stage where Annie Cannonbrookes, Mike's, well, they're still married, but they're split now. Mike's wife puts up scaffolding to sort of like, almost like sort of project what, you know, what this monstrosity in inverted commas next door is going to look like.

16:46And this is the guy, these two guys are working with each other. They're running a$100 billion company and they're not talking about what they're doing property-wise. So it very quickly becomes apparent to Scott Farquhar and his wife, Kim Jackson, that this ain't going to fly. The neighbours, i.e. Annie and Mike, aren't happy. So the idea quickly gets put in the bin only a few weeks later. And then it's on again. So clearly they've fallen out beforehand. They've fallen out. They're not happy with each other over this amazing property scenario. Fast forward a few years and Scott's leaving the company.

17:21There's a lot that goes on in between, but really this property thing is a pretty big moment. It's huge. Another thing that I put in this category, which is the fact that I still get asked what high school I went to, which is like the hierarchical nature of Australia, the class hierarchy. You outline in the book that these guys went to very different schools. Mike, very private school. Scott middle or maybe even lower middle class upbringing do you think that plays into any of the friction or or not so much they played it up a lot that just the differences between the pair right I mean you know you know the line of work that you do with this in in technology in AI there's a lot of talk about the founder story there's great founder stories right their founder story was that you know the classic boy from the wrong side of the track so to speak in Scott you know He's from Sydney's western suburbs.

18:11It's James Roos Agricultural College. It's a selective high school, but it's a public school. Mike is, firstly, he flits between Australia and England going to boarding school, and then he ends up at Cranbrook, which is one of Sydney's premier private schools. So they meet at university. So they're doing the technology degree together. So they meet. But they are two guys from different sides of parts of the world. Does that play a part in what happens eventually? It's a really interesting way of looking at it. I mean, I suppose the way that they've both talked about it, in particular with Scott, he's always talked about his upbringing.

18:48So the fact that he talks about it a lot, maybe it is a thing that he's, you know, he talks about it, right, Perry, that, you know, he talks about going to parties in the eastern suburbs when he's, you know, a teenager or whatever, and he's like, oh, these, you know, these amazing houses, I don't quite fit in here. So maybe there is a bit of a sort of chip on that shoulder about that, And that leads to, you know, when he is actually part of the Eastern Suburbs set now, he really is. So does he feel like he's part of it? I wonder. I wonder. I really do. I married to a public school boy originally in the northern suburbs of Queensland, and I went to a private school.

19:23It's still a topic that comes up even between us, and, like, it just feels very Australian. And, you know, I didn't go to the best school. He got a much better academic record than me. but it still is that thing of like where do we send our kids oh like i wonder how much of that does actually without them realizing filter through i think they've grappled with that yeah i've like for the kids you know there's kids at cranbrook there's kids that have gone to other places as well so yeah i suspect it is an issue we were yeah john and i were just on that i mean we were quite struck by the narrative and the kind of working class upbringing which look I need to say I'm a Kiwi now an Aussie citizen but it's not really a distinction that for me most Aussies talk about a kind of a working class upbringing so yeah we were quite sort of struck by that in the narrative and you know as we sort of tried to portray a bit in the book it's probably a pretty typical Aussie upbringing for millions of people you go to the same place you know every summer for your holidays you know there's not a huge amount of money to splash around but you know you might have a trampoline out the back that sort of thing so yeah it was it was an interesting just for us to sort of unpick that thread a little bit.

20:42Speaking of unpicking threads and you know you guys have been covering tech and business and finance for many years between you how did you choose what to write about did you haggle did you

20:57Georgie Healy: say I'll do Scott you do my like like how did you how did you decide and and then how did you bring the book together did you cover the same things and then go oh gosh someone's got to cover that now well yeah you firstly if I mean you try and structure it right so you part of the part of the the talk that you have with publishers and a publisher approached us to do it right to start with so it makes us go oh how would what sort of a book would you want to do so you end up writing a chapter outline right and if you play your cards right you end up with an even amount of chapters in that outline then you can split it in half right so i mean it probably was a case right perry where like you know i was probably you know had a penchant for like the yeah you know charting all the houses and all the money that comes in right it plays to my richest 250 background Perry's written so much about the renewable energy, green energy infrastructure sector that parts of the book are pretty natural for Perry.

21:49So we sort of tried to split it a little bit that way and then you probably end up, you know, editing each other's work as you go and try to... We had some great editors at HarperCollins too, by the way, that sort of, you know, probably knocked our copy into shape. So that's a pretty rough way of putting it. Definitely. That's fascinating. Yeah, yeah. No, I think we had a bit of a laugh about this at the launch of HarperCollins. I mean, John sort of cracked the whip, which is great. I often leave things to the last minute, but, you know, it worked really well, the two of us working together. And, you know, there are a few perhaps unexpected things.

22:22I think when we first started writing the book, it might have been November, December last year, you know, we might come to this. I mean, that was definitely, was it a chapter? Maybe it was. But then by the time we got to deadline, you know, that was like, wow, this is quite a big issue now for Atlassian. so you know it's just interesting sort of from you know conception to finish a few kind of little mini themes like that evolved as well guys this is a weekly show and i'm like from one week to the next the information becomes void i don't i can't even imagine writing a book with ai i'm so sick of talking about what is it the sass i'm so sick of the sasspocalypse although like i did want to ask you guys about that you do finish the book and you know i'm getting ahead of myself and we'll kind of go back a little bit but you know the last thing is stock price was plummeting for some time and you know salesforce and the like like many b2b sas companies you know were really grappling with ai and whether they could navigate and last i looked it's coming back up again do you guys have any thoughts on that and why So it's been an incredibly rollercoaster year, right?

23:34I mean, you're right. I mean, if you go from January 1 and the stock price, you know, it more than halves, right? Very quickly. And now we get to, you know, fast forward to sort of almost the middle of September and it's actually above what it was in January 1. So what does that tell us? It tells us that the market, I think, as a whole is struggling to price, you know, what's happening with AI to, you know, SaaS companies, right? So where are we going with this? I mean, firstly, I think they probably oversold all these companies and now they're roaring back. So probably the truth is somewhere in between if you're a savvy stock picker, right?

24:13But people have made money on the way down, clearly, and they've made money on the way up as well. I think it's probably, what is Atlassian worth? I mean, I know people that say, look, it should be a$10 billion company. It should be a$20 billion company. There's plenty of analysts that have got like, you know, share price recommendation targets that are well above where it is now. So I think people are, you know, it's an industry that you struggle to put a normal sort of, you know, inverted commas, multiple, you know, profit multiple sort of metric on it anyway, right? So you're trying to probably have some sort of a revenue, you know, projection on the overall valuation of a company.

24:50So it's hard to peg. Is it as bad as it was? Probably not. Is it as good as it is now? Probably not. So I think the truth is maybe somewhere in between. But, you know, I'm not in charge of Atlassian and Mike's doing pretty well to talk about that comeback story at the moment. In the book, I remember when AI first was coming out, you know, Mike was like, AI is the best thing for Atlassian. It's great for us. It's brilliant. And then the stock players, you know, said other things. And you're right. Like, if we all knew how to price it, we'd all be on your rich list, I'm sure. If you had to predict, though, do you think Atlassian can navigate this time in AI?

25:29I just, you know, word on the street, this just out as Salesforce and Anthropics Claude working together. You know, I thought it was one or the other. You're either a B2B SaaS company or you're a vibe coding using the AI tools platform. But, you know, there seems to be grey area in the middle. I'm putting you guys on the spot. but do you think that Atlassian can navigate AI and be kind of like a 2.0 version of itself? Well, it's trying to be. That's what it's trying to be. I mean, it's kind of a little bit of a leopard changing its spots in a way. So, look, I think what he's trying to do is certainly be a streamlined version of what Atlassian was, right?

26:11For so long, the Atlassian story was, you know, we're going to have more employees, a very big employee target, right? there's big job cuts earlier this year. There's a bit of a change of direction with some executives. So I think that story, if you're trying to be more nimble and cut costs, the market's reacted to that very well. I think that Mike is excellent at that narrative about how good AI can be for Atlassian. I think internally, I don't think it's as nimble as what he'd like to portray. I think there's still huge question marks on that from an ongoing basis. I think that the products that they have are probably sticky enough to, you know, still have some very excellent revenue results.

26:57You know, it's still a big company, so to speak. Is it as big a company as they thought it might be? I don't think so. But it might be a smaller big company, so to speak, but, you know, probably more profitable, in inverted commas. Yes, well articulated. I think I was going to say, you know, there's obviously an interesting comparison with Canva as well, which I don't know if Atlassian is necessarily in a stronger position. But, you know, being there, done that on the IPO, you know, doesn't really need to prove itself necessarily. Obviously, you know, Canva's sort of got this pressure with the IPO at some stage next year and it's got the spotlight on.

27:35Yeah, I think there's real questions. I think a lot of the success for both those companies will hinge on, you know, they've got decades of, you know, user data, you know, all the, for Atlassian, there's really just a couple of core products, you know, Confluence and Jira. And then if you can successfully sort of tack AI on to make that easier for your customers to use, then, you know, perhaps they can pull it off. But it's definitely still in the balance, yeah. Yeah, this seems to be what Salesforce is navigating to, right? We've got the historical data, got the customer data. There's nothing we've not seen before.

28:11We're able to navigate every scenario. And with the power of AI, one plus one equals three. I hope so for our Australian companies. That would be brilliant. On the topic of Australian companies and Australian billionaires, do you think now that it's not as easy to create a B2B SaaS moat like we used to, Is there a chance for a Mike and Scott of the future? If, you know, I'm thinking of all the founders that listen to the show that put themselves through the pain of having a startup for those potential upsize rewards if they're successful. Is that dream gone with AI? I think everyone seems to be hopping into data centers or the derivative of data centers at the moment.

28:57That's the AI story for the entrepreneurs out there. It feels like at the moment, you know, So these are sort of a lot of pivoting going that way. I'm sort of thinking about Firmus and Iron and Charon AI. These are the hot, these are the Atlassians and Canvas now that those guys were, you know, 5, 10, well, in Atlassian's case, 20 years ago. So it seems to be all the attention is going to the data centre dynamic here in Australia, right? So those are the cool guys now. Now, look, there's other ones, you know, around the mark, like even like the swipe jobs of the world and others like that too, right, that are sort of kind of in space where you're looking at.

29:41But I really feel that so much attention, it's either on crypto gambling still, which is something completely different. Not recommended financial advice, everyone. Or AI data centres. Those are the two frontiers, right? what I mean like you know the Olly Curtis story or or you know people like that I mean that's that's where um that's where seems to be uh you know that's where the money is going yeah all eyes are on for the moment I'm noticing I'm also noticing perhaps a trend in deep tech and hardware perhaps but it's it's so hard for any of us to understand such a domain specific field right there's some Australian entrepreneurs that are doing some really fascinating things you know there's a guy called Tim Davis who's in Modula, which is an Australian, which he's an Australian guy over in San Francisco that got sold to Qualcomm for billions of dollars pretty recently.

30:30I mean, there's, you know, and that's sort of, that's an AI company. So you do have people like that, you know, not necessarily here in Australia, but there are, you know, interesting entrepreneurs doing interesting things still. Yeah, but it does feel like from a local, you know, ASX point of view or something like that, it's all about trying to get the data centers on board. Speaking of incredible entrepreneurs, I'm going to make you do something very silly. Are you ready? I'm going to play a game and it's kind of like debating. I don't know if you guys did debating back in high school. I'm going to make one of you be Scott, one of you be Mike, and you have to plead your case why you're the best entrepreneur.

31:05I'm happy to delegate or you can pick your favourite. Are you guys ready? Yeah, maybe you delegate who's who you are. All right, John, you are Scott and Perry, you are Mike. You each have a minute to tell me why you're the best entrepreneur from Atlassian. Go, John. Scott. I'm sorry yeah Scott well look you know I'm the brains behind the operation right I'll take you a bit of liberty there no look I'm the one that was really you know calm and you know and collected and you know really kept things you know on the straight and narrow I kept you know I kept us going forward I was you know I was the sort of I was the sane and rational sort of person while Mike was the dreamer and so I'm you know I'm the one who you know kept kept things rolling and made sure that the structure was there.

31:50Then I've also gone, with my money, my beliefs, done some pretty interesting things. I haven't just sprayed the money around. I've focused on some really good ways, I think, of making money too. So I'm talking about investing in infrastructure and investing in things like airports and things that make really good returns. I've got a bunch of big US technology stocks too. So I'm a deep thinker and I'm a bit more methodical about things so I keep you know what I've what I've made and have built on that so and you know I think that the company isn't as good without me and I think that's that's the difference right if without me there there's a bit of magic that is not able to be not able to happen.

32:32Well said you're in the hot seat now Mike Cannon Brooks. Look it's hard to go past this. I've got the private jet. So, no, no, but seriously, it's a good start, private jet. But the first time I ever met Mike, it was a few years ago. This was when he was really full on into climate, all his renewable energy investments. And he went along to the Powerhouse Museum here in Sydney and did a one-hour talk on basically on climate change and he was very impressive and he literally you know he's obviously you know an extremely smart guy he'd spent a couple of weeks literally just reading books and learning about it and you know as John and I have sort of you know laughed about quite what Scott made of this you know when he was probably trying to run the company at that point.

33:27But I think his passion for climate, for renewable energy, sun cable, look, the grand vision of exporting renewables to Singapore is probably not going to come to fruition. But he does think big. He's perhaps almost a Twiggy and Andrew Forrest style person in that regard. Is he going to pull everything off? No, but he gives it a crack. So maybe that counts for something. Oh gosh, the Forrester debacle in the book as well and the back and forth between them was amazing as well. I do want to ask you as well, just I think I went through a journey. I think I always was like, well, Mike's more fun at parties.

34:15He's my favourite. And then as the book went on, it was like oh actually Scott actually seems to be very passionate as well he's not a robot I think for whatever reason in my mind there was like the charismatic entrepreneurial Mike and then the robotic CTO type Scott like almost like a Steve Jobs Steve Wozniak situation in my mind and as the book progressed I went on a bit of a journey there's elements of that to it yeah I mean I think Scott sort of probably is a bit more socially awkward in that way and maybe can't you know project like Mike can. He can mix a mean punch though like he did at university with all these sort of alcoholic ingredients.

34:54So like, you know, maybe a bit more of a party. I thought you meant a physical punch for a moment. I missed that in the book. Yes. You put the recipe in. Good party host, right? We should make that. You should make that at the book launch. Scott's punch. You really should. Well, there you go. Maybe he's a better host than you think, right? Yeah. Because I did engineering as my undergrad. the engineers can can pop back a few drinks that's for sure yeah yeah yeah okay so thank you for for doing that the next and very critical thing i want you guys to do we promise this on linkedin is to sign the book and also put a prediction in the book for whoever writes your favorite comment in seven days time after this goes out gets each of your prediction in the front cover.

35:40Are you willing to sign that now? Yeah, sure. Amazing. And while John is signing that, Perry, you're in the hot seat again. One person at Atlassian said it was the most toxic place they had ever worked. Do you think they're bitter or do you think that could have some fairness to it? Definitely some fairness. Yeah, this was a really interesting theme of the book and again had gone unreported that there was this quite toxic culture within Atlassian, but also within Mike's own family office. And look, you know, should it have been one or two rogue ex-employees, you know, maybe you shrug it off, but, you know, we spoke to, you know, dozens of people.

36:31Again, it was quite a sort of, you know, layered conversation with a lot of them. A lot of them were really proud to have Atlassian, you know, on their CV. You know, it's one of the greatest places they've worked. But the flip side was they felt that that incredible culture had, you know, completely, you know, gone backwards. It became sort of quite difficult for some, you know, some of the old timers to sort of reconcile, you know, what the company was turning into. You also had this, you know, quite powerful group of women that surrounded Mike and the Assassins that again proved to be quite divisive.

37:10There was a kind of a team Mike and a team Scott sort of dichotomy within the company which look yeah probably just sort of underlined you know some of the differences that were emerging. Fascinating place to probably be in its heyday but then it would be really hard as it at best got more bureaucratic and at worst got literally toxic. Yeah, look, I think John and I have been saying the last couple of weeks since the book launched, I mean, you know, these two, you know, early 20s, just the two of them in a Glebe share house, starting the company, best mates, best men at each other's weddings. For the first 100, even 200 employees, they went out for lunch, you know, they took them to the pub you know in order to meet their staff but quite quickly the place was growing so much that that sort of flew out the window so they had to delegate they had to have managers and you know other people that hired staff and yeah I think it was there's been a lot of soul searching for both Mike and Scott about kind of you know losing a little bit of control over you know what what they first created and I think it's probably a broader problem that a lot of company founders have to be honest yeah yeah I can imagine that's the case while you sign the book yes John I have a question for you this fallout that we've been talking about between the two founders a Silicon Valley councillor was brought in to try and mediate try and like make them make up make them be best friends again why do you think that didn't work oh look that by the way that that sort of thing is is more common than you think i suspect particularly in america in in the u.s it is still a shock to to hear about these things right i think i think it works and it patches things up for a time right so yeah there's i mean it gets to a stage where i think as we we talked about probably before there's the year of not talking so to speak as people in atlassian dubbed it now you know were they literally not talking most of the time, yeah, pretty much, but there was probably still some, you know, a little bit of, I mean, they would have had to have board meetings and some perfunctory sort of stuff.

39:20It was clear that they were not getting on. So there's an intervention effectively staged by wives, by PAs, that says, you guys have got to sort this out. So they fly off to America. They're in Napa Valley and they're in a pretty luxurious sort of retreat where they have to thrash things out. And look, you know, things are better, but they're never going to be like they were, right? And I think that's the thing with Atlas. It's never going to be like it was at that height where it literally was the best place to work. As Perry said, they were hanging out with the people. I mean, how can you be like that with 1 ,000 people against 100 rather than 10 ,000 or whatever we got to in the end?

39:58So it's hard. And I think it's hard to... And then COVID hits as well. So then that collegiality goes out the window. So they're not seeing each other anymore all the time anyway. And they never really get back to the office, so to speak. So there's already that distance, whether it's physically or mentally, and it culminates in Scott deciding he's had enough, given that the way things are going internally, he's like, that's it, I'm leaving. And the two odd years that it's been since he left, and he's the chair of the Tech Council, and obviously Kim, his wife and him, they have some pretty impressive investments through their family office, Skip, right?

40:47In fact, I interviewed there a few years ago, Skip Capital. Their portfolio is very impressive to your point. Absolutely right, yeah. Not an actual VC, but it's definitely one of the ones to watch for sure. Very good investments, whether they're sort of just decent infrastructure or some of the more, you know both of these guys by the way early investors in canva and done very very well mike in particular so in these two years connor's kept very quiet now obviously the kids are growing up you know he works out a lot he's a great you know he does a lot of bike riding the triathlon stuff you'd see him around sydney all the time right so but then it's like well what are we doing here like you've got so much of your life to live still you've got so much to give as an entrepreneur so So the fact that I think there's a void in that life that, you know, you obviously feel with Atlassian.

41:38So without him there, it's sort of like it's not the same without them together. And that's where there's height. I think that's an issue. I did want to touch on this. Can you guys predict, do you think they ever will become friends again? And would they ever go into business again? I mean, just to say, you know, for the record, or the official narrative from Mike and from Scott is they still meet for a beer and they still talk. You know, will they be best mates again? I don't think so. Not from the people we've spoken to. Quite what the future holds in terms of, you know, leadership will be interesting to watch.

42:19You know, do they both pretty much got equal shareholding? I'm at Atlassian. Does that remain the case? You know, should there be an imbalance there? You know, does one of them cash out potentially? So, yeah, there's a lot of questions, I think. But, yeah, it certainly feels that Scott's probably got something else, you know, beyond the important work he's doing with his family office and the tech council. Could it be another start-up? Could it be another role of some sort? Quite possibly, yeah. It's interesting because Mike is at the moment pursuing this sun cable dream, right? It's building this huge renewable farm in Northern Territory.

43:03It was going to pipe energy up to Singapore. They pivoted. What are they doing? Data centres. That's the hottest thing, right? So the idea now, they're in talks with Anthropic. We've written about this where, you know, Anthropic is this sort of anchor tenant for a massive data centre that gets built in the Northern Territory. Now, Cannonbrookes needs money. Now, who is in the space that has money knows their infrastructure as a sort of, you know, green energy sort of, you know, bent as well. I mean, you know, Scott Farquhar and Kim Jackson, Skip would be an ideal investor in Suncable. If it happens, I'm timestamping this episode.

43:41So after writing this book, you guys are still friends. There's no fences like getting, you know, built up, no scaffolding between you two. I know you live in different cities. I was just saying, I live in Melbourne and parallelistic cities so there's that natural, we never be next to each other. Maybe that's the key, right? So, no, we're still – and we really are, like, not like these guys. We really are still on talking terms, yeah. That's really good. Do you reckon the guys have read the book? Like, low-key, they've read the book, right? I don't reckon they would have. Do you reckon? No. I'd be surprised because, I mean, I know that other billionaires have had books written about them and I know that they haven't read them.

44:16I think people like this would have someone read it for them and report to them if there's any dramas. and they, you know, they've probably, so I'd be, I'd be, they might listen to the audio version because, you know, can you imagine if someone photographed, I mean, we'd love it, right? Photographed, reading the copy of Down the Cafe or something. If you're watching this from Barrel, get a photo. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I'd be surprised. I mean, not that I don't think they were very sensitive about it because believe me, they were. We've got the legal letters to prove that. But I doubt that they would think it would be beneath the morrigan.

44:52I reckon that'd be so curious. I would read a book about me. You'd read a book about you guys, wouldn't you? Surely. Oh, look, I mean, you know, I think we're hopeful that they would read it. And one of the things I've reflected on a bit is, I mean, sure, you know, we had all our newspaper headlines and so on. But, you know, as I'm sure you could attest to, you know, a large chunk of the book, not massively sensationalist, It's the real growth of this incredible Australian success story and how it starts with an idea here in Sydney and grows into this amazing company. And sure, the last five years or so have been a rollercoaster, no doubt.

45:35But yeah, I think from that perspective, if either of them did read it, I'm sure that I'd be a little bit surprised by how it turned out. I'm really thrilled that there's this book. I only yesterday posted on my Instagram all my favourite business books, you know, that I really love. And there's Shoe Dog and there's like all these great books. And there's your book, which is about Australian founders and very few else. And I think that if you're using the technology, you need to know who's behind it. And I think there should be more books about Australian entrepreneurs. I think these guys, I mean, I think when you step back for a moment, they've packed a hell of a lot into 20 years, right?

46:14with just the company itself is quite an amazing story. But all the other stuff that they've done around it personally and investing-wise or climate-wise or campaign-wise, they're interesting characters. And I think we hope that that sort of colour of a couple of really interesting characters who have done a hell of a lot of stuff comes through. I believe it does. Last question on this is, who is the book for? What kind of people should read it? Because obviously I've been working in tech and I'm like, woof, there's a lot I didn't know about. But who else? Who should be buying this and where can they buy it?

46:48I think there's a few different angles to that. There's definitely people that want to know about the founder story, how to build it, the how-to story. There's people that want to, you know, the lifestyle of the rich and the famous, sort of most voyeuristic sort of element to it as well. And, yeah, there's lessons for leadership as well. And just, yeah, as I said, a colourful tale of a couple of famous people. Yeah, like I've sort of said, You know, a couple of guys with an idea and scaling it into this business. You know, I think a lot of us have at one stage thought about starting up our own business or what would that be like, how hard it is.

47:25And we sort of capture, especially in the early years, you know, a lot of the fun, the chaos. You know, it could have turned out very differently, but they had a brilliant original idea and, you know, carried it forward. So, yeah, I think people are sort of quite captivated by that. And, yeah, what's the line? You can buy it from all good bookstores. And listen to it online as well. Yeah, listen to it online. The audiobook, obviously Amazon and other online marketplaces. But, yeah, it's got a good reception so far. Well, guys, write a comment in this YouTube clip if you can, and one of you will get this copy with the predictions inside it.

48:04But I listen to it on Spotify. So after you listen to this, you can also listen to the audio book. If you're listening on Spotify, you're like ready to go. Thank you guys so much for being on In the Blink of AI. The time went so quickly and I loved this. Thank you. Thanks for having us. Yeah, thanks very much.

48:23Georgie Healy: Thank you so much for listening to In the Blink of AI. If you want to go deeper on anything we've spoken about today, I write a weekly substat called Attention is All I Need. Yes, it's hilarious. It's a pun. and essentially I go into AI rants, tech news, events I'm going to and more. It's bite-sized and I hear it's awesome. The link is in the show notes below.