The first wedge was free help
In my September 12, 2021 Atlassian issue with Ruchin Kulkarni, the interesting move came before Jira was a product. The founders wrote free documentation for a Swedish software product, used the resulting demand to expose a bad services business, and then built their own internal tool into the thing customers actually wanted.
Scott and Mike initially tried to sell support for a Swedish infrastructure product to US customers from Australia. The problem was simple: the product had poor documentation.
They wrote the documentation themselves and published it for free. It worked as a wedge because customers could find useful answers and then discover the people who understood the product. It also backfired. The documentation solved trivial problems, leaving the founders with the hardest support requests at 4 a.m., paid at $300 only when they successfully solved the issue.
That is a useful warning for content-led distribution. Content should create the next commercial conversation, but it can also attract the wrong work if the product and customer boundary are unclear.
Productize the internal tool
The founders liked building software more than supporting it. They had made internal tools for their own internet business: online documentation, a CMS, visitor tracking, email archiving, and an issue tracker called Atlassian Support System.
The issue tracker became Jira. The first audience was software developers because developers actively looked for tools and worked with other teams inside the company. Within its first year, the source says Jira reached more than 300 customers; the next year it grew more than three times to 1,000-plus.
That is the part I would copy from a services business. Do not ask, “What software can we sell?” Ask, “What repeated internal tool is solving the same ugly problem for us and for our customers?”
Make distribution cheaper than a booth
Atlassian could not afford a $20,000–$50,000 conference booth. The founders brought 15–20 cases of beer to a JavaOne session, put Atlassian labels on them, and spent about $3,000. The speakers gave them a shout-out, and the cheap sponsorship bought them attention that looked much more expensive.
They also made customers into billboards. The issue says the most expensive product version included a T-shirt, and customers sometimes paid an extra $3,000 for it. The shirt was a pricing feature, a status signal, and distribution.
By 2007, the source says Atlassian had about 10,000 customers across close to 100 countries. The article’s later market-cap and acquisition analysis is a historical argument from the source; it is not a result I am updating here.
The founder checklist
If a services business is trying to become a product company, I would ask:
- What support question repeats often enough to become a product?
- Does free documentation attract the customer you want, or only harder support work?
- Which audience actively searches for a tool and can pull it into other teams?
- What cheap distribution asset can do the job of an expensive booth?
- Can a paid tier include a status or sharing mechanism customers want anyway?
The takeaway
Atlassian did not separate product and distribution into two departments. The documentation found the users. The internal tool became Jira. The customers, shirts, pages, and weird conference stunts kept the loop moving.
Sources and original research
Adapted from my original Atlassian/Jira First 1000 issue, co-written with Ruchin Kulkarni and published September 12, 2021. The historical pricing, customer counts, tactics and product history come from that issue; the checklist is my adaptation. No current Atlassian metrics or new M&A analysis is claimed.
Updated September 20, 2026. Based on original First 1000 reporting and the sources listed above.