As we gear up for 2025 SaaStr Annual, May 13-15 in SF Bay, we wanted to do a deep dive on some of the best sessions from past Annuals. As Atlassian was crossing $10B ARR, CRO Cameron Deatsch came to SaaStr Annual to share how they build a platform and ecosystem to fuel that growth.
5 Nonobvious Learnings from Atlassian’s Path to $10B
1. The “Anti-Enterprise” Enterprise Model
Most surprising insight: Atlassian’s growth challenges conventional enterprise wisdom. While competitors invested in huge sales teams, Atlassian actually restricted direct customer interaction. By forcing self-service, they inadvertently created stronger customer champions who had to deeply learn the product themselves. This “hands-off” approach counterintuitively led to more organic expansion within enterprises.
2. The “Feature Request Arbitrage” Strategy
Hidden gem in their marketplace origin: They turned their biggest product weakness (feature request backlog) into their greatest strength. Instead of treating feature requests as a liability, they used them as market research for third-party developers. Each rejected feature request became a potential business opportunity for partners. This created a natural product-market fit validation system for their marketplace.
3. The “Reverse Channel” Effect
Counterintuitive channel finding: Unlike traditional partner programs that start with recruitment, Atlassian let partners self-select by becoming power users first. These partners had already built their business on Atlassian before becoming official partners. This “reverse channel” approach meant partners were profitable from day one, eliminating the usual channel ramp-up problems.
4. The “Profitable Contradiction” Principle
Fascinating paradox: Atlassian achieved higher enterprise penetration by making their products less “enterprise-ready” out of the box. By keeping core products simpler and pushing customization to marketplace apps, they created a more adaptable platform. This deliberate product constraint drove the ecosystem’s growth – the opposite of the usual enterprise software approach of building every feature in-house.
5. The “Ecosystem Before Product” Rule
Most counterintuitive scaling insight: In crucial decisions, Atlassian often prioritized ecosystem health over product advantages. Example: When building their cloud platform, they deliberately limited some of their own products’ capabilities to ensure partners had room to add value. This self-imposed constraint seemed to hurt short-term product competitiveness but dramatically increased long-term platform value.
Each of these insights challenges conventional SaaS wisdom, yet they’ve been crucial to Atlassian’s unique growth trajectory. The common thread? Success came not from following standard enterprise software playbooks, but from systematically breaking them in ways that created new kinds of value.
These aren’t just theoretical insights – they’re backed by their scaling metrics:
- 240,000+ paid customers with minimal sales touch
- $2B+ in marketplace transactions despite (or because of) core product constraints
- 700+ solution partners who found profitability before formal partnership
- Sub-15% sales and marketing costs (versus 40-50% industry standard)
- $3B+ revenue achieved by often saying “no” to direct enterprise feature requests
The key takeaway? Building a $10B ecosystem sometimes means doing the exact opposite of what enterprise software conventional wisdom suggests. It’s not just about breaking the rules – it’s about breaking them in ways that create new, more scalable models of value creation.
And we’ll see you at 2025 SaaStr Annual, May 13-15 in SF Bay!!
