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Comment by elvinyung | Hacker News Reader

Is Atlassian not considered Australian?

(Well, I guess it's public now.)

Atlassian is certainly an Australian company. HQ is Sydney, both co-founders are Australian, and probably more employees in that office than any other.

Atlassian is definitely Australian. But if we count them, there are a lot more Australian tech businesses worth more than US$1B: Acconex was just bought by Oracle for US$1.2B, and we have tech businesses from the last web boom like Seek.com (~US$5B), or going even further back, businesses like MYOB (~US$1.7B).

Pretty sure they moved years ago because of taxes. [1]

[1] http://www.afr.com/leadership/entrepreneur/atlassian-leads-c...

Just because your company is incorporated in Delaware does not mean its running the show there.

Sure, I was thinking that may have been why they were not considered an Australian unicorn in regards to the article in question.

They are UK-headquartered and list on the NASDAQ. Not sure what proportion of employees are Australian and spiritually I would still claim them as Australian. They would also have comfortably been a unicorn-level company before the UK restructure and the listing, with substantial profits.

Nope, Atlassian's HQ is Sydney. Definitely Australian-based.

Atlassian is legally domiciled in the UK, not Sydney. Their legal appears to mostly be HQ'd in San Francisco per all their legal documents.

I understand that doesn't mean they aren't primarily operating out of Sydney, although I don't know how one would say that definitely given the distribution (unless eg that's where all their core management operates?). How many employees do they have in Sydney? Where does the top management primarily operate from?

I'd rely on the fact that the company contact page lists "Sydney (HQ)" as the first office, followed by "San Francisco (HQ)" and then the non-HQ offices, as an assertion that they consider themselves to be an Australian-based company.

As for top management, I believe both their co-CEOs are Sydney-based, and Mike Cannon-Brookes is well known for his occasional forays into Australian politics and public affairs...

> How many employees do they have in Sydney?

Based on sightings of dudebros wearing branded shwag in coffee shops and bars around here, I'd say quite a lot...

Saw a guy on the train the other day wearing Atlassian socks (with beige sandals).

> How many employees do they have in Sydney?

Currently 1053 - by far our largest office. According to our people directory, we have no active employees in the UK.

I’m going to guess that the “privately backed” qualifier either disqualifies them because they’re now public, or because they reached the $1B valuation before they took VC money.

Similar story with most other AU companies that have reached that level, local IPO early or reach the valuation without institutional money. The latter also meaning valuation is pure external speculation.

My first thought as well.

Are they excluded for going public? Weren't they over a billion well before that?

Or did they not take outside money?

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