Forbes_USA_June_13_2017

STRATEGIES
most successful technology startups in Australian
history.
The founders, who serve as Atlassian’s cochief
executives, freely acknowledge the improbability
of their meteoric rise. “I think we’re completely
under-skilled and under-experienced for
the job that we’re in,” Cannon-Brookes deadpans.
But despite the self-effacement, they have
unquestionably built a highly disciplined business
with a continually expanding global footprint.
What began as Jira, a bug-tracking tool for
software developers, has since morphed into over
a dozen collaboration products used by many of
the world’s most prominent innovators, including
NASA, Snapchat, Twilio and Spotify.
Atlassian has 85,000 customers who pay as
little as a few dollars per person per month for
access to its software. Confluence, its knowledge-sharing
app for teams, is its most popular
after Jira. Other products include Bitbucket,
an online repository for storing code; Bamboo,
a technical-workflow interface; and Hipchat,
a messaging service that competes with Slack.
Trello, the latest addition, is a project-management
tool that helps Atlassian further appeal to
individuals and smaller, less technical teams.
In essence, Atlassian has taken on the unsexy
mission of bridging organizational and communication
gaps. If the back-end seems dry,
the applications are anything but. When developing
the software underpinning Tesla’s electric
car, Elon Musk turned to Atlassian. SpaceX
is using its software to coordinate coding teams
and rocket scientists, and NASA relied on it to
help plan the Curiosity Rover’s mission to Mars.
The customer list extends further: Airbnb,
BMW, BlackRock, Sotheby’s, Paypal, all eight
Ivy League universities and 85% of the 100 largest
companies in America.
That success has come despite Farquhar and
Cannon-Brookes’ insistence on skirting industry
norms. Atlassian has no sales staff, unheard
of in the hypercompetitive world of enterprise
software. And in an era when some tech leaders
helm more than one multibillion-dollar venture
(Jack Dorsey, Elon Musk), the cofounders are
the conspicuous duo leading a single entity.
Growth has come easily so far, but the pressure
is on for Atlassian—which posted just a
$4.4 million profit last year—to prove it deserves
its $8 billion market cap. And as it ventures
further from its technical core competency,
competitors are anything but idle. Smaller
startups like Slack and Asana are nibbling away
at market share, while industry giants like Microsoft
pose a persistent threat from above.
GLOBAL
GAME CHANGERS
GLOBAL GAME CHANGERS
These global business leaders are changing industries and lives around the world.
To make our list, leaders needed to run for-profit operations that are growing and
innovating better than their peers. They also needed to have market values of at least
$1 billion. —Edited by Lauren Gensler
Mukesh Ambani, 60
CHAIRMAN, RELIANCE IND.
INDIA
Connectivity
Bringing the internet to India’s
masses. Oil and gas tycoon entered
the country’s telecom market,
offering fast internet at dirtcheap
prices. Gained 100 million
customers in six months. “Anything
and everything that can go
digital is going digital. India cannot
afford to be left behind.”
Ziv Aviram, 58
Amnon
Shashua, 56
COFOUNDERS, MOBILEYE
ISRAEL
Autos
Making cars smart and safe. Mobileye
is a leading provider of
camera-based assisted-driving
systems. Now building maps
that use crowd-sourced data
from millions of vehicles to give
cars human-like decision-making
skills. Intel is buying the company
for $15 billion.
Stewart
Butterfield, 44
COFOUNDER, SLACK
UNITED STATES
Workplace communication
Messaging platform Slack is
now evolving into something of
a corporate nervous system at
scores of businesses. Next: leverage
AI to automate mind-numbing
office tasks.
John and Patrick
Collison, 26, 28
COFOUNDERS, STRIPE
UNITED STATES
Digital payments
Irish brothers made it effortless
for merchants to accept
online and mobile payments.
Stripe processes billions in
trans actions every year in 25
countries. Its new business-ina-box
product, Atlas, will help
countries like Cuba leap into
e-commerce.
“Batteries are
quite exciting
and sexy things.”
JAMES DYSON,
DYSON
James Dyson, 70
FOUNDER, DYSON
UNITED KINGDOM
Home appliances
Inventor who built a better,
bag less vacuum before turning
his attention to hair dryers,
fans and now batteries.
Recent success: a batterypowered
vacuum that took 17
years and 1,000-plus prototypes
to finish.
Scott Farquhar, 37
Mike Cannon-
Brookes, 37
COFOUNDERS, ATLASSIAN
AUSTRALIA
Business productivity
See story, p. 36.
Larry Fink, 64
COFOUNDER, BLACKROCK
UNITED STATES
Money management
With $5.4 trillion in assets,
BlackRock dominates ETFs
and is strong in both active
and passive strategies. Fink
is using his firm’s vast shareholder
positions to press
boards for better behavior
in areas of executive pay,
climate-risk disclosure and
boardroom diversity.
Ken Frazier, 62
CEO, MERCK
UNITED STATES
Cancer treatment
When Frazier took over Merck,
it was scandal-plagued and
had few promising experimental
drugs. Now it rivals Bristol-
Myers Squibb in a new class of
cancer drugs (including the one
that saved Jimmy Carter) that
amp up the immune system.
“A long-term approach
should not be confused with
an infinitely patient one.”
LARRY FINK,
BLACKROCK
ADRIAN SHERRATT/NEWSCOM; SAM KANG LI/BLOOMBERG
38 | FORBES JUNE 13, 2017