EP 64: Jay Simons (GP, BOND Capital) On How Product-Led Growth Turned Atlassian into a $40B Company
The Logan Bartlett Show
The Stride of Hip Chat
Hip chat was a very successful product. Ultimately, shut down, sold the slack and no longer existed. "I can't think of too many companies of this scale just publicly announcing like, oh, yeah, we're moving on"
Jay Simons is a General Partner at BOND Capital and former President of Atlassian. Jay ran Atlassian between 2012-2020 taking them from pre-IPO to about $3B in revenue. Jay is known for being one of the earliest SaaS leaders to adopt and implement a product-led growth strategy.
In this episode Jay shares his background, stories from the early days at Atlassian, building two products at once (Jira & Confluence), and his philosophy on management and leadership. Jay has since joined BOND Capital investing alongside Mary Meeker - he shares his investment strategy and what BOND looks for in the companies they invest in.
(0:00) Intro
(1:19) Welcome Jay Simons
(10:15) BEA Acquired by Oracle
(14:19) Joining Atlassian
(16:58) What was the company growing at when you joined?
(22:10) Divorcing the success from the tactics
(34:48) Control your destiny of what the market is going to take
(40:22) How do you orient your team?
(46:42) Having two products early on
(55:07) Seeding the community
(1:07:29) Crucible moments at Atlassian
(1:22:11) Path to advising
(1:33:28) Soft diplomacy in decision making
Mixed and edited: Justin Hrabovsky
Produced: Rashad Assir
Executive Producer: Josh Machiz
Music: Griff Lawson
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About the Show
Logan Bartlett is a Software Investor at Redpoint Ventures - a Silicon Valley-based VC with $6B AUM and investments in Snowflake, DraftKings, Twilio, and Netflix. In each episode, Logan goes behind the scenes with world-class entrepreneurs and investors. If you're interested in the real inside baseball of tech, entrepreneurship, and start-up investing, tune in every Friday for new episodes.
Executive Producer: Rashad Assir
Producer: Leah Clapper
Mixing and editing: Justin Hrabovsky
Check out Unsupervised Learning, Redpoint's AI Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@UCUl-s_Vp-Kkk_XVyDylNwLA
🎥 Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCugS0jD5IAdoqzjaNYzns7w?sub_confirmation=1
Follow on Socials
📸 Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/theloganbartlettshow
📱 X - https://twitter.com/loganbartshow
🎬 Clips on TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@theloganbartlettshow
About the Show
Logan Bartlett is a Software Investor at Redpoint Ventures - a Silicon Valley-based VC with $6B AUM and investments in Snowflake, DraftKings, Twilio, and Netflix. In each episode of The Logan Bartlett Show, we sit down with the people behind today’s most important startups and extract the tactics, lessons, and frameworks they’ve learned the hard way. Conversations span hiring to GTM, product, growth, fundraising and everything in between - collectively forming the ultimate playbook to make you a better CEO, investor or board member.
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