Innovating Within Constraints: The Jira Journey

Tanguy Crusson is the product lead for Jira Product Discovery at Atlassian. In his more than 10 years at the company, he has been instrumental in taking several new products from zero to one, including HipChat, Statuspage, and Jira Product Discovery. In this episode, we dive deep into the struggles of innovating and building new products inside a large company. Tanguy shares candid stories about what worked, what didn’t, and his many hard-won lessons learned about how to successfully build 0 to 1. We cover:

• Why large companies with so many advantages still fail at creating new products

• Lessons learned from building HipChat

• How to avoid common pitfalls like competitive myopia and premature scaling

• Lessons learned from the acquisition and integration of Statuspage

• Insights from the success of Jira Product Discovery

• Tactics for protecting your “ugly babies”

• The power of “lighthouse users”

• The importance of having a “why now”

• Much more

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Find the transcript at: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/building-0-to-1-inside-atlassian-tanguy-crusson

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Where to find Tanguy Crusson:

• X: https://x.com/tanguycrusson

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tanguy-crusson-99832a

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Where to find Lenny:

• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com

• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/

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In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Tanguy’s background

(02:30) Tanguy’s journey at Atlassian

(07:03) The challenges of innovating in large companies

(10:42) Atlassian's high bar for excellence 

(12:58) The HipChat story: successes, failures, and lessons learned

(20:47) Lessons learned from building HipChat

(33:49) Statuspage: a journey of perseverance

(39:48) Acquisition challenges and lessons

(47:22) Strategic decisions: build, buy, or partner?

(48:17) Learning to articulate "why now"

(54:08) A quick summary of lessons in this episode

(55:40) The success and pain of launching Jira Product Discovery 

(58:10) Incubating new products: the Point A program

(01:00:13) Failure is the most likely outcome

(01:04:15) Atlassian's four-phase approach to launching new products

(01:09:20) Breaking rules without breaking trust

(01:16:16) Early success and team autonomy

(01:17:22) Innovating without disrupting existing customers

(01:23:17) The Lighthouse Users program

(01:30:00) Protecting and nurturing new ideas

(01:36:14) Balancing innovation with personal well-being

(01:38:17) A reminder to look after yourself

(01:42:06) Lightning round

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Referenced:

• Atlassian: https://www.atlassian.com/

• HipChat: https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Hipchat/ct-p/hipchat

• Stride: https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Stride/ct-p/stride

• Statuspage: https://www.atlassian.com/software/statuspage

• Opsgenie: https://www.atlassian.com/software/opsgenie

• Jira Product Discovery: https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/product-discovery

• HipChat billboard: https://x.com/HubSpot/status/654696998126272512

• Announcing our new partnership with Slack: https://www.atlassian.com/blog/announcements/new-atlassian-slack-partnership

• Slack shows it’s worried about Microsoft Teams with a full-page newspaper ad: https://www.theverge.com/2016/11/2/13497766/slack-microsoft-teams-new-york-times-ad

• What Is ‘Dogfooding’?: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/14/business/dogfooding.html

• Jira: https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira

• Confluence: https://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence

• PagerDuty: https://www.pagerduty.com/

• New Relic: https://newrelic.com/

• BigPanda: https://www.bigpanda.io/

• Transparent Uptime: http://www.transparentuptime.com/

• Vision, conviction, and hype: How to build 0 to 1 inside a company | Mihika Kapoor (Product at Figma): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/vision-conviction-hype-mihika-kapoor

• Figma: https://www.figma.com/

• Lessons from Atlassian: Launching new products, getting buy-in, and staying ahead of the competition | Megan Cook (head of product, Jira): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/lessons-from-atlassian-launching

• Noah Weiss on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/noahw/

• Tanguy’s LinkedIn post about “lighthouse users”: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/tanguy-crusson-99832a_lighthouse-users-one-of-the-pm-techniques-activity-7176654510801502210-hWNi/

• Pixar Chief: Protect Your ‘Ugly Babies’ (Your Unsightly Ideas): https://www.forbes.com/sites/andyboynton/2014/03/17/pixar-chief-protect-your-ugly-babies-your-unsightly-ideas/

• Atlas: https://www.atlassian.com/software/atlas

• Point A: https://www.atlassian.com/point-a

• Scott Farquhar on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottfarquhar

• Who: A Method for Hiring: https://www.amazon.com/Who-Method-Hiring-HC-2008/dp/B004C79SRS/

• Hakim’s Odyssey: Book 1: From Syria to Turkey: https://www.amazon.com/Hakims-Odyssey-Book-Syria-Turkey/dp/1637790007

• Living with the Earth, Volume 1: Permaculture, Ecoculture: Inspired by Nature: https://www.amazon.com/Living-Earth-Gardeners-Permaculture-Ecoculture/dp/1856232603/

• INRIA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Institute_for_Research_in_Computer_Science_and_Automation

• How a Hydrofoil Works: https://web.mit.edu/2.972/www/reports/hydrofoil/hydrofoil.html

• What Is Kitefoil or Foilboarding?: https://www.whenitswindy.com/wp/?page_id=534

• Freediving: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freediving

• Tanguy’s freediving stats: https://www.aidainternational.org/Athletes/Profile-00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000a45

• Perplexity: https://www.perplexity.com/

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Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed.

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