never ask the best art collectors how they made their money or why they bought the art. atlassian's $610m purchase rhymes with that.
the atlassian problem:
they invented bottoms-up saas. anyone could sign up for jira, no procurement needed. they were the cool tool of 2010, but success forced them upmarket. enterprise features. enterprise pricing. enterprise vibes.
today when founders start companies, they choose slack not hipchat (rip), linear not jira, notion not confluence. $team has near zero inroads with the next generation. they're microsoft circa 2014 - rich but irrelevant to anyone building something new.
why tbc (and loom):
these aren't product acquisitions. they're guest list acquisitions. every founder using arc, every startup using loom - that's atlassian buying access to users they lost and might never get back. it's building a gallery in brooklyn so you get invited to the right dinners in manhattan.
the math:
$610m for ~1m arc users = $610/user. expensive? sure. but if they scale to 10m users and those users eventually need enterprise tools, the math works.
atlassian's ruthless about resource allocation - they kill teams all the time. they wouldn't spend this if they didn't see the path.
the verdict:
8/10 move. smart strategy, execution risk is massive. they need to keep founders happy, teams independent, culture intact. the moment they add a jira integration to arc, it's over.
reminds me a little bit of microsoft buying sunrise, accompli, wunderlist