Atlassian, the Sydney-based software company behind JIRA, Confluence, and HipChat, has officially gone public. The company launched under the ticker code TEAM on the Nasdaq this morning.

Mounting investor interest prompted Atlassian to set the price at $21 a share. It’s quite  jump from their original pricing of $16.50-18.50 per share, which they raised to $19-20 on Monday and raised again to $21 on Thursday. [Editors Note: Atlassian is currently trading at $27.19 per share]

At the initial public offering price, the company was valued at $4.38 billion, making it the fifth biggest company to go public this year.

The initial announcement of the I.P.O was not unexpected, considering Atlassian co-founders Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar brought on Doug Burgum as Chairman of the Board in 2012.

Burgum is no stranger to taking companies public; he served on the Board of SuccessFactors, a cloud-based human resources management software provider, during the company’s successful I.P.O in 2007. Burgum also seed-funded Great Plains Software in 1983 and took it public in 1997, eventually selling it to Microsoft in 2001 for $1.1 billion.

Burgum is currently in New York at the Nasdaq with the Atlassian team. He shared his thoughts with us from the scene.

 

Interview with Atlassian Chairman, Doug Burgum

Emerging Prairie: Why is Atlassian, which is based in Australia, going public in the United States?

Doug Burgum: There are public stock markets all over the world. The biggest, most liquid, most visible and most robust markets for tech and software stocks are in the US. Atlassian is a world-class company with over 50,000 customers across the globe, including Fortune 500 teams and teams of all sizes. They are a powerful combination of long-term growth, a disruptive business model, great products that users love, and a full ten years of profitability. Atlassian has earned the right to play on the biggest stage.

This visibility should also be an inspiration to software companies in Australia, in the Midwest or elsewhere…you don’t have be founded in Silicon Valley to be best in class.

Emerging Prairie: As a software executive, what intrigued you about Atlassian to join its Board in 2012?

Doug Burgum: Scott and Mike, the co-founders, reached out to me as they were beginning to build out their board. Scott and Mike are exceptional co-founders, product visionaries, and leaders. And they are great human beings who really care about the world and their team members and customers. The business model they created is best I have seen in my career: large investments in research and development, small investments in sales and marketing, and a belief that great products will sell themselves.

Emerging Prairie: While not listed on Arthur Ventures website, is Arthur Ventures a venture capitalist investor in Atlassian?

Doug Burgum: Arthur Ventures is not an investor in Atlassian. At the time that Scott and Mike reached out to me, Arthur Ventures was still primarily a family fund and was fully invested. James Burgum, co-founder of Arthur Ventures, and I had not yet launched our efforts to raise our second fund, AVII, from which we are currently making seed and early stage B2B software investments.

Emerging Prairie: Will you be in New York for the launch?

Doug Burgum: Yes. Scott and Mike will get to open NASDAQ trading on Thursday, and there will be tremendous visibility for the company at the NASDAQ MarketSite on Times Square. I am excited for Scott and Mike and the entire management team. Going public is tremendous milestone on the journey of building a great and lasting company. Going public requires an enormous team effort across all the management, but especially everyone from finance, legal and accounting.

And of course, the company would not have its great track record of success and years of profitability without its great line up of products like JIRA, Confluence, HipChat and more. It is fitting that the company will be traded under the NASDAQ symbol TEAM, since the Atlassian products are all designed to help teams achieve better results through collaboration, process and communication. This is a huge opportunity. Every team, across every company, in every country needs tools to work better together.

Emerging Prairie: How do you see the products developed within Atlassian impacting the Fargo-Moorhead area?

Doug Burgum: Atlassian solutions work across all sizes of businesses. If your work involves teamwork, it likely can be improved with an Atlassian solution. Their products transform how teams work together. Atlassian is doing for team productivity what Microsoft Office did for personal productivity. Also, the Atlassian marketplace is host to a large ecosystem of third party products that work on top of Atlassian products.

 

Photos courtesy of the Nasdaq.