AtlassianAtlassian cofounders Mike Cannon-Brookes (left) and Scott Farquhar (right)
Business software company Atlassian, now a $6 billion publicly-traded company on the Nasdaq took a $60m investment from Accel partners even though it had $55m in the bank.
Why? Mike and Scott wanted to build up their board for a listing, new they wanted Richard Wong from Accel Partners and negotiated a deal!
They tried keeping the round small, around $5 million, says MikeCannon-Brookes, but Accel wanted more equity in the company and Atlassian ended up accepting $60 million from Accel.
Where did the money go?
the lion’s share of that investment ended up being used for employee liquidity. In other words, Atlassian brokered the sale of stock options from its employees directly to Accel, with the cash going straight into its employees’ pockets.
Accel got the equity it wanted; Atlassian’s leadership didn’t give up control; Atlassian employees got to cash out their shares almost 5 years before the 2015 IPO; everybody was happy. A win – win .
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