Long before product-led growth became a buzzword, Atlassian offered free tiers for virtually all of its productivity and development tools. Today, this mainly means free access for a maximum of 10 users and some other restrictions. For startups, this is a good approach to get began with company tools like Jira and Bitbucket, but additionally they quickly reach their limits in this free tier.
For early-stage firms that need more seats and access to some of the more advanced features, Atlassian today launched Atlassian for startups program that gives firms with funding of lower than $10 million per year for free access for as much as 50 users.
Products included in this program include Jira, Confluence, Loom, Jira Product Discovery, Bitbucket, and Compass.
Few firms immediately change their productivity and issue tracking tools like Jira, so this is obviously a approach to introduce growing startups to the Atlassian ecosystem and then keep them on the platform as they grow.
Atlassian CMO Zeynep Inanoglu Ozdemir, who joined the company last October, told me that the company has long watched startups grow on its platform into large, mature firms.
“It’s definitely a win-win situation,” she told me. “We like the idea of removing the burden of managing work and projects and scaling the entire process within the company so it can really focus on its innovation […] So we thought, OK, we’ll help the startup community, maybe make it easier for them to get started with this.”
It’s price noting here that while Atlassian started off in the tech community, it has primarily focused on acquiring non-tech startups, particularly with its Jira project management products and Confluence collaboration services. This is what he bases his plan for 2023 on acquisition Loom asynchronous video messaging service. Ozdemir tells me that he expects a large number of non-tech firms to use to the Atlassian for Startups program as well.
At launch, Atlassian is also partnering with several accelerators and their portfolio firms, including AWS Activate, Accel, Blackbird, and Menlo Ventures.