The co-founder of Australian tech phenomenon Atlassian said he was "chuffed" by his company's debut on the Nasdaq, whose closing share price has seen its value soar to nearly $8 billion.
Mike Cannon-Brookes, along with co-CEO Scott Farquhar rang the opening market bell to celebrate their company's listing in front of family and friends.
"It was pretty special to bring them all over from Australia and San Fransisco to celebrate with us," Mr Cannon-Brookes told SBS World News via Skype. "Obviously the whole team here is pretty chuffed, I think it's a real validation of the work they've done in the last 13 years."
The Sydney-based software maker develops and licences a range of workplace collaboration tools including Jira and Confluence and counts Facebook, NASA and Toyota among its 51,000 customers around the world.
Hitting the boards under the code name "TEAM", Atlassian debuted at $(US)27.67, up from the $(US)21 premium investors paid during the company's initial public offering.
It ticked higher to a peak of $(US)28.50, before settling to trade strongly around the $(US)27 mark throughout the session, eventually closing on $(US)27.78 - a rise of 32 per cent.
Mr Cannon-Brookes said the listing gives Atlassian a huge opportunity to expand its team and products.
"The war for talent is pretty fierce and we hire in some pretty competitive markets," he said. "Continuing to attract the best and brightest in the world, growing the people we have as the company keeps scaling is a constant challenge, and just making people understand the culture we've created at the company and we remain a great place to work."
Atlassian's listing on the Nasdaq is the biggest ever float from an Australian company on US markets.
Mr Cannon-Brookes is adamant there won't be any huge changes at Atlassian, including its co-CEO structure.
"The company we were yesterday is the company we have to be tomorrow," he said. "(We) shouldn't change that in terms of creativity, in terms of innovation and just building great products and that's what we have to keep doing."
Share
