Jay Simons is a General Partner at BOND Capital and former President of Atlassian. Jay ran Atlassian between 2012-2020 taking them from pre-IPO to about $3B in revenue. Jay is known for being one of the earliest SaaS leaders to adopt and implement a product-led growth strategy.
In this episode Jay shares his background, stories from the early days at Atlassian, building two products at once (Jira & Confluence), and his philosophy on management and leadership. Jay has since joined BOND Capital investing alongside Mary Meeker - he shares his investment strategy and what BOND looks for in the companies they invest in.
(0:00) Intro
(1:19) Welcome Jay Simons
(10:15) BEA Acquired by Oracle
(14:19) Joining Atlassian
(16:58) What was the company growing at when you joined?
(22:10) Divorcing the success from the tactics
(34:48) Control your destiny of what the market is going to take
(40:22) How do you orient your team?
(46:42) Having two products early on
(55:07) Seeding the community
(1:07:29) Crucible moments at Atlassian
(1:22:11) Path to advising
(1:33:28) Soft diplomacy in decision making
Mixed and edited: Justin Hrabovsky
Produced: Rashad Assir
Executive Producer: Josh Machiz
Music: Griff Lawson
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About the Show
Logan Bartlett is a Software Investor at Redpoint Ventures - a Silicon Valley-based VC with $6B AUM and investments in Snowflake, DraftKings, Twilio, and Netflix. In each episode, Logan goes behind the scenes with world-class entrepreneurs and investors. If you're interested in the real inside baseball of tech, entrepreneurship, and start-up investing, tune in every Friday for new episodes.