Two 34-Year-Old Aussies Are Latest Techies To Become Billionaires

Scott Farquhar and Mike Cannon-Brookes are Australia’s newest billionaires after their business software company Atlassian announced this week it had closed a financing round that valued the company at $3.3 billion. T. Rowe Price and Dragoneer Investment Capital paid $150 million, which amounts to a 4.6%  stake in Atlassian.

Farquhar and Cannon-Brookes, both 34, who founded the company twelve years ago, did not sell any shares in the latest round of funding, meaning the estimated 1/3 ownership stake each own in the company is worth about $1.1 billion. The selling shareholders in the deal include current and former employees, as well as Accel Partners, which invested $60 million in the company in 2010 at a valuation of $400 million, according to the Wall Street Journal.

What’s driving such a high valuation for the Australian software shop? A unique business model that has fostered rapid growth and a liquid balance sheet — the latter being a distinction many tech companies can’t claim. Atlassian specializes in developing online business software tools like JIRA, a product that helps companies manage the projects and workflow for their development and IT teams. Its services are used by more than 35,000 companies worldwide, including a broad array of heavyweights like BMW, American Airlines, Cisco, Facebook and Citigroup C -0.08%. It boasts positive cash flow and has done so for the past 10 years; its compound annual growth rate for the past five is 40%.

Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexmorrell/2014/04/09/new-financing-round-for-australian-software-company-atlassian-turns-founders-into-billionaires/