The SaaSpocalypse that wasn't, with Atlassian's CEO

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Nilay Patel (1:49)

Hello and welcome to Decoder. I'm Nilay Patel, Editor-in-Chief of The Verge, and Decoder is my show about big ideas and other problems. Today I'm talking with Mike Cannon-Brookes, the co-founder and CEO of Atlassian. Atlassian is one of those companies that every other company runs on. It makes important platform tools like Jira and Trello that allow people to organize and manage big teams, create shared databases of company information, and generally allow work to happen. As you'll hear Mike say, all of Atlassian's products are actually different expressions of a single core platform, which really shapes how Atlassian itself is structured and those products are built. All of this means Atlassian is also right in the middle of the way AI is changing how every company works. AI tools might be able to look at all the different tools and systems you have and just read them for you, making a big migration to Atlassian's platform less enticing. Or if you buy the idea of the so-called SESpocalypse, AI might just build all of these tools for you, destroying this entire category of businesses. Obviously, Mike had a lot of thoughts pushing back on this, and we spent some real time talking about the value of design, human users, how AI is actually increasing the usage of Atlassian's tools, and what all this might look like a few years from now. Of course, AI has also changed Atlassian. Like so many other tech companies, Atlassian did a round of layoffs earlier this year, with Mike saying that he felt the company needed a different mix of skills. So I asked him what he thinks that mix of skills is, and how AI is changing what it means to run a software company. But Mike was also refreshingly direct about what AI can't do, and willing to push back on his own friends like CloudFlare CEO Matthew Prince, who was just on the show talking about AI eliminating what he called measurement roles. This is a fun one. We got deep. Shout out to Mike who recorded this from Atlassian home base in Australia, which means that he had a deep conversation about org charts at 5 AM. Before we get started, subscribe to Decoder on YouTube to watch new episodes every Monday and Thursday, and subscribe to The Verge to listen to this episode, and every episode completely ad free. Atlassian CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes. Here we go.

Mike Cannon-Brookes, you're the co-founder and CEO of Atlassian. Welcome to Decoder.

Mike Cannon-Brookes (3:57)

Thanks for having me, man.

Nilay Patel (3:58)

I am really excited to talk to you. I believe you're in Australia. It's tomorrow for you.

Mike Cannon-Brookes (4:03)

It is. Well, it's today, it depends on.

Nilay Patel (4:05)

What's going to happen tomorrow? At this point in the AI news cycle, I feel like I can just demand to know what's going to happen tomorrow. Whoever understands the urgency behind that question. There's a lot going on with Atlassian. There's a lot going on with your products. There's a lot going on in the very concept of SaaS businesses and business processes generally. Let's start at the very start. I think people know Atlassian. They know Jira.