Mike Cannon-Brookes

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Mike Cannon-Brookes
Mike Cannon-Brookes Australian businessman.jpg
Cannon-Brookes in 2018
BornMichael Cannon-Brookes
(1979-11-17) 17 November 1979 (age 44)
New Haven, Connecticut, U.S.
NationalityAustralian
Education Cranbrook School
Alma mater University of New South Wales
OccupationCEO of Atlassian
Employer
Known forCo-founding Atlassian
Board member ofAtlassian
Spouse(s)
Annie Todd
​
​
(m. 2010;sep. 2023)​
Children4
Awards
Website atlassian.com

Michael Cannon-Brookes (born 17 November 1979) is an Australian businessman who is the co-founder and chief executive officer of software company Atlassian.

Contents

Since 2018, he has been involved in the Australia-Asia Power Link, a huge electricity infrastructure project to be developed in the Northern Territory by Sun Cable in a collaboration with Twiggy Forrest.

Early life and education

Michael Cannon-Brookes was born on 17 November 1979, [1] [2] the son of a global banking executive, also named Mike, and his wife, Helen. [3] He attended Cranbrook School in Sydney, [4] and graduated from the University of New South Wales [5] with a bachelor's degree in information systems on a UNSW co-op scholarship. [6] [7]

Career

Before founding Atlassian, Cannon-Brookes co-founded an internet bookmark management tool called The Bookmark Box with his university classmate Niki Scevak. The Bookmark Box was sold to Blink.com in 2000. [8]

Cannon-Brookes co-founded Atlassian, a collaboration software company, of which he is co-CEO, with Scott Farquhar. The pair started the company in 2002, shortly after graduating from university, funding it with credit cards. [9] They have said they founded Atlassian with the aim of earning the then-typical graduate starting salary of A$48,000 at the big corporations without having to work for someone else. [10] [11]

Their first major Atlassian product was Jira, an issue- and project-tracking software. [12] They decided to forgo the expense of hiring sales people, and instead spent their time and money on building a good product and selling it at a more affordable price via the Atlassian website. [12] As of 2016, the company still did not have a traditional sales force, investing instead in research and development. [13]

In 2005, they opened an office in New York, where most of their clients were. [12] Later in 2005 they moved the U.S. office to San Francisco, [14] which had a much larger pool of relevant technical talent. [12]

Their first external funding for Atlassian was a US$60 million round from Accel in 2010. [15] In 2014, they redomiciled the company to the UK, in advance of an initial public offering (IPO). [16]

Atlassian made its debut on the Nasdaq stock exchange in December 2015, [17] with a market capitalisation of $4.37 billion. [18] The IPO made Cannon-Brookes and Farquhar Australia's first tech startup billionaires and household names in Australia. [19] [20] [21]

Cannon-Brookes and Farquhar redomiciled Atlassian to the United States in 2022. [16] Since September 2024, Cannon-Brookes is the sole CEO of the company after Farquhar stepped down as co-CEO. [22] [23]

Other activities

Cannon-Brookes is a major investor in green projects. [24] In October 2021, he pledged to donate and invest $1.5 billion on climate projects by 2030 to reinforce the COP26 goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels. [25]

Cannon-Brookes is an adjunct professor at the University of New South Wales' School of Computer Science and Engineering. [26] He is also the chairman of Blackbird Ventures, a venture capital firm. [27]

In September 2020, it was revealed that Cannon-Brookes was among 35,000 Australians on a Chinese Government "Overseas Key Individuals Database" of prominent international individuals of interest for China. [28] [29]

In March 2022, Cannon-Brookes and billionaire Andrew Forrest invested in the Sun Cable project, to build a solar and battery farm 12,000 hectares (120 km2) in size at Powell Creek, Northern Territory, and a power-cable to link it to Singapore (via Indonesia) leaving Australia at Murrumujuk beach. In January 2023, Sun Cable went into administration owing to disagreements between Cannon-Brookes and Forrest, and in May 2023, Grok Ventures outbid Forrest and others to buy the liquidated company. [30] [31]

In 2023, Cannon-Brookes purchased a majority stake in Australian publicly listed energy company AGL, Australia’s largest greenhouse gas emitter, in a move to force the company to de-carbonise more quickly.[ citation needed ]

Sports

In December 2020, Cannon-Brookes bought a minority stake in NBA team Utah Jazz, along with Qualtrics co-founder Ryan Smith. [32]

In November 2021, Cannon-Brookes bought a one-third share of Blackcourt League Investments. Blackcourt owns 75% of the Australian Rugby League team, the South Sydney Rabbitohs. [33] [34]

Personal life

Cannon-Brookes married American fashion designer Annie Todd in 2010, and they have four children together. [35] [36] The couple first met at a Qantas lounge while flying from Sydney to San Francisco. [37] Cannon-Brookes and Todd lived in Sydney's eastern suburbs in Centennial Park. [11] In 2018 they bought Fairwater , Australia's most expensive house for approximately A$100 million, next door to Scott Farquhar's A$71 million Point Piper harbourside mansion, Elaine. Cannon-Brookes also acquired the 1923-built heritage residence Verona, designed by architect Leslie Wilkinson and located in Double Bay, for A$17 million. [38] The house previously belonged to New Zealand philanthropist Pat Goodman. Prior to that, in 2016, Cannon-Brookes had bought the A$7.05 million SeaDragon house, built in 1936, also designed by Wilkinson and updated by architect Luigi Rosselli. [39] His Centennial Park home sold for A$16.5 million. [40] In 2019 he purchased a house near Fairwater for A$12 million. [41] Cannon-Brookes separated from his wife Annie in July 2023. [35]

Recognition

Cannon-Brookes and Farquhar were recognised as Ernst & Young's 2006 Australian Entrepreneur of the Year. [42] He is a member of The Forum of Young Global Leaders. [6] In 2023, he was recognized as one of the "Time100 climate person" [43]

Net worth

In 2016, his net worth was estimated by Forbes on the list of Australia's 50 Richest people as US$1.69  billion; [44] by BRW Rich 200 as A$2.00  billion; [45] and by the Sunday Times Rich List as £906 million. [46] As of May 2023, the Australian Financial Review estimated his net worth was A$19.01 billion. [47] Meanwhile, in 2021, his net worth was assessed at US$13.7 billion by Forbes and at US$11.2 billion by Bloomberg . [48]

Year BRW
Rich 200 		Forbes
Australia's 50 Richest 		Sunday Times
Rich List
Rank Net worth (A$)Rank Net worth (US$)Rank Net worth (£)
2013 [49] [50] 190Increase2.svg$0.25  billion Increase2.svgn/anot listed
2014 [51] [52] 35Increase2.svg$1.07 billion Increase2.svgn/anot listed
2015 [53] [54] 42Decrease2.svg$1.14 billion Increase2.svg25Increase2.svg$1.10 billion Increase2.svg
2016 [45] [44] [46] 18Increase2.svg$2.00 billion Increase2.svg14Increase2.svg$1.69 billion Increase2.svg£906 million Increase2.svg
2017 [55] [56] 17Increase2.svg$2.51 billion Increase2.svg10Increase2.svg$3.40 billion Increase2.svg
2018 [57] 12Increase2.svg$5.16 billion Increase2.svg5Increase2.svg
2019 [58] [59] [60] 6Increase2.svg$9.63 billion Increase2.svg5Steady2.svg$6.40 billion Increase2.svg
2020 [61] 5Increase2.svg$16.93 billion Increase2.svg
2021 [62] [48] 3Increase2.svg$20.18 billion Increase2.svg$13.70 billion Increase2.svg
20223Steady2.svg$27.80 billion Increase2.svg
2023 [47] 6Decrease2.svg$19.01 billion Decrease2.svg
Legend
Icon Description
Steady2.svgHas not changed from the previous year
Increase2.svgHas increased from the previous year
Decrease2.svgHas decreased from the previous year

See also

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References

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  2. ↑ "WA's best and brightest young guns top rich list". The West Australian . 26 November 2020. Archived from the original on 23 April 2024.
  3. ↑ Gray, Joanne (9 June 2016). "Michael Cannon-Brookes snr: How I raised a son who became Atlassian billionaire". Australian Financial Review . Australia. Archived from the original on 9 June 2016. Retrieved 9 June 2016.
  4. ↑ Cranbrook School: Elite Sydney institution eyes up major change Archived 6 December 2021 at the Wayback Machine News.com.au
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  36. ↑ "Imposter Syndrome as an Asset". Atlassian blog. Archived from the original on 1 September 2017. Retrieved 1 September 2017.
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