US investor ploughs $68m into Australian developer

Australian software maker Atlassian scored a $US60 million ($A68 million) injection from US venture capitalist Accel Partners overnight.

Linked gallery: A day in the life of Atlassian

The Sydney project management developer known for its Jira bug tracker and Confluence wiki software employed 225, mostly developers, and was in use in more than 20,000 companies worldwide including Facebook, Adobe and Haymarket Media, publisher of this website.

Atlassian booked $A58 million in revenues last financial year and was profitable, the company said.

The Australian round was a departure for the Palo Alto-based Accel Partners that tended to invest in early-stage companies yet to strike profitability; Atlassian was profitable last financial year and was started with about $10,000 in credit card debt in 2002.

Atlassian joined a stellar stable of 300 Accel-backed companies such as:

• information security company Imperva;
• filesharing startup Bit Torrent;
• mobile advertising network admob;
• video-distribution platform founded by Flash creator Jeremy Allaire, Brightcove;
• social media website Facebook;
• and the legendary internet company, now part of defence contractor Raytheon, BBN Technologies that did much to spark the internet.

It's believed this was this biggest Australian capital raising this year and the biggest in Accel's 17-year history: "This deal is bigger than all the money combined raised by the Australian software industry over the whole year", an Atlassian source said.