Atlassian vs Freshworks: Founders, CEOs and History

Company facts

Founders

CEOs and their tenures

Timeline: Atlassian and Freshworks side by side

1. 2002Atlassian

   Company founded by Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar in Sydney

   Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar founded Atlassian with $10,000 in credit card debt while students at the University of New South Wales. They launched Jira, a bug-tracking and project management tool for software developers.

2. 2004Atlassian

   Launch of Confluence team collaboration platform

   Atlassian launched Confluence, a team collaboration and documentation platform that complemented Jira and expanded the addressable market beyond software development into general team collaboration and knowledge management.

3. 2005Atlassian

   Reaches $1 million in annual revenue with no salespeople

   Atlassian reached $1 million in annual revenue entirely through self-service online sales, validating the product-led growth model and demonstrating that enterprise software could be sold without a traditional sales force.

4. 2010Atlassian

   Raises $60 million from Accel Partners

   Atlassian raised its first outside investment, $60 million from Accel Partners, after eight years of bootstrapped growth. The money went to product development and international expansion, not to building a sales force.

5. 2010Freshworks

   Freshdesk Founded in Chennai

   Girish Mathrubootham and Shan Krishnasamy founded Freshdesk in an 800 sq ft office in Chennai, building an affordable cloud customer ticketing system.

6. 2011Freshworks

   First Customer Won & Accel Seed Funding

   Launched Freshdesk commercially and raised a $1 million Series A led by Accel India.

7. 2012Atlassian

   Acquisition of HipChat for real-time messaging

   Atlassian acquired HipChat, an enterprise messaging platform, entering the real-time communication market and expanding the product suite beyond project management and documentation.

8. 2014Freshworks

   Launch of Freshservice ITSM

   Introduced Freshservice to provide internal IT helpdesk and service management, which rapidly expanded into its largest enterprise revenue engine.

9. 2015Atlassian

   Initial public offering on NASDAQ

   Atlassian completed its IPO on the NASDAQ Global Select Market, raising $462 million at a valuation of $4.37 billion. Shares were priced at $21 and rose 32% on the first day to close near $28.

10. 2017Atlassian

    Acquisition of Trello for $425 million

    Atlassian acquired Trello, a visual task management platform built on Kanban boards, for $425 million in cash and stock. The deal extended its reach to non-technical teams and smaller organizations, complementing Jira.

11. 2017Freshworks

    Company Rebranded to Freshworks

    Rebranded from Freshdesk to Freshworks to reflect its multi-product suite spanning customer support, IT service, and sales CRM.

12. 2018Atlassian

    Launch of Jira Service Management

    Atlassian launched Jira Service Management, entering the IT service management market and extending Jira from software development into IT operations and service desk work.

13. 2018Freshworks

    San Mateo Headquarters and Unicorn Status

    Raised a $100 million round led by Accel and Sequoia Capital at a valuation reported above $1.5 billion, and set up headquarters in San Mateo, California.

14. 2020Atlassian

    Acquisition of Mindville for asset management

    Atlassian acquired Mindville, an IT asset management company, to add asset and configuration management to Jira Service Management for enterprise customers.

15. 2021Atlassian

    Acquisition of Chartio for data visualization

    Atlassian acquired Chartio, a cloud data visualization and analytics company, to improve reporting across the product suite. The standalone Chartio product was later discontinued.

16. 2021Freshworks

    Historic NASDAQ IPO Raising $1.03 Billion

    Listed on NASDAQ under ticker FRSH on September 22, 2021, raising about $1.03 billion; shares closed the first day with a market value above $12 billion.

17. 2022Atlassian

    Acquisition of Percept.AI for AI virtual agents

    Atlassian acquired Percept.AI, an AI virtual agent company, to add automated ticket handling to Jira Service Management ahead of its broader AI push.

18. 2023Atlassian

    Acquisition of Loom for approximately $975 million

    Atlassian acquired Loom, an asynchronous video messaging platform, for about $975 million, its largest acquisition by announced value, adding recorded video to Jira and Confluence workflows.

19. 2023Freshworks

    Launch of Freddy AI Generative Suite

    Unveiled Freddy AI, embedding generative AI across Freshservice and Freshdesk to automate ticket summaries, responses, and routine IT tasks.

20. 2024Atlassian

    Launch of Rovo AI assistant

    Atlassian launched Rovo, an AI assistant embedded across its products, providing search, summarization, automation, and agents that draw on the Teamwork Graph.

21. 2024Atlassian

    Server end-of-life forces cloud and data center migration

    Atlassian ended support for its Server product line in February 2024, requiring remaining on-premises customers to move to either Cloud or Data Center subscriptions.

22. 2024Freshworks

    Dennis Woodside Appointed CEO

    President Dennis Woodside became CEO in May 2024, with founder Girish Mathrubootham moving to Executive Chairman. Freshworks also agreed to acquire IT asset discovery company Device42.

23. 2025Atlassian

    Launch of Atlassian Collections

    Atlassian began selling Collections, bundles of apps and AI agents priced around an outcome rather than per product: the Teamwork Collection, Software Collection, Service Collection, and Strategy Collection.

24. 2025Atlassian

    Announces end of life for Data Center products

    On September 8, 2025, Atlassian announced the end of life of its Data Center products under a migration program called Atlassian Ascend.

25. 2025Atlassian

    Acquisition of The Browser Company of New York

    Atlassian completed the acquisition of The Browser Company of New York, maker of the Dia and Arc browsers, on October 20, 2025, for a total purchase price of $488.3 million, taking the company into enterprise browsers.

26. 2025Atlassian

    Acquisition of engineering intelligence vendor DX

    Atlassian acquired A Software Company, which trades as DX, on November 10, 2025 for $720.4 million in cash. DX measures how engineering investment turns into delivered work and is being folded into Atlassian Collections.

27. 2025Freshworks

    First GAAP Operating Profit; Founder Exits

    Revenue reached $838.8 million with GAAP operating income of $13.2 million. Girish Mathrubootham left the board on December 1, 2025 and Roxanne Austin became Chair.

28. 2026Atlassian

    Restructuring eliminates roles covering about 10% of the workforce

    Atlassian initiated a second restructuring plan in the third quarter of fiscal 2026, eliminating roles covering approximately 10% of its workforce to fund investment in AI and enterprise sales.

29. 2026Atlassian

    Rovo reaches over 80% of the Fortune 500

    Atlassian reported that Rovo was in use at over 80% of Fortune 500 companies and that its MCP server and Teamwork Graph CLI passed one million monthly active users in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2026, more than doubling in a quarter.

30. 2026Freshworks

    Record Q2 and Raised Outlook

    Q2 2026 revenue rose 16% to $237.4 million and full-year guidance was raised to $963.5M-$966.5M, after a May 2026 restructuring that cut about 500 jobs.

Acquisitions

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