rebelutionary / 2.0

Sell software, ship t-shirts / 2006 Nov 07

If companies could be mates, Jive would be one of Atlassian's closest friends.

Matt & Bill started about a year before Scott & I, but we've known them from back in the days when they were still a little Open Source project called "Cool Forums" (if I remember correctly).

We're in different markets with slightly different business models (them: high $, fewer customers, large pro services team, us: low $, many customers, no pro services team), but technically our products (enterprise Java, deployed behind the firewall, easy to setup etc) are very similar.

Anyway, they made SoftwareCEO's latest issue which is great to see (the full article is here if you're a member, otherwise it's on the frontpage for the next day or two):

Dave (the Jive CEO and another all around good bloke) & Sam make a lot of good points in the interview, but here's one I can only reinforce based on our experiences - t-shirts rock:

"Here's something I would recommend to other smaller companies," Lawrence says.

"If you do invest in a tasty, visually-appealing identity, then invest in cheap swag. We did t-shirts, and you would not believe what people have done for these.

"It isn't just customers: it's people we admire, people who've blogged about us, they all want a t-shirt. It's bizarre how much currency that has for the money — especially t-shirts, especially when they look really good.

When you're selling virtual goods, having something concrete to tie it to is a good idea. That's why we ship t-shirts all around the planet on a monthly basis. If you buy any top-tier Atlassian product, we ship a t-shirt to your desk.

At first it was something to assure people we were 'real', but now it's become a true part of the company fabric - no pun intended.

PS If you're going to make a corporate t-shirt, make it fun like Tangosol's "Coherence - Don't get fluster clucked", our "JIRA - Because You've Got Issues" etc. If it's boring, people are that much less likely to wear it.

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