Zero to One Inside
a Big Company

Tanguy Crusson

Head of Jira Product Discovery, Atlassian · 10+ years leading 0-to-1 bets (HipChat/Stride, Statuspage, JPD)

JUN 16 2024

The Paradox

50/50 Track Record: Why Big Companies Fail at Innovation

HipChat: 3-year obsession → sold to Slack
Stride: Rewrite disaster → killed
StatusPage: Dead on arrival → acquired instead
Jira Product Discovery: 4-year bet → 8,000 customers in year one

"The company has a tendency to over-invest. You need to create scarcity. Let's not drag the rest of the company into it."

The Core Problem

Why Success Metrics Kill New Products

$100M

success bar at Atlassian

300K

existing customers to sell to

6 mo

patience window

The metric trap: New products judged by mature product KPIs (monthly active users, growth rate)
The reality: Early stage products should have low MAU, they're not ready yet
The consequence: Team gets shut down before product finds fit
The solution: Separate success metrics for Wonder/Explore/Make/Impact stages

The asymmetryA startup that fails learns from that. A big company that fails looks incompetent. So big companies often stop things too early.

Point A Framework

How to Protect New Bets Inside Large Orgs

Wonder: Prove there's a real market problem. Validate that Atlassian should care. Must answer "why now?"
Explore: Test solutions with customers, not building, just validating with prototypes and mockups
Make: Build the MVP. Team expands. First production code. Real metrics begin.
Impact: Scale and commercialize. Move out of incubator. Becomes a real business unit.

JPD timeline

Year 1-2: Wonder & Explore (solo, then 3 people). No code written.

Year 3-4: Make phase (alpha/beta, internal dogfooding, 8,000 customers at launch).

One year after launch: Already one of fastest-growing products in Atlassian history.

The Point A advantage

Psychological safety (can borrow people, no firing). Access to 20+ internal teams. Customer research pool. Analyst relationships. 3-6 month reassessment windows, not quarterly.

The Scarcity Move

Frame Failure to Win Autonomy

Tell leadership: "70% chance this doesn't exist in 6 months"
Stay small (7 people, not 50) to maintain speed
Refuse process help: "We're a bet. Let's not drag the rest of the company in"
Build hacky prototypes: "Not going to scale, not respecting design guidelines, but testing fast"
No planning sessions for resources; iterate and test with customers next week

Why this worksWhen everyone knows "this might fail," help comes with fewer conditions. Teams avoid gold-plating. You get runway to test truth, not process.

Contrarian

What Big Company Innovation Gets Wrong

✗Rewrite the product to competeINSTEAD →✓ Never rewrite. HipChat/Stride failed because rewrite took 3 years; Slack won in the meantime.

✗Bundle new products with existing onesINSTEAD →✓ Let new products stand alone. Bundling (like MS Teams + Office) kills competition; you can't force adoption this way.

✗Measure early bets by mature KPIsINSTEAD →✓ Ask different questions at each stage: Wonder/Explore are about learning, not growth.

✗Give new bets all the company resourcesINSTEAD →✓ Create scarcity. Small teams move faster. Big teams slow down. Earn help by proving concept first.

Based on Tanguy Crusson's episode on Lenny's Podcast. All ideas on this page are from the episode.Watch on YouTube Follow @tanguycrusson on X

GO DEEPER IN THE EPISODE

02:30 Tanguy’s journey at Atlassian 07:03 The challenges of innovating in large companies 10:42 Atlassian's high bar for excellence 12:58 The HipChat story: successes, failures, and lessons learned 20:47 Lessons learned from building HipChat 33:49 Statuspage: a journey of perseverance 39:48 Acquisition challenges and lessons 47:22 Strategic decisions: build, buy, or partner?48:17 Learning to articulate "why now"54:08 A quick summary of lessons in this episode 55:40 The success and pain of launching Jira Product Discovery 58:10 Incubating new products: the Point A program 01:00:13 Failure is the most likely outcome 01:04:15 Atlassian's four-phase approach to launching new products 01:09:20 Breaking rules without breaking trust 01:16:16 Early success and team autonomy 01:17:22 Innovating without disrupting existing customers 01:23:17 The Lighthouse Users program 01:30:00 Protecting and nurturing new ideas 01:36:14 Balancing innovation with personal well-being 01:38:17 A reminder to look after yourself 01:42:06 Lightning round

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