Atlassian’s unconventional growth, trend spotting from a data-journalist, and the TikTok feta effect

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Unpacking five of Atlassian’s most unconventional company building moves

This piece in First Round Review features insights from Jay Simons, who was Atlassian’s president as the Australian success story grew from a $20 million to $2 billion company.

“Atlassian chose to trade off faster short-term growth and opportunity for the long-term durability of the company, which is a trade that we would make every single day.”

Three top trend spotting tips from a data journalist

Lisa Reid is a data journalist who reports on internet trends. In this piece, she shares her tips for checking the pulse of the internet at any given moment.

“Building trends into my daily workflows like this means I never miss a beat, and helps me create up-to-the-minute trend content with minimal effort.

“This automated workflow is also great for another kind of trend spotting: crisis management. We use Slack to track mentions of Brandwatch in the same way, to make sure we know what’s being said about our brand at all times.”

Moving from cultural fit to cultural add

This piece brings up an interesting question: does hiring for a particular ‘cultural fit’ within your organisation limit how your organisation changes as it grow? Instead, ‘cultural add’ focuses on bringing in diverse candidates and expanding the company culture.

“If you look for it, cognitive diversity is all around — but people like to fit in, so they are cautious about sticking their necks out. A homogenous culture stifles the natural cognitive diversity in groups through the pressure to conform.”

The TikTok feta effect

One recipe casually posted on a TikTok channel earlier this year led to feta cheese shortages globally. This New-York Times piece looks at how it affected supply chains and small stores, while capturing the attention of millions of people worldwide.