How 50 People Built Atlassian’s Fastest-Growing Product Ever
Inside one of the world’s largest software companies, a team of just 50 people discovered something that would challenge everything the industry thought it knew about product development.
While most startups chase product-market fit with spray-and-pray launches, this lean team inside Atlassian spent three years doing something radically different. They built their product discovery tool, Jira Product Discovery (JPD), not just for customers, but with them. The result? One of Atlassian fastest-growing products of all time, scaling from zero to 14,000 customers while taking aim at a $1.3 billion market.
This isn’t another Silicon Valley success story about overnight unicorns. It’s a masterclass in patient, deliberate product development that offers lessons for anyone building software in 2025.
The Problem That Couldn’t Be Ignored
For a company like Atlassian, with a $7.2 billion opportunity across 300,000+ customers, launching new products isn’t about incremental revenue streams. They need products that can become billion-dollar businesses. That pressure creates an interesting dynamic: you can’t afford to build small, but you also can’t afford to build wrong.
The JPD team started where all great products begin: with a problem that kept showing up in customer conversations. Their research revealed a fascinating disconnect in how product teams actually worked versus how existing tools supported them.
Product teams were making commitments and tracking execution inside Jira, Atlassian’s flagship project management tool. But all the critical decisions that led to those commitments, the discovery phase where ideas are evaluated and prioritized, were happening in a fragmented mess of spreadsheets, whiteboards, and informal conversations.
This gap represented more than just workflow inefficiency. It meant that the most important phase of product development, where teams decide what to build and why, was essentially invisible to the tools designed to help them succeed.
But identifying a problem and proving people will pay to solve it are entirely different challenges. The JPD team needed validation before they could justify the investment required to build a solution.
The Three-Week Validation Experiment
Rather than spending months building a prototype or conducting extensive market research, the team designed a brilliantly simple validation experiment. They placed a single advertisement in a Jira newsletter with a straightforward message: “We’re building something for product managers. Interested?”
Within two weeks, over 3,000 people had joined the waitlist.
This wasn’t just market validation, it was a masterclass in efficient demand testing. By leveraging their existing audience and asking a direct question, they gathered more meaningful data in three weeks than most companies collect in months of surveys and focus groups.
As one team member later reflected: “The best market research isn’t asking people what they want, it’s seeing what they actually sign up for when given the chance.”
That waitlist became the foundation for everything that followed.
The Lighthouse User Strategy
Most companies follow a predictable playbook: build in stealth, launch with fanfare, then scramble to understand why adoption isn’t meeting expectations. JPD flipped this approach entirely.
For three years, they embraced what they called “building in the open.” Instead of disappearing into development caves, they brought their most engaged prospects, dubbed “lighthouse users,” directly into the creation process.
These weren’t just beta testers providing feedback on finished features. They were true co-creators, helping shape fundamental product decisions about workflow, interface design, and core functionality. The team started with just 10 of these lighthouse users, carefully selected for their depth of experience with product discovery challenges.
This approach required a fundamental shift in how the team thought about product development. Instead of building what they thought customers needed, they were building what customers actively helped them design.
The lighthouse user model solved multiple challenges simultaneously. It provided continuous validation throughout development, created a group of deeply invested early advocates, and ensured that the eventual product would solve real problems in ways that made sense to actual users.
After validating their MVP with the lighthouse group, they expanded to 100 power users for broader feedback before considering wider release.
The Brutal Honesty of Open Beta
When JPD finally opened to their waitlist, reality hit hard.
The feedback was unforgiving: crashes were frequent, the design felt unpolished, and the overall experience fell short of Atlassian’s typical quality standards. Even one of Atlassian’s founders reportedly called the product “ugly.”
For many teams, this kind of feedback would trigger panic mode, leading to rushed fixes or premature pivots. The JPD team chose a different path. They treated the criticism as valuable data rather than personal failure.
Instead of defensiveness, they demonstrated systematic improvement. They methodically addressed stability issues, refined the user interface, and polished every interaction until the product met their quality standards.
But something unexpected emerged from this process. While JPD was specifically designed for product managers, usage data revealed that over 30% of users within each account weren’t PMs at all. Designers, engineers, stakeholders, and other team members were naturally gravitating toward the tool.
This organic expansion beyond the target audience signaled something important: JPD wasn’t just solving a product manager problem, it was addressing a broader team collaboration challenge. This viral growth potential would become crucial to the product’s eventual success.
The General Availability Inflection Point
After years of refinement, JPD reached its most critical milestone: General Availability. This transition from free beta to paid product represented the ultimate market test.
The shift was dramatic. Users who had grown accustomed to free access now faced a choice: pay for continued access or find alternatives. This moment separates products people enjoy using from products they actually value enough to purchase.
JPD passed this test decisively. Not only did existing users convert to paid plans, but the product began attracting new customers at an accelerating pace. It quickly became one of Atlassian’s fastest-growing products ever, validating years of patient development and user-centric design.
The Growth Trajectory
The numbers tell a compelling story of sustained momentum:
- 8 months ago: 8,000 customers
- 4 months ago: 10,000 customers
- Today: 14,000 customers
This isn’t just growth, it’s acceleration. The monthly customer acquisition rate is increasing, suggesting that JPD has achieved the kind of product-market fit that drives sustainable, long-term success.
With Atlassian’s base of over 300,000 customers, JPD is still in the early stages of its potential reach. The team is essentially competing for wallet share within an existing ecosystem, which provides significant advantages in terms of integration, trust, and distribution.
The Strategic Lessons
JPD’s success offers three fundamental insights that extend far beyond product discovery tools.
Obsess over real customer pain points. The team didn’t start with a cool technology or a clever feature idea. They started with a problem that repeatedly surfaced in customer conversations and took the time to understand its true scope and impact.
Build with users, not just for them. The lighthouse user approach transformed customers from passive recipients into active collaborators. This created deeper insights, stronger product-market fit, and a group of natural advocates who understood the product’s value because they helped create it.
Expand into existing ecosystems. Rather than trying to create a new category or compete in crowded markets, JPD leveraged Atlassian’s existing customer relationships and platform integration. This provided built-in distribution advantages and reduced the friction of adoption.
The Broader Implications
JPD’s story challenges several prevailing assumptions about modern product development. In an era of rapid iteration and minimum viable products, they demonstrated the power of patient, thorough development. While others rushed to market, they invested years in understanding and solving the real problem.
“The most successful products don’t just solve problems, they solve problems so well that customers can’t imagine working any other way,” as one industry observer noted.
This approach requires confidence, discipline, and organizational support for longer development cycles. But when executed well, it can create products with deeper moats and stronger competitive positions than those built through rapid iteration alone.
The success also highlights the continued importance of ecosystem plays in software. Rather than building standalone solutions, the companies that win often leverage existing platforms, customer relationships, and integration opportunities.
As the product discovery market continues to evolve, JPD’s approach offers a template for building products that don’t just capture market share, but create lasting value for the customers and organizations that adopt them.
What aspects of JPD’s development approach could apply to your own product challenges, and how might patient, user-centric development change your current roadmap priorities?
