Ten years ago, two university mates from Sydney used free beer to spread the word about their then little known software company.
Today, Scott Farquhar and Mike Cannon-Brookes are billionaires and their Australian tech giant Atlassian is worth $26.6 billion.
Established in 2002, Atlassian still only consisted of several employees seven years later when the pair gatecrashed a podcast recording at a tech conference in Belgium with the aim of making an impact.
A marketing gamble at a tech conference in Belgium paid off for Atlassian co-founders Mike Cannon-Brookes (left) and Scott Farquhar (right) 10 years ago
They bought $2000 worth of beer and put Atlassian stickers on them, which were handed to all of the 10,000 attendees as they walked in.
The marketing gamble paid off and the pair haven't looked back since.
'We got tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of free advertising … the naivety of youth sometimes has its benefits,' Mr Farquhar told The Australian.
Other guerrilla marketing tactics such as plastering university walls with Atlassian posters and attending community events were deployed by the company in its early days to get the name out.
Atlassian has been named as one of Australia's best places to work for several years running
Atlassian now has more than 3000 employees (pictured) in 10 offices worldwide
'If your market is the world, tackling it one customer at a time isn’t scalable,' Mr Farquhar said.
Chief marketing officer Robert Chatwani added: 'We don't have a traditional sales organisation, so we love doing stuff like giving away free swag, free T-shirts, and materials. Whether it's free beer, free T-shirts or
