Mike Cannon-Brookes

Sydney, from 2002. Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar started Atlassian straight out of the University of New South Wales and sold its software online to teams worldwide, so they never needed a sales office in California to grow. Being far from Silicon Valley kept costs and staff churn lower, though they eventually moved the company's legal home to the United States. Atlassian became Australia's best-known technology success.