The Portuguese are known for being explorers for over 600 years, giving to the known world “new worlds”, and this is something that is in our blood. Atlassian ecosystem was a brand new world that Xpand IT, through its Xpand Add-ons business unit, started to explore in 2012 by developing a solution to export information from JIRA into mail letters.

Recognizing a market need for issue exporting, Xpand IT decided to take it all the way and develop an add-on with a roadmap and feature list far beyond the customer’s requirements. Xpand IT started contacting several big customers for beta testing, feedback, and guidance. “I think it’s very important to not only consider what your competitors are doing but to also have people that really need the product helping you to choose the right features,” explains co-founder and CTO Pedro Gonçalves.

So from this need came Xporter for JIRA, the company’s first add-on, launched not long after the Atlassian Marketplace did. Says Gonçalves: “So we decided to just try it out, see how it works, and try the billing process through Atlassian. It was a surprise for us that we started getting lots of trials and slowly customers purchasing through the Marketplace.”

The main objective for the first year was to get a big number of installations, product feedback, and customer reviews to refine and improve the product while gaining visibility on the Marketplace. Xpand IT was making a name for itself as an add-on developer. So when Portugal Telecom was looking for a test management solution and didn’t find what it needed on the Marketplace, it challenged Xpand IT to create a product.

So, it was natural that when Portugal Telecom was looking for a test management solution and didn’t find what it needed on the Marketplace, it challenged Xpand IT to create a product and we accepted. Xray for JIRA was released in 2014, quickly becoming a top seller.

With the business growth of these two products in the Atlassian Marketplace, Xpand IT created a business unit named Xpand Add-ons. “Since 2015, Xpand Add-ons is the name of the team behind Xray and Xporter.”

“So we decided to just try it out, see how it works, and try the billing process through Atlassian. It was a surprise for us that we started getting lots of trials and slowly customers purchasing through the Marketplace.”
– Pedro Gonçalves, Co-founder and CTO at Xpand IT

Exponential growth

The Atlassian Marketplace platform, which offers a built-in customer base, billing, peer ecosystem, and lots of other resources, gave Atlassian Solution Partner Xpand IT the right opportunity to productize its knowledge and scale its business. With add-on revenue growing from $30K to $1M in just 18 months, we expect continued exponential growth for the foreseeable future.

“The thing that I’m most proud of is our customers. We didn’t think it would be possible to have companies like Airbus, Boeing, Intel, Nike, Walmart, and Audi using our products. It’s quite rewarding accomplishing that while working from a small country like Portugal.”

You can find the complete story at Atlassian website.

Please remember what Scott Farquhar, Atlassian CEO, said about us during the last Atlassian Summit in Barcelona: