Flattered by the shoutout. Atlassian's model is most definitely focused on empowering customer self-service (and probably a strong counterpoint to the a16z piece). We do believe software can sell itself, and I think there are dozens of examples of other companies that do as well, from Basecamp to Expensify. But we also enter and expand via teams. If we were dependent on selling initially to the whole enterprise, our model probably wouldn't work.
I work at Atlassian. The dolls were $100 each, and lots of us are just going to wrap 'em up as x-mas presents for our kids. We did the rest ourselves. As someone else commented, professional photos would have cost as much, with a lot more yawns.
Talk I gave on our model here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JU1AWD_fue8