<p>This is a guest post by the president of Atlassian Software President Jay Simons</p><p>The secret isthere is no secret. Mergers are hard work. They take a bunch of careful planning, all the right follow-through, and have an incredibly low success rate. For many companies, M&amp;A remains an important source of growth. Technology, customers, revenue, new markets, and most importantly, employees are key pieces of an acquisition strategy.</p><p>Surprisingly, employees the brains and horsepower that create all that desirability are often undervalued in an acquisition (outside of the Valley's appetite for acqui-hires, where companies are targeted specifically for the collection of talent they bring to the acquiring company).</p><p>My company Atlassian has made nine acquisitions in the past seven years and of the 14 founders that joined us through the process, 11 are still building collaboration software with us. So how did we keep such a high percentage of founders happy and fired up around our shared mission? Three simple rules.Rule 1: Believe in the same thing</p><p><a href="http://venturebeat.com/2013/10/08/the-secret-to-making-acquisitions-stick/">Keep reading...</a></p>