“Diversity is a critical success driver for every business—not just tech and startups,” says Aubrey Blanche, head of diversity and inclusion at multibillion-dollar tech giant Atlassian.

The company, which has a market capitalisation of $8.5 billion (£6.84 billion) and recently acquired Trello for $577 million (£463.97 million), is working hard to address the tech sector’s diversity problem by starting within.

Joining the likes of Salesforce and Google, Atlassian released the demographic makeup of its teams for the first time last year.

Of its 158 teams worldwide, Atlassian revealed that 71% have at least one woman and 64% have at least one person aged over 40. In the US, 11% of the tech giant’s teams include at least one black or African American person and 10% have at least one Hispanic person.

As the effort to improve these statistics continues, StartupSmart spoke to Blanche about the real challenges, and business opportunity, in tackling the problem of diversity in startups and tech.