English
Arabic
What we’ve found is these partnering things take a long time, and you’ve got to earn trust. From our beginnings at a kitchen table in a Wellington apartment, to offices in more than 20 cities around the world, it’s been quite a journey. A journey built on the support and belief of our bookkeepers, accountants, the broader Xero partner community, and our people. I’m proud to share that several of the Xero team from those early days are still with us – Craig Walker, Fletch Brown, Larissa Paris, and Catherine Walker (OG) are all celebrating their 15 year anniversaries this year. Rod Drury was a board member of TradeMe at the time, but he was also busy doing the sums to try to get Xero off the ground.
- So he put the idea on hold and started an e-mail archiving company called AfterMail.
- Perhaps not surprising given the size of the country (which Drury calls “a small set of rocks in the South Pacific”) but Drury needed more than that.
- The Linkin Park fan said he’d previously rejected an offer of $10,000 to give up xero.com.
- Then you’ve been useful for people, and that always comes back times ten.
The best bits of Xero’s scale-up transformation. An insider tells all.
The Company has been a publicly traded startup since the early days because that was the easiest way to raise capital in New Zealand. But now Matrix and Accel have invested and Xero has just hit an annual run rate of $250M in Revenue. It’s hard to believe that after 15 seasons, ABC’s hit show “Shark Tank” is still as relevant as ever for startup companies seeking both capital and publicity. Indeed, investments from the venture capitalist “sharks” have spawned such success stories like Scrub Daddy (the one “Shark Tank” deal Daymond John regrets turning down), Bombas socks, and who could forget Squatty Potty?
Articles by Rod
We realised that accounting would be the key systems of record, all small businesses have banks, the smart ones have business advisors, so there’s a natural accounting channel, and they all have a relationship with the taxman. So, you can choose to use accounting software or not, but you must do accounting. Doing financial systems implementation at EY, you always think, “I could do this better,” especially being a programmer. So, about three years before I properly started Xero, I was actually doing some work up in Boston.
THE UNTOLD STORY: How Xero took a band name and changed accounting for a million companies
There is also a community element in the form of a forum where clients can interact. The company promotes its offerings through its website, social media pages, advertising, and participation in road shows and conferences. xero founder Collaborate easily, automate manual tasks & access client records any time with tools to manage your practice. Xero automates many day-to-day tasks and keeps you up to date on the money side of things wherever you are.
So, one of our first design-led stories was, we noticed that a small business owner would, you know, open up the factory first thing in the morning, and the first business thing they’d do would go to their online banking, to see who’d paid them overnight. So, the horror of small business was just before, say, a VAT return was due, basically reprocessing all of your data. Fifteen years ago, Rod and the Xero foundation team took the first steps to bring the vision of accounting software in the cloud to life and scaling a purposeful, global Software as a Service (SaaS) business from New Zealand. I recently had a chance to chat with Rod Drury, Founder of Xero, about his take on building a business from the region.
In New Zealand’s most populous city, Auckland, there’s an exhibit called The Innovators at the Museum of Transport and Technology (MOTAT). It celebrates the nation’s innovation, entrepreneurship and ingenuity. “Are you about done with this contracting bullshit?” Drury asked the technology specialist. “It was a software-as-a-service company. Some generally good ideas, but with the dot-com failure that was kind of happening around the world, it kind of didn’t go anywhere. That’s how Rod and I worked together the first time.”
Along the way it secured backing from the co-founder of an arch-rival company, as well as from one of Silicon Valley’s most controversial entrepreneurs. When Xero was planning to list on New Zealand’s stock exchange through its initial public offering ten years ago, there was a gag in Kiwi financial circles about the company which said it aimed to upend the accounting industry. Other Matter® (Australia) offers an innovative and environmentally responsible alternative to traditional vinyl decals, and is the global winner in the ‘Innovating for environmental sustainability’ category.
After finishing high school, the trio started to ramp up their musical career and sought new band members for their “nu metal” rock band. As they met vocalist Chester Bennington, who would later become the internationally famous face of the band, it was clear the group would need to evolve further.
I’m always trying to create benefit for people in my networks and it tends to come back with a multiple. Having the ability to get the resources to build a great team to execute strategy is what needs to be done. So for the right type of company, and the right type of people, following what we did will make sense.
Drury says Xero has given new confidence to New Zealand startups and investors that it’s okay to “play the long game”. This post-Xero crop of startups are different from previous generations, Clare says, because they have tangible sales backing up their business. “What it has done is help support a strong technology investment story in Wellington, and to a lesser extent Auckland.” There was a collective acknowledgement that small businesses also needed to create jobs to make a real impact on youth unemployment. While Thiel’s politics have been in the headlines recently, back in 2010 he was a tech industry megastar. As New Zealand media revealed this year, Drury supported his application for a waiver around the usual Kiwi citizenship requirements in 2011.
