Rod Drury on Xero’s origin story, new partnerships & Xerocon 11:FS

So, I’m always hiring great people, and making sure we have those team dynamics between all of our leaders, and our leaders are coaches that are bringing people through. I think if you’re working on the business not in the business, your head’s out, making sure you’re executing strategy, and you’re putting in place the people that actually run and operate the business. And I think that’s the benefit of having real capital, is that you xero founder don’t have to be the operator as well, you can actually work on the business and drive it forward. We’re launching Xero Expenses, so that allows small business owners to, and their staff, to do reimbursements, and that’s a nice banking integration point. We really love the categorisation at point of sale that’s been driven up in the UK, and the ability to fire expenses through a banking front end into accounting is pretty exciting.

Personal life

There are offices in New Zealand, Australia, the U.S. and the U.K. While Drury plots the path to world domination out of Wellington, Craig Walker now plies his trade in the New York City office. In a 28th St office near the Flatiron Building, he loves his life in Manhattan leading a team of developers that work on « strategic projects ». « Some would say [he’s] an authoritarian, but he had a really clear vision and took people along on a journey that really drove an outcome, » he says. Drury says two people that inspire him at the moment are Tesla founder Elon Musk and – having recently launched a Singapore office – that city-state’s first prime minister Lee Kuan Yew. « I don’t like their secrecy. There’s bits of Apple I don’t like — I do like that they do some cool stuff, but I think they could be more customer-centric and a bit more open about what they’re doing. Because a lot of people are very invested in their journey. »

Honored to speak with Rod and founder of…

We know that large businesses aren’t going to be where the jobs are created. So we were thinking as a team, you know, “How do we make better schools and hospitals? ” and it’s by creating jobs, and creating jobs in the small business sector.

• Rod Drury is the Founder & CEO of Xero, a multi-billion publicly traded accounting software company.
• In recognition of it being 15 years since Xero was registered as a company, we’re launching Xero Day.
• We get such a kick when people let us know they now find accounting fun.

The Employee Opportunity: Building Products for Your Customer’s Employees

We’re betting nowadays, O’Leary, also known as « Mr. Wonderful, » regrets not being more flexible in his offer. “I’m thrilled to be joining Xero’s Board and am excited to bring my deep technology experience to help Xero deliver on its significant potential,” she said. Additionally, Xero announced more massive moves with the nomination of independent non-executive director, Anjali Joshi, as well as the retirement from the board of non-executive director Lee Hatton.

First of all, we did a services business, so we were doing our bespoke software development, mainly in Microsoft Access, then in SQL Server, and that got up to about 60 people. And then I was on the board of Trade Me, which was New Zealand’s version of eBay, which we sold for half a billion US dollars, about 11 years ago, and that put quite a lot of capital in our network, and New Zealand, which helped us get Xero off the ground, as well. The real hypothesis there was, we saw the consumer internet taking off, and consumers were having better technology experiences than large enterprises were. We also knew that in the consumer space, people don’t like spending money, so the next biggest market must be all small businesses. So we thought the small business internet was probably the biggest monetizable opportunity on the web, and then most technology was being deployed in the enterprise space. When we saw the Cloud, it fundamentally changed the distribution costs of getting software to small businesses.

We already have 60% of our revenue from offshore so we are in transition to being New Zealand centric. We have so many other phases and experiences to come so there is a lot to look forward to. So, I think, enjoy the journey, because it’s so much fun, and if you’re enjoying it, it never feels like work. We did an IPO very early on, I was always working on the business, and I’m always out there networking, trying to find talent.

It is also capable of integration with over 500 business apps, including solutions for eCommerce and time tracking. Xero has been able to provide many features (accounts payable, purchase orders, invoicing, management reporting, etc.) because it has acquired numerous competitors since its founding. It was only a few years ago there were just four or five of us crammed into a small apartment. Now I go to Melbourne and we have a building with our name on it. We are creating something, a really special company, and I have to pinch myself that we started this from scratch. It was financially painful but it was more the frustration and lost opportunities that rankle today.

« We’re probably the same sort of people who really like sudoku. There’s a mathematical elegance in accounting and getting accounting right. » Just weeks prior, Drury sold his email archival business AfterMail to US tech firm Quest Software for $US45 million. Walker had long moved on from Glazier and VIATX, and he had a good portfolio of small business customers that kept him busy. Regarding the organisation’s imminent development and opportunities, Drury said he feels optimistic about the company’s future under Xero CEO Sukhinder Singh Cassidy’s guidance.

At the time, the company’s sole product was a minimalist sandal that approximated the experience of wearing no shoes at all, as was custom in ancient civilizations. According to a 2021 press release, « Co-founder and CEO, Steven Sashen, started Xero Shoes out of necessity after discovering that running barefoot solved years of running injuries, but that being actually barefoot wasn’t ideal in many situations. » We’ve eliminated a lot of the early risk and have built the core foundations, but we are still in the early stages of our journey.

Your body’s made up of a bunch of chemicals, flushing them out by doing some exercise must be good. It’s amazing, you’ll meet somebody interesting, and then two days later, you’ll meet somebody that they should meet. Don’t expect anything back, but I’ve just got in the habit of always connecting people. Then you’ve been useful for people, and that always comes back times ten.