How Rod Drury Built Xero From A ‘Small Set Of Rocks In The South Pacific’ Into A Global Player

Drury told him his idea to change the world was to build a new suite of accounting software from scratch, without any preconceived ideas from existing players of how it should look, feel and act. In 1999, straight out of university, he had worked at Glazier Systems, a software development and consulting company founded by Drury. At first, Walker didn’t have much to do with the boss, but that all changed in his second year. It is still yet to turn a profit, having stuck with its strategy of pursuing growth over earnings. But the company has become a poster child for New Zealand’s tech sector, having blazed a trail for the country’s now-burgeoning tech startup industry. This week it is hosting 3000 customers at its annual event, XeroCon, in Melbourne.

“The internet was a bit of a challenge there, but there was this thing called Café Net, which was you bought $50 for prepaid internet and you could get it if you were in a café,” said Catherine Walker. Catherine Walker, when she first started working at apartment 404, was alarmed by the ferocity of the debates between her husband and Drury. “There were some great implementations and great discussions around some of the early product features that still exist today.”

Operations

Susan is a past director of Arvida Group, ASB Bank and Trustpower, and a past ministerial appointee to the National Advisory Council on the Employment of Women. Susan holds a Bachelor of Commerce and Bachelor of Laws from the University of Otago. David has a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology and English from Victoria University of Wellington, and completed the post-graduate General Management Program at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. Peter Karpas is CEO of North America and said that one of the things that has made Xero so successful is that employees are encouraged to ask questions. Top management shares with the entire organization exactly what it shares with the board, allowing complete transparency and conversations about every aspect of the company. Xero is now one of the top 20 companies on the New Zealand Stock Exchange and is listed on the Australian Securities Exchange.

Xero celebrates 15 year anniversary with launch of ‘Xero Day’

Software-as-a-service, as the industry called it, was still rare for small business use. “I started to get on Drury’s radar when I developed a new way to write software, essentially. Out of that, we xero founder spun out a company called VIATX,” Walker told Business Insider. 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. Today, the original vision to change the game for small business is stronger than ever with Xero’s team of more than 3,600 people working to bring Xero to millions more small businesses and their advisors around the world. Dale co-founded and was CEO of mobile pioneer Omega Logic in 1999, which co-launched prepay top-ups in the UK, leading the growth of top-up transactions to £450m within five years. She then turned to investing and advising startups and won the British Angel Investor of the Year award in 2011.

Craig Walker remembers that even as a struggling startup building the first prototype, a variety of people with distinct skill sets were deliberately hired to provide this diversity. Those winter days of Rod Drury and Craig Walker yelling at each other in apartment 404 has now grown to a corporate culture in Xero now known internally as “diversity of thought”. At this stage, Drury was still busy with his other ventures – he was a director at TradeMe and worked as a sales evangelist for Quest Software, the company that bought out his AfterMail business. In New Zealand’s most populous city, Auckland, there’s an exhibit called The Innovators at the Museum of Transport and Technology (MOTAT). Perhaps this knack for evangelism was born out of those early days in 2006 when he had to motivate his first employees – including Craig Walker – to share the same vision as him for Accounting 2.0.

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Having started life supported by a thousand retail investors, the company would later take money from some surprising backers, including the founder of a competing company. 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. He figured he would need $NZ17 million to sustain a business with close to 50 staff – for three years to develop the accounting software into a commercially viable product. The company started in an apartment with a ramshackle solution for accessing wifi from a nearby café. It acquired its domain name by flying a fan of a US metal rap band out to New Zealand. 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.

World’s Top 10 Serial Entrepreneurs

A self-described software nerd, Drury locked himself in his office at home for a few weeks and wrote an early online relational bit of accounting software. Join our team of talented thinkers, creators and educators and help make life better for small businesses globally. 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”. The company was armed with ready information to teach small businesses how to find young workers, how to manage them, what the rules are on wages and probation periods — all to help them take on more young people.

Susan is currently the chair of Vista Group and an independent director of Mercury. Kate leads Xero’s business operations in the UK, playing an active role as an advocate for our customer community. She joined Xero in 2019 and has held critical leadership roles in Xero’s strategy and operations teams, globally and in the UK. She holds a Bachelor of Science (Biology) from the University of South Hampton and trained and qualified with the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland (ICAS). Drury made his initial fortune through Glazier Systems, a New Zealand software development and consulting company, which was sold in 1999. He subsequently established Context Connect and an email technology company called Aftermail.

Although it’s been 11 years since Drury summoned Walker at his 40th birthday party and 10 years since the company floated on the NZX, Xero remains a growth-first venture. It has focused the entire time building up its customer base and has not posted a dollar of profit along the way. Wellington — 6 July, 2021 — Xero, the global small business platform, today marked its 15th anniversary since becoming a registered company in Wellington, New Zealand.

• As the technical framework took shape in that dining room, Walker hired three software engineers and three designers – and the new team needed a place to work.
• The idea is that everyone in the company, regardless of their seniority or role, must wash their own cup.
• Drury was adamant that he would not go to Silicon Valley to raise funds, however.
• She is responsible for driving Xero’s growth in Asia, working closely with leading financial institutions and governments in the region to bring value to the small business and partner community.

The band tweaked the spelling, and would go on to find global fame as Linkin Park. “The band was called Xero at the time, and we probably had less than a half-a-dozen songs. No flame tattoos yet, no red hair yet, most of us were still in college.” Brian is currently lead director of Frontdoor, the largest provider of home service plans in the United States, and is presiding director on the board of The New York Times.

Deloitte Top 200 Visionary Leader

As an established human resources leader, she has more than 20 years’ experience in human resources strategy development and execution, delivering value-adding organizational people solutions and transformational change programs. Nicole has worked across the financial services, technology and telecommunications industries for companies including AMP and Microsoft. Kirsty is an FCA and FCPA with more than 25 years’ global experience in the finance and technology sectors across New Zealand and the UK at companies including PwC, BBC Technology, Jade and Siemens.