THE UNTOLD STORY: How Xero Took a Band Name and Changed Accounting for a Million Companies

Drury says he usually catches up with Thiel a couple of times a year, although they’ve not met in the last 12 months due to time pressures. And Thiel this year sold down almost $23 million of his Xero shares to slip down from 6.7% equity at one point to 4.8% — putting his stake under the 5% disclosure threshold. “Over more recent years, the whole concept of equality’s become a big deal here. Politically, it’s a different time, it doesn’t play out as well, but my view is these people add a huge amount of value to New Zealand,” he says. “Some diversity in views is healthy, but catastrophically bad judgment (in my view) is not what anyone wants in a fellow board member,” Hastings wrote, according to the New York Times.

In 2006 it was even more difficult to find that much in a tiny country with not many more than 4 million people and a practically non-existent tech venture capital pool. Drury was adamant that he would not go to Silicon Valley to raise funds, however. Most business owners at the time would have been paralysed with horror at the thought of keeping their financial information on the public internet rather than in the privacy of their own computers. But this was before everyone was happily putting their personal information on Facebook and the iPhone was still a secret project deep in the laboratories at xero founder Apple. The software would be stored and delivered over the internet rather than installed on individual computers.

Company secretary

Cardinal has two daughters and in the last couple of years, the constant flying necessary as a manager looking after teams in Melbourne and Wellington has made time a precious commodity. “Often I’ve joined companies when you walk in the door, and you think ‘What’s the culture, how do I need to adjust my style so that I can be successful?’ … but Xero’s just been a place where everyone is uniquely encouraged to be themselves.” While that first era of solving problems with a clash-of-ideas seemed chaotic to witnesses like Catherine Walker, the approach has persisted to encourage current-day Xero teams to be inclusive of different points of view. “Xero listed very early, with limited revenues, raising $NZ15 million from 1,100 retail investors — not funds.”

Rodney Drury

Steven has held a range of senior executive roles, including at GoDaddy, the world’s largest services platform for entrepreneurs, where most recently he was chief product officer. Prior to this, Steven was the CEO of Outright, an online bookkeeping service, which was acquired by GoDaddy. Steven has also held various senior management roles at Intuit, including vice president of strategy and innovation for the small business division. Steven holds a Bachelor of Arts in Physics from the University of North Carolina and a Master of Business Administration from Stanford University.

As we’ve written before, innovators ask provocative questions that challenge the status quo. Rod Drury asked why small businesses couldn’t access their financial statement right when they wanted them. He and Peter Karpas encourage this same line of questioning in their employees.

Michael holds a Bachelor of Science, Applied Mathematics (Honors) from Brown University. With the rapid growing popularity of the cloud, more and more companies are integrating its features into their core business practices. Xero, a New Zealand based company, which develops cloud-based software solutions for accounting purposes has adopted the features of the cloud. Xero was the brainchild of Rod Drury and his personal accountant, both of whom felt that the existing traditional desktop accounting software was not sufficient to fulfil the needs of contemporary accountants. Officially, the company was incorporated in the year 2006, with its headquarters in Wellingdon, New Zealand.

Board of directors

“I think we were legally working there. I’m not entirely sure whether you were allowed to start a business out of an apartment.” “It was a studio apartment. Not even a galley, but a little kitchen, a bathroom and that was it… It was really small. It was grey. It had grey carpet. Grey walls. Very simple, small apartment, about 50 metres square,” Walker recalls. “We loved solving the problems. There was this mathematical beauty in accounting. We loved the equation that debits equalled credits,” Drury said. Despite making great money out of Glazier Systems and AfterMail, accounting had been on Rod Drury’s mind since he was a teenager. With Walker not having any knowledge of accounting, this was a risky project for him – but he immediately felt at peace about walking away from his safe contracting gigs. On May 1, 2006, Walker came in for his first day of work at Drury’s mysterious new venture.

The flat hierarchy circles back to the “diversity of thought” theme seen in the robust conversations back in apartment 404. If the boss is seen different to or distant from the rest of the team, free exchange of ideas would be hindered. Much like Mary Taylor did 160 years earlier, Rod Drury and Xero took a big chance on Cuba Street to control their own destiny. And as is the case with many companies, internal history shapes some of the present, and legacy features of how things worked in the founding days are still seen at the firm today. Like Craig Walker, “mum and dad” investors would be asked to take a leap of faith based on little more than Drury’s vision and track record.

They were in enough contact that Drury invited him along to his lavish 40th birthday party, where he was celebrating not just the life milestone but a recent business success. Walker had long moved on from Glazier and VIATX, and he had a good portfolio of small business customers that kept him busy. Rod Drury had already successfully started two companies and exited them for gains of millions of dollars. He was busy as a director of New Zealand classifieds site TradeMe, but had a vision of having a bigger impact on the world.

• In New Zealand at the time, the biggest VC deal was about two million dollars.
• “If you don’t have time for yourself, you don’t have time for the company. For any job, right? And for me, I think I’ve learnt that the hard way personally because I do love what I do and love working.”
• “We kind of threw a bunch of stuff at the wall to see what would stick. We weren’t looking at what other products were doing. We were making it up as we were building.”
• For Walker, having an understanding of diversity at Xero is essential to walking in the shoes of their customers – small businesses.
• The new software venture began life as Accounting 2.0, but the name never felt right.

Product

He is a former director of Trade Me,1 and was involved in the now-defunct Pacific Fibre project. Michael is responsible for driving Xero’s direct customer and partner marketing activities, and aligning our brand, marketing, digital and communications teams globally. He is tasked with growing Xero’s reputation and deepening its connection and engagement with customers and our communities. Before Xero he worked at Uber as Vice President, Performance Marketing and Growth, and led global demand generation at Tripadvisor as Vice President, Traffic Acquisition and Measurement. Before Tripadvisor, Michael was Chief Technology Officer and Co-Founder of Choicestream, an online personalisation and programmatic advertising provider.

Craig Walker was working around Wellington as a technology contractor for a range of small business clients that couldn’t afford to have their own chief technology officer. Damien is a legal and governance professional and leader with more than 20 years’ experience advising senior management and boards. Prior to joining Xero, Damien was Company Secretary and Deputy Group General Counsel at Telstra. Damien holds a Bachelor of Laws with Honours and a Bachelor of Economics from the Australian National University. He is a fellow of the Governance Institute of Australia and a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.

Prior to Xero, Alex led the European operations for small business payments technology company SumUp, and before that held senior leadership positions at Electrocomponents and eBay, where he gained exposure to a large constituency of merchant sellers. Alex holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration, International Business from Georgetown University, and a Master of Business Administration from INSEAD. The Company went public on the New Zealand Stock Exchange on June 5, 2007, through a US$15 million IPO.

Diya leads Xero’s product and technology teams driving product management, product design, engineering, security and data to further improve Xero’s global small business platform for partners and small businesses. Diya has market-leading global experience in designing, developing and launching consumer and business products in high growth mid sized companies, startups and Fortune 500 brands. Before joining Xero in 2023, Diya was Chief Product Officer at Okta where she led product innovation for both its workforce and customer identity business. Prior to that she was Vice President of Product Management at Google, where she was focused on driving adoption for some of the company’s leading products. Diya has a Masters of Business Administration from Harvard Business School and a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering and Economics from the University of Michigan. Brian is an experienced former executive and CEO, having driven growth and innovation for leading technology, SaaS and cloud-based companies, and a professional director.