While Mary Taylor returned to England in 1859 or 1860 to live out her remaining years, she had set a precedent of risk-taking, independence and entrepreneurship on Cuba St that remains to this day. Mary Taylor reportedly even wrote articles for English newspapers and worked on a novel while running the shop on Cuba Street. But after Ellen died of tuberculosis in 1851, she started to miss her acquaintances in England, including her close friend Charlotte Bronte. Taylor opened a general store on Cuba Street, itself named after the settler ship the Cuba. Her cousin Ellen Taylor joined her from the United Kingdom in August 1849 and the business flourished, according to FL Irvine-Smith’s Wellington history book xero founder Streets Of My City.
Trent Innes, MD of Xero Australia, has a philosophy that he directs all employees to live by. The idea is that everyone in the company, regardless of their seniority or role, must wash their own cup. “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.”
Publications
“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. “All of these companies have real software-as-a-service revenues with more than $US2 million in annualised recurring revenues – some well more than $US10 million in annualised recurring revenues,” he says.
Anjali is an experienced technology and product leader and professional director with more than 30 years’ experience in engineering and product management. She is currently a director of LocoNav and Persistent Systems, and was previously a director of Alteryx, Lattice Semiconductor, Iteris, Mobileiron, and McClatchy. Anjali is on the advisory board of the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University and an advisor to Insight Partners in New York. Ashley leads Xero’s global go-to-market functions including sales operations, regional managing directors and leadership, customer experience, partnerships and revenue operations. Before joining Xero in 2023, Ashley was Chief Operating Officer at Recharge Inc.
Angad has a Bachelor in Information Technology from the University of Technology Sydney. Xero’s innovation extended beyond accounting software—it was also funded in a unique way. In New Zealand at the time, the biggest VC deal was about two million dollars. 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.
Executive leadership: Regional leaders
Thiel is recognised for his business acumen and has some deep and fascinating philosophical views on society and history, but he has lately become a divisive figure in Silicon Valley, mainly for his political views. He has financially supported Republican candidates at various elections, and wrote a book in the 1990s that railed against political correctness. MYOB likely started with similar objectives to Xero in helping small businesses succeed, according to Drury, but the takeover oversaw a transformation from a “founder-led business” to an investor-first machine. “I’d been watching him a while closely, and I saw MYOB was moving down the private equity route. When it had all those private equity people come into it from Archer Capital, in early 2009, Craig got moved to chief innovation officer, then left.” For Walker, having an understanding of diversity at Xero is essential to walking in the shoes of their customers – small businesses. “We had a sales person very early, we had quality assurance people pretty early. We had accounting. Experts in their field. We had help writing, and a product manager as well as the designers and engineers — it cost us really a fair bit,” Walker says.
- Credit Suisse once called it the “Apple of accounting” and Drury was introduced to the crowd at XeroCon in Brisbane last year as a person who was “doing for accounting what Steve Jobs did for the phone”.
- As New Zealand media revealed this year, Drury supported his application for a waiver around the usual Kiwi citizenship requirements in 2011.
- He is tasked with growing Xero’s reputation and deepening its connection and engagement with customers and our communities.
- In New Zealand’s most populous city, Auckland, there’s an exhibit called The Innovators at the Museum of Transport and Technology (MOTAT).
- “We probably could’ve raised money on the US west coast, but if we were looking for $NZ15 million, the company would’ve had a valuation of around $NZ20 million, meaning the venture capitalists would’ve got most of the business,” he says.
Colin has over 12 years of experience in the accounting profession and has expertise in cloud accounting software implementation, development and best practice. In 2011 he founded South Africa’s first ever cloud practice, Real Time Accounting, and later became the first Xero-certified advisor in South Africa. Colin has also worked at global accounting firm BDO and is a SAIPA certified accountant. Anjali spent 13 years in senior product leadership at Google, during which time she was instrumental in building and scaling new products globally across internet, mobile and video platforms. Prior to joining Google, Anjali held engineering leadership roles at Covad Communications and program management roles at AT&T Bell Labs.
We help small businesses thrive worldwide
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. “We got the book Accounting for Dummies — because many of our very first programming team hadn’t really been exposed to accounting. “That stuck with me for many, many years… The magic of getting accounting and software together is really important.”
Galpin said the milestone was remarkable, considering the company started with zero customers just a decade earlier. “Small businesses move the needle by each adding half a job to a job. And we realised that, really for the first time using our accountants’ channel, we could… drive urgency through millions of small businesses. 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.
Product
It was these questions that led to Xero’s “beautiful accounting software.” And the software changed everything. Drury saw that once these bank transactions automatically loaded into the accounting cloud, it completely transformed how a small business owner works. Xero’s online accounting software connects small business owners with their numbers, their bank, and advisors at anytime. “That was the technology scene in the 1990s, because it was really hard and personally very difficult with all the travel, to build long-term businesses. So you get into a point and you’d sell them, and everyone was happy.” Australian general manager of product development, Laura Cardinal, joined the company in 2014 but says she still feels the cultural legacy from those early days. Even in today’s terms, that’s a lot of money for a company not generating any revenue.
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. Koren joined Xero as senior partner marketing manager in 2017, establishing Xero’s global sales enablement function, and has since held other global leadership positions at Xero. Koren holds a Bachelor of Social Sciences (Psychology) from Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne. Alex is responsible for leading Xero’s operations across the UK, Europe, the Middle East and Africa. He has more than 25 years’ of senior leadership experience, having led teams across Europe and Latin America in ecommerce, payments, telecommunications, FMCG and consultancy.
Rod Drury
His experience includes leading Pandora Media, a streaming music provider in the US, and aQuantive, a digital marketing services and technology company that was acquired by Microsoft. Steven is an entrepreneur and professional director with more than 25 years’ experience in creating and delivering products within the technology and accounting software industries. Steven is currently a non-executive director of Semrush, an online visibility management SaaS platform, and a previous non-executive director of Avantax.
“At the northern end of Cuba Street you will find the head offices of two ‘unicorns’ — technology companies with values over a billion dollars. Both of the companies were founded in Wellington in the last 20 years. TradeMe in 1999 and Xero in 2006.” “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.” “I remember there were a couple of MPs members of parliament that lived in the building… and we’d be having these business meetings, and people coming up into this residential apartment building.” The actual table where he wrote the first code to turn Drury’s vision into a working product is the centrepiece. The installation also features video narrative from Drury, Walker and his ex-wife Catherine, who also ended up working for the new software venture.
Rodney Kenneth Drury (born 1966) is a New Zealand technology entrepreneur, predominately known for his association with accounting software company, Xero. As a business operating in New Zealand and Australia, the biggest rival for Xero was – and still is — the desktop software package named MYOB. Established in 1991, the Australian company was dominant in the small business accounting software market by the time Drury started Xero.
