It was less than 2 years ago when kiwi global entrepreneur Rod Drury lead the first IPO of the 2007 year on New Zealand’s stock exchange - NZX by listing online accounting software Xero.
Now just 22 months on and Xero has over 6000 customers and has just completed a strategic capital raise totalling $23.2 million.
Building a successful Public company
When Rod first listed Xero on the NZX just 9 months after starting the business and very early into it’s revenue, many people questioned whether Xero deserved the public valuation it was going for. The round closed successfully with $15 million raised from some 1600 investors and Rod and the crew got down to the business of making Xero a success.
Then came global recession, public money and equity markets everywhere have taken a beating, including New Zealand’s stock exchange, but again, Rod and the crew at Xero have stayed calm, focused on building partnerships and getting customers and results. This laser focus on succeeding has helped them pull together a $23.2 million strategic round which sees the addition of the founder and ex-director of major competitor MYOB - Craig Winkler to the shareholder register with Craig taking an $18 million stake.
Xero now has a firm and fast growing presence in New Zealand, the UK and Australia, and has just strated their moves into the US, and with no debt on the balance sheet, a major competitor bleeding talent, Xero is poised to use this growth capital very wisely for the next major stage of expansion.
What Makes us Made From New Zealand
Xero was designed from day one to be a global business made from New Zealand. Our development team in in Wellington New Zealand and we have staff in the UK and soon Australia.
Already we have customers in the United Kingdom and Australia. Watch out world, Xero goes global early in 2009. Xero is proudly listed on the New Zealand Stock Exchange.
Online Accounting Software
Xero is an online accounting system designed for small businesses.
Xero was founded in July 2006 by successful technology entrepreneur Rod Drury and specialist small business accountant Hamish Edwards. Xero is now listed on the New Zealand Stock Exchange and is a fast growing company with offices in Wellington and Auckland.
The Big Idea
The foundations for Xero were established back in 2003 when Rod Drury and Hamish Edwards worked together, building the award-winning software company AfterMail – Rod as chief executive and Hamish as the virtual CFO, running his own accounting practice.
But it wasn’t until 2006 with growing internet access and advanced web development techniques, along with increasing acceptance of the internet that the time was right to begin development.
Building Xero
Rod and Hamish set about hiring the best and brightest people and forming relationships with small businesses and their advisors, to get direction on the features and design of Xero. They fused this with their own extensive knowledge of small business – Rod having built numerous successful enterprises from scratch, while Hamish, a chartered accountant, had advised hundreds as a virtual CFO.
Growing Up
Listing on the NZX in June 2007 was an important milestone for Xero – growing from a small start-up software company to a listed company within a year – demonstrating how determined we are at Xero to set milestones and to achieve them.
Our goal remains to build a long-term global business from New Zealand, creating an environment that’s attractive to the country’s very best people. We’ve always said we wanted to revolutionise small business, and that’s what we’re here to do.