20VC: Xero's Rod Drury on IPO on Day 1 To Hedge Fund to VC & Doing Startups Backward

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

The Twenty Minute VC

Finance, Venturecapital, Tech News, News, Siliconvalley, Technology, Investing, Startups, Business

4.4 • 637 Ratings

🗓️ 20 May 2016

⏱️ 23 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Rod Drury is the Founder & CEO @ Xero, essentially beautiful accounting software for small business. Xero has received funding from some of the best investors in the world including the likes of Peter Thiel, Accel and Matrix Partners. Prior to Xero, Rod has founded and exited several successful startups including being acquired by QuestSoftware (later acquired by Dell). This success has led to a mass of awards including the likes of NZ Entrepreneur of The Year and NZ High Tech Hall Of Fame.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

1.) How Rod came to found one of New Zealand's breakout tech startup in Xero?

2.) What were the very first days of Xero like? How and why did Rod decide to IPO from the start? How did Rod convey the narrative so well from day 1?

3.) What does it take to transition a firm like Xero from a 50 man startup to a 500 an company? What are the challenges? How do you assure a consistent hiring quality and mechanism?

4.) How are Xero doing in the US in terms of fighting Intuit? Is it a winner take all market?

5.) How was the fundraising process for Rod? How did Rod choose and meet his investors? What was important for Rod when making the selection?

Items Mentioned In Today’s Episode:

Rod’s Fave Book: How the Billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla is Shaping our Future

Rod’s Fave Blog: Feedly, Techmeme

As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Rod on Twitter here!

If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the 20 minute VC for this very special Founders Friday episode. I'm your host, Terry Stebbings, who you can add on the old Snapchat at H. Stebbings, that's with two bees.
0:10.1	Now, we constantly hear the talk of unicorns and the need for them in our tech ecosystem, but our founder today is the founder of a billion dollar startup himself.
0:17.9	I'm delighted to welcome Rod Jewry, founder at Zero, essentially really
0:22.4	beautiful cloud-based accounting software, and they have an incredible story having IPOed from day
0:27.4	one and have then gone on to raise funding from some of the world's greats, including the likes of
0:32.0	Peter Thiel, Excel partners and Matrix partners, just to name a few. And as for Rod, he really is a serial entrepreneur
0:38.8	with a wealth of successful startups behind him. This success has led to a vast number of
0:43.8	entrepreneurs, including New Zealand Entrepreneur of the Year award, New Zealand High Tech Hall of
0:49.8	Fame. The list goes on and on, but it's a 20-minute show, so out of respect for the time,
0:55.2	we can't go through them all.
1:03.6	And if you enjoy the show with Rod today, then check out my episode with Andy Lark, CMO at Saster, on the official Sasta podcast by Jason Lempkin and I.
1:11.3	But before we meet the main man himself, did you know that in the late 17th century, getting up in the middle of the night used to be normal for people.
1:16.5	People would sleep in two segments separated by an hour, and then Lisa came into the world,
1:22.4	producing their incredible mattress made of three unique layers, one of memory foam and one of latex light foam designed to keep you cool at night. With this mattress perfection, there was no need to get up
1:27.0	in the middle of the
1:27.6	night, and the leaser experience was made even better through the all-online experience,
1:32.3	meaning you can order the mattress from home and have it delivered to your door in a matter of
1:36.1	days for free if you live in the UK, US and Canada, and avoiding that terrible showroom experience.
1:42.5	Also, for every 10 they sell, they give one to a shelter,
1:45.7	so sleep well and do good by heading over to lisa.com forward slash VC
1:50.2	and enter the promo code VC75 at checkout for a whopping $75 off your purchase.
1:56.8	However, it's now time to jump into the interview itself,
	...

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