Xero Raises a Truckload of Cash from US Funds
Last week the announcement came that Xero had secured a huge investment round from US venture funds Valar Ventures (backed by Facebook founder Peter Thiel) and Matrix Capital Management. I’ve spent time talking with these US investors about Xero’s prospects and areas I thought the company would need to improve
Xero Rolls Out Some More Network Effects and Faces Some Criticism. Some Lessons on Viral Strategies
Xero rolled out a new update this week which included some interesting and valuable features. The introduction of online invoicing is a bit of a watershed, rather than opening emailed PDF’s, customers whose suppliers use Xero can click on a URL which takes them to an online invoice. SO far so good – saves paper, saves [...]
Xero Hits Escape Velocity With 100000 Customers Count
Xero held its annual meeting last week and detailed its current performance. Xero annual meetings are always an interesting event, Xero has an incredibly supportive shareholder base, while most publicly listed company AGMs include a fair dose of critique and questioning, Xero’s events instead ring to the sound of hand-clapping
Rumors Suggest Xero to Announce Acquisitions at Xerocon
Xero is holding it’s annual Australian conference in Melbourne this week and in keeping with the norm for tech companies, we can expect some important announcements to be made at the event. I’ve received multiple notes from people speculating about potential news including acquisitions – some likely, some less so.
Xero Raises Another Round and Acquires WorkFlowMax
Exciting news today from Xero ahead of their user conference tomorrow that spans two important announcements. I’ll cover them individually. $20M Raised from Existing Shareholders Existing shareholders have reinvested to the aggregate tune of $20M. Sam Morgan, Sam Knowles, Craig Winkler and Peter Thiel’s fund Valar Ventures have all taken
Differentiating in a Commoditized World: On Syncplicity and Expanz
At the Cloud Connect event in San Jose, Allister Croll gave an excellent presentation, actually as an aside, Croll ran close to half of the Cloud Connect sessions and really did a sterling job of managing the conference. Anyway – in his session Croll was talking about the opportunities for investment in the cloud and [...]
Channels – Direct or Partnered, Take Your Pick
I had a little online tete-a-tete with fellow SaaS commentator Dennis Howlett recently about market strategies for SaaS accounting companies. Dennis comes from an accountancy background and, from where I can stand at least, seems to have generally been supportive of vendors partnering with accountants as a major part of their go-to-market strategy. In his [...]
One Swallow Doth Not a Summer Make
Before any wit comes up with any other suggestions for the meaning of the title of this post, the “swallow” in the above refers to the bird, Stelgidopteryx serripennis, and not the physiological movement, phagia. For one swallow does not make the summer, nor does one day; and so too one day, or a short [...]
Xero Releases Multi-currency and First Hint of Tiered Pricing
(Disclosure – in the lead-up to the release of multi-currency, I did a very small amount of contracting to Xero to produce some marketing videos) A couple of months ago while I was in San Francisco I saw a sneak preview of some screen flows for Xero’s multi-currency capability. At the time I was pretty [...]
