Wave Updates UI, Rolls out Broad SMB Financial Portfolio
I’ve been following Wave since its founding back in November 2010. The company has an interesting approach to the traditionally conservative accounting software space – it’s product is provided to the user at no cost who, in return, receive personalized “Business Savings”, or special deals offered by businesses that pay Wave Accounting revenue each time […]
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
TradeGecko–Cloud-Based SMB Inventory Launches
I’ve spent couple of decades dealing with the realities of a small business that sells physical goods. The functional requirements of these businesses are surprisingly broad but alas the budget tends to be small. I was interested then to hear from the founders of TradeGecko, a recently launched SaaS inventory
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 […]
Back to the Future–FreshBooks is Accounting
On my first ever trip to the Bay area, six or so years ago, I attended the, now defunct, Office 2.0 conference. At the event I moderated a panel looking at what Accounting 2.0 actually meant and the value it could drive. The panel was a who’s who of the space and included folks from […]
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.
FreeAgent Acquires 60mo–Plans US Expansion
Big news in the SaaS accounting space this morning as FreeAgent announces that it has acquired US accounting provider 60mo and will be using the company as its vehicle for a US expansion. 60mo is a small SaaS provider that has quietly been going about building a small following for its financial forecasting tool. They’ve […]
Xero Nabs Intuit Exec
I’ve long wondered how Xero will execute upon its North American opportunity – after all North America is the real goal for the company, and also where they face the biggest hurdles to success. I’ve even been roundly criticized for articulating this question I’ve spent some time with Xero’s US president Jamie Sutherland who seems […]
Responding to Competition–In the Cloud World–It’s All About Raising the Tide
It’s an interesting trait and one which I believe isn’t specific to Sage – in corporate rooms all across the world, highly paid strategy analysts are spending time agonizing over the impact of a tiny player in their space. That in itself is bad enough, but the flow on effects are far worse.
Is Multi-Currency Actually Important for SMBs?
Of late there has been a bunch of discussion about whether or not multi-currency functionality is important for SMBs. Some commentators came to this conversation from the perspective that if SaaS accounting vendors want to achieve scale, they have to provide for multi-currency. In a post discussing this AccMan says that; As things stand today, […]
On Trial Periods for SaaS Companies–Is Shorter Better?
Recently KashFlow CEO Duane Jackson made the decision to reduce the trial periods offered on his product from 60 days down to 14. In blogging about this change, Jackson explained the decision saying; We analysed our trial data and found that the vast majority of people who never converted from free trial to paid-up had […]
Acclipse Rolls Out Client Side Application (Again)
Acclipse is a New Zealand based accounting practice management solution that I’ve covered previously, specifically when it announced eventually ill-fated partnerships with Xero (covered here) and Saasu (covered here). Acclipse’e product, iFirm is an integrated suite of online products that boasts over 2,000 firms and 10,000 licensed users of its
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
MinuteDock Launches on Intuit’s Partner Platform
Exciting times today for the team from MinuteDock (more on them here) the neat little time trapping application from my own hometown, Wellington, New Zealand. Formerly a product that was primarily intended for users of the Xero accounting product, MinuteDock is broadening its approach and is now tightly integrated with
