Xero boss says hooroo, in steps guru
Analysis: Rod Drury is standing down as Xero’s boss after making his mark on Wellington.
One of his last acts as chief executive was to open the company’s new headquarters on Taranaki St last month – home to its 650 staff in the city.
There has always been a strong sense of purpose about Drury, who built Xero up from its bootstraps with a cheeky stockmarket listing.
Drury had a simple conviction that New Zealand businesses could play on the world stage if they backed a good idea with a decent amount of capital.
He persuaded investors that Xero was worth a $15 million punt, based largely on his success building up and selling another software business, Aftermail, for $65m.
He repaid those faithful by, at one point, showing them a ‘‘40 times’’ return on their money as Xero shares soared above $45.
There was never going to be a good time for Drury to stand down and, given the importance of his personal brand to the business, it was always going to be sudden.
But that may not stop people asking ‘‘why now’’ and ‘‘what will it mean for Wellington’’.
He still owns about $600m of shares in Xero, despite cashing out $95m in November.
Drury and Xero chairman Graham Smith said the company needed a chief executive with new skills to ‘‘scale up the business around the world’’, setting it up for the next five years. The pair had been talking about a handover for 12 months and those discussions ‘‘came to a head’’ towards the end of last year, Smith said.
Two milestones lie ahead for Xero, the first tantalisingly within reach and the other not much closer that it was five years ago.
They are achieving a profit, and cracking the United States market.
What also appears likely is that there is a culture change ahead for Xero and its 2000 staff.
The company has, at times, attracted attention for its high turnover of senior executives.
Talking about his own departure, Drury said: ‘‘The legacy of founder-led businesses is to get through these sorts of transitions to become ‘nimble corporates’.’’
New chief executive Steve Vamos, an Australian, is more management guru than entrepreneur.
He has spent much of his career in Australia with established multinationals such as Microsoft, IBM and Apple. And he is in the process of writing his first book on ‘‘leadership and disruption’’.
In a blog post from October, Vamos said a big lesson he had learned while leading people and teams was ‘‘the need to think more like a ‘head coach’ than a ‘star player’ ’’.
The ‘‘short answer’’ was that there would be no change to Xero’s company structure.
He was open to moving to New Zealand but noted that Australia was now the company’s biggest market. ‘‘So I’ll be spending time in both places, as well as in our international businesses, which are growing.’’