Thanks Rod

Liam Dann writes:

In 2007 Rod Drury took me to lunch. He told me about his idea for a cloud computing company and how he planned to turn into a global tech player.

That kind of enthusiasm and passion for an idea isn’t unusual in entrepreneurs – but the clarity of Drury’s vision was disarming. His success in executing it is extremely rare.

Having sold his first start-up (AfterMail) for US$45 million, Drury had enough local support in 2007 to raise $15 million and list Xero on the NZX with a market cap of $18 million.

When it, controversially, de-listed to join the ASX earlier this year it was worth nearly $5 billion.

It now has 1.2 million customers in 180 countries and is breaking even at a cash earnings level.

Drury has systematically done what he said he would do.

I invested in Xero at the beginning based on my belief in Rod Drury to make a success of it. My shares which cost $1 are now worth around $33 each.

On top of that I use Xero for my business and it is great. I spend only a fraction of the time I used to on accounting.

So thanks Rod for a job well done.