Rod Drury: From Xero to $2.1 Billion

Описание: 👀 Watch this if you want to learn how to grow a company to $1B

This is our 100th episode, and we marked it properly: live audience, fireside chat, and one of the most influential founders in New Zealand tech, Rod Drury (Xero).

Rod shares what it took to build Xero into a global SaaS platform, including the controversial early IPO strategy, the realities of raising capital at scale, and how to keep an organisation moving fast as it grows. We go deep on co-founders, product design, performance culture, revenue per employee, and why founders need to get uncomfortable and go offshore.

Then we shift to what Rod’s focused on now: “sovereign” systems, digital identity in NZ, why tourism is exposed to platform value leakage, and what it looks like to apply startup execution to national-scale problems.

If you’re building, investing, hiring, or just trying to understand where NZ tech is heading, you’ll get a lot from this episode.

Supported by:
PwC (NZ tech ecosystem support)
Startup Queenstown-Lakes

If you enjoyed it:
Subscribe on YouTube, follow on Spotify, and share this with someone building in NZ.

🧠 What You’ll Learn:

Why Xero IPO’d early, and how Rod thinks about raising before you need it
The “one-pager” rule for getting help from investors and operators
How to hire A-players (and why compromising creates C teams)
Founder-led urgency: keeping speed as the company scales
Working on the business vs in the business (and what changes as you grow)
Practical lessons on scaling from NZ, plus why going offshore matters
Rod’s view on NZ’s next infrastructure layers: digital identity, payments, and tourism platforms
What AI changes about hiring, productivity, and the next wave of enterprise SaaS

⏱️ Timestamps
00:00 – Why NZ needs “amazing people” and global networks
01:35 – Startup Theatre EP100: how the show started + what this live episode is
03:54 – Introducing Rod Drury: Xero, Glazier Systems, AfterMail
06:16 – Rod’s proudest moment: ringing the bell at Xero’s IPO
08:23 – Why listing early was the only way to fund the Xero strategy
09:45 – Raising capital: systems thinking, two-sided markets, and “raise when you don’t need it”
13:01 – Founder PR and media: showing up, building journalist relationships, earned attention
16:58 – Co-founders, team dynamics, and the design-led “wow moment” at Xero
18:55 – The hardest moments: people decisions, urgency, and numbers pressure
20:43 – What “A-players” actually are (and why NZ founders must get uncomfortable)
22:34 – Why Wellington worked: proximity, density, and bad-weather software cities
25:06 – The Trade Me moment, ambition, and deciding to go global
29:41 – The “Rodbomb”: walking the floor, speed, and driving urgency
31:48 – Mental health, values, and culture scaling beyond the founder
33:35 – Craig Winkler: the coffee meeting that turned into a $20m cheque
36:44 – NZ falling behind: payments, platform value leakage, and tourism risk
42:44 – Venture philanthropy + building NZ.com as a national platform
47:41 – Queenstown infrastructure: gondola, funding, and community ownership models
51:57 – Coro: sovereign messaging and why it matters geopolitically
54:08 – AI and jobs: the “no new hires” mindset and revenue per employee
01:01:59 – Mentoring filter: why Rod wants a one-page summary (not a coffee)
01:03:40 – Performance culture, WFH, and learning through proximity
01:05:52 – Revenue per employee: the metric Rod watches
01:09:34 – Intuition vs research: becoming an expert and pattern recognition
01:12:25 – “How does it feel to be a billionaire?” + wealth, tax, and NZ values
01:17:18 – What the ecosystem needs: procurement, urgency, and building big from NZ
01:20:55 – Audience Q&A: channels, partnerships, and scaling overseas hiring
01:30:49 – Post-event wrap: behind the scenes and what’s next for Startup Theatre

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This podcast was proudly supported by https://www.pwc.co.nz/