peter thiel « The Diversity Blog – SaaS, Cloud & Business Strategy

Xero Raises a Truckload of Cash from US Funds

December 2, 2012

Business

Craig Winkler, Matrix Capital Management, New Zealand, peter thiel, rod drury, The Ventures, Vala (Middle-earth), Xero

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…

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Xero Raises Another Round and Acquires WorkFlowMax

February 1, 2012

Business

Craig Winkler, LiveMigrate, MYOB, peter thiel, rod drury, SaaSu, Xero

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,…

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Xero Buys Paycycle and Clarifies US Market Entry

July 21, 2011

Business

Market entry strategy, MYOB, PayCycle, peter thiel, rod drury, Software as a Service, Xero

At its AGM today, Xero announced a number of things, one of which was the acquisition of Australian payroll provider Paycycle in a deal worth $1.5M. When Xero launched they went on record as saying that payroll was outside…

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Xero and the US Market

May 24, 2011

Business

accounting, PayPal, peter thiel, rod drury, Small Business Web, Xero

In the four or so years since Xero launched with great fanfare in New Zealand, moved on to Australia and gained a modicum of visibility in the UK, many of us have been waiting to see what would happen…

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Xero Gets Some Acid on the Blogosphere

October 24, 2010

Business

Craig Winkler, PayPal, peter thiel, rod drury, Xero

Last week Xero announced that Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal and the first external investor in Facebook, was investing NZD4 million to “support Xero’s expansion into the US market”. Not surprisingly the move got significant attention both in New…

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On start-ups and paying CEOs

September 24, 2008

Business, Efficiency, IT, New business, Strategy

peter thiel, techcrunch

At the TechCrunch 50 conference Peter Thiel, Silicon Valley uber investor was quoted as saying that there is a ceiling in terms of CEO salary for a startup, beyond which you begin to “have issues”. For a more general…

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Blog Archives

Xero Raises a Truckload of Cash from US Funds

Xero Raises Another Round and Acquires WorkFlowMax

Xero Buys Paycycle and Clarifies US Market Entry

Xero and the US Market

Xero Gets Some Acid on the Blogosphere

On start-ups and paying CEOs