Congrats to Rod & the team at Xero on getting their listing away. Rod’s leadership has demonstrated that great tech ventures can get funded in NZ outside of the VC market. I’ve been concerned for sometime that the only path for a NZ tech start-up seeking serious money is the VC (I’m a part-time VC). 

Here we see another avenue opening up. Diversity in funding sources will drive prosperity by ensuring more businesses are adequately funded to make it to market.

Is this something that could be done with this degree of success in the US market? The listing of a pre-revenue company? Doubt it.

I’ve played a bit with Xero and as a very frustrated user of competitive solutions really liked it. For me online financial solutions have always been less about the logistics of finance – I get other folks to do that. What this is about is business literacy – the ability to clue in to what your business is doing and why. To do this you need to be able to read and comprehend the numbers easily.