What Xero learned after 15 years of building software for SMBs

▤ Summary

The unique problem of building for SMBs When trying to understand the different needs between small businesses and enterprise customers, you don’t need to look much beyond the resourcing at each type of company. They just want simplicity and to be working on the business, not necessarily in the business.” From a product perspective, this required Xero to think differently than enterprise software builders. And even if it’s ‘coopetition’, we want you.” With so many potential data flows to integrate, the next step for Xero is ensuring the product has what Curzon calls a “seamless” experience layer. You might think this is always the business owners themselves, but Curzon explained that it’s often accountants or bookkeepers first—the people who will be using a portion of the product and educating end users. “We need to be making sure that for each region we’re building a purpose-built roadmap to go ‘what is the next most important thing that we could deliver in terms of bringing value forward for that customer?’” Curzon said.

▦ Linked Companies

Xero

$1B+