Xero founder Rod Drury is enjoying doing the “fun stuff” after stepping down as chief executive at the end of 2017.
Drury, who founded the accountancy software company 12 years ago, is now working on being with his family. At the company’s Xerocon conference in Brisbane last year he said that his last real holiday was in 1991.
“My kids are now 10, 12 and 14 and what I've realised since taking a step back was, I flew every week or two for the past 15 years and while I like to think I was a good parent, I was never present," Drury said. He had plans to change that this year.
Xero's decision to ditch its New Zealand listing and concentrate solely on the ASX last year was a major blow to the local exchange, but its share price has since climbed.
In November 2017, Drury sold almost $95 million worth of shares, saying the sale would provide an important foundation for his "future plans to pursue a range of philanthropic and social endeavours". In May this year, his family sold another 2 million shares, thought to be worth at least $120m.
He and his former partner Anna still own around 11% of the company, which has a market cap on the ASX of around $A8.5 billion.
At the end of March, Xero had more than 1.8 million subscribers around the world, including more than 1 million in Australia and New Zealand.
In July, it also acquired Canadian software company Hubdoc, which has a platform that captures data from bills for $US70m (NZ$106m), making it the company's largest acquisition to date.
Before founding Xero, Drury successfully established and sold two companies: Glazier Systems, a software development company acquired for $7.5m by Advantage Group in 1999 and which operates today as Intergen; and AfterMail, which was acquired by US Quest Software in 2006 in a $US45m deal.
2018: $1 billion