We put out our first half operating update this morning.

Xero Operating Update to 30 September 2009

Xero has over 12,000 customers and now has customers in 50 countries. How cool is that!

Just 12 months ago we had 2200 customers. As you can imagine there has been a huge amount of work going on behind the scenes to ensure that we scale all aspects of the business to deal with this level of growth. With the additional capital raised in May we’ve been able to gas up on development as well as build out our sales team with senior people in NZ, the UK and Australia.

We’re delighted we’ve been able to lock in our growth rate after our seasonal high of March and feel that we’ve put the foundations in place for the next step up.

Selling software to the vast and fragmented small business market is really hard. There are few companies who have cracked it. The way people are using the web is evolving quickly and we’re all just starting to understand the impact of social media. Over the last half we’ve experimented with a number of marketing and sales approaches to find what works in our space and in each country. I’ve really enjoyed this stage of the business and I think we’re evolving sales models and processes that work. There is no doubt we are still learning.

Our entire team have worked really, really hard over the last half. There is a buzz inside Xero as all the hard work we’ve been doing is beginning to pay off. We just love the feedback and hearing how people enjoy using our software.

Thank you to our valuable customers and partners. We really appreciate your support and the great ideas and feedback. Our list of things to do has not got any smaller. And thank you again to our shareholders who have given us the opportunity to build a company that we all at Xero are proud of.