Rod Drury: from surf and software to shares and social endeavours

Friday, 17 November 2017

Rod Drury has banked almost $95 million by selling three million shares in Xero.

The businessman has lived out his career increasingly under the limelight, building the business into a powerhouse that now employs more than 1800 staff in New Zealand, Australia, Britain and the United States.

Who is Rod Drury?

New Zealand's most famous software entrepreneur. He's the chief executive and driving force behind cloud accounting company Xero, which listed on the New Zealand stock exchange 10 years ago and which is now worth just over $4.4 billion, with its shares rising more than 3000 per cent over the period.

Why he is in the news now?   

He is rarely out of it, but he is selling about a sixth of his shareholding in Xero for $95 million. He has sold shares worth $25m before but this is his biggest cash-out.

Expensive tastes?

More of your Kiwi outdoors-type with a liking for tech-toys that's common in the industry. He ordered a Tesla X a couple of years ago. He lives in Havelock North and has been a keen surfer in the past. Now 50, journos who call him up are more likely to interrupt him exercising on his bike.

Pretty down to earth then?

In many ways. He doesn't have an office at Xero for example, but he overcame a stutter earlier in his career and is now an effective showman when he needs to be on the conference circuit. So not the retiring type either.  

So what is he going to do with the money?

We'll have to wait and perhaps see. All we really know so far is he has said it will provide 'an important foundation' for what he said were 'future plans to pursue a range of philanthropic and social endeavours'. 

Any clues what those endeavours may be? 

No. Nor, is it clear whether he will pursuing them imminently. Drury has said Xero remains his 'absolute day to day focus'.

How did he make his money?

He developed an interest in coding at Napier Boys High in the 1980s and had what has been described as a middle-class upbringing in the Hawke's Bay where his father traced a lineage to Ngai Tahu. 

He made his 'hundreds of millions' through Xero – though most of that is still on paper – and before than 'tens of millions' through establishing and selling an email technology company called Aftermail which he set up in 2003, and his initial 'millions' from software development firm Glazier Systems, which he sold in 1999.