David New bio:

A 20+ year (young) ‘veteran’ of the financial software industry. After enjoying a long and successful 16 years with leading mid-range accounting software vendor Attaché Software, has held Senior Executive positions with both Xero and Receipt Bank. With both organisations was responsible for building local AU / ANZ teams on the ground-based in Sydney effectively from scratch… and in super fast time! Passionate about cloud technology and helping businesses solve real everyday problems, to allow them to be more efficient and productive.

Questions I asked David New:

What historical figure would you like to have coffee with and why?

David, you’ve spent twenty years in the financial software industry, first hand witnessing the shift from DOS to Windows, and more recently from Desktop to Cloud. What concerns do you hear from people worried about moving to the cloud?

 

You’ve worked in senior executive positions at Xero, and New Zealand based company and Receipt Bank a UK based company, what have you learnt from introducing software solutions into Australia and New Zealand.

 

What advice do you have for business software solutions who want to grow a presence in Australia and New Zealand? [If not addressed with the previous question] Where should they spend their time.

 

At the time of speaking, August 2015, the Xero community is surrounded by four hundred add-on solutions, some one man bands, some massive entities. When in their life cycle do they need to direct money away from developing their solution towards promoting their solution.

 

Melbourne Xerocon is on at the moment-and outside the event competitor software have set up ambush marketing campaigns. Using Xero branded colour one was giving out coffee, one was giving out sausages and one offered to host bar tab for people in the industry not going to xerocon. What do you think of marketing tactics like that?

 

A number of the software solutions are looking to crack the enormous US market - do you think it’s achievable and what would your plan of attack be.

 

Reflecting upon your time at Xero and Receipt Bank, what were your successes and what would you have done differently?

 

We are surrounded by so many startups – do you feel the inclination to take the risk join a start-up and see where the journey can take you?

 

How does someone in a senior sales and marketing solution, manage a work life balance?

 

What do you look forward to doing most in your work life?

 

 

Looking outwards what are your work life aspirations?