Three cloud software companies from New Zealand have set up a joint base in Melbourne for their Australian expansion.
Point-of-sale program Vend, job scheduling app GeoOp and accounting tool suite Spotlight Reporting have taken over a former gallery in Richmond around the corner from cloud accounting company Xero, also from New Zealand.
The three programs were among the most established of Xero’s “add-on” apps and had been temporarily sharing Xero’s offices.
“What’s awesome for the add-ons is that they can come over here and literally be up the road from the mothership” Xero, Richard Francis, CEO of Spotlight Reporting said.
Vend, which has received several million dollars in venture capital, held the lease for the gallery and the other two apps were sharing offices as they had done with Xero, Francis said.
“We just see Australia as such a pivotal market now. It’s a really dynamic time to be riding the coattails of Xero and some of these larger, better funded apps,” Francis said.
The Richmond hub included four staff for Vend and GeoOp and one for Spotlight. However, Vend was growing rapidly and the office arrangements could change, said Fallon Savery, Vend’s country manager for Australia. The PoS vendor was looking for two sales consultants, a business development manager and a “customer success” manager who set up new customers.
“The growth is so huge we never know how big we are going to get,” Savery said.
In the business world of cloud software, a collective approach to office sharing has become quite common. StartNest, shared offices for cloud software startup in Crows Nest, Sydney, was set up last year by receipt and document scanning service Shoeboxed. The co-working space had 30 desks for fledgling businesses developing cloud software.
“Co-working spaces will be prime breeding grounds for cloud apps,” said Jono Herrman, Shoeboxed Australia’schairman. “We’re all about promoting the SaaS industry and one way we could do that is opening this in North Sydney,” he said.