Cloud accounting vendor Xero has hired a senior executive from Google Australia and New Zealand to fill a newly created position. Stuart McLean, Google’s head of enterprise, was responsible for driving the cloud applications business for products such as Google Apps.
McLean has been appointed Xero’s chief revenue officer and will oversee the global sales and marketing teams. He will be based at the company’s Wellington headquarters in New Zealand.
“There’s been a lot of excitement around Xero in the last couple of days (about the hire). We’re really on the radar of global players now,” Xero CEO Rod Dury told BoxFreeIT.
As chief revenue officer McLean would be responsible for total global revenue and the cost of acquisition, Drury said. He would also co-ordinate approaches and systems followed by country managers.
“We can see the light at the end of the tunnel in terms of building a horizontal accounting engine,” Drury said. “Now we’re at the end of the beginning of the product phase – though there are still lots more fun things to do – we’re ready to invest and build out the sales engine. We’re of a size now where we can attract people of this talent.”
“Xero represents the next generation of SaaS companies with fantastic product, great people and huge market potential. It has the opportunity to expand dramatically in international markets. I’ve been watching Xero for some time and am thrilled to have the opportunity to join the Xero team at this stage in its growth,” said McLean in an announcement to the Australian Stock Exchange.
McLean’s previous roles also include founding and managing NetReturn, the former Australian distributor for cloud ERP solution NetSuite and an extensive career at enterprise software vendor Oracle.
McLean was also involved in investment fund Matrix Capital, but this was unrelated to Matrix Capital Management, a major investor in Xero.
Updated 11:47am: comment from Xero CEO Rod Drury.
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