Gary Turner, Investor and Non-executive Board Member
I've been in B2B software my whole career, having spent the last 20 years in executive leadership roles.
In 2009 I left my position at Microsoft to establish and lead the UK arm of the cloud accounting platform, Xero, taking it from £50k of revenue in our first year to £150 million (USD$185m) with more than 850,000 small business customers in 2022.
I was a member of Xero’s global leadership team for more than 12 years, during which time it grew to more than 3 million customers worldwide.
I stepped back from my role at Xero last year, and I now advise and invest in great tech businesses in the UK and internationally.
I've also recently started a newsletter to share what I've learned about growth and leadership.
What do you like about your current role?
Alongside investing in early-stage tech, I sit on a couple of boards where I guide and advise other CEOs and founders as they scale through the different stages of growth and tackle go-to-market challenges.
What are your favourite books?
The most recent book I read was "Upscale: What it Takes to Scale a Startup by the People Who've Done It" because besides being a great book packed with insights and war stories from founders who managed to overcome the enormous challenge of successfully taking a start-up through the scale-up phase, I wish it had been around when we were getting Xero off the ground as I would have benefitted so much from it!
Who do you most admire and why?
I loved so much about Steve Jobs' perspective and outlook on what makes a great product great and how the importance of a coherent, connected vision and go-to-market strategy is vital if you want to win.
What is the best advice you have ever received?
Very early on in my career, while enjoying some rookie success which I think mainly was beginner's luck, I had a great boss who brought me back down to earth with "You're only as good as your next deal..." which has stuck with me through my entire career and baked into me a strong aversion to complacency, which also happens to be the number one killer of tech businesses. So, it was great advice!
What motivates or inspires you?
I love solving business problems with tech, and I'm inspired by great ideas and connections, taking a problem and conceptually turning it on its head to uncover solutions nobody else has considered. Then turning them into reality.
What would you like to highlight and share with our audience?
Having been in tech for as long as I have, I've seen enough big waves to know how to spot them.
Today, it feels like we're at the beginning of another huge generational change in how businesses operate and run, the role of tech in that, and how different the world will look in a decade.
I've built my career by riding these waves, so I'm excited to see the next generation of businesses and leaders emerging.