CHRIS RIDD, MANAGING DIRECTOR, AUSTRALIA, XERO – the disruptive surfer
It is easy to toss around the word ‘disrupter’ without it meaning very much or to have it used by an organisation desperately hoping to be seen as such. In reading media stories about Xero, you see this word a lot. While interviewing Chris Ridd, the 46-year-old managing director of Xero Australia, you hear it even more. In spending time with Ridd, it becomes clear that some of his own, distinctive DNA has flowed into the business. This self-confessed surfing lifestyle junkie is the very embodiment of a disrupter.
He grew up in a “classic middle-class family” in which his parents – his father specialising in financial advice; his mother taking part-time jobs – put their four children through private school. Ridd completed a year of accounting at Melbourne’s Swinburne University of Technology before shifting to economics/marketing. That’s where the predictable career path ended.
The next 12 months, he says, were spent on a beach. His career path was disrupted. “My friend and I surfed and partied, and I played guitar,” he says. “I look back on that time with a lot of fond memories. I hardly had a cent to my name but it was just good fun.”
When the real world came calling in 1989, Ridd was one of 18 people (and only four Australians) accepted into the Australasia graduate intake for NCR, a tech powerhouse then similar to IBM. His first day of work was spent on a business class flight to Malaysia for three months of intense sales training.
In 1995, Ridd was wooed by Microsoft, a business that, at the time, was also playing the role of disrupter. “The late ’90s was an exciting time in information technology,” he says. “You could feel the energy, as you can in accounting software now.
“Then Microsoft became too big and a bit arrogant and ended up in trouble with the US Government. It goes to show that you can’t get complacent. You have to remain focused on the market and on the customer.”
Ridd stayed with Microsoft for 15 years before moving to Xero Australia and says it was a career-shaping experience. Now, he insists on a disciplined customer focus. Feedback from users is immediately analysed, prioritised and put into play. “We have a real-time view of exactly what our customers want,” says Ridd, now a father of three and still a keen surfer. “There’s a saying around here that it’s not the big that eat the small, but it’s the fast that eat the slow.”
That’s the way things used to be at Microsoft and that’s the way it is now at Xero, he believes.
“I see the passion our developers have for the work they’re doing,” says Ridd. “If you’ve got a band and you give them a piece of music they hate, then they’re going to do a shitty job playing it. But if you give them a piece they’re passionate about, then you’re going to enjoy listening to it.
“It’s the same with software development. As long as we can retain that passion, it gives us a tremendous competitive advantage in the market, and our users will share in the feeling.”
