I think there must be some sort of ''critical mass'' that would define that.--people want to be with a system that they know is going to still be around in 10 years time
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He made a good point though about share holder hype not having much to do with the actual running of the company .
Thats a good lesson
Not for those that got caught up in it
Xero's plan for the US is to have the best product out there and sell it to people. There is no need for a contingency plan because there can't be one.
Any sort of contingency is going to be in refining the features and the timeline for rolling out those features and in changing the method for selling the product. It is not going to be one major change to effect success if the US strategy fails, it's going to be dozens or hundreds of small changes to get the US strategy working.
If Xero has faith in the product (and the success in NZ, AU and UK shows that that is warranted) then what else should they be doing?
Just for an added info, my son worked for Xero. Compared to his previous job, he told me that working there is really having fun. They were having that shooting game as part of their socializing when that 3rd Degree show came in for a visit. So that wasn't staged at all.
I would have thought that the plan B would be to pull out of any unprofitable markets (the US in this example) and concentrate on the markets where you are profitable/ dominant (NZ, AUS,UK etc) and become the dominant provider. MYOB is only in a couple of markets and they have been around for ages and I assume make a profit. I couldn't be bothered checking.
It wouldn't be the great success that everybody would like but it would still be a formidable company in its chosen markets. I don't really see this happening though as they don't actually have to win in the States, they just have to grab enough market share to be a viable alternative to QuickBooks. Then they can nestle in and become a slow profitable behemoth for a few years.