It is with great excitement that today we announce the sale of Paycycle to Xero.
It seems like not that long ago we set about on this journey from our barstools in Canberra to devise a product that would, among other things, make the lives of small business people in Australia just a tiny bit easier.
By no means have we achieved everything we set out to do, but I can say judging from some of our feedback, that we at least achieved that goal.
If you've followed our journey it's probably no surprise to you that this is a big deal for us. John, myself, David, Agus have lived and breathed Paycycle for just 2 years now. More recently Joe and James have joined the team and have embraced everything that we believe in. We've answered support at midnight, we've developed functionality overnight to satisfy some of our best customers, gone on the road for weeks at a time and blogged, designed, developed and supported during our holidays, much to the chagrin of our families.
We also know this is just normal for small business. Such behaviours are nothing different from the way most small businesses operate in Australia. What I do hope is that the energy and love that has gone into the product has been felt by our customers, because we don’t think we could have been more genuine about how we went about it. I guess, at the end of the day, Rod and the Xero team saw the same level of commitment that they were putting into Xero, in us.
It's funny how things turn out. Way back in October of 2009 when we first met with Hamish Edwards, I suggested to him that Xero was our exit strategy. Unfortunately he didn’t have his cheque book on him. While I didn't mean it at the time, the more that we’ve worked alongside Xero, the more that we’ve come to realise the synergies the two organisations share. Not just in a product space, but also, and more importantly, we share cultural similarities and strong values around customers, employees and the passion with which we embark on our endeavours.
Not in our wildest business plans did we consider that a sale would occur in such a short period of time. We've been nothing but focused on being the best payroll partner we could be, and until Rod raised the prospect of acquisition with us, we we're going to keep doing our best for some time to come. There’s no doubt therefore that the success of this bootstrapped startup fills us with a great sense of pride and achievement, having built Paycycle from just an idea through to the creation of value that is loved by customers and considered a desirable organisation, in what is a fairly barren level of acquisition activity in the technology landscape in Australia.
I’m sure there are lots of questions about the sale of Paycycle to Xero and some of these have already been answered in our dedicated FAQ page. The rest will be answered over the coming days and weeks. The team is very excited to be staying on at Xero and everyone has been offered fantastic roles. Predominantly, we will continue to enhance and develop the Paycycle product while ultimately ensuring that the Xero Integrated Payroll Functionality is delivered in a timely manner.
The Paycycle website and product will continue as is for now and any future changes will be announced well in advance. As always, you can still follow us @paycycleaus, and probably a little over @xero now as well.