New adventures

I’ve got some sad, but happy news to share: I’m saying goodbye to Xero for a new adventure.

A few months back, I was approached by some friends about an exciting new service they were building and they mentioned that if I wanted to be a part of it, I could be. I politely declined as I was happy where I am, but it stuck in my mind for some time afterward.

I spent weeks regretting it. I thought about what I could be missing out on by not seriously considering joining the team almost daily. After reading about Jeff Bezos’ Regret Minimization Framework one morning, I came to the conclusion that I would always kick myself about missing out on an opportunity to take a risk with the team later in life, so I sent an email to Owen Evans and told him I wanted to join.

Which leads us to now. In April, I’m joining a NZ based start-up called Hoist as Manager of Marketing and Communications / Front End Developer to help build a world-class Platform as a Service company. I’ve always been interested in start ups and have wanted to get into web development for a long time, so it’s the perfect opportunity to try a bit of everything.

I’ll be building websites, working on the core platform, writing blog posts, managing the community and helping come up with marketing strategies. All brand new things for me, but all things that I’m extremely passionate about and can’t wait to get stuck into. It’s scary, but very exciting.

I’m extremely sad to be leaving Xero, it was a very difficult decision that kept me awake at night for weeks. It’s been incredible to be part of such a high-pace company with a huge trajectory (and I know I’m going to miss out on a lot more).

I’ve made amazing friends here and am thankful to have been lucky enough to be part of the Xero family. The company has some of the smartest, friendliest people in the world and I’ll miss spending time with them daily.

Xero is an incredible place that I very much love so I’m sad to miss out on its journey going forward, but I’ll be cheering them on from the outside and visiting them a lot.

Sometimes, life presents opportunities at unexpected times and you just have to jump in the deep end.

I’ll be posting more about my adventures at Hoist here and on Twitter once I get started.