From the Xero Blog today:

US Technology Guru Peter Thiel to Invest in Xero

Leading online accounting software provider Xero Limited [NZE:XRO] today announced that Peter Thiel, the San Francisco based investor and Silicon Valley authority, has agreed to invest NZ$4 million to support Xero’s expansion into the US market. He will also join Xero’s US Advisory Board.

This is a really good step forward for Xero and provides a great investment and partner to really have a great crack at the US market.

On a side note, earlier this year I  read the PayPal wars book one of Peter’s earlier investments. While the stroy is a number of years old it was still an interesting read and always interesting to see the different tactics employed by companies when threatened by a competitor with deep pockets.

A while back at one of our board meetings Lance introduced us to the concept of the 3 horizons – not surprisingly the 3 horizons concept is from McKinsey one of Lance’s previous roles.

Both Lance’s post a few months back and todays article on the NBR shows the amazing effect of 3 horizon thinking for business – 60% of Apple’s revenue today is for items that didn’t exist 3 years ago!

While you can’t simply focus on the future this does help to illustrate that R&D now can lead to enormous opportunities in the future – and revenue streams that are almost impossible to predict.