Hi Turmeric
I'm sorry I was not to be able to read your post that got deleted. I'm always interested in your thoughts.
Back in 2008 Xero chose the UK as its first offshore market to enter in terms of onground market presence. It targeted the UK, ahead of the more obvious Australia, as it must have thought there was more potential in the UK market. Hamish Edwards went over there and they put a lot of time and energy and presumably money into building the market. Five years later they have 22,000 customers and 27 staff.
A couple of years later Xero put staff into Australia, a market 1/3 the size of the UK. Three years later they have 51,000 customers and 71 staff.
Despite the greater potential in the UK Xero is now in a proportional sense reducing its focus on that market. It would not have done this if it had gone as well in that market as expected. Of course you can argue that what has really happened is that the UK has gone well but Australia has done even better than expected but I don't buy that.
Comparing the numbers versus the market size and the time in the market lead me to the conclusion that their performance in the UK was poor. Yes they are still growing there but not at the rates that I believe were anticipated.
If the USA turns out like the UK after 5 years there will be trouble for Xero. If it turns out like Australia it will be quite a different story.