Nick Houldsworth Exec GM Ecosystem of Xero joins me on the Cloud Stories podcast and we discuss the launch of the Xero App Store.

Initially, Nick explains what the Xero App store is, and the thinking behind it. He shares how the App Store will help match the right app with the right customer, and how this will work.

As you can imagine, when this announcement was made, there was a lot of discussion about it in the Xero Mastermind group, and I brought their higher-level concerns and questions to the interview.

We explore:
?The impact the Xero App store will have on Xero partners and small business users
?The revenue share, and how it will work.
?The activities that will be undertaken to encourage people to visit the Xero app store.
?How will the additional revenue stream be used? Will it be used to improve security, API connections, uptime, and feature enhancements, ‘like the ability to mark as reconciled the transactions in the clearing accounts connected via the API’?

To avoid confusion, I should highlight that The Xero App Store Subscription offering is now available in the UK, Australia and New Zealand, notably, it’s currently not available in North America at this stage.

What are your thoughts on the new Xero App store? I’ve heard a spectrum of opinions from the App Tech community. From shock to suggesting the revenue share is too high, to the revenue share is fair. Someone commented if the revenue improves the API connections, then the engineers will save time on development, in turn reducing their expenses. Another said if it brings me, customers, I’m happy. Since Covid-19 impacted conferences, many within the App community have been asking how can we get in front of accountants, bookkeepers and small businesses? There are only so many webinars we can run. The vision of the Xero App Store is to help match the right app with the right customer and maybe while we’re in this pandemic, it fills that conference void, and like many businesses that have pirouetted, it is a new opportunity that we can all leverage and benefits from. If you want to continue the conversation jump into the thread on the Xero Mastermind Facebook page.

The interview was at a high level. I’ll drop into the show notes, links to resources that may provide further information. If you have further questions about how it will work or impact you the team, at Xero are happy to answer any of your questions we weren’t able to cover. Reach out to them at api@xero.com.

I’d like to take the opportunity to say thank you to Nick Houldsworth, Sarah Scott and the team at Xero who helped coordinate turning around an interview so fast. Search and subscribe to the Cloud Stories podcast on your favourite listening device.