Episode 18: Live from Xerocon Denver with Angad Soin, Managing Director AU/NZ, Global Chief Strategy Officer Xero

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In this episode, Nat and Sarah are live on the Xerocon Denver expo floor with Angad Soin, Managing Director Australia & New Zealand and Global Chief Strategy Officer at Xero. They dive into life outside the executive chair, practical AI workflows, and what the next five years look like for accounting practices.

They kick off with quickfire questions to get to know Angad beyond his title. He shares the reality of life at home with three kids, ranks classic Aussie staples (Tim Tams first, flat whites last), and explains why he prefers working in the office kitchen area over a traditional desk. Nat also gets him to name his favourite XPAC'er, and he diplomatically picks the two of them - "those two twins" - much to Sophie's horror for not pre-vetting the questions.

The conversation turns to the firm of 2030. Angad's view is that while tech will change how the work gets done, the core purpose of accounting remains unchanged: spending time talking to clients and helping them navigate their businesses.

They move to realistic AI applications, where Angad breaks down two personal setups: a system that parses school newsletters into his calendar, and enterprise workflows that stitch together data analysis and presentation decks in minutes rather than weeks.

On market differences, he notes that Australia and New Zealand firms are often further ahead in tech adoption than the US, where scale and tax complexity allow traditional models to persist longer.

For firm owners eyeing strategy and hiring, his advice is to find hungry problem-solvers with domain knowledge over purely technical developers. On security, his stance is simple: good data governance never changes, and sensitive client information should never be fed into consumer-grade LLMs.

And Nat goes in for the scoop on the next Xerocon location….

Plus, a firm stance on fairy bread and a passionate defence of erasing office whiteboards.

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