Entrepreneurs are the ‘real heroes’ and AI is already here, says Xero’s UK managing director

Alexander Von Schirmeister is not just the UK managing director of Xero, a New Zealand-based online accounting software for small businesses, he is also one of the most well-travelled people one could meet. 

Alex – he said he prefers to be called – grew up culturally rich. The managing director was raised in Mexico by two German parents, and although he went to a German school and lived in a German-speaking household, he somehow was still able to keep up with his Spanish-speaking friends growing up.  

After studying business in the US, he moved back to Mexico and started his career with Proctor and Gamble. However, Alex wasn’t done with school just yet. In 1997, he decided to move to Europe to get an MBA and has been living in this part of the world ever since. 

Leaping to Europe would prove to be fruitful as Alex has had many interesting roles in his career ever since – including being the marketing director at eBay.

When asked about his journey since moving to Europe, Alex said: “I’m aware, I’m extremely lucky. And I wish I could tell you this was all a master plan.”

“The reality is, many of those moves were conditioned by opportunities, or job moves or student moves.” 

Alex expressed the luck that has played a big part in his career growth, and having the opportunity to study live and work in the US and Europe was a blessing. 

Spain, France and Switzerland – the managing director tried it all before finally settling for the UK. However, he noted that the British weather is nowhere near as good as the Spanish sun. 

“I don’t think anyone lives in London for the weather,” the managing director joked, before going on to say: “I do think London is a very unique city.” 

He added: “And I do think that across the globe, certainly within Europe, there may be other capital cities that are very dynamic and have a lot to offer. I don’t think there’s any other city that has that diversity and the depth of diversity that London does.

“So, just from it, being exposed to that, and having kind of London as a playground, it’s an incredible, incredible place to be. So much so that it makes up for the weather.” 

The ‘real heroes‘

Alex is no stranger to the SME industry, having worked at eBay for almost 11 years, he lived through the era when entrepreneurs started exploding on the, at the time, relatively new platform, meeting some of them who would tell him they just “made £1m on eBay”. 

The Xero managing director found it fascinating that a “relatively new technology was suddenly opening up an opportunity for entrepreneurship to blossom on the internet in a very, very easy way”

He added: “To some extent, the opportunity for digital tools, you know, whether it’s software such as Xero, whether it’s a marketplace platform like eBay, but nowadays there’s obviously there are many, many other marketplaces – we think of Airbnb, we think of Uber – it has just allowed this whole new generation of people to build businesses on them.” 

Alex believes the people who are building these businesses are “the real heroes” who are willing to risk sailing out on their own.

“And what’s interesting about these entrepreneurs – and they haven’t changed from the ones I met back in the early 2000s to the ones I meet today – they are the real heroes.”

How AI will impact entrepreneurs and the start-up space

“First of all, it’s coming. It is already here.” 

Alex believes although there is hype around artificial intelligence at the moment, “the reality is data and data automation and machine learning has been around for quite some time”.

He also added that so far AI hasn’t destroyed any industry. Alex said: “If anything, I think what it has done, it has generated a massive acceleration in the innovation of the technologies and the sectors that those who serve.”

He continued saying: “And when I look at, you know, a good example at zero, you can connect your user account to your bank, right? We call it a bank feed. 

“That bank feed then allows [users] to do a kind of automatic bank reconciliation. If you were to do that manually, right, like go into a bank and see which payments you’ve received and then kind of match that up to the invoices you send it; that’s about five and a half hours of work that now just gets automated, right?”

It was clear that Alex felt passionate about AI and what it could do for workers in the long term. He believes that if the workforce utilised artificial intelligence the right way, it could certainly make life easier for both employees and employers – freeing time for workers to “do what they love or just spend time with their families”. 

Small business owners and entrepreneurs are on the clock all the time, working 24/7, and, according to Alex, AI-powered tools could be a real game changer for them and ease their workload significantly. 

The managing director touched on the company’s new software, Just Ask Xero, which he stated would complete tasks, automate how people work, and simplify workload altogether. Alex stressed that Just Ask Xero, for example, isn’t there “to take someone’s job away”, but, “it’s there to make your lives easier so you can spend that time on continuing to build your business”.