Interview with Gary Turner

Gary Turner was born in Glasgow in 1968. Gary grew up in what he describes as a “very classical Glaswegian, west of Scotland, working class family background.” His father was an entrepreneur and set up his own business when Gary was around eight years old. He says of his early life: “Family life was great. My father was very hard working, he was a real hero figure to me.  He started off as a car mechanic and then progressed into management and business ownership … He instilled in me a real sense of how important it is to work hard, do great work, look after people and not be shy of effort, not be shy of investment of effort.”

Gary’s mother trained to be a bookkeeper for the family business. Gary says: “It’s only in the last few years that I’ve recognised how important those formative experiences growing up in a family business were.  Whilst my father was out working day after day, including at weekends, my mother looked after me and my sister and made sure we were ready for school. She went to college and learned and got qualified in bookkeeping and became the bookkeeper for the family business. … I don’t think I recognised it at the time, but having both parents so closely involved with running the family business, I think by osmosis I was picking up how all-consuming running a small business is. I’ve only recognised in the last maybe five or ten years how much that’s really driven my career and my purpose.”

Gary went to local state schools an experience that he enjoyed. He says: “I think in the main it was a good, grounded school environment that really instilled in the pupils the sense of work.  In fact our school motto was ‘Floreat Labore’, which is Latin for ‘Let work flourish’, and that was definitely a big theme at that school. It was a big enough school to have a enough budget to buy ample equipment and so we weren’t all fighting over one computer in the computer lab, it was well resourced. I was also extremely fortunate to have a BBC Micro at home and quickly became quite good with BASIC, indeed so much so that for my Computing O’ Level, my teacher decided that my practical assignment should tougher than the grade standard and so I was set the challenge of building a banking system, complete with ATM front end, back-end management reporting, transaction management and so on. Little did I know then that this would mark the beginning of a career in financial software. I had a great time, I stayed right through to the end of my sixth year at high school and really enjoyed it.”

Gary’s interest in computing grew at school and he knew from the age of fourteen that he wanted a career in technology. He says: “I knew my passion was technology and I don’t think I could ever do anything but technology. I’m as excited about technology today as I was thirty, forty years ago.  I knew it wasn’t going to be cutting code and writing software, but I knew it was my passion and even then, my fluency for technology was something that I really recognised.”

With his career direction decided, Gary set out to gain his Scottish O grades and Highers with a conditional acceptance to go to Glasgow University to do a degree in computer science.

Unfortunately, when Gary was seventeen, the family business failed and his parents marriage collapsed as a result. Gary explains: “There was a real period of disruption, stress and anxiety at home just as I was coming to the end of my high school career and beginning to think about to move into university and pursue technology.”

Having failed to achieve the necessary grade in his maths Higher to go to Glasgow University, Gary started a HND in computer science instead. However, feeling disillusioned Gary dropped out. He explains: “I decided to drop out. I thought I don’t want to be a programmer or systems analyst, that’s not where my passion is.  My passion for technology was still really, really burning very strongly, but I pretty much concluded that it wasn’t going to be sitting in a dimly lit room for eight hours a day writing code. Given that the family situation was really, really tough, I also reckoned that I didn’t have the luxury of time to go and get an education, I needed to get a job. The family business and the outcome changed so many things at a personal level and it instilled in me is a huge sense of purpose. … I’ve pursued my entire career almost to right the wrong of family businesses failing and small businesses failing. I have a real personal empathy with what it means to fail in business through the impact it had on our family. … and I think I’ve dedicated my career to how can technology, my love, my passion, be used for good.  How can it be used to help businesses, not just run more efficiently and grow, but avoid that outcome.”

After dropping out of his HND computer science course, Gary set out to find a job. He went to two recruitment agencies. While one turned him away, the second helped him, encouraging him to buy a suit, write his CV and prepare a pitch to call every technology company in the Yellow Pages, Gary adds: “I went home, sat down and I started at ‘A’ and phoned up every company in the computing section of the Glasgow Yellow Pages.  Finally, I got to a business that began with ‘S’… It took me a long time, but the good thing about that was I had many, many calls to get it wrong and then perfect my pitch.” The company beginning with ‘S’ was Select  Computing, a small IT services business in Glasgow, which gave him an interview.

Gary says: “I showed up in my Burton suit. I had done a huge amount of research before the interview and really genned up on everything that business did and what I needed to succeed. He (the sales and marketing director) saw something in me. I would be pretty cheap to hire, really passionate, and that’s how I got my first proper job in technology in the customer facing, consulting, advisory sales side of the business where I could bring my technical fluency and passion and marry that up with businesses and organisations that needed technologies to help them solve a problem. That was a big break for me.”

During his five years with Select Computing, Gary worked with businesses of all sizes. He explains: “My job would be to assess what their needs were, understand their problems, and then either specify that we would write some bespoke software that would solve that problem, or there would be some packaged software and some hardware and networking and services and expertise and everything else. No two meetings were the same and no two sets of problems were the same. I learnt an immense amount and developed a huge sense of empathy for what it is to be a business, to run a business, whether you’re the accountant or the managing director or the office manager or the factory supervisor. I loved it.”

The scale of projects varied from helping companies installing their first PCs to setting the IT strategy for national companies. Gary says that at the age of twenty-one, one of the biggest deals he was involved in was for a large bus company with 1000 employees. He says: “I had the entire future of their business strategy, all of their operations, all of their payroll, everything down to what I was advising and specifying and helping deliver to them. Today I’m not sure I’d buy a coffee machine from a twenty-one year old, but business people somehow entrusted me with a great deal at that age.”

Gary credits his understanding of, and empathy with, small businesses not only to his family experience but also the five years he spent with Select where he worked he saw first hand how hard it is to run a business. He says: “When I think about a small business predominantly, when I think about the people we serve today, I know what it’s like, I’ve been there, I’ve been to this quiet, rainy industrial park in some backwater area of Glasgow or anywhere in Scotland at 10 o’clock on a Monday morning and it’s Nescafe instant coffee in a chipped mug and the sugar has got damp and is hard, and the sandwich van comes round at 10 o’clock in the morning.  Life is hard, there’s fan heaters on the floor, there’s a dog sleeping under the desk.  That picture of what it’s like across the country for small businesses, all the difficulties and challenges in the context they operate in is something that’s still so real for me and I think it’s helped me when I’ve had to make a judgement call on what we’re doing, what we’re building. I still can relate to what it is to be a small business, and that five-year period was such an important induction to that.”

Around 1994, Select Computing fell under the wheels of the recession and the whole business went under. Gary says: “Nobody saw it coming and it was a real shock to the system.  I’m very fortunate in that the people that ran Select did their best to re-home everybody and find jobs for people, and I went to work for, effectively a competitor business to Select Computing in Glasgow called CB Systems.  And I was there for a year before the opportunity to join the next thing came along.”

After his year at CB Systems, Gary moved to Pegasus in 1995 and stayed for twelve years. Gary explains: “Pegasus is still going today but back then it was larger and a very well-regarded accounting software developer. They’d been around since the early eighties and was predominantly MS-DOS based and PC based software and had a network of specialist IT resellers across the country.”

He adds: “When the opportunity to join a much larger software company and get out of the channel came along that was a huge leg-up for me. … I joined as an account manager looking after all of the IT companies that Pegasus had relationships with in Scotland, Northern Ireland and the north of England. I was a kind of poacher turned gamekeeper as I was now on the other side of the fence and dealing with the people doing the work I used to do.”

During his time at Pegasus, the landscape changed with the introduction of the world-wide-web in a business context which created the opportunity for e-commerce, plus there was the looming threat of Y2K, the millennial bug which saw companies upgrading their software.  Gary says of Y2K: “That was a great time to be in software because we had a great argument – if you’re on something you bought ten years ago, you probably need to spend some money to upgrade it. It was a real boomtime economically in software.”

Post 2000, Pegasus returned to core business and needed to redefine it against the impact of the internet on businesses. Gary explains: “The dot.com bubble was at its peak, pre-implosion at that point. It was clear to me that the world of software and business was going to change profoundly.”

Gary read ‘The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual’ which looked at the potential impact of the internet on the world of business.  He continues: “At that point in time I hadn’t really a sense of what the internet was going to mean for business.  I read this book and it was a real epiphany, it was a huge revelation for me.” The book touched the then still-distant prospect of social media, rebalancing of consumer and supplier rights, crowd sourcing etc. It sparked Gary’s enthusiasm, he adds: “This book was another huge pivot point for me; it changed my thinking, it really helped me have a vision for what the next generation could look like.”

In 2003, Gary was appointed managing director at Pegasus. He says: “I remember, aged 34 moving into this big office, I had PA and so on but I’d no real idea what a managing director should do, but I was sure I’d be able to work it out. I had great fun during my final four years at Pegasus, really letting my own enthusiasm and ideas for how the business could progress in the internet era. We came up with some ideas for some brand new products that harnessed the internet.  I conceived and we then built an instant messaging service but for a business context and integrated with accounting data, and this was back in 2004 at time when nobody was really thinking about services like that in business software.”

At the same time, Gary started his own blog to share his enthusiasm for the world wide web. He adds: “By day I was peddling rather mundane accounting and business management software, and then by night all of the ideas and thoughts that I had that didn’t apply to Pegasus were going into my blog.” This opened up a new  sphere of networks for Gary including becoming friendly and meeting with some of the leading architects of Web 2.0 and web standards. Gary adds: “I was really living two different realities.  My traditional, very much rooted in the eighties and the nineties world of business at Pegasus and at the same time trying to map out what the world of technology and software would look like with the web and Web 2.0. … It was an incredible time of new ideas and technologies coming forth.”

As a massive Microsoft fan from early in his career, Gary’s aspiration to one day work for them came true in 2007, he says: “In the mid-nineties Microsoft was probably one of the most admired and successful technology companies and who wouldn’t want a career at a business like Microsoft. I thought it would be great one day to work for Microsoft, and I’d resolved that I was somehow going to make that happen.”

“I’d been at Pegasus for twelve years and I’d considered my best years with them were behind me, I’d done everything, I’d done every job and it was time for something new. I wanted to pursue this sense that something bigger was happening in the world of technology and software. … This idea of rethinking business software in a browser context, connected to the internet, running in the cloud, could be revolutionary and I had a real sense that this was the next frontier that was going to emerge for me in my career. So, I left Pegasus after a private equity takeover, not quite sure what to do or where to go, but anxious to pursue this idea. I was incredibly fortunate and also flattered when Microsoft asked if I would want to come and work for them.”

Gary continues: “I very much enjoyed my time at Microsoft, but it wasn’t the most productive or fruitful part of my career. There were a couple of reasons for that. Microsoft was still finding its way after its anti-trust problems from the early 2000s.  Steve Ballmer was CEO, Windows Vista was the operating system at the time, which was not their best work ever and Microsoft was still very much rooted in the old world of technology. Then we hit the global financial crisis and unfortunately that meant that anything that was interesting and new got put on the back burner, so there was no new stuff coming out of Microsoft that I could get my teeth into.

“I think in retrospect my earlier resolution and desire to work for Microsoft, strong as it was, and which ultimately led me to join them, was the only reason I went there. Once I’d ticked the box, I’ve done that now, I’ve fulfilled that ambition, I wondered what am I actually going to be doing here. … It was clear that it wasn’t going to give me the future that I was looking for but I consider myself very fortunate to have been there for the two years.”

Gary’s next role was as managing director setting up Xero in the UK. Xero started in 2006/2007 in New Zealand by Rod Drury and Hamish Edwards. It did an IPO on the New Zealand stock exchange in 2007, on the strength of a hundred test pilot customers and raised seven million pounds to hire people to build a product and build a proof of concept to see if they could then take it to market.

Gary explains: “Once that original product was then built, the ambition was to take it globally. … I got a LinkedIn message from Rod’s partner, Hamish, saying we’re Xero and we want to launch in the UK and globally and we’re looking for somebody to get on board to help us with that. I remember not reading the rest of the message on LinkedIn, realising this is what I’ve been waiting for, this is what I’ve been writing, talking and musting about for the last five or more years.  It was accounting software, it was business software, it was serving small businesses, it was web services.

“I’d never done a start-up at that point, I’d never really been in a start-up business.  I was forty and I thought well, if I’m not going to do it now, I’m never going to do it. I felt like I’d won first prize in a job competition. If also felt like my entire career up to that point in early 2009 was merely the preparation for this opportunity.  It was the culmination of everything that I had done in leadership and management and leading teams and doing strategy and marketing and everything else, this was my opportunity, my job, and only I could do it.”

Today, Xero has 2.7 million businesses using it, employs 4,000 people globally, 500 of which are in the UK. Under Gary’s leadership Xero’s UK subscriber count has grown to 720,000 businesses, such a scale that Xero now accounts for around one in five of all VAT returns received by HMRC every month. Gary adds: “I’ve had a front row ringside seat on that journey, it has been incredible and also very rewarding over that time. To have been able to follow my passion for supporting small businesses at such a scale now.”

As well as running Xero, Gary is also passionate about sharing his expertise to help others through non-executive director roles. He explains: “I’ve always been incredibly motivated to share my knowledge and help if anyone ever asks me for help.  I massively over-commit and end up helping everybody and helping anyone that comes to me for advice.  It comes from my purpose and passion; I love technology, I love solving problems and I love helping business solve and overcome challenges.

“The stage I’m at in my career now and with the success that I’ve enjoyed, there are just more things that I can help people on.  I’ve got more experiences that I can relate to helping people solve problems.  It’s like I have a real sense of duty to do that, to help others whether that’s helping them avoiding some of the mistakes I made or learning from some of the things that I’ve succeeded at. I look forward to continuing to do what I’ve been doing for my entire career, which is to help people, help businesses solve problems and work with great technology and invent and create and come up with fantastic solutions to problems. I think my focus in my fifties will shift to helping the next generation of technology companies that are coming through, the next generation of leaders, the next generation of CEOs to continue that mission, and I look forward to helping as many people as I can do that.”

Asked what advice he would offer young people wanting to work in technology in the future, Gary says: “You’ve always got to be thinking ahead, you’ve always got to be thinking, not what does it look like today and what are the opportunities and what does technology look like today, it’s what does it look like five years from now or ten years from now, which is hard to do.”

Gary believes that solving problems is more important than being either a disrupter or unicorn. He adds: “It isn’t about being a unicorn, it’s about having enough understanding of what technology can achieve and therefore having enough of a grounding in the disciplines and the technical nature of technology, but then an equally deep sense of empathy for the problem you’re trying to solve. It’s when you bring them together that you spark an idea or you spark an opportunity.  Whether you’re disruptive or a unicorn isn’t the point, it’s solving problems and you can’t skip the steps, you can’t cut anything out, and there’s no point coming up with another fintech business idea, or a revolutionary new kind of like banking solution if it’s almost exactly the same as the twenty-four that came before you and not really changing problems or addressing problems for people.  It’s the basics: it’s empathy and understanding on both sides of the equation and what does that look like, not today, but what does it look like in five years’ time. Having such a strong sense of confidence in your own ability to judge that, to envision that you’re going to shoot for that and you’ll make mistakes along the way, but driven by solving problems, not driven by being a unicorn.”

Gary wishes that he had more confidence in his younger years. He says: “One of the cruellest kind of dimensions to that is imposter syndrome.  I have always struggled with imposter syndrome.  The unfortunate thing about imposter syndrome club is you can’t talk about the fact you have imposter syndrome. If only people spoke about imposter syndrome more, they’d realise that 99% of the population have imposter syndrome. It’s an entirely normal and self-effacing way to be and actually the 1% that don’t have it are the ones you should worry about.”

Of his proudest moments, Gary says his satisfaction comes from helping others to develop and achieve their success. He says: “I have a bit of a superstitious aversion to feeling proud about my own achievements.  My superstitious little safety valve says, when I retire, when I finally hang up my boots and I’m done, and I do a retrospective on how well I have done, then I’ll reserve the right to feel a little bit proud if it’s appropriate.  But until then, for me pride is only one step away from complacency, and complacency’s only one step away from disaster, and so I’m reserving pride for what I see in others and if I’ve helped people progress, develop, learn, achieve their life goals, then that’s what I’m right now absolutely most proud of.”

Gary sees a cycle of technology from the introduction of the PC increasing productivity of the individual through to teams in businesses, business transformation and societal transformation. He says: “We haven’t quite worked out how we deal with societal impact and technology and it’s problematic and it probably means more regulation and it needs much more careful thought.  But I am optimistic and I would even suggest that it might actually go back to full circle about being individuals again. We’ve gone all the way round the clockface; people, teams, organisations, now society but it might roll back to individuals again and be about what we in our new, more aware, enlightened state about the good and the bad of technology, what we can do about that as individuals, how can we become empowered.

“I think there are two competing transformations happening at the moment. One of the things I’ve learned in my career, particularly that relates to people, teams and culture, is that technology on its own doesn’t succeed, it needs people. For every conversation about the emergence of artificial intelligence and digital transformation that’s happening, I see an equal and opposite argument that the world of work is also humanising, so there’s a people transformation happening as well as a digital transformation happening. You see that in the much broader awareness and appreciation for the importance of equality and inclusivity in the workplace, gender pay gap reporting, the importance of creating an inclusive environment for all walks of life and all backgrounds, the importance of treating people like humans not like numbers on a spreadsheet. I think the world of work in the next ten years is going to humanise as much as it’s going to digitalise and my bet is on the human side of it being the biggest change driver there.

“My passion for technology is still as strong as it was, but we need to be much more cautious about how and where we deploy it and don’t lose sight of the fact that people are ultimately what it’s about.”

Interviewed by Jane Bird

Transcribed by

Abstracted by Lynda Feeley