Satya Swallows the Fish

Satya Nadella was recently named Fortune’s Businessperson of the Year. It’s well deserved. I’m old enough to remember Microsoft as being sort of like the Star Wars franchise. It started off great, then had a really rough middle patch, and now it’s back on track in a big way. But Microsoft’s resurgence obviously didn’t just […]

Subscription Economy News: Week of 11/25/2019

Every week, we bring you the top stories and analyses from the global Subscription Economy. E-Book Subscription Service Scribd Raises $58 Million Excerpts from an article by Anthony Ha on TechCrunch Scribd has raised $58 million in new funding led by growth firm Spectrum Equity. The company first launched as a document-sharing service in 2007 before […]

Usership Saves the World

In the fire department of Livermore, California, there is a light bulb that has been burning since 1901. Yes, that’s over 100 years that the lightbulb has continued to work. It was manufactured in Ohio in the 1890s by the Shelby Electric Company, and there are apparently several other working models just like it. It […]

Subscription Economy News: Week of 11/18/2019

Every week, we bring you the top stories and analyses from the global Subscription Economy. This Startup Just Raised $13 Million To Build Satellites-As-A-Service Excerpts from an article by Alex Knapp on Forbes San Francisco-based Loft Orbital is developing a business of “satellite-as-a-service,” in which it will deploy satellites about the size of a washing […]

Why the publishing industry will remain a subscription stalwart

This article was originally published in What’s New In Publishing by John Phillips, GM of EMEA, Zuora.   Over the last few weeks, we’ve seen the launch of two promising entertainment options – Apple TV+ and Disney+. Conventional wisdom (and most ‘experts’) will say that Disney will win this battle, but I disagree. On the […]

The Digital Future of Farming: Could This Mean the End of World Hunger?

This is a pretty remarkable graph. It depicts the growth of the world’s population since roughly 200 AD. Talk about hockey stick growth – this looks like a VC pitch deck! What explains that sharp upward ascent on the right? The arrival of industrial manufacturing and agriculture (not to mention modern science). It took all […]

New Business Models in Medical Technology

This piece was originally published in Medizin + Elektronik by Phillipe Van Hove, Area VP Continental EMEA, Zuora.   While political leaders are still discussing data protection in the digital patient file, some providers from the medical technology sector are already much further along. Tailor-made service packages are increasingly replacing traditional product sales. And all […]

How Much Is An Active User Worth? Lessons from the Sale of Fitbit

Google just bought Fitbit for $2.1 billion, and the press seems to hate the deal. Judging from what I’ve read, here are the main reasons: Culture. Google is historically not very good at successfully integrating new acquisitions. Competition. Fitbit was already struggling against Apple and Samsung in the health wearables market, which is reflected in […]