SaaS and online billing experts join to support the growing trend of subscription businesses
(San Francisco, Calif. — August 19, 2008) — Zuora, Inc., formed by Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) industry veterans from salesforce.com and WebEx to revolutionize the subscription billing industry, announces today the formation of the company’s Board of Advisors. These new members represent diverse positions throughout Silicon Valley in the subscription billing and SaaS industries, and will provide guidance to Zuora’s executive team on a broad range of areas.
“Our mission is to do for the subscription industry what Amazon and PayPal have done for online retailing and payments — Make it easy and accessible, so that any company can offer subscriptions online,” said Tien Tzuo, CEO of Zuora, Inc. “Now, we’ve put together a board of well respected advisors with the right background and experience to help us achieve our vision. With their guidance, we’ll continue to develop the killer apps companies need to build, manage and grow subscription businesses.”
The advisory board members bring expertise in developing and leading business strategies and billing operations for some of the world’s largest and most successful companies. Their guidance, experience and knowledge will help Zuora to achieve its mission of transforming the SaaS and subscription industry. The advisory board members include:
Elizabeth Tse, eBay: VP, Global Billing, Payments and Collections
Tse is responsible for overseeing worldwide billing operations at eBay, the world’s largest online marketplace. Tse has held similar executive level positions with Providian Financial (now Washington Mutual) and American Express.
David Welsh, Adams Street Partners: Partner
As a partner at Adams Street, a private equity firm, Welsh focuses on investing in a variety of technology companies that show promise to impact entire industries. At McAfee, Welsh oversaw the strategy and development of bringing SaaS solutions to users of every size and security need. Welsh also headed corporate development for online billing company Portal Software where he helped grow the company from a start-up to over $200 million in revenue per year.
Dan Halabe, Accenture: Former Partner
In addition to his position with Accenture, Halabe was a leader of several large-scale billing and development projects at media and telecom companies including Electronic Arts, Hongkong Telecom, Netscape and Sony Computer Entertainment.
Michael Everett, Cisco: Vice President of Finance
Everett is currently a vice president of finance at Cisco and was the chief financial officer at on-demand collaboration leader WebEx before its $3.2 billion acquisition by Cisco in 2007. Before WebEx, Everett acted as CFO for multiple private and public companies including VMWare, Netro Corporation, and Raychem, a Fortune 500 company.
“There are few start ups that have the winning combination of experience and vision that I see at Zuora,” said Elizabeth Tse. “Look for great things to come from this company. I am honored to be part of the team.”
Zuora was founded to create a major shift in how subscription based businesses operate. The company launched their first product Z-Billing, in May 2008 and since then have deployed nearly 20 customers. Z-Billing is the first Web-based billing software of its kind for subscription businesses. The product is built as an on-demand service, putting control and flexibility in the hands of the end user. It allows both business to business and business to consumer companies to quickly launch new products and pricing options, scale operations, and have one central location for all of their recurring revenue data. The user interface of Z-Billing is simple to learn and can be customized per each clients’ individual needs and preferences. Z-Billing is also designed to work seamlessly with the most popular CRM and accounting systems, so users can get started quickly.
The company plans to launch additional products this year to support the growing subscription industry. For more information, go to zuorainternprd.wpengine.com.
About Zuora, Inc.
Zuora, Inc. is a Redwood City based company created to support the growing subscription market with a complete solution that is flexible, powerful, and integrates with the entire company infrastructure. The platform created by Zuora changes the way subscription businesses manage and sell to customers, as well as allows them bring new products to the market in less time, and with less hassle. Zuora was built from the ground up by SaaS industry visionaries and veterans from salesforce.com, WebEx, Accenture, Postini (now Google), and Oracle. To learn more about Zuora, please visit zuorainternprd.wpengine.com.