SaaS Veterans from Salesforce.com and WebEx Create New Platform to Empower Online Services Companies
Redwood City, Calif. — March 13, 2008 — Zuora, Inc., a new company that simplifies online subscription services, today announced that it received a $6.5 million Series A round of funding led by Benchmark Capital. Additional investors include founders from Salesforce.com and WebEx. Zuora plans to use the funds to successfully deploy its next-generation platform, to further drive product development, and to expand sales and marketing programs. Benchmark Capital general partner Peter Fenton will join the company’s board of directors.
Zuora has created the first on-demand platform designed to simplify the way online subscription services are purchased, billed, and provisioned. It replaces the cumbersome manual processes or expensive billing systems employed today with a hosted solution that delivers the flexibility and simplicity needed to conduct seamless, ongoing customer transactions. Using Zuora, online service providers can now easily offer tailored subscription services that adapt to changing customer needs.
“The Zuora team pioneered the subscription billing models at WebEx and Salesforce.com, where customers pay-as-they-go, removing the friction associated with high-priced license-based models,” said Mr. Fenton. “The team’s deep understanding of complex billing needs has allowed them to develop a simple, modular, and highly scalable offering to enable on-demand billing.”
Zuora was founded by three SaaS industry veterans. Tien Tzuo, chief executive officer, was the 11th employee at Salesforce.com, serving in a variety of executive positions including chief marketing officer and most recently chief strategy officer. During his nine-year tenure, he helped shape the company, growing sales from zero to nearly $1 billion. K.V. Rao, president, joined WebEx as an early employee, where he was instrumental in forging key alliances and signing on fortune 50 companies. Cheng Zou, chief technology officer, architected and led the implementation of WebEx’s order-to-cash system, which manages the subscription lifecycle process. The Zuora founding team is also joined by experts from Accenture, Oracle, and Postini (now Google).
“After spending nine years at Salesforce.com evangelizing the SaaS model, it became clear to me that not only software but entire industries will move to a pay-as-you-go model,” said Mr. Tzuo. “Our vision is to create a new platform for subscription businesses, analogous to the way PayPal developed automated online payments, and Benchmark Capital is the ideal strategic partner to help us get there.”
About Zuora, Inc.
Founded in 2007 by SaaS industry veterans from Salesforce.com and WebEx, Zuora has created an on demand platform designed to simplify the way online subscription services are purchased, billed, and provisioned. Zuora, Inc is backed by Benchmark Capital and located in Redwood City, California. For more information about Zuora, Inc. visit zuorainternprd.wpengine.com or email info@zuora.com.
About Benchmark Capital
Benchmark Capital, a leading international venture capital firm, was founded in 1995 to help talented entrepreneurs with original ideas build successful technology companies. Benchmark’s general partners take a team-oriented, labor-intensive approach to venture investing to deliver a superior level of service to the firm’s portfolio companies. Benchmark’s portfolio includes high-profile start-ups like Infinera, MySQL, OpenTable, Second Life, Tellme, Yelp, and Zillow, and franchise companies such as eBay, Juniper Networks and Red Hat. The firm manages nearly $2.8 billion in committed venture capital. For more information on Benchmark Capital, visit its website at www.benchmark.com.