Silicon Valley prepares for financial storm of century
Scobleizer — ... Over at Zuora in Redwood City I talked with Tien Tzuo, CEO. They are shipping a new system that enables subscription-based businesses to easily be built. He used to be head of strategy at Salesforce and talked to me about how Salesforce weathered the previous storm back in 2001. That’s a common theme I’ve heard as I walked around the valley last night. Most of these leaders have been through a pretty brutal downturn in 2000-2003. He said it was pretty lucky that Salesforce only had to lay off about 10%. They had plans sitting around to expand a lot right before 9/11 ...

Zuora’s new product helps companies collect money from customers
VentureBeat — Zuora, a startup that offers companies software to manage their customer subscriptions, just announced its second product, dubbed “Z-Payments.” While Zuora’s first product, Z-Billing, automates the process of billing customers on a recurring basis, Z-Payments (as the name implies) handles the other side of the equation — actually allowing customers to pay those bills through integration with online payment service PayPal. The product addresses a common complaint among Zuora customers, says chief executive Tien Tzuo ...

Zuora’s new product helps companies collect from customers
VentureBeat — Zuora, a startup that offers companies a cheap way to manage their customer subscriptions, just announced its second product, dubbed “Z-Payments.” Where Zuora’s first product, Z-Billing, automates the process of billing customers on a recurring basis, Z-Payments (as the name implies) handles the other side of the equation — actually allowing customers to pay those bills through integration with online payment service PayPal. The problem addresses a common complaint among Zuora customers, says chief executive Tien Tzuo — ...

Zuora Taps PayPal For Cloud Payments
InformationWeek - All Stories And Blogs — ... in September. The company's Z-Billing service was launched in May as a hosted billing service for SaaS providers. Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff is an investor in the company. Z-Payments is the complement to Z-Billing. Zuora used PayPal's SDK and APIs to tie into the PayPal billing engine, and PayPal processes the credit card transactions. Z-Payments is included at no extra cost with Z-Billing. Alternatively, Z-Payments will become available later this quarter as a standalone service, beginning at $500 a month. Who needs it? Zuora CEO Tien Tzuo says potential customers ...

Zuora Automates Subscription Billing and Payments
SitePoint — ... Zuora, which was founded by former Salesforce.com Chief Strategy Officer Tien Tzuo, believes that subscription payments are the future. “Why buy a DVD when you can subscribe to Netflix and access a whole library? Why install CRM software when you can subscribe to the world-class version online from salesforce.com? Why buy a car when you can subscribe to ZipCar and get the whole fleet?” goes their sales pitch. ...

Yahoo, YouTube, And The New XYZ's
InformationWeek - All Stories And Blogs — ... , Zuora . If there's an art to naming a new company, we've entered the dissonance period. What's behind the trend toward difficult-to-spell, phonetically-challenged monikers? Don't blame Google; it's got the benefit of alliteration and the familiar "le" ending. One thing that many newcomers have in common is that they're going off the deep end of the alphabet. Vysr, Wrike, ...

Zuora raises $15M to manage online subscriptions
VentureBeat — Zuora, which offers online services to automate customer subscriptions and payments, has raised $15 million in a second round of funding. Chief executive Tien Tzuo said he wants Zuora to be the web’s top “online subscription platform,” the way PayPal is the default platform for web payments. Zuora has released two complementary products so far, Z-Billing and Z-Payments (the latter launched earlier this month). The Redwood City, Calif. startup says it now has 45 customers. And as Tzuo argues in ...

Zuora Raises Another $15 Million For Integrated Online Billing And Payment Solution
TechCrunch — Zuora, an SaaS startup that offers online services to manage and automate customer subscriptions and payments, has raised $15 million in a second round of funding from Shasta Ventures and Lehman Brothers Venture Partners, Venturebeat reports. The company had previously raised $6.5 million from Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff and Benchmark Capital (who also participated in this round), bringing the total of funding to $21.5 million. When Zuora launched its online billing solution last May, we wrote the company aims to alleviate the need for ...

Zuora lands $15 million for online billing services
Webware.com — ... , a company that offers an on-demand subscription billing and payment service, announced today that it has secured $15 million in Series B funding. According to the company, the round was led by ...

The Dreamforce Dream Team
E-Commerce Times — Zuora . I have long been impressed by Zuora and Tien Tzuo, one of its founders and, coincidentally, the eleventh person hired into Salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM) Latest News about Salesforce.com . Zuora provides billing and payments application services on-demand for on-demand companies. These vendors have different needs than conventional software providers in that they bill more often, and customers have the option -- which they like to exercise -- of changing their configurations frequently. Getting the billing right under those conditions is challenging and provides an opening for a clever ...

Blue Light Special
E-Commerce Times — It was just a matter of time before businesses started to respond to the financial meltdown with some creativity, and as usual, the biggest advantages will go to the early movers. I have been noodling on several convergent ideas recently, and they seem to be taking shape in the marketplace, but in some quarters where you might not expect innovation or creativity. Exhibit one is the return of layaway in retail. People of a certain age and background, myself included, can remember perhaps only vaguely the concept of buying something at a retail store and leaving it there while you paid for it over a few months. ...

Aria Systems raises $10M more for online billing
VentureBeat — ... The Media, Pa.-based company has been around since 2003, but interest in online billing software seems to have taken off this year — and it’s not just Aria chief executive Ed Sullivan who says so. A new competitor called Zuora, led by an early employee of SaaS pioneer ...

Billing startup Zuora’s Z-Commerce targets cloud computing
VentureBeat — Zuora, one of the startups that provides on-demand software to manage companies’ billing and payments, aims to take advantage of growing interest in cloud computing with a new product dubbed Z-Commerce, which will provide Zuora’s services to developers on cloud platforms like Amazon Web Services and Google App Engine. The Redwood City, Calif. startup has already released three products: Z-Billing, which automates the billing process; Z-Payments, which integrates with PayPal to handle the actual ...

Zuora: Completing the SaaS Circle
E-Commerce Times — Software as a Service has become the business and software delivery model of choice among new vendors -- not to mention companies seeking to invest in IT. Surprisingly, considering the model's growing market share, few companies have sprung up to offer SaaS applications for the providers themselves. Enter Zuora ...

FastDue raises $5M for free business tools
VentureBeat — ... and web billing platforms like Zuora. The Palo Alto, Calif. company is probably particularly tempting to some customers because it’s free and ad-supported. ...

Zuora Brings Subscription Billing To Facebook Apps
TechCrunch — ... How much would you pay for a Facebook app? For most apps, most people would probably pay nothing. But for some apps, such as member-to-member online tutorial services, charging could become an option. At least Tien Tzuo hopes so. The CEO of Zuora is bringing his billing subscription service to Facebook, which has more than 50,000 apps in search of a business model. Tzuo argues: ...

DEMO: Zuora launches subscription engine for Facebook apps
VentureBeat — ... . But there’s an untapped opportunity for subscription-based apps, says Zuora, a startup that provides an online services to manage companies’ subscriptions and billing. Now Zuora is launching Z-Commerce for Facebook, which provides developers with the infrastructure they need to offer subscriptions to their apps. ...

DEMO Roundup: Doing more with less, a smarter Internet, and more
VentureBeat — ... On — A service that lets you boot your computer and access services like web browsers and instant messengers before Microsoft Windows has started. Xmarks.com — A web discovery service that that builds on Xmarks’ bookmark synchronization tool. Zipadi — An online platform for small-to-medium businesses that bundles digital publishing, e-commerce, and customer relationship management. Z-Commerce for Facebook — Read our coverage of Zuora’s subscription engine for ...

DEMO 2009
dailywireless.org — ... Zuora, a specialist in online billing services, is unveiling an add-on service for Facebook that helps developers of software applications for the social-networking service charge monthly subscription fees. ...

Demo 09: Doing More With Less
Forward Thinking by Michael J. Miller — ... , an easy way to make a screen recording. You click an icon in the system tray, and the program then captures all the changes on screen along with audio. It saves the recording to a web site, where you can edit it easily (within a browser), and share it with others via email. Now I've seen a lot of screen capture programs over the years - we used one Lotus used to offer in the old PC Magazine CD -- but this looks like an extremely easy way of doing it. At least in beta, it's free. Zuora , which has a very nice looking software-as-a-service offering that lets other SaaS ...

Webware Radar: Stop automated direct messages in Twitter
Webware.com — SocialToo, a company that makes it easier to get more out of social networks, announced that it will no longer allow its users to automatically direct message users who follow them on Twitter. According to the company's CEO, Jesse Stay, he wants to "take a stand against automated ...

Facebook to Get "Pro" Apps Thanks to Z-Commerce
ReadWriteWeb — ... Are any application developers making money on Facebook? Not really, but they could be. According to Bruce Richardson of AMR Research, less than 2% of Facebook developers make any "real" money. Part of the problem is that Facebook has not had any decent e-commerce engine for monetizing applications - until now, that is. Instead, developers have had to rely on the advertising model which isn't always a good fit for their type of application nor is it all that effective. Z-Commerce, a new service launching today at DEMO 09, aims to address this ...

Tail (Zuora) Wags Dog
E-Commerce Times — Last Monday at Demo, Zuora CEO and cofounder Tien Tzuo introduced Z-Commerce for Facebook More about Facebook -- a significant announcement that might be looked back on as a turning point in the evolution of on-demand technology. Zuora, if you don't know, provides an on-demand billing and payments suite for companies that sell Software as a Service (SaaS). You might think that these companies don't need specialized billing systems, but you would meet many objections from the companies involved. Selling SaaS is intricate and difficult to do. It requires ...

Spare Change On Track To Process $30 Million In Micropayments On Social Apps This Year
TechCrunch — ... A bigger concern for him should be if Facebook, MySpace, or Apple ever decide to jump into the micropayments game. Meanwhile, he has an opportunity to stake out a piece of the micropayments market and fight it out with the other startups eying the same prize. For instance, Zuora recently launched ...

Facebook Platform Payment Providers Report Strong Growth in Q1
Inside Facebook — ... Labs, Sometrics, and Gambit provide developers with managed offer networks that users can pay for either directly or indirectly (i.e. through CPA offer completion). These companies have partnered with many of the payment providers above and help developers optimize which payment options to display most prominently (for users who choose paid offers) in order to optimize revenue. Other payment companies, like Global Collect, CC Bill, and Zuora are also active in the space. Facebook Staying Mum on Plans ...

Paradigm and Disruption
E-Commerce Times — I am fond of Paul Greenberg because he's smart and knows a heck of a lot about CRM Get ahead of the competition with data mining. Learn more! -- most importantly, he's a good judge of whether a company is for real or just playing around. I am also grateful to him for pointing out that I was the fortunate one to identify on-demand technology as a disruptive innovation. Paul is busy writing the fourth edition of CRM at the Speed of Light , and if it's like the last one, it will be a big book. Sometimes I kid him that he's become the Walt Whitman of CRM. As I recall, my disruptive innovation comment came from ...

Zuora’s online billing service gets 100 new features as it lands 100th customer
VentureBeat — Zuora, a startup that offers online software to help companies automate subscriptions and billing, is releasing version 2.0 of its lead product, Z-Billing, complete with what it says are 100 new features that improve power, automation, and ease-of-use. The Redwood City, Calif. company has been growing quickly since launching Z-Billing in May 2008, and with the release of 2.0, Zuora is also announcing its 100th customer. It’s a big one, too — server giant Sun Microsystems. (Yes, the same Sun Microsystems ...

1-Year-Old Zuora Is Paving the Way
E-Commerce Times — Zuora , the on-demand billing service for on-demand companies, is turning 1 year old. Last week, the company announced 100 product improvements with its 2.0 version and said that it had attracted 100 customers in its first year. Why all the attention to this startup? I think what's cool about Zuora is that it is the first on-demand infrastructure company delivering its product as an on-demand service. It may not have invented the car, so to speak, but it is inventing asphalt, and, in some ways, that's better. We're now accustomed to thinking about on-demand solutions as rather ...

WizKids 2009
E-Commerce Times — ... for a while now. That trend toward themes continues this year, and the theme is all about making your company easy to do business with. You know I have been on this operations kick for a while. Operations might be the flip side of customer intimacy, especially in a recession. Finding ways to lower your costs and make it easy for your customers to do business with you may not sound very sexy, but there is great opportunity in that pursuit. Some of our best examples include Zuora for on-demand billing and payments, ...

Who uses cloud computing? Startups do, VCs don’t
VentureBeat — ... ’s Peter Fenton offered the startups that Benchmark has invested in as evidence. Every company in Benchmark’s portfolio uses Amazon’s cloud infrastructure in some way, and about one-third of them operate entirely on web-based services and infrastructure. Billing startup Zuora, for example, is doing well despite having “not a single IT guy, not a one,” Fenton said –  and that’s more meaningful than an analyst’s report. ...

Cindicia raises $7.5M more for online billing
VentureBeat — Vindicia, which provides companies with online software to help manage web billing and payments, has raised $7.5 million in a fourth round of venture funding. The Redwood City, Calif. startup is one of several companies (Zuora and Aria Systems are the other ones we’ve covered) trying to bring the software-as-a-service approach, where the tools are provided via online subscription, to the billing software market. Among its customers are Symantec, Intuit, Atari/Cryptic Studios, and Outspark. The company has said it ...

Pain and Paradigm Shift
E-Commerce Times — ... say, are small computers that don't do much on their own. They have small screens and small disks, smaller processors and memory -- just enough to get their users to the Web, where they can access applications and data stored there. Netbook computers represent a new style of computing that harmonizes nicely with cloud computing. Netbook owners use these appliances for a purpose such as email and other office tasks as well as accessing cloud-based applications. Tien Tzuo, CEO of Zuora , told me recently that he runs his whole company from the cloud. They use ...

DEMOfall09: The launching companies
VentureBeat — ... Weels Corp.; Milton, MA; www.weelscorp.com WhoDoYouKnowAt, LLC; Dallas, TX; www.whodoyouknowat.com YiqYaq, LLC; Redwood City, CA; http://radioweave.com Zorap, Inc.; Falmouth, ME; www.zorap.com Zuora; Redwood City, CA; www.zuora.com And here are the pre-launch Alpha Pitch companies: ...

70 companies to Launch at DEMOfall, here is the list
The Next Web — ... VicMan Software; Alexandria, VA Waze; Ra’anana, Israel Webroot; Boulder, CO Weels Corp.; Milton, MA WhoDoYouKnowAt; Dallas, TX YiqYaq; Redwood City, CA Zorap; Falmouth, ME Zuora; Redwood City, CA Via: VentureBeat ...

DEMOfall 09: Your guide to VentureBeat’s coverage
VentureBeat — ... Zuora; Redwood City, CA — Zuora provides online software to help companies manage subscriptions and billing, and no it’s launching a service tailored for newspapers and other news organizations to help them charge for content. ...

Demo09: Tools for Businesses and Productivity
Forward Thinking by Michael J. Miller — ... Z-Commerce for Media from Zuora is designed to help media companies quickly and easily charge for online content.    The company, which offers subscription payment services for a variety of online businesses, is allowing publishers to charge for online content in a variety of ways, ranging from per-article access to monthly or annual access.     On stage the company said that all of us have a civic responsibility to save the media industry - I don't know that any one product by itself can do that, but I do think we'll see a lot more media ...

Online Subscription Billing Is A Pain. Recurly Wants To Alleviate It.
TechCrunch — ... Of course, as I said, there is plenty of competition. One of the big players is Zuora. But for many young startups, they’re offering is too complex. And more importantly, it’s also expensive. A closer competitor may be ...