CEO Forum talks with Co-Founder of Zuora, Tien Tzuo

Mr. Tien Tzuo co-founded Zuora, Inc. in 2007 and serves as its Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board. Mr. Tzuo serves as an Advisor of LiveOps, Inc. In his 9 years at Salesforce.com, Mr. Tzuo built Salesforce.com’s original billing system and held a variety of executive roles in Salesforce.com’s technology, marketing, and strategy organizations, including building out the product management & marketing organization. 

Robert Reiss: Explain the phrase you coined, “The Subscription Economy.”

Tien Tzuo: The Subscription Economy is the idea that with every day that passes, you and I are finding ourselves buying less and less. We don’t need to buy things for what we need anymore. Why buy a car when you can get from point A to point B with services like Lyft or Zipcar or Uber? Why buy songs or DVDs or CDs if you can get any music that you want on Apple Music or any movie on Netflix or HBO or any of these streaming services? Why even buy software applications when you can just point your browser or your phone to the cloud to a Google or a Salesforce.com and do the things you need to do for work? This whole idea of not having to buy things and, instead, running your life on a set of services that you subscribe to, is what we mean by “the Subscription Economy.” We are seeing this continue to grow not just in the US, but all around the world.