Zuora Recognized for Telecom Industry Award

by Shawn Price, President

"Don't worry when you are not recognized, but strive to be worthy of recognition."
— Abraham Lincoln

Ever since launching Zuora for Communications in April 2011, Zuora has been rapidly scaling up its presence in the communications industry. I’m proud to say that our efforts are being recognized. I’ve been given the OK to reveal that Zuora for Communications was selected as a 2011 Internet Telephony BSS/OSS Excellence Award winner by Internet Telephony Magazine.

Internet Telephony specifically pointed to Zuora’s achievement in “creating exceptional systems for supporting business support systems.” And the editors highlighted the success Zuora generated for Tata Communications with its revolutionary InstaCompute service.

In a blog post I wrote on June 15, I discussed the need for carriers to adapt to the changing world of smart devices and customer loyalties a thing of the past. That’s the reason we launched Zuora for Communications, a solution that brings the power of the cloud to communication service providers and enables service providers to launch any type of service from broadband, WIFI, 4G, VOIP, unified communications, and wireless devices services, as well as media services that are delivered over the network such as apps, cloud, gaming, video, and voice services. The solution enables service providers to price and package any communications service, manage customer interactions everywhere, bill and invoice customers in real-time and make decisions based on subscriber analytics.

That’s exactly what Zuora means by bringing innovation to the communications space, and we’ve just started. It’s great to have industry recognition for the work that Zuora is doing with telecom carriers like Qualcomm and Elevate, and we’re excited about the opportunity to serve more industry players in the new year.

Yahoo! for Scott Thompson: The Right Pick to Save the Company

by Tien Tzuo

Congratulations to Scott Thompson on being named the new CEO at Yahoo. Scott was one of Zuora’s inaugural board members, and has been a guiding force through our growth. He has helped our team focus on the big picture while providing positive energy or unvarnished feedback when we needed it most. And he did it all while turning PayPal into a payments powerhouse alongside the giants of Visa and MasterCard.

There’s no doubt that leading Yahoo is the biggest turnaround challenge in the Valley today. The company is clearly at a crossroads--and needs serious help. Yahoo needs two things right now: positive leadership for a team that’s been repeatedly beaten down, and critical analysis to build a cohesive strategy that the company, investors and customers can rally around. In my experience with Scott, he has those skills and then some.

Scott’s leadership was clear the first time we met. Zuora had just launched its first subscription billing product, and had a handful of SaaS customers including Marketo, Coremetrics, LiveOffice, Cloud9 and Box. We were looking for an outside board member and, still in the euphoria of just getting our company and product launched, we thought, why not go shoot for the moon and ask the leader of the company who revolutionized the online payments industry?

Looking back, I expected Scott to ignore my outreach, or at best punt me to an underling. To my surprise, he invited me to a meeting where his clear intention was, “How can I help?” I presented our bold vision, threw out 3-4 ideas and then snuck on at the end, “How about joining our board?” He loved our vision and never hesitated.

Scott's been instrumental to Zuora to this day. I have so many great Scott stories, but I have one in particular that the Yahoo crew should know. As I said, we had some early success, and I was feeling pretty good about myself. Scott took me down a rung, saying, “This is all great, but you haven't proven to anyone that YOU can make your team successful. That's your job, and you’re on the hook.” It was one of those moments where the color of the world changes, and you can see a whole new path ahead. That’s the kind of leadership Scott can provide.

So to Scott, thank you for all you have done for Zuora. Thank you for always asking me about my family. Thank you for the three hour lunches and dinners to invest in our success. You have a huge challenge ahead of you, but I have no doubt that you are the right guy for the job.

To the Yahoo ecosystem, congratulations on getting a great leader. I expect we will see some great things from the Yahoo team.