The Secrets of Salesforce - Dreamforce’09 Recap and Twitter Contest Winners

by Tricia Reilly

This year’s Dreamforce was a force indeed. 16,000 attendees from all over the world gathered for three and a half days of networking, education, and inspiration. Dreamforce’09 marked Zuora’s second year as an exhibitor, and this time around we sponsored the AppExchange Appreciation Party at Temple.

A few of the highlights included:

• Tien’s session: Maximize Your Revenues: Market and Deliver Your Solutions on the AppExchange
• Gen. Colin Powell’s keynote speech
• Seeing so many successful Zuora customers exhibiting on the show floor – Marketo, InsideView, Xactly, Boomi, Cloud9 Analytics, Landslide, box.net, Genius, Ricoh and ThomsonReuters!
• Marc’s best-selling book Behind the Cloud and the 111 plays that propelled salesforce.com to a $1B business

Zuora has incorporated some of the same plays that salesforce.com used, and is launching a short video series featuring the secrets that catapulted their success. Delivered weekly to your inbox over the next 6 weeks, these two-minute vignettes will show you how to be just like the $1B success story.

Sign up today to receive these and other educational emails from Zuora.

Finally, congratulations to our Dreamforce Twitter Contest Winners:

Jarrod - Perspective Software
Justin - Fused Solutions
Bill - Aprimo

Who’s Thriving on the AppExchange? Meet Zuora Customers at Dreamforce

by Tricia Reilly

The Zuora Marketing team has been busy getting ready for Dreamforce next week. You might recall, we launched Z-Force at Dreamforce last year, and with so many former salesforce.com employees working at Zuora, attending Dreamforce is like going home.

Last month, we hosted a webinar with salesforce.com which featured customers Marketo and InsideView all about how to make more money on the AppExchange. Phil Fernandez, CEO and Founder of Marketo, and Lisa Bailey, VP Business Operations at InsideView, shared how they’re accelerating growth of their AppExchange business thanks to Zuora. With Dreamforce starting next week, we wanted to invite our readers to meet the Zuora team and our customers and find out how we’re helping them monetize and grow their AppExchange business.

• Meet our CEO Tien Tzuo, salesforce.com’s 11th employee and former Chief Strategy Officer, at Maximize Your Revenues: Market and Deliver Your Solutions on the AppExchange, Thursday at 7.30AM
• Drop by booth #203 for a demo
• Join us for a drink at the AppExchange Appreciation Party on Thrusday night at Temple from 7-10PM
• Follow our tweets on the Dreamforce All Stars List for a chance to win one of three Amazon Kindles!

We’ll also be making a big announcement next week, so stay tuned for the scoop. Both Marketo and InsideView will be exhibiting on the show floor along with other Zuora customers Boomi, Cloud9, Genius, Xactly, Landslide, and Box.net. See you at Moscone!

Zuora Helps Salesforce.com Partners Monetize Their AppExchange Listings

by Tricia Reilly

Zuora’s AppExchange team is gearing up for a busy Fall. This month, we’re hosting a webinar on Oct. 21st titled, Make Your AppExchange Listing Work for You. Featuring two of the most successful AppExchange vendors, Marketo and InsideView, as well as salesforce.com’s VP Alliances, we’ll share how Zuora is already helping AppExchange vendors monetize their listing.

Then, we’ll be taking the message to salesforce.com’s annual global gathering, Dreamforce ’09. We’ll be evangelizing our cloud and subscription commerce services, and launching a new product. We can’t tell you what it is, but you won’t want to miss out!

We’ll also be presenting at two sessions at Dreamforce and sponsoring the AppExchange Appreciation Party at Temple on Thursday evening.

Here’s how you can learn about how Zuora is helping the AppExchange community:

• Register for our Webinar on October 21st - Make Your AppExchange Listing Work for You
• Come See Us at Dreamforce ’09
  • Register and use promo code EXH50050 to save $100 http://www.salesforce.com/dreamforce/DF09/site/
• Drop by Booth #203 or our demo station in the Salesforce.com Campground and talk Cloud Computing, AppExchange, and all things Subscription Commerce.
• Attend our Sessions
  • 11/19 @ 7.30AM: Tien Tzuo, Maximize Your Revenues: Market and Deliver Your Solutions on the AppExchange
  • 11/20 @ 9AM: Tricia Reilly, Bridging the Gap: VP Sales & Marketing
• Follow us on Twitter – we’ll be tweeting from both shows from the handle @Zuora!

Fall DEMO’09: Social Media, B2B, and Chris Shipley’s Victory Dance

by Annette Giambroni

Earlier this week, we launched Z-Commerce for Media at Fall DEMO’09 in San Diego. We were really excited to see this event growing in size despite the economy. As always, there was a real palpable energy and buzz about the place and we were honored to be asked back, following our launch at DEMO in the Spring.

We’re busy following up on connections made, press coverage, and internal de-briefs – but before we move on to the next big thing, we’d like to share our observations and thoughts with you.

First of all, we were thrilled to see such a strong focus on business models and whether or not the presenters could turn a great idea into a viable business. I guess it’s a sign of the times, but following the tweets, it was obvious that people were more interested in how presenters would monetize their offering than in seeing cool technology.

Some of our favorite presenters included Webroot, Liaise (a super friendly bunch of Aussies who won the Enterprise People’s Choice Award and $500k in IDG advertising), LeapFILE (great group of people who offer a secure file transfer service), Rumbafish, Pinyadda, and TwirlTV just to name a few. Not surprisingly, there was a heavy focus on social media and crowdsourcing, but we were a little shocked that Zuora was one of few enterprise, B2B apps.

Despite the heavy focus on consumer technologies, quite a few of the Lifetime Achievement Awards went to B2B vendors such as Marc Benioff, Founder and Chairman of salesforce.com and an early Zuora investor; as well WebEx, Adobe Systems, and Google. With our own founders coming from salesforce.com and WebEx, we certainly hope to follow in their footsteps!

Finally, we were sad to see Chris Shipley hand over the reins to Matt Marshall, but getting to watch her victory dance was well worth the hefty show price tag.

Zuora Named to SaaS and Enterprise Category of AlwaysOn 250

by Tricia Reilly

We’re thrilled to announce that Zuora was named to the SaaS and Enterprise category of the 2009 AlwaysOn Global 250 Top Private Companies List. The designation is given to emerging innovators in technology, successful in creating new business opportunities in high-growth markets.

Selected from among hundreds of other technology companies nominated by investors, bankers, journalists and industry insiders, we’re proud to be named by the AlwaysOn editorial team based on demonstration of growth, market opportunity, quality of innovation and customer traction. Previous overall winners include Google, Twitter, and salesforce.com.

We’d like to congratulate Aaron Patzer and his team at Mint.com – another Benchmark Capital/Shasta Ventures backed organization for being named Category Winner in the Consumer Internet space. And a big shout out to Zuora customers Boomi, box.net, and cvsdude who were all included on the list as well.

Reflections on Dreamforces Past and Present

by Tien Tzuo

It's the second day here at Dreamforce for Zuora, and the entire team is charged up from all the energy and ideas buzzing around the conference.

On a personal note, being at Dreamforce stirs up many mixed emotions for me.  Walking into the Moscone the first day, I saw Marc Benioff (my old boss, and an investor in Zuora) standing outside, and we chatted a bit before he had to head inside to prepare.  Marc looked back and shot me one last remark: "you know, this is the first Dreamforce we've had without you".

Indeed it is!  I can remember our first Dreamforce, at the St. Francis in Union Square, where we were proud to have 8 partners exhibiting.  Okere was one of the 8, and now they are Fujitsu Consulting and have a huge booth the size of the entire partner expo that year.  I can also remember the two Dreamforce's I ran as CMO of Salesforce, including the one during the last US election, when George Bush dropped in to kick things off.

How time flies.

Every Dreamforce has had its own flavor and character, and this one is no different.  One thing that jumps out at me is the contrast between the excitement around the future of Cloud Computing, with the concern around the global economy.  Are technology companies spooked by the negative buzz that was sparked by the Sequoia presentation?  Absolutely, but to the last person, everyone believes that the long term prospects of Cloud Computing are bright.

We couldn’t agree with them more.  Now is not the time to slam on the brakes, to reduce costs and "hibernate" through the winter.  Now is the time to look to the future.  That doesn't mean companies shouldn't reign in their costs and focus on a path to profitability.  But now is a great time to invest intelligently in your business. This is not time a time to weigh a company down with decisions and purchases that will pay off far in the future – it’s time to take actions that work NOW, fit NOW, are strategic NOW and – most importantly – actions that will still benefit the company next month, next year.

This is exactly why both the cloud and the subscription model are smart investments in any economy, and what at Zuora, we will continue to invest in creating great products that deliver positive business impact for our customers.

If you’re at the Dreamforce event today, come see us:

   -   Zuora will be at Force.com session today at 11:30am in Esplanade 305

   -   Tomorrow, Wednesday, I will present a session at Partner Day at 3:45pm on “How to Make More $$$"

And, come by and meet Zuora in-person. We’re at booth #230.

Zuora at Dreamforce

by Annette Giambroni

Zuora is onsite at Dreamforce! The energy is contagious at the software-as-service event of the year—it’s great to be back. If you’re at the conference, be sure to stop by and say hello. Here’s where you can find us:

• The Z-Team will be at booth #230 in the Dreamforce Expo—stop by for a demo
• Zuora will present a Force.com session on Tuesday at 11:30am in Esplanade 305
• Our CEO Tien Tzuo will present a session at Partner Day at 3:45pm on “How to Make More $$$”

At the conference, we’re going live with Z-Force, the first billing and payment system integrated with salesforce.com and we can’t wait to give you a demo. You can learn more about Z-Force at: http://www.zuora.com/products/zforce

Not registered for Dreamforce yet? You can get a FREE expo pass onsite on Tuesday or Wednesday. Just come onsite November 4 or 5 to Moscone North and use the promotion code "Success" to register for your free Expo Pass. See www.dreamforce.com for more details.

See you there!