Tien Tzuo is the Founder and CEO of Zuora, one of the fastest growing SaaS companies that has been at the forefront of the rise of subscription business models. They have funding from some of the best in the business including the likes of Benchmark, Sequoia, Redpoint and Marc Benioff, just to name a few. As for Tien, before Zuora, he was one of the ‘original forces’ at salesforce.com, joining as employee number 11. In his 9 years at salesforce.com, Tien served in numerous different roles including as Chief Marketing Officer for two years, and most recently as Chief Strategy Officer. Huge thanks to Jason Lemkin for the intro to Tien today!
In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:
How did Tien make his way from being an early employee at Salesforce to founding Zuora?
What were the big takeaways for Tien from seeing the meteoric rise of Salesforce and working with Mark Benioff? How has that experience molded his running and strategy with Zuora today?
What does Tien see as the fundamental benefits of a subscription model? What products and services does it work best for? What are the keys to assembling this model successfully?
Tien has previously referred to scaling as ‘the climb’. How does he approach this analogy? What was the most challenging element of scaling for Tien? How did he overcome it?
Tien has previously said that market strategy is the $100m question all founders must ask. So how does Tien approach go to market? What are the fundamentals to think about when considering different go to market options?
60 Second SaaStr:
Biggest mentor and how the relationship came about?
What does Tien know now that he wishes he had known in the beginning?
Highlight of the Zuora journey so far?
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