Tien Tzuo liked to call his company's stock an "index fund of the subscription economy." He coined that phrase for the shift from buying things once to paying for them every month. Software, newspapers, and even cars were moving to subscriptions by 2018. Each change needed billing systems that could handle upgrades, trials, and renewals. Zuora built that plumbing. It filed to go public as investors were paying up for cloud software that brought in money every month.

Out of Salesforce

Tzuo had been an early Salesforce executive and saw how hard subscription billing was for that company. He founded Zuora in 2007 with K. V. Rao and Cheng Zou. Old billing software was built to send one invoice for one sale. Zuora ran in the cloud and tracked every customer's plan as it changed over time. Salesforce's Marc Benioff was an early backer. Customers came from software, media, and manufacturing.

Up 43 Percent, Then Private

Zuora priced its IPO at $14 a share in April 2018, above a raised range of $11 to $13. It opened on the NYSE at $20 and closed there, up about 43 percent. Growth slowed in the years that followed, and the stock spent long stretches below its IPO price. In October 2024, Silver Lake and GIC agreed to buy the company for $10 a share. The deal, worth about $1.7 billion, closed in February 2025.

Cover: Stacks of Wheat (Sunset, Snow Effect), Claude Monet. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for the same stacks, painted season after season (recurring).