Subscribed: Why the Subscription Model Will Be Your Company's Future - and What to Do About It

by Tien Tzuo

Instead, I argued, the goal of business should be to start with the wants and needs of a particular customer base, then create a service that delivers ongoing value to those customers.

Simply put, the world is moving from products to services. Subscriptions are exploding because billions of digital consumers are increasingly favoring access over ownership, but most companies are still built to sell products.

If stock valuations are forward-looking predictions, then subscriptions are forward-looking revenue models.

Who are we going to sell to? How big is this market, really? Is this going to be a software company that sells only to other software companies, or is it something bigger?

running on subscription models grow their revenue more than nine times faster than the S&P 500

(check the Subscription Economy Index at the end of this book for the latest data on that topic).

After all, competitors can steal your product features, but they can’t steal the insights you gain from an active, loyal subscriber base.