Salestech consolidators: ZoomInfo

It’s impossible to discuss sales technology consolidation without covering ZoomInfo. The company is unique in many respects. 

DiscoverOrg — the company's name at its creation — was bootstrapped in 2007 by founders Henry Schuck and Kirk Brown on maxed-out credit cards.

Henry had had exposure to the sales intelligence industry and was aware of rampant bad data and unreliable lists peddled by brokers. DiscoverOrg began by assembling a comprehensive dataset on sales and marketing roles for tech companies, swiftly earning recognition for solid data quality.

It was later able to get funded and went on a buying spree to augment its data coverage:

• iProfile in August 2015  

• RainKing in August 2017

• ZoomInfo in February 2019

• Everstring in November 2020  

In September 2019, the company rebranded as ZoomInfo.

Today, its datasets provide global coverage spanning 100 million companies and 260 million contacts and include technographics and intent data. It collects its data through the scanning of 38 million online sources, a network of contributors (ZoomInfo Lite), partners, and a large in-house department of 300 analysts.

Meanwhile, ZoomInfo built an industry-leading sales engine. In an industry prompt at inventing new categories, it adopted a fast-follower stance, snapping up numerous companies to methodically expand its solution footprint and successfully funneling these acquired products through its sales machine:

• Tellwise (sales engagement) in July 2017

• Komiko (AI-powered CRM automation, playbooks, and predictive analytics) in November 2019

• Clickagy (streaming intent data) in October 2020

• NeverBounce (email verification and list cleansing) in March 2021

• Insent.ai (chat) in June 2021

• Chorus.ai (conversation intelligence) in July 2021

• RingLead (data orchestration) in September 2021

• Dogpatch Advisors (prospecting) in May 2022

• Comparably (recruitment) in May 2022

The company became public in 2020. In 2022, it started consolidating its acquired assets under RevOS, an ecosystem of solutions for each of the personas it is addressing:

• SalesOS for B2B sales teams

• OperationsOS for Revenue Operations

• MarketingOS account-based marketing for marketers

• RecruitingOS for HR teams

ZoomInfo is now an industry powerhouse with an annualized $1.25 billion run rate, still growing 9% year over with an impressive 22% GAAP Operating Income.