Company: ZoomInfo
Founder: Henry Schuck
Website: https://www.zoominfo.com
About ZoomInfo
ZoomInfo started as DiscoverOrg in 2007, founded by Henry Schuck and Kirk Brown. Then in 2019, DiscoverOrg bought ZoomInfo and rebranded everything under the ZoomInfo name, becoming a major Go-to-Market (GTM) Intelligence platform player. The platform helps businesses grow faster by combining exceptional data, AI, and automation in one convenient workspace to give sales and marketing teams a full picture of their customers.
Pivot to Outbound: Gartner says traditional website traffic or “inbound” strategy that worked for a decade is falling apart. About 30-40% of inbound traffic is just disappearing. Analysts are calling it a major business risk. This means sales teams need to rethink how they get leads. But outbound sales have always been inefficient.
Money down the drain: Boston Consulting Group points out that typical sales and marketing efforts can waste a massive $2 trillion in extra costs and lost sales. It’s not about effort or intent; it’s about actually getting things done.
Reps chase bad accounts, waste time on crummy data, and spend hours on boring admin instead of selling. Even AI “assistants” haven’t fixed it – they just suggest what to do, they don’t actually do it.
What ZoomInfo brings:
- Easily plugs into other systems. ZoomInfo made sure it could seamlessly connect with CRM systems, marketing automation, and sales engagement tools. It combines scattered customer data so everyone’s on the same page.
- Strong privacy controls to meet GDPR and CCPA standards.
- Automated systems and human researchers, to make sure their business contact info is accurate, complete and up-to-date. They offer a 360-degree view of buyers, who they are, what they need, and when to talk to them.
- Built for people and ready for AI “agents.” Gives AI clean data to do the heavy lifting, freeing up humans.
- Smart agents don’t just give advice – they actually do things. Copilot finds your best opportunities, spots in-market buyers, beefs up info on entire buying committees, and even writes outreach messages automatically.
- Sales teams can focus on what matters: talking to buyers who are already interested, with info that helps close deals.
Supporting SaaS:
- Made top-level sales intelligence available to companies of any size. This changed how businesses find and get leads, shifting from relationships to being data driven.
- Helped create and grow the Revenue Operations (RevOps) role by providing unified data that connects sales, marketing, and customer success teams. This is standard practice in SaaS now.
- Ahead of the curve by letting people embed sales intelligence right into their existing workflows through strong API integrations. This influenced how other SaaS companies design their platforms for smooth data flow.
- Set the bar for how businesses collect, store, and use contact and company data, creating industry benchmarks for data quality.
- ZoomInfo helped define and expand the GTM intelligence category, which is now a multi-billion dollar market within the broader SaaS world.
- By giving detailed info about company tech and other firmographics, ZoomInfo made more sophisticated account-based marketing and sales possible. This completely changed how SaaS companies find and target potential customers.
