Letter #173: Henry Schuck (2020)
ZoomInfo Founder & CEO | S-1 Founder's Letter
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Today’s letter is Henry Schuck’s Founder’s Letter for ZoomInfo’s S-1 filing. In this letter, Henry starts by sharing the reasons for ZoomInfo’s success, as well as a thank you to ZoomInfo’s employees. He then dives into the letter, sharing the circumstances and motivations that led to the founding of the company, hitting sales numbers, the cost of bad GTM intelligence, and ZoomInfo’s capabilities.
Henry Schuck is the Founder and CEO of ZoomInfo (fka DiscoverOrg), which he founded in 2007 while still in law school. He also serves on the Board of Tegus. Prior to founding ZoomInfo, Henry was the VP of Research & Marketing at iProfile, a sales intelligence firm focused on the IT market that ZoomInfo later acquired (in 2015). He was also a Data Analyst at Political Data. Henry started his career while still in high school as a Field Director for Burnside and Associates.
Related Resources:
Tegus
VMS (Vertical Market Software)
Constellation Software Podcast - Spotify, Apple Podcasts (1.5 hours)
Constellation Software Research Report (Full Report: ~45 pages)
Letter
We’ve been successful because we have executed better, because we believed in our leadership, because we stayed scrappier and more nimble than our competitors, because we limited the red tape around the company and maintained our bootstrapped nature and entrepreneurial DNA. This is a company that could have died a hundred times over. It’s a company that got to where it’s at today on the backs of heroic efforts over the years by our employees - who gave ZoomInfo a chance; they came in early, stayed late and refused to lose.
And because of all of you we have made it.
- Henry Schuck, Founder & CEO -
Founder’s Letter
About 20 years ago, I made a choice that dramatically changed my life. I was an undergraduate, and the $5,000 college fund that my single mother had heroically safeguarded for my college education was depleted. I found myself faced with a large tuition bill due and the urgent need for a paying job so that I could complete my education.
In the most serendipitous moment of my professional life, I stumbled into the office of a new entrant in the SaaS go-to-market intelligence space and took a job as a marketing analyst to pay my way through college. Four years later the company sold to private equity and I entered law school. I tried to quiet the voice in my head that was telling me the opportunity in that space was too big to ignore and that what we had achieved was good, but not good enough. And it turns out I couldn’t.
So, while still in law school, my co-founder and I put $25,000 on our credit cards and founded what would become ZoomInfo (it was called DiscoverOrg at the time). In doing so, we ventured to help the millions of sales and marketing professionals who wake up every morning with one goal: hitting their number.
Hitting Their Number
For sales and marketing professionals, hitting their number is an emotional, professionally defining and/or debilitating moment that comes at the end of every month, every quarter, and every year. Their number is their scoreboard and whether they hit it or not is binary. Promotions, bonuses, and feelings of accomplishment are linked to that number—you either hit it, or you miss it, there is nothing in between.
If that doesn’t sound challenging enough, the ability to successfully, repeatedly, and predictably hit that number month-in and month-out is rife with additional roadblocks, difficulties, and systemic flaws. Territories are poorly mapped, targeting is weak, data in CRMs is incomplete and inaccurate. Sellers waste inordinate amounts of time researching, marketing campaigns go out to random companies at random times, and money is spent in horribly inefficient ways.
The Cost of Bad Go-to-Market Intelligence
Sales and marketing pain is universal. Step out onto any sales floor and you’ll hear a familiar chorus of go-to-market pain:
“I don’t have the right contacts at this account”
“I keep calling disconnected phone numbers”
“I keep getting blocked by gatekeepers”
“This company isn’t even in my territory anymore. It got acquired”
“The new CEO at this company used our competitor”
“The email addresses I have keep bouncing”
“There are only 100 targetable companies in Los Angeles? That can’t be right...”
“We lost our three best sellers because they couldn’t hit their quotas”
“Marketing didn’t hit their pipeline contribution this quarter”
Or worse, you’ll hear nothing...and wonder, “Why is the sales floor so quiet?”
Incomplete, stale, or outright inaccurate data on customers and prospects throws sand into the gears of every go-to-market motion. It starts with quiet sales floors and leads to missed numbers, low morale, lost deals, disappointment, and slumps in career trajectory.
Enter ZoomInfo
What ZoomInfo provides pales in comparison to what it enables.
We provide the software, information, and insights that give our customers a 360-degree view of their customers and their prospects. We provide contacts, companies, technology stack data, direct-dial phone numbers, email addresses, corporate hierarchy information, location maps, and hundreds of additional fields. And with proprietary AI and intent overlays, we help our customers create tailored go-to-market strategies based on the profiles and real-time activity of their ideal customers.
What we enable is far more impactful. We breathe life into a sales floor, we boost morale, we reduce turnover, we drive the sales and marketing pipeline, and we help companies grow. We do all of this by removing the roadblocks faced by millions of sales and marketing professionals who want to come in, work hard, and hit their number each and every day.
I am humbled by the depth and breadth of our growing customer base. From our earliest customers—who, over a decade ago, recognized the value of our product and put their trust in a 23-year-old’s idea—to our newest customers who continue to sophisticate their go-to-market motions with our platform.
I am so proud to stand in front of this organization. I am proud of the culture we have built that constantly asks, “How can I perform better?” “How can we make this better?” “How can we do more good?”
This is a company that stands on the shoulders of its employees who have made countless heroic efforts over the years. They have come in early, they have stayed late, and they have refused to lose every step of the way. They are the difference makers.
It is because of them that I know ZoomInfo’s best days are ahead of it.
Here’s To Hitting Your Number,
-Henry
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Wrap-up
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