ZoomInfo's New CEO Discusses Datanyze Acquisition And The Value Of Technographic Capabilities

ZoomInfo CEO Derek Schoettle is following up a whirlwind tour of talking with customers by acquiring firms with expertise in areas such as technographics, product development and security operations.

The company on Wednesday will announce it has bought San Mateo, Calif.-based Datanyze, a company that gathers information on the technology that has already been purchased by more than 35 million companies around the world. This follows news Tuesday that ZoomInfo had also bought Y Labs, an organization that will allow the company to effectively establish a new base in Israel and bring on additional talent.

Schoettle joined ZoomInfo form IBM in late July, and has spent part of his time since then on an initiative he calls “50 in 5” — a series of discussions with more than 50 customers across only five weeks. These conversations have offered insight not only into ZoomInfo’s strengths but potential gaps and areas in which the firm will either seek partners or other acquisitions, he said.

“The (customer) advocacy for the company and the product is phenomenal,” Schoettle told B2B News Network. “The second part of our effort now is to round out the data factory we have, looking at all the right data sources, the data quality, and present it to the right end users.”

ZoomInfo already offers a rich set of data offerings with demographic and firmographic information, and the addition of technographic data was an obvious fit, Schoettle added.

At its annual customer event, the Growth Acceleration Summit, this past summer, ZoomInfo already announced a number of additions to products such as Reachout. For the time being the technology from Datanyze will continue to be offered as its own distinct tool, though the company founder will join ZoomInfo as vice-president of data.

“The market is looking to buy in a way that’s quickly evolving from static-search oriented methods to more intent-based, more dynamic ways,” he said. “Customers want a user experience that is more tailored and personalized. Delivering on that need is something that is of a great deal of interest to me.”

Schoettle wouldn’t specify any of the other areas where ZoomInfo might buy other firms following the Datanyze deal, but he said any additional deals would have to align with the existing mission of collecting, processing, curating and preparing data for a variety of different business applications.

“Our value is in sharing data that isn’t readily available,” he said, “whether it’s industry specific, user specific, or unstructured data that’s proprietary. Investing in that capability is something we’ve been doing all along.”

Besides the acquisition of Datanyze, Y Labs and other changes, ZoomInfo also recently opened a new corporate headquarters in Waltham, Mass.