How Zoominfo CEO Henry Schuck grew Zoominfo to $1.2B revenue and 15K customers in 2024.

founders what's going on you guys know i love in-person events and they are back the recording you're about to hear is from our most recent event where we had hundreds of founders come together share intimate details templates kpis okrs about their business and it was something special something special we'd love to meet you in person if you want to see the next live events we have coming up via our schedule the link will be down below in the description if you're listening on itunes check this out on youtube you'll see the links in the description or you can just google founder path or latka next event we'd love to see you in person in the meantime though enjoy this recording it's a good one whose idea was it to ipo in the middle of a pandemic anyways [Music] [Applause] that's it [Music] zoom info is still founder-led henry chuck is the ceo and started the company while he was in law school by putting 25 000 on his and his co-founders credit cards you know we're investing for the long term i'm focused on building this company into something much larger than it is today our team at zoom info is innovative we're hard working we're always looking to define new possibles and we're just getting started three two one marketing platform zoom info open for trading earlier today the company's ceo henry shuck joins us now remotely from his home outside of portland zoom info helps sellers find their next best customer whether you're a pallet manufacturer in alabama or your fortune 1000 technology company zoom info helps sellers find those companies and find the buyers of those companies we've got zoom info set to go public this friday morning how is the current environment affecting you what advice would you give if another company was out there looking to come to market right now congratulations it's always a big deal let's do this [Music] guys before you eat that guy welcome to founder cops get so guys henry shuck uh we're thrilled to have him with us before you meet him though i just want to say it's incredibly back in person yeah i hope it feels good does it feel good yeah it feels good drink lots of coffee keep your energy high we've got outlets for every person so if you get bored you can just open your computer and look up occasionally and act like you're paying attention and go back to your gmail okay so perfect there's plenty of extra seats on this side of the room if you want to grab one of those um as well um so let's let's get this on the content here um henry's story is really incredible right so many many years ago before uh he was now a publicly traded sas founder uh i i don't know why he responded a cold email to come on the podcast but he did and i was so impressed with how he was building the company how he was doing it but specifically because he was creating multiple opportunities for liquidation before ipo there's some very non-traditional stuff that he sort of did and i'm excited to have him teach us exactly how he did that you bet you bet you san francisco he's a san francisco guy i'm actually in portland but i was in san francisco san francisco is open now huh yes okay all right very cool this is a little bit different attire than like dorm room days this is what i wear to work what i wear to work all right so take us back in the story over the next 25 minutes we're going to really chat about how you got going uh where you are today where you see markets going some of the key things that you were important for your first 10 million in revenue um how you did a big secondary 40 million bucks when you're 27 years old and what a secondary means and now sort of pre-ipo metrics versus post-ipo metrics so we'll have fun that's all expected right yep no surprises yes surprises all right all right so here we go this is dorm room henry dorman 25k in debt was that on student loans i mean i was actually like a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in debt you can't tell by my smile in this picture but i was 150 000 in debt if you count law school undergrad and then when we started the business i put 25 000 on my credit card and my co-founder put 25 000 on his credit card for some reason chase gave us this ridiculous limit it made no sense for a 23 year old uh but that's how we funded the business and and what was the original idea so you guys can follow along on the bottom of this chart and see sort of henry's product launches as they got going but you started in 2007 with with org charts why org charts i had worked for a similar company when i was in college and we grew the company from about 300 000 in revenue as a lifestyle business to 5 million in revenue at 5 million in revenue it was like 4.8 million dollars in ebitda and so there wasn't much of a business there and so i left i went to law school and then we founded like a company that we wanted to actually build a company around and invest inside of uh and so it was it was a lot of it was a replication of that company but done in a more professional scalable way and before we go to the next slide just out of curiosity um stand up in the room if you're currently running you're founder of a software company stand up real quick stand up don't raise your hand stand up stand up stand up stand up okay let's let me stay standing also stand up if you if you own if you're own a little bit of a sas coming you're on the cap table of a sas company now there we go okay so i love how curio we really want to curate this event you guys are all operators you all have upside you're on the cab table you have equity so good that's that's a good view now sit down so henry take us into this deal right explain first what a secondary is how the opportunity came out in 2012 and how you negotiated this loi yeah this was a bad loi for what it's worth uh but uh the business was profitable because we didn't know how to run a bus we didn't have an option otherwise and so you had to build a profitable business because after the 25 000 of chase financing ran out there was no more money to run the business so we ran the business in this really profitable way and then we started getting calls we got on the inc 500 list and then we started getting calls from venture capital firms and private equity firms the private equity firms ended up being the ones most interested in us because we had profitability and that's what they would give a multiple off of and so they have a sense of that real quick how pro what was revenue in in 2012 in 2012 revenue was uh it was probably 20 million and it was like 10 million dollars of profitability yeah and so when the venture capital guys came in they said okay here's what we want to do we want to buy fifty percent of the business what is the seventy percent of the business for thirty-five we got a close-up baby we got a close-up by the loi yeah some portion of the business we want to buy and when we buy that business we'll give you and your co-founder the dollars because the business is profitable so the money doesn't really get dollars what you want to say 40 million bucks was it 40 million dollars yeah so the second highlight down on the left right you can see it specifically says part of this deal is buying kirk and henry co-founders uh 40 million bucks this is sort of right is this yep okay no that's right okay you keep going i know sorry sorry i'm sorry can you guys see it from the tables when you look up so that's that's risky right they can all see it and you can't you're going off memory from and this is ten years later yeah yeah uh so buy the company give us give us cash for in exchange for ownership in the business and then the things you're thinking about here are like do i want to give up control do i not want to give up control do i like these people how is the board going to be set up what do they want to do my biggest mistake during this was they asked me what do you want to do after the investment and in my head it was like well you're going to give me 40 million dollars i could do whatever you want me to do i don't whatever what do you want me to do and so they were like well you know why don't we bring in a ceo we'll bring in a professional ceo and they can run the company and i was like yeah okay you're 27 at the time 20 here i'm yeah 27. yep and if you're going to give me that money great bring in a new ceo i didn't really understand how business worked there wasn't like networks of people like this really back then like jason lemkin was writing some stuff on quora that's it that was the extent of that's a long time ago yeah so uh so then he started introducing me to other ceos and saying like look when when we do the deal we're gonna bring in this professional ceo and i was like yeah okay great luckily this deal fell apart um and i took it we took a year and then kind of rebuilt some of the pieces of the business and had i taken that deal you know i would i don't think i would have ever been a public company ceo well just going back to that for a second you can see the the yellow highlight on the right i believe is the proposed post post cap table deal so you would you'd be down to 10 effectively they they were...