Tag: Datanyze

DiscoverOrg Acquires Zoominfo

DiscoverOrg and Zoominfo Acquisition History
DiscoverOrg and Zoominfo Acquisition History

Industry consolidation continues apace in the sales and marketing intelligence industry.  This afternoon, DiscoverOrg announced the acquisition of Zoominfo, just eighteen months after acquiring RainKing.  Zoominfo acquired technographics vendor Datanyze in September, so DiscoverOrg will be integrating both a contacts vendor and a technographics vendor.

The acquisition moves DiscoverOrg into the number two position in the Sales and Marketing Intelligence space with $230 million in joint revenues.  Only LinkedIn Sales Navigator has a larger market share.

Debtwire leaked the deal on January 25th indicating that “Zebra” was a direct competitor.  According to Debtwire, DiscoverOrg was “pitching its unrated buyout loan package on strong recent growth and a story that the whole will be greater than the sum of its parts, said five buysiders familiar with the deal.  Meanwhile, levering up the capital structure draws attention to the borrower’s ability to meet synergy projections – which could crimp its free cash flow, especially amid an ambitious technology integration plan, they said.”

Debtwire indicated that the acquisition was priced at $800 million, a three-fold increase from Great Hill’s summer 2017 acquisition price of $240 million for Zoominfo.  Debtwire also indicated an FY18 management adjusted EBITDA of $62.7 million for DiscoverOrg and $17.7 for Zoominfo.

Revenue Growth Data from Inc. 5000 (2011 - 2017) and Debtwire (2018)
Revenue Growth Data from Inc. 5000 (2011 – 2017) and Debtwire (2018)

Revenue growth for both companies is strong.  DiscoverOrg has made the Inc. 5000 list for eight straight years and Zoominfo for the past four years.  Debtwire indicated revenue growth figures of 26% and 30% over the past two years for DiscoverOrg with revenue hitting $152 million in 2018.  Zoominfo has grown at an even faster pace over the past two years with growth rates of 63% and 44%.  Thus, Zoominfo revenue grew from $39 million in 2016 to $91 million last year.

Based on the Debtwire revenue numbers for 2018 and historical revenue figures from the Inc. 5000 list, DiscoverOrg had a seven-year CAGR of 61% and Zoominfo of 34%.  Zoominfo’s growth rate is mostly organic while DiscoverOrg’s organic seven-year CAGR, after adjusting for RainKing revenue, is around 53%.

The two firms are strongly complementary.  Zoominfo provides the deepest set of B2B emails and direct dials with content mined from email signature blocks.  DiscoverOrg offers deep technology profiles (technographics and project plans) alongside human verified bios (skills, responsibilities, education, work histories, emails, direct dials, and social links), org charts, and company profiles.  DiscoverOrg’s human verification supports a 95% data quality SLA for its contacts.  Zoominfo’s Datanyze acquisition provides DiscoverOrg with additional NLP tools for determining products and vendors alongside market share analytics tools for marketing and competitive intelligence teams.

“Business data is rapidly changing and your data platforms must be built to adapt,” said Zoominfo CEO Derek Schoettle in September.  “ZoomInfo has the largest, most complete data set of companies and contacts and a goal to enable our customers to automate, process, curate, and present the data on-demand and in real-time. Delivering industry-leading technographics, the Datanyze technology will be a significant addition to help us deliver the right data, at the right time, to the right person.”

“DiscoverOrg’s deep, research-verified, actionable insights coming together with ZoomInfo’s comprehensive coverage of 100M business professionals is an unrivaled combo,” said the firm.  “We each employ different, but highly advanced technologies and tools to gather, cleanse, and maintain at an unparalleled scale.”

“To effectively capitalize on growth opportunities, companies of all sizes need accurate firmographic, technographic, contact, and intent data. Combined, DiscoverOrg and ZoomInfo deliver the trifecta: B2B data of the highest quality, quantity, and depth.”


DiscoverOrg CEO Henry Schuck

Over the past few years, sales intelligence has moved from a standalone browser research service for sales reps to an integrated workflow solution tied into CRMs, Marketing Automation Platforms, Sales Engagement Platforms, Chrome Browsers, and email.  DiscoverOrg has been at the forefront of these integrations with a broad set of platform connectors.  CEO Henry Schuck emphasized these workflow tools during the announcement.  “High-quality data is the fundamental go-to-market requirement for growth. In the near future, CRM and marketing automation systems will be defined not by their empty-box capabilities – but by the data that is housed inside them.”

While highly complementary, the combined companies remain weak with respect to deep company profiles.  DiscoverOrg recently added family trees, but they are to the subsidiary level, not branches.  They also lack public company financials, US and UK filings, SWOTs, and industry research.

When DiscoverOrg acquired rival RainKing in August 2017, CEO Henry Schuck stated the following goal, “The path to rapid revenue growth is paved with highly accurate, actionable, and predictive sales and marketing data, and the combination of RainKing and DiscoverOrg means that our joint customer base has access to an extraordinary portfolio of data, contextual buying insights, and predictive intelligence.  We are building a company that is to sales and marketing intelligence what Salesforce is to CRM.”

Schuck’s vision was updated today:

“Every sales and marketing team will have a go-to-market operating system that identifies the prospects that should be engaged every day, week, and month based on buying signals and intent data collected in a multitude of different ways. Even better, they have deep insights on the buyers who are making the purchase decisions with accurate contact, org chart, technographic, and firmographic data. It’s all at their fingertips and it’s all served to them dynamically – wherever they are working.”


DiscoverOrg Statement

DiscoverOrg stated that support, service, and sales for all products will continue.  Both platforms will be sold for the next six to twelve months “with highly coordinated sales and marketing efforts to ensure customers realize the most value from the platform(s) that best serve their needs.”  In March, joint customers will have a light integration between the two platforms followed quickly by DiscoverOrg customer access to Zoominfo company and contact data.

“As we combine the best of both platforms over the next year, customers will have the best, bar-none, B2B intelligence platform -the highest quality data with the broadest coverage and deepest actionable insights,” said the firm.

The combined company has 15,000 active customers and 120,000 active users, with the Zoominfo acquisition trebling the customer count.

DiscoverOrg stated that there are no plans to shutter any of Zoominfo’s locations and that hiring will continue for all Zoominfo offices.  Zoominfo has more than doubled its staff over the past year with headcount spread over six locations: Waltham (MA), San Mateo (CA), Grand Rapid (MI), St Petersburg (Russia), Kazan (Russia), and Ra’anana (Israel).  Zoominfo moved into a new headquarters location in Waltham, MA just last month.  The lease provides space for up to 450 employees.  Globally, DiscoverOrg has over 1,000 employees.

DiscoverOrg’s investors include TA Associates, The Carlyle Group, and 22C Capital.

Zoominfo Acquires Datanyze and Y Labs

Zoominfo announced that it acquired both San Mateo-based Datanyze and Israeli firm Y Labs last month. Datanyze provides Zoominfo with a deep set of technographics and segmentation visualization tools to complement Zoominfo’s company and contact database. Y Labs, which is moving into Zoominfo’s recently opened office in Ra’anana, Israel, will operate under the name ZoomInfo Israel Limited (Ltd.). Y Labs will supplement Zoominfo’s product development and security operations.

“I am thrilled to be joining ZoomInfo at this time of tremendous growth in the organization,” said Datanyze CEO Ilya Semin. “Bringing together our two organizations is a perfect union, combining Datanyze’s real-time technographic data with ZoomInfo’s unparalleled – and the industry’s most current – company and contact data.”

Semin is joining Zoominfo as the Vice President of Data.

Both vendors heavily employ natural-language processing for building their respective datasets. Zoominfo also mines signature blocks of its voluntary community members. Zoominfo has some technographic intelligence available to its customers, but Datanyze provides a significantly more mature dataset and technographic capabilities. Datanyze has captured technographic intelligence for 35 million companies.

Datanyze provides a free market share analysis tool which segments by market and Alexa Rank or country. Share is based on installations, not revenue.
Datanyze provides a free market share analysis tool which segments by market and Alexa Rank or country. Share is based on installations, not revenue.

“Business data is rapidly changing and your data platforms must be built to adapt,” said Zoominfo CEO Derek Schoettle. “ZoomInfo has the largest, most complete data set of companies and contacts and a goal to enable our customers to automate, process, curate, and present the data on-demand and in real-time. Delivering industry-leading technographics, the Datanyze technology will be a significant addition to help us deliver the right data, at the right time, to the right person.”

Schoettle, who joined the company in July, just completed 50 customer discussions over five weeks providing him with insights to both Zoominfo’s strengths and gaps.

“The (customer) advocacy for the company and the product is phenomenal,” Schoettle said. “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.”

The acquisition follows a blowout August with billings 53% above July’s numbers. August billing were up 71% year-over-year.

“The growth we experienced in August will continue as we build the industry’s most robust and frequently updated platform for sales and marketing teams thirsting for real-time, on-demand customer data,” said Schoettle. “As we look ahead, we see significant potential to create a world-class development capability in Israel that will allow us to harness leading artificial intelligence and security capabilities which translates into smarter services for our 7,500-plus customers. The rate and pace of change in the data space requires a commitment to innovation and we are thrilled to have this team become part of ZoomInfo.”

Zoominfo also announced the hiring of Brad Noble as VP of Product Design. Noble previously led product design and advocacy teams at IBM Watson, Cloudant, Boathouse Group and MullenLowe.

Datanyze customers will continue to receive support for the Datanyze product offering. Terms of the two deals were not disclosed. Nathan Latka’s database of SaaS vendors listed Datanyze’s 2016 revenue at $6 million, up 50% year-over-year.

Zoominfo has more than doubled its staff over the past year. They are stratified over six locations: Waltham (MA), San Mateo (CA), Grand Rapid (MI), St Petersburg (Russia), Kazan (Russia), and Ra’anana. The Waltham headquarters office is relocating at the end of the year to Constant Contact’s old site along I-128.

The Datanyze acquisition is part of a broader consolidation trend in the technographics and sales intelligence spaces.

Consolidation in the Technology Sales Intelligence Space

Technographics, which were a relatively small segment five years ago, have grown rapidly and are in the midst of a consolidation phase.  Three years ago, DiscoverOrg acquired iProfile and then picked up RainKing last August.  This week, HG Data acquired London-based Pivotal iQ, Zoominfo acquired Datanyze, and DiscoverOrg rebranded.

Both acquisitions expand the scope of coverage of the acquiring firms.  Zoominfo had limited technographics prior to the Datanyze deal and now holds a deeper set of technographics along with analytics and visualization tools.  HG Data has expanded beyond product / vendor data to include contract and spend intelligence.

By my research, the IT sub-sector represents 18% of the sales intelligence space with DiscoverOrg in the pole position.  Overall, the IT sub-sector is $170 million and it is growing faster than the overall Sales Intelligence market.

“The recent acquisition activity shows the value and appetite for technology data enrichment,” said HG Data VP of Product and Marketing Kineon Walker.  “This consolidation cycle is happening as new companies continue to enter the space. As technology data continues to evolve and become more valuable to businesses of all sizes, we expect this sector to continue to grow and flourish.”

What we are seeing is the transition of technographic intelligence from a delighter five years ago to a must have content set for sales and marketing intelligence products.  Ten years ago, it was contacts and SMBs that made this transition. Eight years ago it was sales triggers.  Four years ago it was emails and direct dials.  Now it is technographics.

Next up it may be third-party intent data and the integration of first-party visitor intelligence into more sophisticated lead scoring and prioritization.

I will be covering both acquisitions over the next few days.

Datanyze Account Intelligence & Triggers Released

The Datanyze Account List with Events.
The Datanyze Account List with Events.

Technology Intelligence vendor Datanyze rolled out an Account Intelligence capability which provides a set of buying signals via a dashboard and daily email alerts. Amongst the sales triggers covered are Acquisition Events, Funding Events, Technology Adds/Drops, Job Postings Added, and Recent News Articles.

Datanyze CEO Ilya Semin said that the firm is looking to expand beyond lead generation into Account Based Marketing. “We could do a really good job identifying companies that our customers should go after, but when they already have a list of companies they want to talk to they use the ABM model, meaning there’s already a list of accounts. How can we help? With an ABM approach we didn’t really have a solution. This new feature, Account Intelligence Dashboard, is designed specifically for companies that use an ABM approach.”

ABM lists can be uploaded as CSV files of ABM domains, generated as a targeting report, gathered from Datanyze tags or matched against Salesforce Opportunities, Leads, or Accounts. Users can then select which technology adds and drops are relevant to their campaigns and account plans.

“Traditionally, the approach for salespeople is, ‘Hey, let me go find the accounts that I want to target and let me see if they’re interested in my solution or product.’  The account-based approach is when companies, usually marketing departments, identify a list of companies that will definitely be a good fit, the sales rep is responsible for a territory and will be given a list of 100 accounts that they need to talk to in the next year. Using our Account Intelligence Dashboard, they can upload this list of 100 accounts, and every time there is a good buying signal it will give them context to reach out to this company.”

  • Datanayze CEO Ilya Semin

Along with Account Based Sales, Datanyze positions the service for competitive intelligence (tracking technology and events at your competitors) and customer success monitoring (identifying growth and opportunity events as well as monitoring complementary and competitive technology).

The service is free to Datanyze Small Team ($500 per month for ten users) and Enterprise customers. A limited free version will be available in a few months.

Datanzye Insider Dropping LinkedIn Feature

Technology sales intelligence vendor Datanyze has informed users of its Insider Chrome plug-in that they are phasing out their LinkedIn functionality.  Free users were turned off on April 14th and subscription users will lose access when their contract comes up for renewal.  The Chrome extension places a small Datanyze icon on LinkedIn executive profiles which allows users to import contact data to Insider.  They also offer a list feature which allowed users to select groups of individuals for import.

Datanyze Insider captures contacts from LinkedIn lists for import, with emails, into CRMs. Unfortunately, this feature is being phased out.
Datanyze Insider captures contacts from LinkedIn lists for import, with emails, into CRMs. Unfortunately, this feature is being phased out.

In lieu of LinkedIn prospect loading, Datanyze suggests two other methods for obtaining contact information:

  • Right clicking on any name in a Google search, Crunchbase profile, or executive page bio and select Datanyze Insider “to run our manual email finder.”  The finder provides email combinations tied to confidence scores.
  • Uploading lists of names for matching.  The “People to List” CSV file import contains five fields: First Name, Last Name, Title, Company, and Domain.  First Name, Last Name and either the Company or Domain are required for matching.

Interestingly, both SalesLoft and Datanyze switched from prospect discovery on LinkedIn to Account Based Sales Development (ABSD) after phasing out access to LinkedIn.  So long as LinkedIn was an easy method for acquiring names, the firms focused on LinkedIn mining.  Once they lost that valuable feature, they began to search for less parasitic, more value-oriented positioning and features.

Datanyze also offers web-mined company profiles alongside their tech platform intelligence.  Company information includes sizing data, CrunchBase and AngelList categories, Alexa rank, a business description, social media links, Google News, Google Map, and an integrated Twitter feed.

“The average sales pitch is no longer good enough. With the amount of messages buyers receive every day, sales has become less about volume and persistence, and more about context and timing,” said CEO Ilya Semin. “For technology companies, that means understanding your prospects’ tech stack and knowing who’s in the midst of evaluating providers in your space. This kind of intelligence — or what we call ‘technology data’ flows through every solution we provide and is at the core of what we do.”

Datanyze is backed by Google Ventures and Mark Cuban.  They currenly have 600 customers including Marketo and Hubspot.

Gartner Cool: Radius, Everstring, SalesLoft…

SalesLoft, DemandBase, Datanyze, and Leadspace made Gartner’s “Cool Vendors in Tech Go-to-Market, 2016” list.  According to the report, “Marketing and sales enablement leaders should consider these software-as-a-service applications to complement existing CRM tool investments.”  Gartner also recognized predictive analytics firms Everstring and Radius in the data-driven marketing category.

Providers are doing a better job in responding to the changing B2B technology buying cycle and the higher expectation that buyers (both prospects and customers alike) have when they look to make a purchase. Some of this involves process and training improvement, improved messaging and positioning. But there is also a technology element, particularly as it relates to things like data, analytics, content, targeting, personalization and engagement.  And clients are increasingly leveraging the latest tools that allow them to make better, smarter decisions.

  • Gartner Research Director Todd Berkowitz

Here is what Berkowitz said was cool about the firms:

  • Datanyze – The technology tracking firm helps identify “when a particular piece of SaaS or mobile software (say from a competitor) is added and fire off alerts.” This feature helps SDRs and sales reps see “which companies are in market and engaging with them.”  Datanyze also offers a “cool” Chrome browser extension called Insider which displays firmographics and technographics from a company website, performs on demand email detection, and uploads this information to Salesforce.
  • Demandbase – The firm supports Account Based Marketing (ABM) marketing with IP-based advertising and personalization tools.  The firm delivers “a unique ‘one-two punch’ of real-time IP identification and technology that makes it possible to deliver company advertising (targeting and retargeting) and website personalization to help marketers increase awareness, drive up conversions, generate net-new and upsell/cross-sell leads from named accounts, and measure program effectiveness across the funnel.”
  • LeadSpace – The predictive analytics vendor helps customers “generate demand, enrich and prioritize accounts/leads from companies with a higher propensity to buy.”  Berkowitz also commended their “virtual data management platform that drives their models and recommendations.”
  • SalesLoft – The Account Based Sales Development (ABSD) firm assists sales development reps (SDRs) with lead qualification and prospecting.  “Their suite of templates, an integrated dialer and real-time analytics are a lot cooler for SDRs than the old way of working. And they work much better.”  Their Cadence tool helps streamline prospect communications such that “some of their customers reported more than doubling the number of successful connections, appointments, demos and sales-qualified leads (SQLs), while reducing follow-up time from leads by more than 75%.” Their new Sales Development Cloud provides prospect intelligence to SDRs from DiscoverOrg, Crystal, Owler, InsideView, Datanyze, RingLead, Sigstr, and ExecVision.
  • Everstring – A more recent entrant to the predictive analytics space (founded in July 2014), Everstring offers predictive demand generation and scoring models at both the lead and account level.  Everstring covers eleven million B2B companies and 20,000 different attributes with “rapid deployment of models across many points in the funnel.”  The firm is also a strong proponent of ABM and helps marketers identify accounts.  “EverString’s predictive account models enable marketers to identify high-potential ABM candidates and then push them to third-party ABM platforms for use,” said Berkman.
  • Radius – The predictive company was lauded for its segmentation tools which help SMBs “determine total available market, create attractive segments and identify accounts to target.”  Radius was also praised for its  “clean interface,” “data and analytics tools,” and the ability to train and validate models within one business day.  Berkman warned that Radius has faced little competition in the SMB market to date but is likely to face stiffer competition as both Radius and the market for predictive analytics solutions grow.

Berkowitz noted that these tools are all focused on making it easier for marketers and down-the line sales to make better decisions” noting that they all rely on the “heavy use” of data and analytics.

Radius provides easy to interpret segmentation, success analytics, and net-new lead prospect acquisition tools from within SFDC.
Radius provides easy to interpret segmentation, success analytics, and net-new prospect acquisition tools from within SFDC.

While many of these firms provide predictive analytics, Berkman contends that vendors will soon be offering “prescriptive analytics” that help firms decide what should be done.  Thus, analytics will shift from predictions based upon historical analysis to recommendations concerning which actions to take.  Prescriptive analytics utilizes graph analysis, simulation, complex event processing, neural networks, recommendation engines, heuristics, and machine learning.

“We have seen it [prescriptive] used a little bit on the sales analytics side already,” said Berkman. “It is likely that we will get to that stage with marketing so the marketer will know not only who is most likely to buy and what they will buy.”

For marketing, prescriptive analytics will assist with prospect identification, optimizing customer communications, and improving prospect offers.

Another trend you will find amongst the cool vendors is the heavy citation of ABM and ABSD tools amongst these vendors.  Everstring, SalesLoft, and DemandBase are all strong proponents of ABM while Leadspace recently partnered with ABM vendor Engagio.

DiscoverOrg: Closing Out Another Year of Growth

DO Chrome

Technology Sales Intelligence vendor DiscoverOrg closed out another year of significant growth in customers, product, content, and revenue.  “DiscoverOrg saw significant advancements in its workforce, physical locations, data insight, product development, and market share,” blogged the company.  “In the process, we are creating jobs, establishing a stronger presence, and delivering more product value to customers.  As DiscoverOrg succeeds, we are primed to level the playing field in business-to-business sales and marketing … to help small companies grow into big companies … to create a global revolution in B2B sales.”

Amongst the growth metrics they published on their blog:

  • Customer accounts increased 36 percent.
  • Platform users increased by 17 percent.
  • Search queries increased from 721,862 in 2014 to 733,277 in 2015.

The firm discussed three of their 2015 objectives: strategic hires, physical presence, and greater data insight.

In 2015, the firm added 93 employees, nearly doubling their staff to 203.  Hiring centered around their research team as “data accuracy is a top focus”.  Some of this growth was from the mid-summer acquisition of iProfile, but the majority was organic hiring.

2015 hires included a new SVP of Customer Success and CFO.  The firm also added three new Board Members including the former COO of Forrester Research and the former CEO of Capital IQ.

Along with moving into larger facilities in Vancouver, Washington (20 miles from Portland), they opened satellite facilities in Gaithersburg, Maryland and Philadelphia.

2015 also saw significant database growth and new product offerings.  The iProfile acquisition helped accelerate their global build out.  The database grew by more than 50% with the marketing dataset growing by 85%.  During 2015 they added datasets for finance and Europe along with the OppAlerts intent data service.

”More platform perks, datasets, and integrations are in development for release in 2016, including: a new, responsive platform design; a new product development dataset; an updated Google Chrome Extension; and an updated, ‘Lightening Ready’ Salesforce Native App.”

Their “new and improved platform” is currently in final stage beta rollout. The enhanced platform “offers a complete redesign of the user interface and numerous ‘under the hood’ speed and functionality enhancements.”

Chrome Extension Update

The Google Chrome extension enhancements, which were released just as the year closed, provide context based intelligence from all of their datasets including IT, marketing, and finance.  The Chrome extension will support additional databases in 2016.

The Chrome extension works as a side panel that automatically displays company intelligence, including contacts and company overviews, based upon the current website.  The system stores account credentials so that company overviews are immediately displayed.  From the browser, a user can quickly select a contact or company name and look it up within the Chrome extension.  Thus, the service is bi-directional with users switching between the extension and browser without additional logins and without having to reenter information to conduct company searches.

DiscoverOrg provided the following Chrome Connector data workflow scenario on their blog:

Assume you’re an information security vendor and you are researching Fannie Mae, the Chrome Extension will return the CISO’s full group and contacts to you right in the browser – no need to login to DiscoverOrg and run another search. From there you can easily add contacts to your CRM tool, research the company further in DiscoverOrg, or lookup a similar company or contact.

Because DiscoverOrg also supports CRM platforms including SFDC,  MS Dynamics, NetSuite, Talent Rover, and SugarCRM, users can begin with a company, contact name, or URL for research then upload the company or contact information to their CRM from DiscoverOrg.  Company and contact data is not mined from the web but collected by its team of researchers, ensuring higher quality information.

Other Chrome Extension features include executive lists with filtering; executive headshots with responsibilities, contact information and social media (Twitter and LinkedIn) links; technology details; similar companies; and sales triggers.

The Chrome extension is free to current subscribers.

Chrome Extensions

While Google Chrome has only garnered limited support from sales intelligence vendors, it has seen significant development from vendors providing technology overviews.  Along with DiscoverOrg, there are Google Chrome extensions from HG Data, Datanyze, BuiltWith, SimilarTech, W3Techs, and HIveMind.  Most of these services are limited to an analysis of online technology associated with the corporate website, but DiscoverOrg utilizes researchers and HG Data employs semantic mining of news and websites to obtain behind the firewall platforms and vendors.