I recently interviewed ZoomInfo co-founder and CEO Henry Schuck on my podcast, Thirty Minute Mentors. Here is a transcript of our interview:
Adam: Our guest today founded and leads a billion-dollar data business. Henry, you are the cofounder and CEO of ZoomInfo. Thank you for joining us.
Henry: Of course, thanks for having me.
Adam: You grew up in La Crescenta, part of Los Angeles County, but very different from how most people who are not from LA picture LA. Your upbringing was anything but glamorous. You were raised by a single mom who worked three jobs, and you wound up going to UNLV, where you ran for student body president and won in a big upset. Can you take listeners back to your early days? What early experiences and lessons shaped your worldview and the trajectory of your success?
Henry: The biggest one is my mom worked three jobs growing up and was always working. So it set in my mind that work ethic was really important and that if my mom could work three jobs, I could certainly work more than one. I could certainly go to college and have a job. I always believed that work ethic was a great equalizer. If I could outwork the people around me, I could outperform them. I knew the bar was really high for how much you could actually work. I would never be outworked. There would never be a situation where I lost because I did not work as hard as the person who won.
The student body president election at UNLV is a pretty good example of that. I was not in student government. I did not know all the cliques and people. But instead of trying to play that game, I decided I was going to speak in every single class that I could find. Every day I would wander around at class start times, find a professor, and say, “Hey, can I speak to your class for three minutes before class starts to tell them why I am running for student body president?” I spoke in over 500 classes across UNLV, and that was a great manifestation of how you can outwork people.
Adam: I love it. There are things we can control and things we cannot control. You cannot control the situation you are born into. You cannot control how tall you are, how fast you are, or how smart you are. You cannot control a lot of things, but you can control your attitude, your effort, your mindset, and the amount of work that you put in. Those are all completely within your control. A lot of your success really comes down to how much you put into what you can control. How did the idea for ZoomInfo come together, and how did you actualize it?
Henry: It is a perfect example of what we just talked about. I finished my freshman year at UNLV and had no money. I had to move out of the dorms, so I sold my PlayStation online for 300 dollars. Then I applied to jobs all over the Las Vegas Valley, trying to find a job that I could take in the summer to pay rent and start saving up for the next year. I really wanted to work at the MGM Grand, but before I got that job, I got a call from a job that I found on the UNLV job board at a company called iProfile.
iProfile was a software as a service company in 2001 with about 300 thousand in revenue, and there were two people who worked there, and one of them was leaving. So it was me and the founder selling software and data, mainly data, to salespeople in technology companies. I did not want that job. I wanted the MGM Grand job. But right before I started the job at iProfile, MGM Grand called me and said, “We have a job for you now if you want to start.”
I had this moment where I thought, I really only need one job. I do not need two jobs, but I have this job and that job, so I will take them both and see what I can manage. I took the iProfile job, then I took the MGM job. I had days where I would work the night shift at MGM from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m., then sleep in my car for an hour and a half and start work at 8 o’clock at iProfile.
iProfile was the precursor to ZoomInfo. There was a tremendous amount of demand in the market for the data iProfile was putting together, and we grew the business over the next five years from 300 thousand in revenue to 5 million in revenue. But it was 5 million in revenue and 4.7 million of profitability because it was still the CEO and a couple of college kids. It was a great income-generating company, but we were not building the infrastructure to have a lasting business, and I did not see a future there. So I left and went to law school.
A year into law school, a buddy called me and said, “Let us start a business like iProfile but that does not directly compete.” I put 25 thousand dollars on my credit card. He put 25 thousand dollars on his credit card, and we started and bootstrapped the business after my first year in law school.
Adam: I love it. What a great example of hustle. When you put your mind to something and go all in, you figure out a way to make it happen.
Henry: I could have easily said no to that opportunity and been the front desk person at the MGM Grand and been happy with that. But because my mom had worked three jobs, the idea of working two did not seem like a far reach. I thought I will work two jobs and figure out what I learn, and maybe I like this other job better. It seemed unlikely because I wanted to be a hotel manager at the time, but when I look back, that was the key moment in getting me to understand business and subscription models and software as a service, and data and context for how companies sell and market their product. I was very lucky that I did not say, I am going to pick one job. I told myself I can handle more. If my mom handled more, I could handle more.
Adam: What were the keys to growing and scaling ZoomInfo, and what do you believe are the keys to growing and scaling any business?
Henry: The first one is really ensuring that you have product-market fit. When we started the business, we were focused on a very specific niche. We were selling data on technology decision makers to technology companies that sold to those decision makers. We started by saying we only offer this on mid-market companies. If you want Fortune-ranked companies, we do not do that. If you want SMBs, we do not do that. We are focused on the mid-market and on technology decision makers, and we are only going to sell to companies that sell to those decision makers. Because we had this focus, we found product market fit quickly.
Once you know you have product market fit, it becomes a game of how you drive demand and distribution effectively. In a bootstrapped company, every dollar matters. How do I build the most efficient go-to-market engine that exists? How do I use automation? How do I generate demand? How do I fill the calendars of account executives? How do I identify the companies in the entire addressable market? How do I identify the buyer personas within that addressable market? How do I figure out key moments when we should reach out across that addressable market? Did they hire a new sales officer? Did they get funding? Are they researching competitors in my space? How do I take that and build a really efficient go-to-market motion, because I have product market fit, and then my job becomes to distribute that as efficiently as possible.
Every business has two halves. On one half you are building the product or the service that you sell. On the other half you are selling that product or service. The key things to think about are, do I have the very best product in the marketplace, and do I have the most efficient go-to-market motion to get that product out to my buyers? To have a great go-to-market motion, you need to know what companies to sell to, who the buyers are in those companies, and to reach those companies at the right time. Does the product solve a valuable problem? It does not need to be the very best product in the world, but it needs to get into your customers’ hands and solve a very valuable problem in their companies, and then you share some of the value creation. If you cannot say your product solves a very valuable problem when deployed inside of a company, you do not have product-market fit.
We were lucky that even today, almost 20 years later, the problem remains. Do I have good data on my customers and prospects? Do I have information that tells me when I should reach out to them? Most companies have not solved that problem. It does not live organically inside their systems. It is valuable to fix because you have salespeople you are paying real money to and you want them to be as effective as possible, and then you buy an annual subscription or some data consumption from ZoomInfo to help you solve that problem.
Adam: When you were solving that problem, you were one of the first movers in the space, and that was a big reason you were able to achieve this success. Now that the problem is clearly identified and there are many well-funded and well-run companies in the space, the market is more crowded. How do you deal with the competition, and what advice do you have for other leaders and entrepreneurs facing the same challenge?
Henry: Product matters, particularly in software. Do you have the best product becomes very important? When you get to scale, there is some place in your business that is not best in class. You are a lot to a lot of companies because your business has grown, and there is some area that you have not made best in class. Those are the areas where competitors wedge themselves into your space.
For us, for a number of years, we were not spectacular at data on international companies. Our customer base was largely North America. They started asking for international data. We collected it and provided it, but we were not as good internationally as we were in North America. That created an opportunity for competitors to say, we know you use ZoomInfo for North America, but they are not very good internationally, so buy our international data. We had to make our international data as good as our North American data to close off that wedge.
At scale, you need a great product leader who understands the market and your customers, who is innovative and on the cutting edge. That person will innovate ahead of the issues. If you create deep domain expertise and real velocity in the way you build and release product, you stay ahead of the market, keep solving the problems your customers care about, and then your go-to-market engine can distribute those solutions.
Adam: How can you, as a leader, build a culture of innovation? How can you build a team that is able to execute quickly?
Henry: One of the biggest issues as a business grows is that people become risk-averse. They are willing to make incremental changes but not fundamental ones because there is downside risk. If you want to meaningfully change the way you go to market, for example, moving from small businesses to larger up-market businesses, that changes the talent profile, demand generation motion, compensation, lead routing, and leadership. People are nervous to take a risk like that.
You have to show up and say, I understand the risk, and we are going to take it. You have to lecture leaders off the hook on taking the risk. Yes, we mitigate what we can, but we are going to take this risk because it is the right direction for the business. Most leaders at scale do not want to put their neck on the line. You have to show them that you understand the risks and that you are willing to take them.
We have cultural principles at ZoomInfo. Be relentless, be an expert, be entrepreneurs, be innovators, be a team. These are expectations. I expect you to innovate and to be an entrepreneur, and you cannot do that without taking risks. Taking risks drives speed. Debating for months slows everything down.
If things do not work out, we need to be great at saying, that did not work, let us talk about why, and see if we can improve it and iterate. Do the hard things that nobody else is willing to do. That creates lasting value and differentiation. Those hard things are taking risks, changing constantly, being comfortable with failure, giving feedback relentlessly, being focused on improvement even when things are going well, and being comfortable in uncomfortable situations. We had a sign that said, if you are comfortable on all of your calls, you are doing something wrong. You should feel uncomfortable every day. If you can feel uncomfortable regularly, you know you are doing hard things that others are not willing to do.
Adam: It is an important point and something that I share in keynotes that I give. I share the example of a well-known leader in the fitness industry around the concept of muscle confusion and how if you want to grow your muscles, you need to push your comfort zone. If you want to grow in any aspect of life, you are going to grow when you are outside of your comfort zone. How do you get your team to a place where they are pushing their comfort zone?
Henry: The key thing is whether you are doing new things that are different from what you have always done. When we are stretching for a different goal, for example, moving from a plan to grow 20 percent to a plan to grow 30 percent, I want to know what my executives are doing differently every day. Behavioral change is the hardest thing to affect. If you keep doing the same thing and hope results improve, that will not work.
When I check down on executives on new initiatives, I look for metrics that show we are doing something different than we were doing yesterday. I want to know how we are operating differently. Operating differently usually means operating out of your comfort zone. Is the cadence of meetings different? Are we looking at different metrics? Are we listening to calls in a different way? What did we roll out that shows we are operating differently than before?
Adam: You have had a lot of highs as CEO of ZoomInfo and a lot of lows, with plenty of swings in between. There is no better way to visualize the highs and the lows than through your stock price, which was 38 dollars the week that you IPOed, was 77 dollars at its high, and is around 10 dollars today. How have you managed the highs and the lows that come with leading a business, and what have you learned from leading during the high and low moments?
Henry: Navigating the highs is not really navigating anything. Everybody is happy and high-fiving. In those moments, you should be ultra-paranoid about where the shoe is going to drop. Believing your hype for one minute is the worst thing you can do as a leader. The stock price does not indicate the health of the business. It is just what a bunch of investors are focused on at any given moment. You have to be clear about what is going well and what is going poorly, and regardless of the stock price, focus on improving the business so that it is durable for the long term.
In the lows, it is important to understand and have clarity on the strategy to move forward, then have conviction in that strategy, communicate it endlessly, and be comfortable when it is not clear that the strategy is working. Progress is not linear. It is up and flat and down and up. In those down moments, it is easy to question the strategy and yourself. It is valuable to have a friend or mentor you can be open with and talk through how to regain conviction and keep the team motivated when progress does not feel linear.
Your team operating like a team is maybe the most important thing. There cannot be fiefdoms or empire builders or finger-pointing. That tears down your culture. Letting that go on is a death sentence to your business. Be a team is one of our cultural principles. I expect teams to respect one another, assume good intent, work with counterparts, and help solve problems. Without that, you are not going to be successful.
Adam: You have built and lead a billion-dollar data business. What are the keys to leading a data-driven business, and how can leaders most effectively utilize data in business today?
Henry: The data we collect and the software we built around it are designed for go-to-market leaders, so sales, marketing, customer success, and account management. Two things. First, understand the type of data your customers find valuable and assemble that data for them. We learned that leadership expects frontline sellers to know a lot about the accounts they sell to and manage. Who the executives are, their strategic initiatives, how they do business with you, whether they use all your products, if they are researching competitors, if there is a new executive, if they got funding, if they hired new people, what their last earnings call said. We built many key data points into ZoomInfo, but that made it hard to navigate and triangulate.
Second, in the age of AI, deliver the right information at the right time in a consolidated way that a seller can act on. Instead of bouncing around many screens, AI can surface account by account what matters now. Sometimes it is a recent support ticket, sometimes a layoff, sometimes 20 new sales hires. A lot of data is important but not important now. The key is to assemble the data and deliver the important data at the right time.
If I have data, having it is not enough. I need to know what movements or differences in that data would motivate my customer to action and deliver that in the easiest way. I always ask customers, if there were something you could know about your customers and prospects that would tell you this is the right time to reach out and go all in, what would that be? Think outside what you know is available. That helps me decide what to collect and how to deliver it so it moves the needle.
Adam: What do you believe are the key characteristics of a great leader, and what can anyone do to become a better leader?
Henry: Trust is the most important thing. When you are leading a team, does your team trust you? Do they believe you are on a team together with them? I am the type of leader who will show up and tell you that something you are doing is not good enough, that there is some place in your business that needs to be improved, and why I am disappointed. If you do not have trust across your leadership team, that conversation can be hard. The person on the receiving end will feel attacked and demoralized.
When you have a lot of trust, that same conversation feels like a partnership. How do we work together to improve this? Here are my ideas, and I trust you to fix them. The same conversation can lead to two different places. One feels like partnership and problem-solving. The other feels like judgment and fear. To get the better response, your team has to feel that you trust them, that you are their partner, and that there is transparency. It is the same if you are a frontline manager coaching a seller after a bad call. They need to feel you are helping them be better, not casting judgment.
Adam: I really like the way you frame that. My job as a leader is to help the people I am leading. If the people I am leading understand that I am there to help them, they are going to trust me as a leader, perform for me as a leader, and want to work for me. How can you build that trust with the people you lead?
Henry: The closer you get in the weeds with your team and work with them on real things, the better. I am never afraid to ideate with my team. I am never afraid to gather feedback across the organization, share it with my team, and come up with plans and ideas to improve the business. Your team needs to see that you are willing to do the work with them. It is one thing to identify problems. It is another to be a partner in solving them. To be a partner, you have to get involved.
Adam: Henry, what can anyone listening to this conversation do to become more successful personally and professionally?
Henry: Work ethic really matters. Do not get outworked by the people you are competing with. I tell my nine-year-old daughter that all the time. If you expect to be better than the people around you, look at how much they are working and ask if you are working harder than them. It is very hard to beat somebody who is working harder than you. You are not going to strike lightning and become better. You have to outwork the people around you.
If you run a team, your job is to look at the output of that team, think about the supply chain of how that output gets created, and find the bottlenecks and friction. Work hard to remove as much friction as possible. How do I get the most out of my team? Where are the bottlenecks? How do I remove them? Sometimes you have a team member who does not perform like the others. Can I improve that person so the output is better, or do I need different talent?
You are also a resource allocator. You have a certain amount of money to invest to generate the outcome. Are you allocating those resources in a way that generates the most outcome? If not, rethink how you allocate resources. Look at your team and its output, remove friction, and increase the output by leading better, managing better, and allocating resources wisely.
Adam: Henry, thank you for all the great advice, and thank you for being a part of Thirty Minute Mentors.
Henry: Of course. Thank you for having me, Adam.
