On today's episode we say farewell (for now) to Krystan Resch of DiscoverOrg/Zoominfo who just "retired" after 9 years leading the wildest ride in B2B data on the planet.
Krystan saw one of the most complicated B2B SaaS companies to go public this decade and educates us all on how data, partnerships, and acquisitions can transform data into subscription value for your business and customers.
Thanks Krystan for all the memories and good luck in the next chapter.
Don't forget to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or anywhere you get your pods on the go, give this episode a like, and the PartnerUp Youtube channel a subscribe.
Check out all past and future the PartnerUp episodes at https://www.partneruppodcast.com and... don't forget to follow join the world's largest partnerships community at https://www.cloudsoftwareassociation.com to hang out and learn with 4,000+ partnerships professionals.
Subscribe and Listen On:
- Apple
- Spotify
- Or literally, anywhere you get your podcasts. Seriously. Ask Alexa: “Alexa, play "PartnerUp the Partnerships Podcast” and magic…
Transcript:
Justin Bartels 00:20
Must be aEuropean thing,
Jared Fuller 00:22
a European thing? I don't know, I saw that they just launched their iOS app. I am absolutely terrified to try that. Based on all the fun things that we've had, we won't we don't blame the vendor. I think this emerging kind of podcast software space is pretty interesting. And I'm looking at cast it from the sidelines, they actually manage the entire process end to end. And I reached out to their CEO and I was like, hey, maybe I can help you out with some stuff. Like, oh, sorry, we start at $10,000 a month, and I was course $10,000 about that. How about not I'm going to keep on using Fiverr and Upwork and stuff like that. So shout outs
Justin Bartels 00:58
like Fiverr we're moving to clubhouse that's what we're doing because Jared is such a big fan of clubhouse. for him. Why
Jared Fuller 01:03
have we will not get started on the clubhouse rant. But in funny, Twitter's Twitter's, tried to buy him. probably not going to happen, but they tried. We'll see what happens there. I think in terms of partner news, Justin today, I actually want to kick partner news off with the guest because I feel like it's the end of an era for something that I've been paying attention to since I've been in SAS pretty much I mean, like zoominfo, discover org and b2b data. I think if you're in b2b SaaS, b2b data as a part of your workflow, whether your company is using it to engage potential buyers and your sellers using it, to communicate with them. And you can't talk about b2b data without bringing up discover org zoom info. And you know, now it's a great public company, and I'm so excited to welcome old friend of ours, Kristen, formerly of zoom info discover org. Is that right?
Krystan Resch 02:01
Yes, I'm on the countdown actually a couple days away from my last day, but
Jared Fuller 02:05
Okay, so by the time this is out, then it will have been breaking any public news here.
Krystan Resch 02:10
We are not.
Jared Fuller 02:11
Okay. Good. We would have had to just start over on that one and act like that didn't have to redo it.
Justin Bartels 02:18
Well, everybody's jealous, I think of her next plans, which is six months sabbatical, right, Kristen? Yes,
Krystan Resch 02:25
yes, I'm taking six months off and just spend some time at home in Montana, and do some projects around the house here in Portland. A lot of contracting about to happen, but I will still be busy. I just will not be working presume and
Jared Fuller 02:39
well deserved. Because what how long was the run?
Krystan Resch 02:43
I March 16 was my ninth year. So I just crossed over to my nine year tenure. But it's a Yeah, we joke at discover. org when we were still discover org but we called door years for one year, several words like five years at any other SaaS company because we grew so dang fast. And so I'm like 45 years old, but I'm actually only 36. So I feel like I have a wealth of knowledge. I would have never had elsewise.
Justin Bartels 03:14
Can I just call out the amount of Montana representation we've had on the partner up podcast? Jared, I don't know if it's something that's in the water over there. But three out of the 21 people we've had on the podcast are 22, I think you'd be count the CO hosts, right, have lived or grew up in Montana at some point or currently living there in Marty's case. So I don't know something's going on in Montana when it comes to building great partnership individuals.
Jared Fuller 03:39
So is that is that the new lease that you're going to be signing? Justin? Is that located in Montana? Or is it located in Boston?
Justin Bartels 03:47
New leases in Boston for a year, but Okay, I'll make a plan. We're making plans. All right.
Krystan Resch 03:53
All right, then.
Jared Fuller 03:58
Well, Justin, if you want to call it the new mecca of SAS, you got Kristen, and she's got the next six months to figure out that next big, audacious goal, and then you can be out there too, in building the next mecca of SAS. Because why not? Why not? It's 2021. Yeah, we can kind of do whatever. work from wherever, and partner with whoever. Kristin before we, before we get into some of the questions, I actually think, as a frame framework for this conversation, it's probably helpful to talk about and actually go a little bit into your background. We I actually try to stay away from people's backgrounds, oftentimes, because I hate when things turn into interviews and podcasts. It's just, it's it's not helpful for the audience. But in this situation, I think it's really helpful to understand that like, okay, nine years ago, the SAS landscape was very different, but discover org zoominfo. How many employees is it right now?
Krystan Resch 04:51
We're just under 1800 employees. And you were what
Jared Fuller 04:56
less than 50 smaller than 50 employees.
Krystan Resch 05:00
When I started, Correct, yeah.
Jared Fuller 05:02
So I think that one of the common mistakes in business that people get caught up in and I mean, this is the CEO that gets caught up in this the board to employees is that what the business needs is different every phase of growth, right? So like in the first five employees, the first 10, to maybe first 25 to 50. Like, you can slice this whichever way you want to talk to us a little bit about those early days of discover. org, and how partnerships became something that you started taking into your wheelhouse?
Krystan Resch 05:33
Yeah, um, well, I think first and foremost, I always like to shout out that I found discovered on Craigslist, because I still think that's about this house, Craigslist, that I found this job on Craigslist. And I still do you have a screenshot and I
Jared Fuller 05:51
know I didn't even exist in 2012.
Justin Bartels 05:53
Oh, yeah. Yeah, I did.
Krystan Resch 05:57
But there was a snippet tool back then. I know, I know it for sure. Because I help desk off of it once upon a time. Um, but yeah, I mean, I will never forget that moment. Let's put that way, right. I found this job. And it was out east Vancouver, and I'm thinking to myself, What is this place? Who are these guys? And I remember meeting perkin. Henry for the first time, and it was just like, okay, so special about this group, like, you could just tell, Henry's really driven. And so I was like, Okay, I think I could work for that, you know, and at that time, we were, you know, relatively small as a company. But also, as a product offering, we really had only one data set, it was our enterprise IT data set, we were selling government as its own data set, as well, but we were just selling it contacts. We were org charts. That's all we were selling, right. And when we got in there, we're starting to build out the market. So I saw from the customer success side, like, hey, you're gonna have some cross sell and expansion opportunities, what's the strategy and it was all of a sudden, oh, we need to think about that strategy. Let's go to for that. Let's go scale that up, right. Because that then we probably had around 500 customers, which is a good healthy base of customers, but fairly small, considering, I think, 200,000 or 20,000 customers today. So we started off there. And very quickly, I went from being in a sales role to being in a customer success and account management based role. And I think that right there is where I felt like Henry was working on some really creative deals with companies. Because of what we were doing and how we were doing this whole concept of block charts. It was unique, it wasn't something everybody had access to. And it was really difficult. It is really difficult to do. We had African houses who seem to do it. And I started to manage those accounts if we were part of them as customers at the time. But that was my first exposure to what became our partner. And then it just kind of builds from there. As I transitioned, I've worn many hats in the company from Salesforce admin to product manager for our Salesforce application. And support team has the support role that used to walk around with a Vonage cordless phone in my pocket with a corded headset. That was me for sure. Yeah. It was folks calling saying I my Discover Card isn't working. I'm sorry, the Discover phone number is one 800. And I knew it right off the bat. That's pretty funny. Um, but yeah, like, you know, as we start to grow, and the ability to do more from a partner perspective, or more creative deals from a licensing standpoint, is effectively what evolved into our partner program today, which is kind of equal parts agency, equal part, commercial data for licensee or data licensing for commercial use for products and things of that nature. And then technical integrations, product exists.
Jared Fuller 09:02
So with that, at that phase, we need joined, you're less than 50 employees. And you start in I I'm willing to bet that there's a good chunk of the audience that is entered into partnerships from a similar route or is just came in from the sales side of the house to see as the am side of the house. We had shareen on on one of our past episodes where she went CPA account manager into partnerships, right. At that stage of the company, you were kind of at the you know, family, maybe progressing to tribe stage, what was the thing that kicked partnerships into a full time function? Like what was the change that happened either in the market, in the business or in your customers that you and Henry and the team was like, hey, Kristin, go there?
Krystan Resch 09:45
Yeah, so I actually it was probably 20 2014 2015 when we started getting, you know, our first rounds of funding and all of this stuff started building up and we were in our customers. worlds' more often. So that's actually when I started traveling all the time. I got to meet Justin actually, because he was my customer testimonials back in the day. Right? We did that at dreamforce. Yeah, and I still have it on an iPad somewhere because it was the funniest thing. But, um, you know, we started interacting with our customers. And they were always asking us like, Oh, where are you guys doing? marquetta? What are you doing with Salesforce? And both of those guys were really starting to build their partner programs and HubSpot was kind of coming out of nowhere with their ecosystem. And it Oracle just never really got it right. You know? So we were trying, everybody has always tried to figure out how, how do we get zoomed in for discover work, it's time to work in that world and work in these worlds. And we're like, oh, this is how we integrate this whole play with them. But like, wasn't really official. It wasn't like we were doing a lot we were, you know, doing some marketing around it and molinara integration, but there wasn't a lot of cross collaboration with these teams. And and I kind of got to the point where I was ready to try something different. And I really wanted to move into marketing. It was always something that I love selling more marketing buyers have always been interested in marketing. And it just so happened, our chief growth officer at the time Katie Bullard was our previous cmo and she was like, Hey, I think there's a big opportunity for us to be doing more on the partner front and getting in front of these companies to work more closely with them. And as right as Marketo, did Joby, you know, acquisition, well, that was starting to happen. And so it's about 2018, by that time, where all of a sudden, hey, we see the need for it, we're getting bigger. At that time, we were probably roughly around, we had acquired ranking. So we were probably around like 800 employees or so. And it was like, okay, build an affiliate program, start to get other companies that we're integrating to to champion us, because we're going to fuel their integrations, we're going to tell this bigger collective story of health statuses. And co founders are things right. And so as we got to that point, it became open, we need somebody who kind of knows all these different pieces. And so I was a natural fit for that, because I had managed some of the complicated ones we had, I already was on the road interacting with our partners effectively face to face conferences. So worked out really well. But I just became kind of the face of the partner team. And then it was like throwing lighter fluid on the fires. And then if we've hired some info, so that's its own. That's like when I joke about discover words growth path, and it was like, okay, we're on like a really high speed train, you know, and like, you are going really fast at 200 miles an hour, but it doesn't feel that fast if you're inside the train, you know, because relativity, so we're like, We're going, we're going but we're good. Right? Then it was like, you get that last round of funding got Carlisle investment, right. And the next thing you know, it was like this thing just started to like peel off the track and turn into a rocket ship. And by the time we acquired some info, I just joked that we hit like the warp speed and lightspeed button and I felt like Han Solo millennial Falcon every day, just through space, like as fast as you can burn. That's changed.
Jared Fuller 13:23
Yeah, I mean, that's, it's a fascinating SAS partner story. And just a SAS, b2b, you know, kind of case study in its own right, especially considering how data companies of old had a commanded a very poor multiple on valuation, be really hard to maintain update and like your drive subscription revenue, because typically, it was based on consumption. Right. And I think over time, you saw your partnership needs to evolve. And you started to utilize partnerships like with Marketo, with Salesforce, to drive more consumption of, you know, credits, right to drive things like net dollar retention, which in turn makes you a lot more favorable in the public markets, right? Customers are spending more year over year than they were the prior year. How did how did the business start to think about these partnerships through these various lenses, obviously, the software side, CRM map, etc. Those are natural, you know, integration partnership strategies, but maybe more from the lens of like build by partner. Maybe we can start with a few of those because I don't know that there's another company quite like discover org slash zoominfo discovered by power discovered right now, that has done so much by way of acquisitions and like navigating the market. I actually can't name another b2b SaaS company that is public today that kind of got there the same way.
Krystan Resch 14:55
Yeah, I think it's actually is probably one of the most unique part of our story. So if we go back to like the very first acquisition we had it was I profile and little fun fact about I profile, but Henry works with high profile back in the day, right. So when born up this idea of discover org, it started when he was at I profile. And so we always joke that there was kind of a little chip on his shoulder when he bought that one, because it was more or less like a toji. My idea was good, you know. And so that kind of like kicked us off. And that was, you know, wrapping up first round of funding, and it was, you know, it helped us solidify the our that we could acquire company, and then we had to figure out that acquisition motion, which is the most difficult part, because it's one thing when you're acquiring the data assets for that company that presented its own challenges, because our research team data cleanup, it did allow us to expand into Europe right away, so did give us immediate market expansion and product expansion. But we also had to be really creative in how we did that positioning, because it's not the same quality. It wasn't, it wasn't built the same way as the original discover or gussets, right. So there's this constant realignment or from an employee standpoint, and educating everybody on how things are different, why things are different, why the philosophy is changing, because we're seeing the growth, which is part of that going from like the family size to the tribe size to now we're building a big company. But then you get to this place with the customers as well, where you're trying to realign all that expectation. And we were back then we were a data set model with all the data, we just wanted you to consume it, we wanted you to buy these data sets, and we wanted you to consume as much of it as possible. So get it into Salesforce, hook it up, because that's what made us stick. And the stickier we were, the more you would renew. And that's where our valuation would come from, because it was coming from that recurring revenue. So that's kind of how we frame the world as we're, you know, growing up and then required ranking. And that was more of a competitive trick on the shoulders that we felt really good when we acquired them. And then in between there, we had some smaller acquisitions, like that's when we started to get into the more what I call like ancillary products, but it's like, you know, the complimentary things, what is going to make the data better. So you get to a certain size, especially when you're trying to do data where a research team of 300 people is great, expensive, and still, they're going to tap out on capabilities. Right. So like email validation, was just natural, that we would buy an email validation company, take that off the table, they don't have to go through. And we don't have to do that in a scratch together kind of way we bought never bounced. And now we have the ability to build an email validation and approval process, or the depth. Right. So that's kind of where that method, I would say, the philosophy around that started. And never bounce, again, kind of came to us through this conversation of partnership. And then it was like, Well, actually, this could be more interesting. net, tell wise, it's another one, right? It's now our engaged product. It's a dialer, an email tool, but it's promoting adoption. So all the other acquisitions we have there outside of data acquisitions are to essentially create real platform adoption. So there's this balance of data adoption, your go to market systems, and then user adoption and platform adoption, because both are revenue in our world. We monetize both the data
Justin Bartels 18:33
reminds me It reminds me of our conversation last week, Jared, where we are breaking out the different buckets of why you acquire a company, it sounds like you almost hit every bucket we talked about there with the competitive angle, the product improvement angle, the market, we want to grow into angle, just curious to know did any of those acquisitions have an existing partner motion in place or partner program that you absorbed or with it?
Krystan Resch 18:54
Yeah, some extent to some extent, hopefully, ever string and the Kimiko, one had been some version of a legacy based partnership. So on the zoom info side, prior to us acquiring zoominfo, they had actually partnered with every string from the data partnership. So it was an interesting, you know, acquisition for us to go by every string knowing that the the crux of that data, you know, originated from what was the old legacy zoominfo database. And then, but then it evolved because their AI was phenomenal. The natural language processing, the ever shrinking field is incredible. So they took it, you know, next level, and that's why I made it really valuable for us to write that. On the other side of that, though, kimete, though, I'll never forget having that conversation with me. And he's like, Hey, you know, this is what I think this is how I think these things can work together. And I'd be really curious if Henry's interested in it. And I remember going into Henry's office and being like, hey, so easily Try not to bring all these to you because there's always somebody trying to sell their company to us at that point. And that was right. It was right about that. We just acquired some info. And so everybody was kind of, we're still discovering word, but we just acquired some info. So we're making quite the buzz in the market. But that one, I saw it and I was like, this can be really cool because it kind of helps again, tell that story of the data. And it does it by visualizing the conversations that people are having, you know, through email and calendar invites for doing so in Salesforce where it's really easy for the manager or somebody go in and see like, Hey, I people in the company are talking to this guy, who are they something to require they talk. And something that I think, you know, kind of looking back on it now, when we were selling discover Work, Work charts, we were selling this concept of selling smarter, selling, not single threading, ie multi threaded, making sure you understand who your economic buyer is, we're bringing in all of the different sales philosophies over Heineman and all of this, you know, as we were trying to coach and teach people how to use our data. And so it only became natural that we would acquire tools that would also facilitate that journey. Because the better you are, as a seller, the more data you're going to use, the more information you're going to want, and the smarter you're going to. So it's where, you know, somebody wanted to use our scoops. So they can, you know, position, something that's happening as a company in a way that is assumptive, things like that, you know, all of a sudden really started to be involved, because we had all this other ways to compliment.
Justin Bartels 21:29
Make sense. Yeah, I seem to remember that from using the product mean, like, Okay, this is more than just data like this is like, helping me sell better not to give a shameless plug, not paid, not paid promotion here. But I do remember, I ate some scoops in my day and use them and definitely was much more than just data was data activated and data within my workflow that helped me sell better. So it's interesting, being a past user seeing that come to life, as you described
Krystan Resch 21:55
it. Exactly. And it was always this kind of concept of like, how do you bring data to life data is so boring, if you think about it, right? How do you create an exciting company around data? And so it's the story of what data can do is what makes it exciting, right? And so when, you know, when I was in our sales enablement world, Dave still, and Ricky and a couple other folks that our company and right we were building out our sales certifications that exist today, one of those key components is storytelling. And we're like, we live in die Bibles. Because if we can't tell the story about what data can do to transform your girls, no one's just gonna buy data, especially our price. We're not the cheapest provider out there. So it was really that's kind of the core of how this you know, how we do everything really. But partnerships comes out of that at the end, because now it's how do you continue to tell that story as a better together story, or, you know, layered together because we're, you know, complementing each other or building off each other.
Jared Fuller 23:01
Whenever that I wanted to take this because of the nature of all the different companies that you did interesting deals with, I mean, some are strictly BD deal. Some are more commercial arrangements, some are flat out m&a, right, like, just come join the family hop on board. This has been something that I feel like I don't see any content out there. Like I've researched, it can't find anything. So if anyone knows of anything, post a link in the comments, or start a thread in the CSA, powered by partnerships, right? So these are OEM, I mean, OEM, to me still feels a little bit more commercial than it does, you know, partnership, because like, really, what's in it for the other person? If it's truly OEM, it's just a commercial relationship at that point, to a large degree. have you encountered any of these kind of powered by partnerships where, you know, ever string and zoominfo might have had a relationship where they were doing partner activities? Because they were better together? Did you see any of these powered by partnerships kind of come in or out of your purview over that period of time? Um,
Krystan Resch 24:05
I did a little, I will say, you know, one of the most exciting things that I ever got to do discover or whose dream, right, I get to have these ideas and just see if, and one, you know, a good chunk of kind of how we operate today was me going, Okay, on the legacy zoominfo side, we were doing very heavy data licensing, all commercial use very much OPM, right? So they're benefiting from having us we're getting the monetary benefit, but there's no you know, mutual customer benefit, if you will, there's no better together story there. So it's a BD relationship. On the other side, you have integrations, and those are great, but generally they don't, they're not monetized. They're free integrations, more from an adoption standpoint. How do you marry those two things together, to help give people the experience of using your data? gets another provider, but don't cannibalize yourself for your opportunities to go sell that customer yourself. And it was like a real fine line. And we're still kind of, you know, the place of these things getting ready to launch. He just wants a partner directory, you know, two weeks ago. And so there's a lot of things coming still. But that hybrid model is really what was born of this is how do we create almost like a test drive experience. So somebody can feel what it's like to be a zoominfo customer without committing to us, or give them just a limited experience to the point where now they want more. So now they'll go by both, and now they're adopting our partner platform more in depth, because they're adopting more of our data at that platform. However, that platform still does something that my platform does. And that's really the key. So you know, driftin zoominfo, are a great example of this, you guys run awesome chatbots and the awesome AI automation around all of those playbooks and everything there, you guys get everybody into Marketo. And you get everything into Salesforce, how does that then get maintained over time? Right, we need to keep that story going. You can augment we can fill in right, we can marry the two things together. So I think that was kind of the biggest challenge is that it does, it didn't really exist, I didn't really see it anywhere out there. But I saw how marquetta was running their program. And then I saw how data licensing was working just rampid into the data world, and figured there's got to be a good solution somewhere. And you're really it is a hybrid model,
Jared Fuller 26:39
I think you're departing, it's such an interesting time, because I think that those conversations that we were having in the beginning, right, so like, if you use drift, and you see a new contact coming through the chatbot. Some of the fields in there, you'll see like a zoom info logo, right. So it's actually that data is being consumed by zoom info, and we're trying to drive some brand awareness back to zoom info in that kind of Power BI fashion. And I feel like we're just getting started like this is this is such a new thing that I don't think a lot of companies are really thinking about, on how to transform the relationship between software companies, between one that's just commercial to one that's, you know, mutually beneficial. And I think there's a lot of use cases for being able to utilize transformed data. For the partners benefit, and for customer, you know, acquisition and awareness, especially with things like, you know, cross beam or whatever, right? Like, you can kind of have both things up right now and better inform your sellers, like, hey, they're already using a part of our solution across these different providers. And I think there's going to be some companies born and maybe solidified in the next few years that really do take that approach. And Kristin, will have a, I think, a chapter in that story, because zoominfo, certainly, kind of at the top of the pyramid there. And now you have like the API's available to you. And you have kind of a big team that's starting to, like take off and scale a partner directory, like you're taking off just like right at the right time. It's like you're
Krystan Resch 28:10
ready to fly? Yes, yes. My birds leaving and the baby birds get to leave the nest? Yes, um, it's gonna be interesting, for sure. I mean, we've been working really closely over the last year with, you know, ringlead as a data orchestration platform, it's great complement to what we do, right? There are going to be companies that are large enterprise scale sized companies, or even snowflake, we announced our partnership with them couple weeks ago, we've actually been working with them for a while on these types of big large data deliveries here. Now, not only do I have these large zoominfo data sets, and I have data structured in a certain way. But I now want to augment my customer data set, or I want to do target market analysis. Or I want to do competitive analysis to get rid of the Washington product, or whatever it might be. But I have all this information at my fingertips. How do I make it work together? Well, big data has been around, right? And snowflakes been doing that. But snowflake traditionally has been going after data scientists and the big. They haven't necessarily appealed to the DevOps teams and the marketing teams. And all of this is, you know, over the last couple of years, relatively new. And so it not only becomes a conversation around how do we fold our technologies together and make it work. But can we expand the users then adopt our platform? Because almost all SAS platforms are going to generate revenue off users, right? So user expansion is on this 90% The number one thing I'll look at, but then there'll be a new product offering that comes out of it that you can monetize as an add on, or can we get to a place where we can now expand to the different markets, and so we can get deeper in enterprise to a partnership with snowflake? We can get deep into mid market companies through a partnership with you know, with bring we've got other partners that specifically serve startups missing beat a market generally out price ourselves and we couldn't go after can I'll create a solution for a startup in an all in one package. So they get the benefits of having zoominfo when we start their data adoption early, which means we're winning our customers earlier in the cycle, they have a lower propensity to go to a competitor to begin with, because you are no cost option. So it's all those things kind of tied in. I think that's kind of like the overall philosophy that I think that when I tie it in, it's equal parts. These are, you know, expansion of products and then expansion market.
Jared Fuller 30:47
At the stage that you're at, you're letting your your little one fly.
Krystan Resch 30:51
Yes,
Jared Fuller 30:52
I have two questions. They're going to be longer questions. So just to like, try to keep these two on track Help Help me out here. The first question, I need your brain today. I've been, I've been off for like three or four days, but I've been doing taxes, which means I've not been off. I've been off at all, but in spreadsheets. looking backwards? And I'll talk about that. I think we'll make that the second question. But looking forwards, actually, let's start there. Right now, today zoominfo has the opportunity to maybe ascend from let's say, you know, we talked about the family, the tribe, village, city state, to perhaps like a country, it's kind of where I feel like you're kind of, you know, the companies that in that you could have, you have the API's available. And there is a growing BD team. And there's interest in doing things for doing larger scale distribution deals, right? in building partners, and kind of like owning this space around data. And in spaces that I would normally not think about like snowflake, I would have never thought there'd been a partner angle there. Talk to me about what you think that country state looks like for data companies and like zoom info, like what is the next five years have in store for the ecosystem that they build? It's kind of like everyone's all of a sudden a part of it?
Krystan Resch 32:15
Yeah, I think we're actually already on that track. Probably some of the most interesting things that we've done over the last year, and the most interesting conversations I've probably had in my entire life in your zoom info have happened in the last year. And it's around all types of companies using data in a smarter way. Right. So it's not just this concept of a smarter go to market or smarter, you know, business intelligence to do my forecasting, or my marketing, you know, repetitive analysis, market analysis. It's underwriting companies who want to help loan originators write better loans, to people who will fulfill their loans, especially during COVID. That became a very big topic, right. And so I found myself in a place where I'm doing more commercial data licensing deals to loan origination software companies, than almost anything else. I've had conversations with drone operation companies who want to use our company data to look at the you know, how many different businesses are out one location so that they can seem to consolidate packaged drop offs with drones, and make it easier for drone operators to you know, maneuver their software and the actual equipment in here. It can go anywhere. And so as you start to think of just data being this ever expanding thing, it's the only thing really out there that's truly you know, full force, you know, exponential everyday, there's more data, you know, now than there was when we started this conversation, right? And so as that is always going to be true, and that's always going to continue, you have to have this point of refinement, which is us, we're constantly refining what we have to say, Yep, this is good. This is bad. Yep, this is good. This is bad. So zoom in is really great at doing. But now you're going to start to see it's not just sales and marketing teams using it to sell teams, it's product teams using it to make their product smarter. It's, you know, companies like banking and finance that are using it to, you know, reduce their risk insurance company, reducing their risk. cybersecurity, using it for intrusion detection. There's a lot of different things you can do. And I think that's where all of a sudden, this turns into a really big awesome.
Jared Fuller 34:37
I have to talk to you about going. Oh, I want to go backwards. But I have one quick question. One quick question. I'm curious. It sounds to me like if you have this giant data asset and you have the API's available, is there been any talks about being able to launch an actual platform where you can start a business on zoom in Felt like the data is valuable, of course, but you've almost commoditized it, meaning there's no value for me to go out and try to acquire a dataset to sell to drone delivery companies, because you already have the data set. So what you should do is commoditize the data, right? Make it you know, it's like it's available, but you could build a business on it. So you have these independent businesses that basically are using your data, putting a website UI on it, and selling directly. And then you're charging, you know, sell through there. Has there been like that kind of platform? Like, I'm almost thinking like, you know, that the App Store or right on your
Justin Bartels 35:33
phone? Like?
Jared Fuller 35:37
Don't call me up like that?
Krystan Resch 35:40
Yeah, yeah, no, um, you are definitely on the right track. I can't share too much about anything moving forward, since we are still a publicly traded company, and I still represent the business. But I what I will say is you're definitely on track. And it's definitely something that the company is thinking of, and moving forward with, I think, over the course of just this year alone, the growth strategy is pretty aggressive. So we're gonna see a lot of developments in the opportunity for multiples abilities. That'd be so cool.
Jared Fuller 36:10
But anyways, I just had to keep out on those. Like, I
Krystan Resch 36:12
wonder, I can't figure out on down ideas.
Justin Bartels 36:16
Yeah, gold star for Garrett. I like, it's a really cool, like, once you started describing that, I was like, Okay, this goes from, like you said, the sales and marketing use case of me this data to understand who I'm selling to, or sell to somebody better or market to them better to? Anytime I have a question and I don't have the data set to answer it, I go to zoom info, which is like such a much bigger picture in value and opens up so much more creative ideas like Mr. Fuller here has presented. That's really neat. That's really
Krystan Resch 36:49
enough, I think about it too, like you think back to when I was in 2012 2013 2014. Pre funding, we had, you know, 5560 data points very well, you know, curated data points, important data points, headquarter location, contact, direct dial, phone numbers, things like that, that were really important in order to sell the time, somebody recorded, see right there buying. But then as it evolved, we layered in technology stack. That was huge. Then you see zoom info, prior data, nice for that exact reason. We then acquired zoominfo, you got both of those assets, right? But that's that's part of that journey is like no, at this point, today, we've got over 200 plus data points. And that's not counting what is new from the everspring. side, I still, we're still figuring out data points that can be curated from that, you know, we just launched in a different number of lately in context for location, and things like that with high accuracy thresholds. So there's going to be, you know, as much as we can license data to then go help other companies create transformed data sets, or a new experience for a new market, we ourselves, also do that. And so that's where that bill by really does come back into play. And so, there, you know, the more we do these types of licensing deals that are a little bit different, outside of what's normal, it helps us understand how much opportunity is truly there, which then, you know, hurts the eyebrows in the ears of the merger and acquisition team, to say, Hey, here's another opportunity for market expansion. And here's how we can do it. Here's how it works. And that playbook is already lightly developed. So it's a lot easier to execute on. And India is an internal team, it's just refined our ability to execute on acquisitions and merge. And from an operational standpoint, that's probably the thing I'm most impressed with our company is just how we internally complete this operations team. So that like we can acquire a company tomorrow when they're integrated within months versus years, which is the traditional acquisition role, because it will take, you know, I want to go through an acquisition in banking back in the day and you know, the Wells Fargo bottle walk over here two and a half or five years transition software, like we integrated and rolled out a whole new interface than the acquired zemin for less than eight months. So the path and the pace is quite.
Jared Fuller 39:25
I'm curious. This is a quick question before we maybe find a fun note to to end on. How do you think about your North Star metrics? Because I'm from a partnerships perspective, I'm always trying to figure out what parts of the business you can impact that are not just like revenue, and I'll give where I'm going with this. If I think about a data asset, you probably have a bunch of different ways of classifying data assets. Right. So for the layman like myself, I think in terms of contact and account attributes, right and Maybe you kind of break that down based on industry or geo, or vertical or whatever, the technographics. Right, what technologies people use? But as you as you start to get these data assets together, do you start to measure some sort of usage per data point meaning is part of the goal of zoom info is to have this one data point of like, let's say business x at location y being consumed more times this month than last month.
Krystan Resch 40:32
Yeah, that's actually the person you want to talk about. That would be Derek Smith. I will tell you, he's our kind of head of research and development and data operations and has been throughout the years of zoominfo or discover org. But I will say like, yeah, we've been doing that, actually, since I remember. It actually, when I was doing trainings, it was one of my favorite talking points, because like, especially back in 20, between 2013 and 2016, the number one company searched and discover work didn't change. And Evan, I asked everybody, like, what do you think it is I was it the Amazon? Or it was Facebook or Google? Or it's Apple, or whatever? And the answer is in 711. And everybody's like, why seven elevens. Like, because what we every single person drives by a 711, if you live in the States, and drive by one on your way to work, regardless, like I walked by one, and I lived three blocks from the building, right in my office. And I still walk by as a mother. And so we want to solve the businesses we can see. And therefore when we go to search, that's what we search. And Google's the same way. Think of it the same way, right? You're searching but no. And then you might end up down the rabbit hole to learn something else. Or you might pose a question and you might end up down the rabbit hole, we learn something new, we you generally go in with this construct of what we already know. And so when everybody's searching 711, we were like, why? And then it clicked. Okay, well, this is a training opportunity, teach them how to use advanced search and how to use filters to define who their ideal customer profile when I do buyer profiles are to identify companies that they should be selling to that bond face value might look just like a 711. But lo and behold, they've got four times the IT budget, and they're much better fit. So you know, I will never forget, there was a mutual fund company out of Oban, Nebraska, and they look like a tiny little company. But they had a forex You know, it budget compared to the 711. And every time I'd be in a training that it based company, whether that was ServiceNow, or is the logo or whatever. And so that went out there, and everybody, Oh, how I got to use these filters, because it opened up a whole new world for them. So when I talked about this expansion of new data points constantly being transformed, you're going to get even more detailed, you know, on populations that you can target from an audience perspective. And that's actually a big piece of the future of zoominfo. Because we acquired clickagy, is now you can build these really highly kind of micro targeted populations and audiences for now you can activate them through our DSP in DMC because he loves to fish to advertising the audience. Right. So again, that's another area of expansion, when it comes to design and I have
Jared Fuller 43:28
to come back to the the first thing that I was going to ask you, we talked a little bit about the future and kind of where you're leaving your, your new one to go fly off into the world. Looking back, put yourself back in the the family, you know, the tribe, the village state, if if you could work backwards, right, if had the foresight to work backwards from where you see you all are going, what advice would you give young Christian to be like, Hey, this is kind of where we're going and what would you do differently? And if maybe you can't answer like exactly what you do differently, maybe how people can maybe zoom out. So that I know, there's lots of folks on the call today, they're probably in that early stage, they're like, Okay, I'm sitting here, but what's the future look like? What was working backwards for you look like? or What advice would you give yourself? You know, early on?
Krystan Resch 44:18
Yeah, that's a really good one. Um, I there's a couple things. I think from like a marketing standpoint, I would say, be aggressive. It's okay to like, Go tell the world you've got a program, even if it's half baked. So I would definitely like you a little bit more aggressive on the marketing front. I was fairly aggressive. But I think I probably would have put a little bit more effort into newsletters and campaigns and just more awareness around what we're doing. Because you filter out some of the bad stuff easier that way or the investments that are that way because people are more educated. So I think that's one aspect of it.
Jared Fuller 44:55
I think you're not being ready, right? Yeah. If
Krystan Resch 44:58
you're not being ready, don't be afraid like Just rip Band Aid off, you know, but on the other side of that don't rip the band aid off until your legal agreements are tight. For sure, you know, we had to if we acquired some info, they licensed data very differently from a philosophy standpoint than how we didn't discover org and getting everybody executive team specifically but buy in on what's new strategy. There's an existing one, yes, there's revenue tied to it. But this strategy, isn't the end all be all for what is that new one look like? And how does all this agreement stuff need to change? That's probably the thing that took the longest. So that's the thing I wish I would have prioritized and focused on post versus the relationship aspect. I want to kind of like keep the can down the road on the relationships, like, Hey, I'll get to know you in a second, like, let us get this stuff together. Because depends on your, your philosophy as a business. But there is going to be some point, at least in the data companies world where you kind of are on this threshold of teeter tottering between commercial licensing and cannibalization. And it's this teeter totter effect, and you're constantly on this balance, trying to make sure that whatever you do over here doesn't hurt you in the future doesn't cannibalize a larger opportunity with a bigger company, especially enterprise. Because enterprises move slow, therefore, to get them to come back to later who difficult. So I would focus on that aspect. Probably more of my time would have been prioritized there. And then I think Lastly, I would have, I think we were still trying to kind of figure out when we became zoominfo, powered by discover or, I mean, we acquired zoominfo. In eight months later, we rebranded as zoominfo, which was not what everybody was really expecting, right. And so I think part of that morning would have been like, hey, pick a few relationships, and just focus on those and get those really right. And there will always be a lot of demand if you're a popular product. Like I mean, I'm talking as I was on 20,000 emails a day, coming into my inbox, I have not checked my LinkedIn messages in three years. It's that great, much inbound, because you're everybody wants to work with you. And that's great. But like, really reading through those and picking out the ones that are going to make the biggest impact the biggest squash, whether that means that you're going to acquire them later, or they're that better together, or you want to tell, taking the time to focus focus on those and build development. Right? That's Yes,
Jared Fuller 47:43
yep. So that's why Salesforce, Adobe, they all have partner development reps and functions to like curate what's happening and ecosystem and make sure that it gets lifted up really quickly.
Krystan Resch 47:53
And the hard part is when one person you're all right, one person team for almost a year and a half. And so that's really where that challenge lies, is how do you prioritize and juggle all those hats. And so if I really think back to it, if I would have thought of my 40 hour week and said, Hey, you know, if 20 hours of this is going to be making sure our legal processes and you know, cannibalization, concerns risk and everything, those are solid and wrong. Same as making sure internally, we're on the same page, because things are always changing. So you know, it's constantly playing telephones, internally, right. Um, but then on the other side of it, take even an hour a day and just focus on marketing, go out there and tell the world about what we're doing, why we're doing it, how we're doing it, just so they felt educated and not neglected. And that way, all the inbound could at least go into a drip campaign to stay up to date and stay in our world and not go elsewhere. And then at the same time, fill out the top ones and create your experience around those who bid out then build this game will experience.
Jared Fuller 49:00
That is a fantastic note to end on. give everyone a good takeaway to like, Hey, I know all of you out there are not you're not marketing your partner programs nearly as much as you need to. I know we're not justified. I got some takeaways right there from Kristen, but we're gonna go have some fun conversations with the team about tomorrow. Before we hop, Kristen, and say, Rob Walker now on your six month sabbatical, quick shout out to cloud software Association. So come join us in the slack group. Check it out cloud software association.com. And join it on some of the conversations every Thursday. There's a really awesome masterclass where you can kind of dive deep, I actually just went through one of those master classes with our team about setting up partner attribution for marketing speaking of marketing, so lots of fun stuff in there and the thing that Kristen probably wanted as much as anything was like Who the hell cuz heck else is trying to do this stuff? Right early on. I mean, there was nothing. There's, you know, the novel Bass have one right and your own ability to which I have to say is your your run as a solo person given how big they were going is like, you deserve a break. So deserve a break. You held together a lot of things at discover org over the years. Yeah.
Krystan Resch 50:17
Yeah, it's gonna be a well live break. So post on LinkedIn let you guys see pictures in Montana. There you go.
Justin Bartels 50:25
There you go. If you dig up that old case study, let me know we'll give it away as premium. No,
Jared Fuller 50:29
don't let him know you have to send it to me. make its way into the video. No, no, no, no. If
Justin Bartels 50:35
people leave five star reviews, they subscribe and they screenshot at premium content. They'll get the case study we did about five, six, what probably five, six years ago. I got
Krystan Resch 50:46
to say what coffee shop we're in in San Francisco.
Justin Bartels 50:50
That's right.
Jared Fuller 50:52
I can't believe you are doing business with 16 year old Justin.
Krystan Resch 50:56
Well, I was only 20.
Jared Fuller 51:02
All right, we're gonna get out here before we get in trouble. So we'll see you all next time. Thank you Kristin. Peace.
