DiscoverOrg acquires another market intelligence company — Zoom Information

Vancouver-based market intelligence company DiscoverOrg announced Monday it had acquired one of its chief competitors, Zoom Information Inc. of Waltham, Mass.

The acquisition will accelerate the already rapid growth rate for DiscoverOrg, in sales and number of employees.

The two companies specialize in scouring the web for information that is valuable for their business clients. Clients typically will use the data to connect with potential clients and sell more effectively.

Terms of the sale were not disclosed by DiscoverOrg or Zoom Information, which is better known as Zoom Info. Acquisition talks had been underway since July, DiscoverOrg CEO Henry Schuck said.

“We had investors who made a big bet today on us and on putting these two companies together,” Schuck said in a phone interview. “We believe putting these two companies together makes us much more sustainable.”

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

A source close to the sale who asked to not be identified said the purchase price was in excess of $500 million.

With the addition of Zoom, DiscoverOrg has 1,050 employees — 560 of them in Vancouver. The employee count in Vancouver is expected to grow to 600 by the end of the year.

The sale will enable the larger DiscoverOrg to hit a key sales milestone, Schuck said.

“Today, you can see a way to becoming a billion-dollar company,” said Schuck, who said DiscoverOrg plans to one day go public through an initial public offering, a desire he’s expressed in interviews at least two years ago. “We can see the path there now. It’s less aspirational than it was last year.”

Schuck spoke from Massachusetts, where he informed Zoom Info employees of the transaction. The company as a whole will continue to be known as DiscoverOrg, but DiscoverOrg and Zoom Info will operate as separate entities. Zoom Info employees are expected to retain their jobs in the transaction; in fact, additional hiring at their office locations is expected to accelerate.

Both companies are privately held and not required to report sales data. Schuck said DiscoverOrg had about $150 million in sales last year; Zoom had about $100 million.

In addition to visiting the Zoom headquarters in person to share the news, Schuck also appeared on the big screen Monday morning at Kiggins Theatre to announce the acquisition. DiscoverOrg employees had been told on Friday there would be a mandatory meeting at 8 a.m. Monday — and to meet in the theater.

Both companies use proprietary technologies and tools to gather company and contact data, but Schuck said they bring together different strengths. DiscoverOrg, he said, touts its research-verified accuracy and proprietary information-gathering tools while Zoom has a vastly deeper reservoir of business contacts — 100 million business professionals worldwide.

The combined organization has almost 15,000 customers and 120,000 active users across the globe.

Zoom was founded about 19 years ago. It moved into a new headquarters building only two weeks ago to accommodate a growing headcount that has doubled since July, when Derek Schoettle was named Zoom’s CEO. Schoettle will serve in an advisory capacity during the transition to the new DiscoverOrg entity.

DiscoverOrg, founded in 2008, also has offices in Philadelphia, Bethesda, Md., and Bellevue. Besides Zoom’s Massachusetts headquarters, it also has offices in Boston; Waltham, Mass.; Saint Petersburg, Russia; Kazan, Russia; Israel; and Grand Rapids, Mich.

Within the next month, mutual customers will have a light integration that allows them to easily access both data platforms. Over the next year, DiscoverOrg will bring together the databases onto a single business-to-business intelligence platform, while accelerating the launch of new features, integrations, and advanced analytics.

“The combination of DiscoverOrg and ZoomInfo creates the only solution in the market that fully delivers data of the highest quality and quantity to drive sales and marketing efforts,” Schoettle said in a news release announcing the sale.

DiscoverOrg’s last major acquisition was in August 2017 when it purchased Maryland-based competitor RainKing. The deal allowed the Vancouver-based company to absorb RainKing’s workforce, customers and proprietary software, as well as gaining a wider reach into the East Coast market.