ZoomInfo
US-listed business-contact data company founded by Unit 8200 veteran Yonatan Stern
| ZoomInfo
| |
|---|---|
| Logo | 
|
| Type | Public company (Nasdaq: ZI) |
| Founded | 2000 |
| Founder(s) | Yonatan Stern |
| Headquarters | 805 Broadway Street, Suite 900, Vancouver, Washington 98660 (2020 SEC filing) |
| Industry | Data |
| Services | Business-to-business contact and company data for sales, marketing and recruiting |
| Homepage | zoominfo.com |
ZoomInfo is a US company that sells business-to-business (B2B) data on companies and their employees to sales, marketing and recruiting teams. It began as Zoom Information, founded in 2000 by Yonatan Stern, a former Unit 8200 officer, as a spin-off of his earlier company CardScan.[1] In February 2019 it was bought by its rival DiscoverOrg, which took the ZoomInfo name;[2] the combined company, ZoomInfo Technologies, listed on Nasdaq in June 2020.[3]
Founder and Unit 8200
In a 2019 interview with Ruti Levi of the Israeli financial newspaper TheMarker, republished in English on Stern's own website, Stern was reported to have studied computer science as a soldier-student at the Technion; "At the end of his studies, he joined the 8200 unit, and served in the same unit where Shwed and Shlomo Kramer later served" (Unit 8200; Gil Shwed; Shlomo Kramer).[4] Stern's own website says that he "enlisted to Unit 8200 in the IDF, where he rose to the rank of Major and received the Israeli Defense Prize" (Israel Defense Forces; Israel Defense Prize).[1]
The same website says that after his army service Stern founded Rosh Intelligent Systems (also given there as Rosh Intelligence Systems) in 1985 "along with friends from his unit", developing artificial-intelligence tools for field service engineers, and that Rosh, after a series of mergers and acquisitions, "is now part of Verint Systems" (Verint).[1]
Origins and ownership
According to Stern's website, in 1999 he set up a research group inside CardScan "to explore the possibility of scanning/crawling the internet in order to extract information about people and companies from free text (mainly company websites, news, press releases and other sources)", and Zoom Information was spun off from CardScan in 2000; Stern was CEO and chief scientist until August 2018, and stayed on as a shareholder and board member.[1] TheMarker reported that part of the company was sold to Great Hill Partners in 2017 at a value of $240 million, and that in February 2019 it was sold in its entirety to DiscoverOrg for $800 million.[4] DiscoverOrg's announcement, dated 4 February 2019 in Vancouver, Washington, said its co-founder and CEO Henry Schuck would lead the combined organisation, which had almost 15,000 customers, and named DiscoverOrg's investors as TA Associates, The Carlyle Group and 22C Capital.[2]
ZoomInfo Technologies Inc. told the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that on 8 June 2020 it completed its initial public offering of 51,175,000 shares of Class A common stock at $21.00 per share.[3]
See also
- Unit 8200
- Leadspace
- Verint
- Cyber and tech firms founded by ex Unit 8200 or occupation forces veterans
External links
Notes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Yonatan Labs, Yonatan's Background Yonatan Labs, accessed 29 October 2026.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 ZoomInfo, DiscoverOrg Acquires ZoomInfo ZoomInfo, 4 February 2019, accessed 29 October 2026.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 ZoomInfo Technologies Inc., Form 8-K U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, June 2020, accessed 29 October 2026.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Ruti Levi, "Most entrepreneurs are not looking to make money from money. They want to build something sustainable. Build a product and technology, walk into the office and see 50 people at work" TheMarker (English translation on Yonatan Labs), 23 October 2019, accessed 29 October 2026.