CLEVELAND, OH (August 1, 2018) — Following a national search, executive recruitment firm Torch Group has placed Derek Schoettle as the new CEO of Waltham, MA-headquartered ZoomInfo, the market leader in B2B contact and business information. Great Hill Partners, a Boston-based private equity firm that provides private capital to finance the expansion, recapitalization or acquisition of growth, acquired ZoomInfo in August 2017.
Schoettle joins ZoomInfo after a successful four-year stint at IBM, where most recently he was the Chief Business Officer and General Manager of the Watson and Cloud Platform business. Mr. Schoettle was previously CEO of Cloudant, a Database-as-a-Service provider, and led that company through its acquisition by IBM. He has also held executive roles with Vertica Systems, acquired by HP, and Infocrossing and Intellireach, both acquired by Wipro.
ZoomInfo has traditionally sold sales teams’ access to its huge database of corporate emails and phone numbers. The company also is one of the dominant providers of contact information to the recruiting and search sector.
“The goal now is to build out a variety of applications to help customers actually use that data effectively,” said Schoettle. “Such software tools could, for example, recommend which potential customers to call first based on earlier patterns of success selling a similar product.”
“We selected Torch Group to conduct the search based on their consultative and detailed approach stressing cultural fit,” Christopher Gaffney, managing director, Great Hill Partners, said. “When Great Hill Partners acquired ZoomInfo, we did so in partnership with ZoomInfo’s founder and CEO, Yonatan Stern. We planned to recruit an enterprise-class successor CEO who has navigated these paths before. When Torch presented Derek, his extensive background leading high growth technology organizations and large scale, complex platform businesses cemented for us that he is the right person for this role.”
“Given ZoomInfo’s product evolution,” our team member said, “Our search strategy was to identify current or past CEOs of software companies with strong data plays that had driven fast growth either prior to or post their acquisition or integration into a broader CRM suite and larger company. Derek quickly rose to the top of a very select group of national candidates.”
“I’ve spent the last 10 years of my career at the intersection of data analytics and artificial intelligence,” Schoettle added. “When Greg contacted me about ZoomInfo and put me through one of the most rigorous and strategic interview/assessment processes I’ve experienced, it became clear to me that this was a different kind of opportunity. I’m thrilled to be able to work on the industry’s best platform for business data. ZoomInfo is one of the best kept secrets in the Boston tech market. The company has 8,000 clients, has experienced a staggering 250 percent increase in revenue over the last four years, and is growing at 50 percent quarter-over-quarter rate. This growth is just the beginning as the company evolves from a sales and marketing performance management product to an intelligent, dynamic customer engagement platform that gives companies a deep understanding of its customers and prospects.”
Schoettle succeeds Stern, who was also the company’s founder and chief data scientist, this month. As part of the terms of ZoomInfo’s sale to Great Hill Partners, Mr. Stern planned his departure from the company in June 2018 but will remain on its Board of Directors.
“I have used Greg and Torch multiple times for C-level executive search assignments and their background and vetting work is the best in the business,” Gaffney said. “Derek Schoettle is an outstanding executive carefully selected to be ZoomInfo’s next leader to expand the company’s product set and to accelerate their already impressive revenue growth.”
About Torch Group
Torch Group (www.torchgroup.com) is a premier retained, boutique executive search firm focused on securing C-level sales, marketing, product management and communication executives and their direct reports for companies in growth and/or in transition. The key industries and business sectors they serve, in addition to software and technology, include food & beverage, food service, building products & materials and commercial & industrial manufacturing. Established in 1990, the company has achieved over 30% annual growth for the last two years.
About ZoomInfo
Accelerate your growth with Zoom Information, Inc. (www.ZoomInfo.com), an Inc. 5000 company. ZoomInfo’s Growth Acceleration Platform combines the world’s most comprehensive and searchable account and contact database with integrated tools to help companies optimize sales and marketing effectiveness, jump-start growth, and maximize profitability. The continuously updated B2B contact database gives businesses access to direct-dial phone numbers, email addresses, and professional background information.