People

How to IPO in the middle of a pandemic

"I've had to stop calls to go and shoo the emus away," ZoomInfo's CFO Cameron Hyzer said.

Times Square

ZoomInfo's CEO Henry Schuck and his family virtually ringing the Nasdaq's opening bell.

Photo: Courtesy of ZoomInfo

An IPO is always a manic time for a company, but even by those standards, ZoomInfo's has been particularly intense. The business contact database, used by salespeople to find new leads, has not only had to conduct much of the process remotely, it's also launching into the most uncertain economic environment in living memory. Not that that's proved to be much of a problem: The company priced well above its initial target, with shares jumping 90% upon its trading debut.

"It's been a little crazy," CFO Cameron Hyzer said ahead of the company's listing this morning. Hyzer, who is currently in Maine, said the process has brought all sorts of unexpected challenges. "Our neighbors apparently have emus," he said, "so I've had to stop calls to go and shoo the emus away." Despite those animal-related incursions, the process has been a good one, Hyzer said — and it's turned out about as well as he could have hoped for. As long as you don't confuse his stock with Zoom Video's, that is.

The following interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

What has this week been like?

It's been a little crazy. I think every roadshow and IPO has its own idiosyncrasies — obviously ours is a little different because we're doing this from home. It's all done on videoconferences and phone calls. But it's been exciting. I think we've got a great reception from different investors, and it's been great to find investors that are really focused on the long-term story.

You confidentially filed for an IPO back in December, which was obviously a very different world. What was the thinking like when the pandemic hit?

First and foremost, we wanted to make sure that all of our employees were safe and that our business would continue to run. We very quickly shifted toward making sure that work-from-home worked for everyone, that everyone had what they needed. And then we kind of just watched the markets, and through that time period we had obviously met with investors. Investors kept coming to us and saying, "Look, we understand that this is a weird time, but we're still very interested, and we think that this is a potential company that really could go public right now." As the market has kind of settled down a little and, there's a bit of normalcy, at least in terms of the markets, we kept reassessing and decided that this was actually a good time for us to get through the process, so we can get back to building the business and really focusing on the future.

What were you looking for in terms of the market settling?

One of the things that the bankers very much focus on is volatility. IPO is a process that — for us it took a week — usually takes two weeks. So you want to have some confidence that there's not going to be major shocks or drops or other issues around how investors are thinking about valuation and how they assess businesses.

In March, as an example, volatility was at record levels and, every day things changed. That wasn't a good time to kind of start a two-week process to court investors and create new long-term relationships. But as the volatility came back to more normal levels — there's a lot of ways that people look at it, but if you look at the VIX index, we're back into the 20s, which is a more normal time. And obviously with a shortened roadshow, because we're doing it all virtually, there's less travel — you don't have to spend quite as much time on planes and hotels and so forth. I think everyone got comfortable that this was as good a time as any.

Did any of the unrest in the last few days with the Black Lives Matter protests affect your thinking at all?

It's a tough backdrop, but we had actually started the process before a lot of that came into being. And so we obviously have a lot of feelings about the unrest and injustice in the world, but getting through the process was something that we just needed to kind of keep powering through.

It's been reported that your IPO was massively oversubscribed. What did investors seem to be so keen on?

We think we have a really special business because we drive operating profitability and high growth together, and we do it in a market where we serve basically any business that sells to another business. I think that the really big opportunity over the long term, the fact that we continue to grow, and continue to grow profitably, are all aspects that people get really excited about.

Did you get a sense from investors that they liked or didn't like doing this remotely?

We had the advantage that we'd already started the process and talked to a lot of people. So we've met a lot of people in person already. For those people that we're meeting for the first time, I think they've gotten a little more used to doing things from home. The great thing about people in general is they're generally resilient. So they've gotten used to doing things through videoconference or whatever else. I don't know that it's 100% the same, but it's certainly worked well for us, and I think people got really comfortable and excited about the story.

Do you get to do a virtual bell-ringing?

We are going to do a virtual bell-ringing. In the theory of there are good things and bad things, certainly it would have been more exciting to be in New York, we're listing on the NASDAQ so it would have been in Times Square with lots of big lights and great things. But realistically, this is just one small part of our journey. Henry [Schuck] founded this company 13 years ago, and we're excited about what the next 13 years or longer have to offer.

Have you seen any benefit from the whole pivot to remote work, now that people can't go to conferences to find customers?

Part of the value we think we deliver to customers is helping them sell more effectively and efficiently, and we do that with data and insights and technology. One of the things that we've always felt is an inefficient way to go to market is taking people out to dinners and ballgames and flying across the country. Our platform just natively helps people find their customers without having to spend as much time and money on those inefficient methodologies. That was a trend that we saw before COVID, but certainly the fact that you can't be taking people out to dinner and there aren't ball games to go to — I think it's put into starker relief that there is a more efficient way to do things, and we help companies do that.

What are your plans for the next six to 12 months?

With the proceeds from the offering we are going to pay down some of our debt and continue to focus on just growing the business. Our real goal is a much longer-term time horizon. We think of the world as really delivering tactical go-to-market, helping every salesperson or marketing person on an individual level just be more effective and more efficient, so they can hit their number and continue to be successful.

Do you think people will confuse your stock with Zoom Video's, as they did with Zoom Technologies'?

We hope not. Zoom [Video] is actually a good customer of ours. We help them continue to drive growth within their business as well. One of the confusions is that the other Zoom [Zoom Technologies] actually had a ticker that was ZOOM [it's since been changed to ZTNO]. Our ticker is ZI. I think our investors are very focused on ZI is ZoomInfo, and we're hoping that doesn't get confused with Zoom Video. And ultimately, I think we're focused on really engaging with our investors and continuing to grow. So hopefully there's very little confusion going forward.

Fintech

Judge Zia Faruqui is trying to teach you crypto, one ‘SNL’ reference at a time

His decisions on major cryptocurrency cases have quoted "The Big Lebowski," "SNL," and "Dr. Strangelove." That’s because he wants you — yes, you — to read them.

The ways Zia Faruqui (right) has weighed on cases that have come before him can give lawyers clues as to what legal frameworks will pass muster.

Photo: Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post via Getty Images

“Cryptocurrency and related software analytics tools are ‘The wave of the future, Dude. One hundred percent electronic.’”

That’s not a quote from "The Big Lebowski" — at least, not directly. It’s a quote from a Washington, D.C., district court memorandum opinion on the role cryptocurrency analytics tools can play in government investigations. The author is Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui.

Keep ReadingShow less
Veronica Irwin

Veronica Irwin (@vronirwin) is a San Francisco-based reporter at Protocol covering fintech. Previously she was at the San Francisco Examiner, covering tech from a hyper-local angle. Before that, her byline was featured in SF Weekly, The Nation, Techworker, Ms. Magazine and The Frisc.

The financial technology transformation is driving competition, creating consumer choice, and shaping the future of finance. Hear from seven fintech leaders who are reshaping the future of finance, and join the inaugural Financial Technology Association Fintech Summit to learn more.

Keep ReadingShow less
FTA
The Financial Technology Association (FTA) represents industry leaders shaping the future of finance. We champion the power of technology-centered financial services and advocate for the modernization of financial regulation to support inclusion and responsible innovation.
Enterprise

AWS CEO: The cloud isn’t just about technology

As AWS preps for its annual re:Invent conference, Adam Selipsky talks product strategy, support for hybrid environments, and the value of the cloud in uncertain economic times.

Photo: Noah Berger/Getty Images for Amazon Web Services

AWS is gearing up for re:Invent, its annual cloud computing conference where announcements this year are expected to focus on its end-to-end data strategy and delivering new industry-specific services.

It will be the second re:Invent with CEO Adam Selipsky as leader of the industry’s largest cloud provider after his return last year to AWS from data visualization company Tableau Software.

Keep ReadingShow less
Donna Goodison

Donna Goodison (@dgoodison) is Protocol's senior reporter focusing on enterprise infrastructure technology, from the 'Big 3' cloud computing providers to data centers. She previously covered the public cloud at CRN after 15 years as a business reporter for the Boston Herald. Based in Massachusetts, she also has worked as a Boston Globe freelancer, business reporter at the Boston Business Journal and real estate reporter at Banker & Tradesman after toiling at weekly newspapers.

Image: Protocol

We launched Protocol in February 2020 to cover the evolving power center of tech. It is with deep sadness that just under three years later, we are winding down the publication.

As of today, we will not publish any more stories. All of our newsletters, apart from our flagship, Source Code, will no longer be sent. Source Code will be published and sent for the next few weeks, but it will also close down in December.

Keep ReadingShow less
Bennett Richardson

Bennett Richardson ( @bennettrich) is the president of Protocol. Prior to joining Protocol in 2019, Bennett was executive director of global strategic partnerships at POLITICO, where he led strategic growth efforts including POLITICO's European expansion in Brussels and POLITICO's creative agency POLITICO Focus during his six years with the company. Prior to POLITICO, Bennett was co-founder and CMO of Hinge, the mobile dating company recently acquired by Match Group. Bennett began his career in digital and social brand marketing working with major brands across tech, energy, and health care at leading marketing and communications agencies including Edelman and GMMB. Bennett is originally from Portland, Maine, and received his bachelor's degree from Colgate University.

Enterprise

Why large enterprises struggle to find suitable platforms for MLops

As companies expand their use of AI beyond running just a few machine learning models, and as larger enterprises go from deploying hundreds of models to thousands and even millions of models, ML practitioners say that they have yet to find what they need from prepackaged MLops systems.

As companies expand their use of AI beyond running just a few machine learning models, ML practitioners say that they have yet to find what they need from prepackaged MLops systems.

Photo: artpartner-images via Getty Images

On any given day, Lily AI runs hundreds of machine learning models using computer vision and natural language processing that are customized for its retail and ecommerce clients to make website product recommendations, forecast demand, and plan merchandising. But this spring when the company was in the market for a machine learning operations platform to manage its expanding model roster, it wasn’t easy to find a suitable off-the-shelf system that could handle such a large number of models in deployment while also meeting other criteria.

Some MLops platforms are not well-suited for maintaining even more than 10 machine learning models when it comes to keeping track of data, navigating their user interfaces, or reporting capabilities, Matthew Nokleby, machine learning manager for Lily AI’s product intelligence team, told Protocol earlier this year. “The duct tape starts to show,” he said.

Keep ReadingShow less
Kate Kaye

Kate Kaye is an award-winning multimedia reporter digging deep and telling print, digital and audio stories. She covers AI and data for Protocol. Her reporting on AI and tech ethics issues has been published in OneZero, Fast Company, MIT Technology Review, CityLab, Ad Age and Digiday and heard on NPR. Kate is the creator of RedTailMedia.org and is the author of "Campaign '08: A Turning Point for Digital Media," a book about how the 2008 presidential campaigns used digital media and data.

Latest Stories
Bulletins