We Like Hiring Entrepreneurs (and letting them be…)

We hire really, really great people.  Smart, funny, visionary, all of that.  From the executive level to the front desk to our newest fresh grad hire, they’re all likely to start their own companies - fact is, at least 3 of our people have left in the past year to do just that (among them, Viximo and Bizo).  We’re still close to all of them, and work closely with at least one of their new ventures.

A lot of places would hate that.  Losing a star perfomer can be a drag, but the fact is that these types are the employees who do amazing work no matter what they’re doing, create tremendous energy and excitement, and are generally just kinda awesome to be around.  We’ve bought into that idea, and actually get excited during the recruiting process when we find out that somebody’s chock-full-of-ideas.

I know, I know - “every company claims that, and nobody means it.”  Oh, ye of little faith.  Forbes recently published a profile of our own Sam Tharp, who’s got his own side-business (Otrib).  The full article’s here.  Meantime, why don’t I serve you up a slice of it - a quote from our President, Bryan Burdick:

At ZoomInfo, Otrib founder Tharp told his boss, Bryan Burdick, about his on-line funeral planning venture when he was interviewing in 2007. “Sam was very up front about it and obviously very passionate,” says Burdick. He adds that over the past two years at least three ZoomInfo staffers have left to start their own companies. “It’s important to make sure that everyone’s objectives are clear, and to say ‘This is what success means for you here,’” says Burdick. “As long as they meet those goals, I don’t care what they’re doing in their off hours.”

Niche Job Boards - I Love ‘em

Eric Shannon, founder of LatPro, Inc, is a good guy.  And, a pretty smart one - he thought up the idea that job boards were going to need to get specific way before a lot of us did, and created one that appeals to the Latino market.  He’s just put out a list of niche job boards that you might find useful.  Good stuff

ZIPI!!! (or, ultra-cool, free Outlook plug-in)

Shameless use of my blog, but also alrtuistic.  We’ve (we being the collective mad genius/ oddballness/ general awesomeness that is ZoomInfo) just launched Zipi.  It’s cool - it’s really cool, actually.  The idea was to provide quick and easy access to our database of professionals (which means 15 million additional email contacts - just a little tick up from your contact list).  Doesn’t take over your personal address book, just provides you a way to search our database from your send line, or through a search bar in your in-box.

So easy, even this guy could use it…

Want to expand your contact list exponentially?  How about having access to millions of professionals, many of them decision makers (ie, hiring managers)?  Annnnd… want it to be easy, intuitive, and free?  Too bad, that’ll cost - wait, no, it actually is free.  And easy.  Did I mention free?  So: if you use Outlook, get Zipi.  All it does is give you more access.  Access to people you can work with and for, sell and market to, and generally chat up.

Here’s the link to the beta - we’ll have a more polished one up later today, but I didn’t want to sit on this: http://www.zoominfo.com/About/signup/signup_zipi.aspx?elq=A3CAFCF26B21401CA3CCC28E08EBDFA3

I Got Distracted by a Shiny Object

CareerBuilder has a fun list of (apparently) real reasons people have given for coming in late to work - my favorite is #9 (”hey, gimme that Glock back - I’ve got a board meeting this morning, and I’m gonna need it!”)

ZoomInfo Spins Off Bizo (yup - we made another company!)

ZoomInfo Bizographic Advertising Unit Forms New Company 

Bizo, Inc. Will Deliver First Online Ad Network Targeting Business People

Waltham, Mass. - May 20, 2008 - ZoomInfo^TM, the premiere provider of business information, has spun off its bizographic advertising business unit into a new company, Bizo, Inc., based in San Francisco. Former ZoomInfo GM and SVP Russell Glass will lead Bizo as its CEO. The Bizo spinoff is wholly funded by ZoomInfo. As a result, existing ZoomInfo investors, including Venrock, Flagship and Vulcan, are significant shareholders in the new company.

“ZoomInfo’s profitability gave us the freedom to experiment with our technology in new and creative ways,” said Jonathan Stern, CEO, chief scientist and founder of ZoomInfo, and cofounder of Bizo. “We quickly realized that our business information index allowed marketers to deliver targeted online ads at a level never before seen. Establishing Bizo as its own company allows Russell and his team to focus on building the largest targeted B2B advertising platform in the world to penetrate the multi-billion dollar online advertising market.”

In October 2007, ZoomInfo first unveiled plans to launch the industry’s first bizographic advertising platform - an advertising targeting platform based on people’s “business demographics.” Since then, Bizo has been operating in stealth mode, building its technology platform and signing partnership agreements with multiple advertisers and publishers. 

“As a marketer myself, I know that B2B marketers don’t have many options for effective advertising online today,” said Glass. “Giving them the ability to reach precise business audiences across the web brings an exciting new toolkit to the B2B marketing space.” 

“ZoomInfo had a fantastic 2007, profitably exceeding $16 million in sales,” said Bryan Burdick, ZoomInfo’s president. “Our plan for 2008 is to continue our growth and maximize opportunities in new markets. While B2B advertising is complimentary to ZoomInfo’s business, the market has been starved for the ability to target business professionals online. Creating a new business in order to meet that need was an ideal solution for us. ZoomInfo will continue to focus on building the most accurate and up-to-date database of business information, and will provide a competitive advantage for Bizo’s success.”

Bizo will continue to leverage ZoomInfo’s understanding of business people and companies to allow marketers to target business users based on thousands of segmenting possibilities, including combinations of title, company, industry, functional area, company size, education, location, etc. The company expects to publicly launch its bizographic advertising platform later in 2008 with over 20 million targetable business users in its network.

About ZoomInfo

ZoomInfo is a business information search engine used to quickly find information about industries, companies, people, products and services. ZoomInfo is used by sales and marketing professionals to identify business opportunities, by recruiters to locate talent, and by anyone conducting in-depth research about products, services and businesses. ZoomInfo’s semantic search engine continually crawls the Business Web - the millions of company Websites, news feeds and other online sources - to identify company and people information which is then organized into fresh, comprehensive and objective profiles. ZoomInfo currently has profiles on nearly 40 million people and over 4 million companies, and its search engine adds more than 20,000 new profiles every day.

According to Nielson/NetRatings, in April 2007 ZoomInfo was the fastest growing network in the country, with 276% annual growth. More than 6 million people search http://www.zoominfo.com/ every month. In addition, nearly 3,000 customers, including Yahoo!, Microsoft, Oracle, PepsiCo and 20% of the Fortune 500, use ZoomInfo’s patented search tools. ZoomInfo is privately held and based in Waltham, Massachusetts.