Revenue Unicorn Club: ZoomInfo
ZoomInfo Joins Revenue Unicorn Club
Congratulations to ZoomInfo as it crosses $1 Billion in annual revenue and joins the software Revenue Unicorns!
Let's see what we can learn from ZoomInfo's journey...
Revenue Growth

ZoomInfo delivered robust revenue growth on its path to $1 Billion in revenue. The Company consistently generated growth above 50% with added scale and kept revenue growth above the Revenue Unicorn median during each revenue milestone.
Gross Margin

ZoomInfo built a business model with a leading gross margin profile, 12% or more above the Revenue Unicorn median across all revenue ranges. The only other Revenue Unicorns to display consistent 80%+ gross margins include Atlassian, Splunk, and Zscaler.
Sales & Marketing

ZoomInfo efficiently delivered its robust revenue growth. The company maintained its sales and marketing investments at levels significantly below the median Revenue Unicorns. Its investment in sales and marketing have increased on a relative basis as the Company scaled. Other Revenue Unicorns with consistently lower sales and marketing investment include Atlassian, Datadog, Dropbox, Twilio, Unity, and Veeva.
Research & Development

Similar to its investment in sales and marketing, ZoomInfo delivered its product with an efficient investment in research and development when compared to the median Revenue Unicorn. More capital has been allocated to research and development as the company scaled.
General & Administrative

ZoomInfo’s general and administrative expense started lower and grew in line with the median Revenue Unicorn.
Stock Based Compensation

ZoomInfo had a higher SBC expense as a percentage of revenue compared to the Revenue Unicorn median until crossing $500 Million in revenue. After $500 Million in revenue, ZoomInfo’s SBC expense was lower than the Revenue Unicorn median. When we consider SBC expense as a percentage of enterprise value, ZoomInfo sits at 0.4%, well below the Revenue Unicorn median of 1.4% in the $1 Billion+ revenue range.
Free Cash Flow

ZoomInfo’s leading gross margins and efficient operating expenses across line-items contributed to strong free cash flow generation on its path to $1 Billion in revenue. ZoomInfo generated double-digit free cash flow margins across every revenue range. Other Revenue Unicorns who delivered similar performance include Atlassian, Palo Alto Networks, Splunk, and Veeva.
Time to Reach $1 Billion in Revenue
ZoomInfo reached $1 Billion in revenue after 14.75 years. This is longer than the median time of 11.25 years it took other Revenue Unicorns to reach the $1 Billion mark. Other Revenue Unicorns that took a similar amount of time to achieve the $1 Billion revenue threshold include HubSpot (15.5 years), MongoDB (14.5 years), and Zscaler (14.5 years).
Other Revenue Unicorns founded around the same time as ZoomInfo (2007 founding) include MongoDB, Veeva, and Zscaler (all three founded in 2007). This set of companies took a median of 14.50 years to achieve $1 Billion in revenue (MongoDB at 14.50 years, Veeva at 11.75 years, and Zscaler at 14.50 years).
The Journey to $1 Billion in Revenue
For those of you that love data as much as we do, below is the full data set used for this analysis.
Again, congratulations to the ZoomInfo team! Stay tuned for the next Revenue Unicorn update.


Note: The complete list of Revenue Unicorns used in the comparison can be found in the presentation here.
About ZoomInfo
As per the Company’s materials, ZoomInfo is a global leader in modern go-to-market software, data, and intelligence for sales, marketing, operations, and recruiting teams. The Company was founded in 2007 by Henry Schuck. RevOS, ZoomInfo’s modern cloud-based operating system for revenue professionals, delivers comprehensive and high-quality intelligence and analytics to provide sales, marketing, operations, and recruiting professionals accurate information and insights on the organizations and professionals they target. This enables their customers to shorten sales cycles and increase win rates by empowering sellers, marketers, and recruiters to deliver the right message to the right person at the right time. ZoomInfo is able to deliver high-quality intelligence at scale by leveraging an artificial intelligence and machine learning powered engine that gathers data from millions of sources in real time and standardizes, matches to entities, verifies, cleans, and applies the processed data to companies and people at scale.
The Company reported $290 Million in third quarter revenue for the period ended September 30, 2022. Combined with results from the preceding quarters, this recent performance boosts ZoomInfo across the $1 Billion in annual revenue threshold as measured on a last twelve month basis to become the latest software Revenue Unicorn.
About the Revenue Unicorn Playbook
The Revenue Unicorn Playbook is an analytical guide that explores the growth of public software companies from $100 Million to $1 Billion in revenue. The goal of the Playbook is to offer founders and company leaders a framework to examine their growth and investments as they scale. You can find the original Revenue Unicorn article here and presentation here.