Ep. 218: Alex (@aebridgeman) is joined by Henry Schuck (@HenryLSchuck).

My guest today is Henry Schuck, founder and CEO at ZoomInfo, one of the most successful data businesses in recent times with a market cap today around $12B. I’ve been looking forward to this podcast for a long time because Henry has proven to be an effective founder, acquirer, and public CEO capital allocator, which is a rare combination of skills to find in a single CEO. He’s thought very deeply about building high performing organizations, sales functions, and how his own role needs to evolve as the company grows.

We talk through lessons learned building vs acquiring capabilities, M&A and integration lessons learned, fixing problems with a process vs culture approach, and how data businesses will succeed in the future

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Links:ZoominfoHenry on X

Topics:(00:00:00) - Intro(00:03:49) - What would you focus on if you were running Boeing?(00:07:26) - How have you seen other CEOs solve culture vs. process problems?(00:12:47) - How do you approach hiring?(00:20:28) - How can you incentivize employees to buy into company values?(00:23:11) - What have you learned working with investors and other CEOs to be a great founder and M&A executive?(00:26:52) - How do you incorporate new tools or partners into Zoominfo?(00:33:53) - What have you learned about integrating acquired companies?(00:36:24) - How do you get a conviction when doing due diligence on a potential acquisition?(00:38:49) - What skills around M&A are you looking to improve?(00:41:19) - How will data companies in the future succeed?