An article by Gal Oron, CEO of Zoomin
Since we first founded Zoomin, we’ve been guided by the belief that products are only as good as people’s ability to use them. People deserve to be able to use products at work as intuitively as they use their favorite products at home.
Today, I’m thrilled to announce that Zoomin has raised $21 million from Bessemer Venture Partners, Salesforce Ventures and Viola Growth, some of the most visionary investors in the world. This investment is a vote of trust in our vision.
If you had told me five years ago I’d lead a company that provides intelligent orchestration of technical content, the first words out of my mouth would probably be, “What’s technical content?”
I soon discovered that this overlooked content is gold. This asset that every company has -- including user guides, knowledge articles, and community discussions -- can make up 70% of an enterprise’s overall web traffic, essentially making product content the face of a company. But the user experience of accessing it is just not good enough. Today’s customers expect more. Their standard of experience is buying on Amazon and watching movies on Netflix. That’s the bar. Product knowledge should be no different.
For me, that’s the most exciting part about Zoomin: we found a critical gap in the customer experience that can be solved with a hidden, strategic asset every enterprise has. Zoomin is turning this gold mine of information into the driving force behind great product experiences – by providing intuitive access to personalized answers, wherever customers need them.
Our growth
Since 2016, Zoomin has grown at an extraordinary rate. We now have offices in Tel Aviv, New York and London, with employees also operating across the United States. Prestigious enterprise clients including Dell, McAfee and Avaya relied on us to deliver over 26 million answers in the last six months alone, with ARR growing over 5x since 2018. And during the COVID-19 crisis we were fortunate not only to survive this period, but also thrive.
Now that companies have been forced to accelerate their digital transformation, the seamless self-service experience that Zoomin offers has become mission-critical. Customers need to easily find answers on their own so they can better understand the product they are using. At the same time, enterprises need actionable data insights into how customers are using content to optimize all aspects of their operations – from marketing and sales, to onboarding, to customer engagement and issue resolution.
Creating authentic solutions for real needs
We’ve seen the following story play out many times before: in a race for funding and customers, overly hyped products have crashed and burned. Vendors over-promised their ability to eliminate pain points and massively under-delivered.
When I co-founded Zoomin along with Joe Gelb and Hannan Saltzman, what appealed to us most about the opportunity was that we would be providing an authentic product that fills a noticeable and impactful gap in the customer experience. No hype, no buzzwords, no inventing pains that don’t exist. Just a group of dedicated people working hard to create smart solutions that enable users to work better.
My philosophy at Zoomin has always been about getting the fundamentals right, and like all fundamentals, ours is simple: ensuring users know how to use your products.
Taking customer obsession from a buzzword to a daily reality
Customer obsession is not a buzzword at Zoomin – it’s in the DNA that guides every decision. Our whole reason for being is to ease and simplify the experience of our enterprise customers’ end users. It’s humbling to think of the many millions of users across the globe who rely on us to deliver an effortless experience that allows them to get back to doing what matters - using the products they need. These users we will never meet are unknowingly the driving force behind every decision we make and the fuel that inspires us to constantly improve. The weight of this responsibility gives us laser focus in helping some of the world’s greatest enterprises, from growth companies to Fortune 500 companies, deliver on their promise of exceptional customer self-service.
Our customers aren’t just customers -- they’re our partners. I truly believe that they know better than we do where we should take our product -- and it’s our job to listen to them. Over the years, we made sure their unique insights and feedback were continuously added to our roadmap. This enabled us to create the robust, forward-thinking solutions we have today. And their love of our products allowed us to grow our customer base through word of mouth alone for many years.
Humility and learning as a driving force
We recognized very early on that no matter how great our products are, successful execution depends upon every single team member. We worked closely to identify the characteristics we needed in our team, prioritizing traits such as intelligence, passion, integrity and work ethic. We encouraged a culture of learning and humility. Our starting point for everything is: “We don’t know enough. Let’s learn.”
I think this creates a space for employees to focus on collaborative learning and continual improvement, rather than hiding any perceived knowledge gaps. This also empowers even junior team members to make decisions and bring new ideas to the table, while ensuring they are guided by experienced hands.
So, while I’m the name on this blog post, the real driving force is the most tenacious, creative and intelligent team I have ever worked with. I am blown away by them every day, and thankful for how much I have learned from each team member – from new recruits who have only been with us a few months, to “old-timers” who’ve been with us since the start.
It’s been fascinating to see how things as intangible as culture and values naturally draw like-minded people together. Our investors have an incredible track record of investing in some of the world’s most successful companies. And yet the partners we work with are humble, down-to-earth and authentic individuals. We simply wouldn’t be where we are today without the knowledge and support of our partners at Bessemer Venture Partners, Salesforce Ventures and Viola Growth. We are thrilled to partner with these investors who have transformed the world of technology as we know it.
Looking to the future
The future looks incredibly bright for Zoomin and I couldn’t be prouder to be part of the journey. We are always discovering more about how a great product content experience is directly impacting the key business KPIs of our customers across many teams. Avoidable support tickets are being reduced by up to 40%. Net Promoter Scores? They’re up 17%. Content usage? Our customers have seen it soar 320%.
We’re excited to take things to the next level. Even in this turbulent year, we’re on track to grow our workforce by nearly 100%, with more growth planned for 2021, as we help even more businesses deepen the value of their products.
With our incredible customers, investors and team, the best is yet to come.
Interested in learning about how we can help you transform your technical product content experience? Drop us a line at info@zoominsoftware.com.
Want to join our world-class team? Check out our open positions.
