Apollo is a leading go-to-market solution for revenue teams, trusted by over 500,000 companies and millions of users globally, from rapidly growing startups to some of the world’s largest enterprises. Apollo provides sales and marketing teams with easier access to verified contact data for over 275 million B2B contacts and tools to engage and convert these contacts in one unified platform. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Apollo chief revenue officer Leandra Fishman to learn more about the company.
Leandra Fishman’s Background
Fishman’s first official corporate job in Silicon Valley was in a sales office. Fishman said:
“Back then, I didn’t know a career in sales was a possibility, and I started my very first role as a customer service rep. What I learned quickly is that when you build relationships and solve problems for customers, it has a positive impact on revenue.”
“Over the course of my career, I’ve had the awesome experience of being at every rung of the sales ladder. Going from being an inside sales rep to a manager, to a director, and then an executive, I developed an appreciation for the opportunities and challenges that each of those roles faces. Building and scaling sales teams is my heart and passion. I feel fortunate I get to do all of those things as CRO at Apollo.”
“My typical day looks like a lot of back-to-back meetings. In my first 100 days, I have been deeply focusing on the Sales, Support, and Customer Success functions – leading a team of 120+ people.”
“I strive to structure my weeks so I’m balancing out individual one on ones, team meetings, customer conversations, and deal strategies, as well as spending time cross-functionally with my colleagues and working with the Apollo executive leadership team on key company strategies and initiatives.”
“These initiatives range from product direction feedback to marketing messaging and positioning to board updates. It’s important to work both ‘on the business’ and ‘in the business,’ always finding the right balance in your calendar to spend time with reps and frontline managers for coaching and development.”
“Being a CRO means a lot of zooming out to view high-level programs while simultaneously double-clicking in to understand objectives and obstacles at each stage of the customer journey. I also work with members of the team to ensure we are driving a strong revenue cadence to hit our targets.”
Core Products
What are Apollo’s core products and features? Fishman explained:
“The way I see it, the current sales tech stack is like a car where GTM teams need to purchase the engine, the tires, the steering wheel, the ignition — all as separate parts. Then, they need to figure out how to make all the pieces work together. It’s expensive, inefficient, and time-consuming.”
“Apollo isn’t like that. We prefer to sell you the whole car so your GTM team is up and running within minutes. We consolidate the entire sales tech stack, offering a unified solution that natively unifies data, intelligence, engagement, and AI workflows. Our platform makes sales prospecting more intelligent, automated, and accessible for sales and marketing teams.”
“The team has built the most simple, powerful, and intelligent GTM platform — from data to engagement to deal execution to forecasting — consolidating the entire sales tech stack. I guess you could say I am Apollo’s ideal buyer since it solves a huge problem in the industry for sales teams like mine.”
“How has the company’s technology evolved since launching? We recently announced Apollo 3.0, the most streamlined go-to-market solution on the market today. This highly anticipated product suite comes packed with innovative new features that go far beyond prospecting and engagement to help revenue teams win more deals, improve results, and leverage AI-driven intelligence to streamline their go-to-market — unlocking as much as 40% more of their total addressable market (TAM).”
“Apollo with AI is like having a co-pilot who streamlines pipeline building processes and boosts productivity and results — generating thousands of sales qualified opportunities (SQOs) a month. We are now optimizing Apollo for SMB and mid-market customers.”
Significant Milestones
What have been some of the company’s most significant milestones? Fishman cited:
“– 2015 – Company is founded as ZenProspect
– 2016 – Graduate from Y Combinator Winter 2016, first product released, 110 paid users
– 2018 – $7 million Series A funding, 500 paid users, rebrand to Apollo.io
– 2018 – Free plan released
– 2019 – Freemium plan released
– 2020 – Unlimited data plans released
– March 2021 – 5K paid users including Autodesk, SEMRush, GoDaddy, Peloton, ADP, and Accenture
– October 2021 – 10K paid users
– November 2021 – $32M Series B funding, 9K paid users
– March 2022 – $110M Series C funding, 15K paid users
– August 2023 – $100M Series D funding, 40K paid users, company valued at $1.6 billion with 9x ARR growth since 2021
– November 2023 – Apollo 3.0 with AI-powered assistance launches.”
Customer Success Stories
After asking Fishman about customer success stories, she highlighted:
“1.) Built In is reinventing talent acquisition by helping companies tell their stories and attract top-tier talent with carefully crafted content. They needed a way to find, enrich, and prioritize leads at scale. Using Apollo, Built In enriched and scored their massive database of over 100K accounts to drastically boost their win rate by 10%+ and increase their annual contract value by 10%+. ‘We have a large number of accounts in our Salesforce instance, and Apollo started enriching it on a daily basis. Apollo enriches everything we have: contacts, leads, accounts…And we don’t really have to touch it, it just works.’ — Mark Turner, VP of Revenue Operations.”
“2.) Census is the No. 1 Data Activation platform, powered by Reverse ETL, helping teams unlock data from their products and incorporate that data into their sales and marketing motions. They made the switch from ZoomInfo to Apollo and saw increased data quality with 50% more email addresses and 400% more phone numbers at 64% cost savings. ‘We were paying Outreach $18,000. ZoomInfo must have been another $15,000. When we did the migration, Apollo was $12,000. We paid less for one tool than two tools together! We basically went from paying $35,000 for two tools to $12,000 for one. We cut our costs in half.’ — Sylvain Giuliani, Head of Growth & Operations, Census.
3.) Customer.io is a messaging automation platform that helps companies like Notion, Shutterstock, and IMAX craft and send data-driven emails, push notifications, in-app messages, and SMS. They used Apollo to improve their outbound motion, increase their sales-qualified leads by 70%, and grow their sales team by 240%, witnessing 50% YoY growth. ‘Apollo is two platforms in one in a way that could save us clicks, save us time, and allow us to create sequences for the first time. With an end-to-end platform that allowed reps to supplement their contacts with verified data and engage best-fit prospects all in one place, Customer.io increased our sales qualified leads by 70% and took our team of 12 salespeople up to 29 salespeople.’ — Kaleb Batman, Sales Development Manager at Customer.io”
Funding/Revenue
After asking Fishman about the company’s funding and revenue information, she revealed:
“Markets/investments are down, but Apollo is one of the fastest-growing companies in SaaS. We recently secured a $100 million Series D, led by Bain Capital Ventures (BCV), with participation from existing investors Nexus Venture Partners, Tribe Capital, and Sequoia Capital. Following our $110 million Series C in March 2022, this investment brings our total funding to approximately $250 million and values the company at $1.6 billion, making us the first sales-tech unicorn minted in 2023.”
“Apollo’s unique approach to product-led growth — where 60% of funds are invested into product development — has resulted in a rapid increase in users and revenue. The company has grown revenue 9x over the last two years and currently serves over three million GTM professionals at over 500,000 companies from startups to global enterprises, including Qualtrics, Customer.io, and Census.”
Total Addressable Market
What total addressable market (TAM) size is Apollo pursuing? Fishman assessed:
“Apollo serves SMB and mid-market customers seeking a robust GTM solution that consolidates the entire sales tech stack, helping RevOps teams generate pipeline, win deals, and improve team performance. Apollo is the No. 1 ranked best sales intelligence software for SMBs on G2, empowering sellers to find, prioritize, and convert prospects who are actively looking to buy. We estimate this TAM to be about $30 billion.”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates Apollo from its competition? Fishman affirmed:
“The traditional go-to-market tech stack includes disparate tools that are complex to set up, difficult to integrate, cost-prohibitive to most businesses, and most importantly, offer no intelligent end-to-end GTM guidance. By combining sales intelligence and execution workflows with artificial intelligence (AI) and Apollo’s proprietary B2B buyer database, Apollo consolidates the sales tech stack, empowering sales and marketing teams to operationalize their go-to-market strategy, generate pipeline, win deals, and improve team performance with AI-driven GTM guidance — all in one place.”
Future Company Goals
What are some of the company’s future company goals? Fishman pointed out:
“We are looking to hire top talent to join our rapidly growing team, which recently added Dzmitry Markovich as SVP of Engineering from Dapper Labs and Dropbox. Having more than doubled headcount in 2023, we plan to grow to 1,000 team members by 2025 across engineering, marketing, design, product, legal, and people operations — an increase of 122 percent.”
Additional Thoughts
Any other topics to discuss? Fishman concluded:
“Sales Intelligence is not just a trendy term. It’s the catalyst for boosting revenue generation. We are seeing it happen today. Five years from now, AI will be the foundation of entire businesses. Thinking about it now is absolutely essential for any company that wants to remain competitive.”
“The magic of sales intelligence goes beyond just gathering data. It’s about leveraging refined, relevant, and actionable insights to understand your customer’s pain points, power up your prospecting, and ultimately close deals faster. In other words, it’s about making data work for you. You cannot have an AI strategy without a data strategy.”
“How does this look in action? Imagine knowing precisely when a lead visits your site, which pages they visited, and what content they downloaded. Then, couple this data with intent signals, like when they change jobs and how often they’re using your (freemium) product. This information can give you a significant edge in understanding their buying journey and tailoring your message accordingly — so you’re reaching out to the right person, at the right time, with the right message.”
“In the era of B2B SaaS, where competition is stiff, and customer demands are high, sales intelligence provides a competitive advantage that differentiates the ordinary from the extraordinary. Embracing it will be the strategy that propels companies to unprecedented heights while others are left behind.”
