Jim Benton, the high profile Silicon Valley executive and earlier founder of ClearSlide, is joining Apollo.io as CEO. Apollo.io announced the news on Wednesday.
The addition of Benton comes after Apollo.io received its SOC 2 accreditation and ISO 27001 certification, an information security standards that requires an independent review from an auditor.
Benton brings experience as an early employee at Evite.com, to leading partnerships at Ticketmaster, and later growing ClearSlide from a two-person team to an organization with several hundred employees.
Apollo.io is an intelligent data-first engagement platform that supports sales and marketing teams. Its platform combines a database of 200 million prospects with email and phone engagement workflows and AI insights. Apollo.io also integrates with CRMs and email clients.
“We are thrilled that Jim is joining Apollo as its next CEO,” said Abhishek Sharma of Nexus Venture Partners.
“He has vast experience in building and scaling teams, as well as a keen firsthand understanding of the pain points of sales professionals.”
The startup was founded Tim Zheng, Roy Chung and Ray Li and has raised $9M in venture capital funding by Nexus Venture Partners and Y Combinator.
