SalesTech Startup Zinnia Taps Local Industry Pro For New CTO Role

Marco Dell’Olio wasn’t necessarily looking for a new job. The software engineer, who worked at Salesloft and Calendly before co-founding Atlanta-based startup OrderNerd, was just about to start his paternity leave and had a senior-level position at a Series B SaaS company.

But Salesloft co-founder Rob Forman asked if he’d be open to chatting with another Southeast entrepreneur, Lauren Goodell, to give pointers around hiring a new Chief Technology Officer and co-founder for her startup Zinnia. The startup had worked through several pivots since launching out of the Atlanta Ventures Studio. After starting with a focus on streamlining company offsites, the team was now focusing on building AI-powered tools to help sales teams do their daily jobs better. Goodell was looking for guidance on what type of tech leader was necessary for Zinnia’s next chapter.

Dell’Olio and Goodell spoke one Sunday afternoon in March. The call was supposed to be fifteen minutes. It ended up being an hour long conversation.

By the end, Dell’Olio was ready to throw his hat into the ring for the position.

“I liked [Goodell’s] energy,” Dell’Olio told Hypepotamus. “Starting a company was always in the back of my mind. But I always struggled with figuring out the right partner or co-founder. Someone that has the right motivation, the right energy. The right chemistry.”

The feeling was mutual. Goodell saw quickly that Dell’Olio had the right complementary skills that could help the startup scale. So he rearranged some things around his paternity leave and officially joined as Zinnia’s new CTO and co-founder this spring.

Marco Dell'Olio
Marco Dell’Olio – From LinkedIn

 

Zinnia’s Growth Forward

Dell’Olio has worked across the SalesTech space, making him a natural fit to take on Zinnia’s new CTO role. He worked for two and a half years at Salesloft, Atlanta’s big success story in the industry, and scaled restaurant ordering startup OrderNerd to a successful acquisition by Atlanta-based Popmenu in late 2021.

Zinnia is designed specifically for sales professionals working through complex and long sales cycles. The AI-powered meeting prep tool helps users have better conversations and interactions with current and potential customers. This “personalization at scale” helps sales teams tailor pitches to individual clients while getting real-time analytics and feedback on how a call went.

The focus is on meeting sales professionals where they are at, Goodell added.

“Right now, we have a great first product that people love and are paying for. But we want to make it easier and quicker for sales reps to be able to navigate the information, to be able to show up prepared [to meetings], and have the right information at the right time,” Goodell added.

On top of bringing on a new CTO, Zinnia has been busy building out its latest offering, automating tailored opportunity-based sales strategies. Users get curated research into a company so that they best prepare for an upcoming call. The platform pulls out what initiatives and outreach tactics will resonate most in each sales pitch, saving sales teams time before each important conversation.