Tim Zheng is an American entrepreneur who co-founded Apollo.io, the San Francisco sales technology company, and led it as chief executive through its growth into a widely used go-to-market platform. He started the company in 2015, originally as ZenProspect, and built it into a business that pairs a large contact database with tools for prospecting and outreach.
Zheng is most closely associated with Apollo.io's data-driven approach to sales, the idea that representatives should spend less time hunting for contact information and more time talking to qualified buyers. Under his leadership the company joined the Y Combinator accelerator, raised venture capital from well-known investors, and grew its customer base into the hundreds of thousands of companies. His work and the company he built are described on its site at apollo.io.
Who Tim Zheng is
Tim Zheng was born in San Francisco and grew up around technology, an early exposure that shaped his interest in software and data. He is based in the San Francisco area, where Apollo.io is headquartered, and he is known within the sales technology industry as the founder who pushed the company from a single prospecting tool toward a broader platform.
His public profile has grown alongside Apollo.io itself. He has spoken at industry events and in interviews about the future of go-to-market software and the role of artificial intelligence in sales, framing the company's mission as making capabilities that were once reserved for large enterprises available to companies of any size.
Background and education
Zheng studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he focused on mathematics. Before founding Apollo.io he held internships at financial and consulting firms and worked on earlier software projects, experiences that exposed him to both quantitative work and the practical problems of building and scaling products.
One of his earlier efforts was an education-focused startup, and that work gave him firsthand experience with the difficulty of finding and reaching the right people, a frustration that later informed the problem Apollo.io set out to solve. That pattern, building a tool to fix a problem he had run into himself, runs through the company's origin story.
Founding Apollo.io and his role
In 2015, Zheng co-founded the company that became Apollo.io alongside Ray Li and Roy Chung, operating at first under the name ZenProspect. He recruited his co-founders to handle engineering and operations while he focused on the overall direction of the business, and the team was accepted into Y Combinator's Winter 2016 batch. The company later rebranded as Apollo.io as its ambitions widened from prospecting to a full go-to-market platform.
As chief executive, Zheng oversaw the company's product expansion and its fundraising, including the 100 million dollar Series D round led by Bain Capital Ventures in August 2023 that valued Apollo.io at roughly 1.6 billion dollars. In February 2026 the company announced that Matt Curl, its chief operating officer, would become chief executive, with Zheng moving into the role of chairman of the board while remaining the company's founder. More about the business is in our profile of Apollo.io.
Focus and outlook
Zheng's central focus has been the combination of data and software in sales, the belief that accurate information about buyers, delivered inside the tools where representatives already work, changes how teams sell. That conviction guided Apollo.io's decision to build a database and an engagement platform together rather than picking one or the other.
More recently he has emphasized artificial intelligence as the next layer on that foundation, with features that draft messages and suggest next steps drawing on the company's data. For readers tracking how AI is reshaping business software, Apollo.io appears alongside other platforms in our guide to the best AI tools for business.
Frequently asked questions
Who is Tim Zheng?
Tim Zheng is an American entrepreneur who co-founded Apollo.io, the San Francisco sales technology company, and led it as chief executive through its growth into a widely used go-to-market platform.
What did Tim Zheng do before Apollo.io?
He studied mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, held internships at financial and consulting firms, and worked on earlier software projects, including an education-focused startup, before founding the company in 2015.
Is Tim Zheng still the CEO of Apollo.io?
Zheng led Apollo.io as chief executive from its founding. In February 2026 the company announced that Matt Curl would become chief executive, with Zheng moving into the role of chairman of the board while remaining the company's founder.
Who else co-founded Apollo.io?
Zheng co-founded the company, originally called ZenProspect, with Ray Li and Roy Chung in 2015. The team was accepted into Y Combinator's Winter 2016 batch.
Where is Tim Zheng based?
He is based in the San Francisco area, where Apollo.io is headquartered. He was born in San Francisco and studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.