During his decade at Google, Tim Ritters worked at the intersection of product and finance, helping to launch financial systems in collaboration with engineering, marketing, and product teams. The role gave him early exposure to cross-functional work and large-scale data environments. “Day one, you’re working cross-functionally,” Ritters tells us. He adds that this mindset became foundational to his approach going forward.
When Ritters joined Gong in 2019, he says the company had already begun challenging traditional approaches to customer data. “We asked a really interesting question… what could we do if we gathered the 99% of information about your customer that was not in a traditional CRM?” Ritters explains. According to him, that original question continues to shape Gong’s mission today.
Ritters tells us that Gong’s platform has since scaled to analyze more than 3.5 billion customer interactions. He says the company now serves approximately 4,700 businesses globally, including organizations such as Google, LinkedIn, Canva, and Anthropic. The platform, Ritters notes, helps customers extract insights from a broader set of data sources—including conversations, emails, and documents—that may not be captured in traditional CRM systems.
Ritters believes that AI adoption has made Gong’s value proposition more tangible to prospective buyers. “When [they] peel back the onion… they start seeing some of the incredible sort of results,” he says. According to Ritters, some customers have reported “halving of deal cycle times” using the platform.
All of Gong’s growth to date has been organic, Ritters tells us, and he views the company’s trajectory as part of a broader evolution in how organizations approach customer intelligence. “The sweet spot we’re in right now,” he says, “is helping companies make smart business decisions.”
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CFOTL: Tell us about Gong. You joined back in 2019—what is the company all about?
Ritters: First off, for those who may not know, Gong is the leader in revenue AI technology. The company started about 10 years ago with a simple but powerful question: What could we do if we captured the 99% of customer information that never makes it into a traditional CRM?
Think about it—most of us have used a CRM at some point. You might enter a couple of sentences here and there, but what about all the conversations, all the documents, all the email traffic? That’s where Gong comes in.
Fast forward to today: we’ve analyzed more than three and a half billion customer interactions. We serve around 4,700 customers globally, including some of the most analytically sophisticated companies in the world—names like Google, Anthropic, LinkedIn, and Canva. We’re helping these businesses make smarter decisions by leveraging vast amounts of customer interaction data.
CFOTL: Gong recently surpassed the $300 million revenue run rate. What’s driving that level of growth—and is it all organic?
Ritters: Yes, Jack—it’s all organic growth. We really haven’t done any acquisitions to date. It comes down to a few core drivers. First and foremost, our customers. The technology resonates. I mentioned my early days at Siebel Systems—that was the first generation of CRMs. Salesforce, HubSpot—they represent the next wave. But now we’re entering a new era.
We’re collecting a much broader set of data and combining it with AI technologies. It’s changing the game in how businesses understand and engage with their customers.
AI may be a buzzword today, but when savvy, detail-oriented customers dig into our platform, they start to see real, measurable impact—things like halving deal cycle times. That kind of performance is what puts us in such a strong position right now.
Gong | www.gong.io | San Francisco, CA