[SaaS & Israel Series] Mastering Product-Led Growth in SaaS With Yoni Tserruya

Yoni Tserruya is the Co-founder and CEO of Lusha, an AI-powered sales intelligence platform built for B2B teams. Under his leadership, Lusha has grown to serve over one million users and more than 15,000 customers worldwide, raising over $40 million in funding. With a background as an iOS developer, Yoni is passionate about product-led growth and building AI-driven tools that help sales teams automate outreach, personalize engagement, and have more effective, human conversations at scale.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [3:44] Yoni Tserruya explains how Lusha integrates with top SaaS platforms for smarter workflows
• [8:39] Why Yoni pivoted Lusha from recruiting to sales based on user behavior
• [11:25] How customer feature requests drive key product integrations
• [14:08] The shift from manual sales processes to RevOps-driven automation
• [17:22] Why hyper-personalized outreach improves cold email deliverability 
• [26:42] How Yoni scaled Lusha to 15,000 customers in four years
• [34:30] Why hiring hands-on builders outpaces building up big management
• [42:44] Automation tactics using N8N and AI for sales enablement

In this episode…

Modern sales success depends on timing, relevance, and insight — not just volume. Teams everywhere are searching for ways to identify real buying intent and reach prospects before competitors do. What does it take to build a system that turns raw data into meaningful, high-conversion conversations?

According to Yoni Tserruya, a seasoned SaaS founder and product-led growth advocate, the answer lies in listening closely to users and letting behavior guide strategy. He explains how shifting focus from assumptions to real usage patterns revealed a massive opportunity in sales intelligence, prompting a pivotal pivot that reshaped the company’s trajectory. By prioritizing accurate data, seamless integrations, and AI-driven automation, this approach enabled sales teams to move from generic outreach to signal-based engagement. 

In this episode of the Inspired Insider Podcast, Dr. Jeremy Weisz sits down with Yoni Tserruya, Co-founder and CEO of Lusha, to discuss building an AI-first sales intelligence platform through product-led growth. They explore pivoting based on user behavior, leveraging real-time data signals, and scaling a SaaS company with a freemium model. Yoni also shares insights on team building, automation, and the future of RevOps in an AI-driven world.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Yoni Tserruya on LinkedIn | X
• Lusha
• Monday.com
• Gemini
• ChatGPT
• N8N

Special mention(s):

• Roy Mann on LinkedIn
• Eran Zinman on LinkedIn

Related episodes:

• “[SaaS Series] Revolutionizing Online Forms and Productivity With Aytekin Tank of Jotform” on Inspired Insider Podcast
• “Automation Solutions with Wade Foster Founder of Zapier” on Inspired Insider Podcast
• “Pipedrive: Brain Surgery, Married, & Moved Company from Estonia to U.S. All at Once – with Urmas Purde [Inspiration]” on Inspired Insider Podcast
• “[SaaS & AI Series] Lessons in Leadership With HubSpot Co-founder Brian Halligan’s AI Clone” on Inspired Insider Podcast
• “[Top SaaS & Israel Business Series] From Handling Million Dollar Cameras to Reinventing Security With Joe Levy” on Inspired Insider Podcast
• “[Top Israel Leader Series] Engineering the Autonomous Revolution with Rabbi Mois Navon of Mobileye” on Inspired Insider Podcast

Quotable moments:

• “The real breakthrough comes when you start using the platform, or you connect your CRM, for example.”
• “The real breakthrough came when salespeople discovered the product, and they thought, ‘Oh great.”
• “If data is not good, they will leave very quickly, and it’s like you waste their time.”
• “The spray and pray approach, or the random approach, is just not effective.”
• “Today you want to have less people but more outcome.”

Action steps:

1. Listen to users and observe behavior: Engage with feedback and usage patterns to uncover real needs and new opportunities.
2. Prioritize data quality and simplicity: Deliver accurate, reliable information with an intuitive experience to build trust and retention.
3. Leverage integrations and automation: Connect systems and automate repetitive tasks to free teams for higher-value work.
4. Act on signals with real-time alerts: Use timely data like job changes or funding events to engage at the right moment.
5. Hire hands-on builders: Empower versatile, execution-focused team members to create solutions and scale efficiently.

Episode Transcript

Intro 00:15

You are listening to Inspired Insider with your host, Dr. Jeremy Weisz.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 00:22

Dr. Jeremy Weisz here Founder of InspiredInsider.com, where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders. Today is no different. I have Yoni Tserruya, you can check them out at Lusha.com. It’s get your sales streaming. And you know, Yoni, I’m going to formally introduce you and Lusha, you know, doing some really impressive things. Before I do, I want to mention some other podcast episodes people should check out. This is kind of this is part of the B2B SaaS Series and Israel Business Leader Series. So on the SaaS front, Yoni, I did an interview with the founder of Jotform. Jotform has grown into a global SaaS powerhouse. They have over 25 million users and it’s really a product-led growth. And we talked about product-led growth. Lusha is really product led growth. And they grew through a freemium model. Right. Letting people try it. And so did Lusha. 

So also Zapier I the co-founder of Zapier, Wade Foster on also product-led growth SaaS company. There’s freemium version talked about how he grew Zapier. Pipedrive another one one of the co-founders of Pipedrive. I think I had him on when they were like around 10,000 customers. They’ve grown quite a bit since then. And I had, you know, I know one of the interviews I watch of you, Yoni, you talked about some of the companies you liked, and one of them was HubSpot. So I, I had. A HubSpot Brian Halligan’s AI version on. I did not interview the actual Brian Halligan so people could check out my AI interview, my my interview with the AI version of Brian Halligan. And on the Israel business leader front, Mois Navon of Mobileye. He talks about one of the founding engineers. They grew. 

We were acquired by Intel for $15.3 billion, but it wasn’t always that way. He talked about sacrificing pay, you know, had to go back to the family, tell the kids and wife they’re pulling them out of extracurriculars because there was an up and down journey. So even though one of my favorite ones was also Joe Levy of AiLert, and they help us detect weapons using surveillance cameras in AI. So have you heard of that one? No. Okay. Guns and assault rifle detection. It’s AI software for security cameras to detect visible firearms in under two seconds and send real time alerts to first responders. It’s crazy. I mean, I wish the thing that happened in Bondi in Australia had a camera that could have detected that, right? It could have saved a lot of lives. So anyways, check out that many more on InspiredInsider.com. This episode is brought to you by Rise25. Well, first you know, what are some of your favorite Israel business leaders like running companies there? I’m curious.

Yoni Tserruya: 03:08

First of all, thanks for inviting me, Jeremy. Well, there are a few very great companies in Israel. I think that I admire First companies, Monday.com, and I think the best company in Israel in terms of SaaS. So I admire both founders, Roy and Eran. I think that’s one. And yeah, I think does.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 03:34

Gong use your I mean yeah like those things integrate with Lusha, right? I mean people want to pull the data into a Monday or a Gong. They can use Lusha to do that.

Yoni Tserruya: 03:44

Exactly. Yeah. We have partnerships with Monday. We are now about to get partnered with going soon as well. So I hope it will get will be done soon. But yeah, I think we have the intelligence of whatever happens in the B2B world. So we know all the trends and signals that happen in all the companies out there and the key decision makers in each company. So we by integrating into Lusha, we can, you know, push the intelligence into any platform and make it and increase the intelligence in that platform. Whatever platform you work with. So it’s like it’s become very intuitive for us and to do those partnerships and we always look for it.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 04:28

Yeah. And I’m going to formally introduce what Lusha does. This episode is brought to you by Rise25. Rise25 helps businesses connect to their dream relationships and partnerships. We do it in a few ways. One, we’re an easy button for a company to launch and run a podcast, and we do the strategy, accountability, and full execution and production. We’re also an easy button for a company’s corporate gifting, so we make gifting and staying top of mind for clients, partners, prospects. It could be to staff from a cultural perspective. You just we’re going to have to start using Lusha, but give us your addresses. All we need is addresses, and some people do it. You know, actually, you only for their prospects. And one company was like 400 gifts a month to just their prospects. 

Okay, I was trying to convince them. Send them to your actual clients and partners because they know you like you trust. You know, Jeremy, they already they already pay us. I’m like, okay, whatever. And so they we send their prospects, but we kind of call ourselves the magic elves that run in the background to help people build amazing relationships. You know, for me, the only over the past decade, the number one thing that I’ve done for my relationships is one profile, the, you know, the people and companies I most admire on the podcast and to send them sweet treats in the mail. So you could probably use Lusha to get all the data so you can actually do this stuff and contact them. So check it out. Rise25.com or email [email protected]. 

As I was saying, Yoni is the Co-founder and CEO of Lusha, and they’re an AI powered sales intelligence platform. It’s used by over a million professionals to turn verified data and real time signals into revenue. And since launching Lusha in 2016, it started off as a simple browser plugin. It’s actually for recruiting, but it was turned into a sales tool, and they built it into an industry’s trusted, verified data layer. And in four years they reached up to over 15,000 customers. And since then they’ve raised over $40 million, growing to 300 staff, as I mentioned, over a million users. And they’ve become known for start with truth before automation. So Yoni, thanks for joining me and tell us what Lusha is.

Yoni Tserruya: 06:42

Thank you. Yeah, I think you describe it. Great. So Lusha is a go to market intelligence platform. And we provide data, accurate data on all the companies and all the professionals that works in B2B companies, in businesses across the world so that every sales, marketing, customer success organization out there, when they want to focus on the right customers. Our platform helped them to to to filter out who they need to focus on what are the best customers they need to focus right now on on that exact timing and who are the people they need to connect with. And so I think the beauty of the platform is that it’s really simple. 

Anyone can get, you know, started and just search for their audience. But the real breakthrough comes when you start using the platform or you connect your CRM, for example, and then the system starts to learn you and understand what’s worse for you and recommend the right companies and prospects you should connect with, even if you didn’t know what to ask. So that’s like the real evolution and where AI comes to play that instead of doing the work manually, AI is here to connect all the data pockets that you have, including all the data in the world, and recommend you what you need to do. That’s like where we are heading and like what we are providing today.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 08:13

You know, we’re going to talk about some if you’re listening to the audio there, we’re looking through Lusha right now and we will talk about some use cases. But I want to talk about the evolution of the product itself. It started off as a Chrome plugin. Talk about what made you kind of pivot to a little bit different industry in some of the, you know, the features that you included, what made what caused the pivot?

Yoni Tserruya: 08:39

Yeah. So at the beginning, you know, we had access to data and technology. And so we tried to solve a very simple problem that anyone that wants to connect with it with any other business person in the world, we’ll be able to do it very easily so that the connection won’t be won’t be the blocker you can connect anyone. So we started by we identified that recruiters are kind of persona that they need. They have a use case.

They need to connect with a lot of, you know, professionals. And we built a very simple Chrome plugin that designed for recruiters. And that was the initial thought. But the real breakthrough came when salespeople discovered the product and they thought, oh great, that that can be great for sales as well. And of course, sales has bigger need. They need more data. They’re more salespeople out there. And and very quickly our focus became mainly for sales organization. And as a result, we started to adopt the roadmap to salespeople.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 09:45

I don’t want to jump over this because I think it’s a key point, but it sounds like You really were listening to your customers to see how they were using and what they were using it. What did you what were you doing early on to communicate with them, or were you just observing who was using it?

Yoni Tserruya: 10:04

I think it was both. You know, since because we are a plg product and it started for free, we always had a lot of data that we saw, you know, all the users statistically and what they did in the platform. So we could simply segment the recruiters, salespeople or any other persona and saw like the behavior. And we saw very clearly that salespeople are using more. They have different needs.The feature request is different, but it also was clear that for us that that’s a much better business model for us to grow. And then and then we, you know, we shift our resources for that direction as well. So part of it was identifying behaviors. But also, you know, we spoke with them either through support or salespeople. And we also got, you know, the sentiment of what they really need. And it happened pretty naturally, I think, at the beginning. It’s like, yeah.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 11:07

We’re talking about some of the feature requests and how that shaped the product, because I’m going to do is I want to pull up Lusha. And what were some critical requests that you were getting and that helped you kind of build it for salespeople?

Yoni Tserruya: 11:25

Yeah. So I think I think integrations was a key part of their requirements because if you’re.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 11:33

Like, oh, I use Pipedrive, can you help me pull it in there easier? And then you’re like, that’s going to take a lot of work. I don’t know if we should do that.

Yoni Tserruya: 11:40

Exactly. So there is a different platforms for recruiters and for salespeople. And so salespeople needs to connect with their CRM when they search on the platform. They need to know if it’s already existing in the CRM, like they have a few requirements and different platforms that they need to integrate with. Without the integration, without like connecting the dots, I think the platform becomes less valuable. So like their requirements were different. In addition, you know, salespeople had the need to have campaigns and reach out to a lot of people simultaneously, while recruiters, I think are more picky there. They want to connect with specific people they know they don’t do it with a blast approach. I think there are a lot of differences of what the persona needs. And yeah, we just, you know, we listen to them and we build what they are asking for, part of what they are asking for and part of part of it was what we were thinking is the right thing to do.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 12:45

Yeah. So it sounds like early on people wanted. A big thing was they wanted to connect it into whatever CRM they were using. So integrations, building integrations was huge. And, you know, it looks like Salesforce, HubSpot outreach. There’s Pipedrive, there’s Zoho, and then obviously connects with Zapier, which can connect with probably pretty much anything if it’s with Zapier as well. And so from the product side, you know, I was looking through the site and there’s I’m sure this came from feedback in, in things like that from customers. But there’s discovery leading to streaming automations and the connected systems was the integration part. Do you want to talk about it? I want to go through each of these columns because really, maybe the connected systems were huge from the integration side. Which one of these should we talk about next that you got some feedback on?

Yoni Tserruya: 13:43

Yeah, I think I think it’s really depends on who is using the platform. If if we talk about sellers, the ones that are actually engaging with customers, they need, you know, the full suite for salespeople, like they need both to search, they need to engage with them, send campaigns, they need to dial.

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