# Yoni Tserruya

> Yoni Tserruya is the software engineer and co-founder behind Lusha, a sales-intelligence business that began as a side project, grew for nearly five years without outside capital, and reached a $1.5 billion valuation after a $205 million Series B in 2021. Now based in Greater Boston, he leads Lusha's shift from static contact lookup toward live signals and AI-assisted prospecting while arguing that judgment, trust, and a few deliberate deviations from best practice still matter.

- **Role:** Co-founder and CEO at Lusha
- **Organizations:** Lusha, YT Apps, AT&T
- **Education:** BSc, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
- **Known for:** Co-founded Lusha and bootstrapped it for nearly five years before taking institutional funding., Led Lusha through a $40 million Series A and a $205 million Series B in 2021., Reached a reported $1.5 billion company valuation in November 2021.

## Career timeline

- **2011-2012** — Worked as an iOS developer at AT&T.
- **2012-2016** — Founded and ran YT Apps while developing mobile products.
- **2016** — Co-founded Lusha with Assaf Eisenstein after a side project revealed demand for easier access to business contact data.
- **2021-02** — Lusha raised a $40 million Series A after nearly five years of bootstrapped growth.
- **2021-11** — Lusha raised a $205 million Series B at a $1.5 billion valuation, bringing total funding to $245 million.
- **2025** — Promoted a shift from manual prospecting toward AI-curated, signal-driven sales workflows.
- **2026** — Led Lusha's repositioning around a live search layer and a company-specific deep-intelligence layer for AI-assisted go-to-market work.

## Achievements

- Co-founded Lusha and bootstrapped it for nearly five years before taking institutional funding.
- Led Lusha through a $40 million Series A and a $205 million Series B in 2021.
- Reached a reported $1.5 billion company valuation in November 2021.
- Helped grow Lusha from a browser-based contact tool into a global B2B data and sales-intelligence platform.
- Scaled the organization from its founders to roughly 330 employees by 2026.

## Latest updates

- **2026-08** — Lusha shared 17 internal go-to-market workflow skills publicly through GTMskills.com as part of an API- and MCP-first approach.
- **2026-08** — Tserruya described Lusha as processing more than 1.2 billion B2B data points daily and offering 24 buying signals across an AI-oriented intelligence layer.
- **2026-05** — Presented Lusha's Search and Deep Intel layers at EvoLusha 2026, framing the product for AI agents and live go-to-market workflows.
- **2026-04** — Discussed founder instinct, organizational scale, and human oversight of AI on The Art of Entrepreneurship podcast.

## Links

- Website: https://www.lusha.com
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yonitserruya
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/yonitseru

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/yoni-tserruya
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-09-27