TL;DR: What does it actually take to grow a company from zero to 330 people over a decade — while staying true to the instincts that got you there in the first place?
In this episode of The Art of Entrepreneurship, host Jackie Hermes sits down with Yoni Tserruya, co-founder and CEO of Lusha, to talk about the real evolution of a founder: professionally, personally, and organizationally. From coding solo to leading a global team, Yoni shares what he’s learned about when to trust your gut, when to let structure take over — and why doing everything “best practice” might be the surest way to build an average company.
Guest: Yoni Tserruya, Co-founder and CEO of Lusha
Podcast: The Art of Entrepreneurship with Jackie Hermes
Episode: 319 | April 28, 2026
The origins of Lusha
Jackie: Can you give us some background on yourself and the company?
Yoni: My name is Yoni. I’m 41, father of four — and I founded Lusha 10 years ago, so my kids and the company have basically grown up together. My background is software engineering. I’m a builder at heart. I started with mobile apps, and then my co-founder and I spotted a real gap: people needed an easy way to connect with other people on the web and get direct access to any business profile.
It started with salespeople doing outreach and HR teams recruiting. Over time it’s evolved into a platform for go-to-market teams. Today we’re helping teams understand who they need to talk to, which companies have the highest intent, and how to cut through a massive amount of data to get to the right answer.
Jackie: And intent really matters — typically only 5% or fewer of your buying market is actually ready to buy at any given moment. How do you identify that?
Yoni: Exactly — 5% is the number I always come back to. Most customers are not ready to buy. The real AI revolution for go-to-market teams will be AI that can digest 300 signals across the web and surface the best ones for you. It’s lead scoring that constantly refines and gets smarter over time.
Instinct vs. best practices
Jackie: You’ve talked about early growth being instinct and curiosity driven. How did that evolve?
Yoni: In the beginning, I did everything on instinct — where the business should go, what to build, how to move. As we grew and headcount increased, I started learning best practices: how to run a big company, how to put systems in place. I did that for a few years. But eventually I realized a lot of it wasn’t right for us. In many ways, I went back to basics — back to what worked at the start.
Early on, you run fast. You experiment constantly. You don’t plan a quarter out — sometimes not even a month out. The disruption happening in the industry today requires exactly that kind of speed and iteration. Nobody really knows what’s going to work. When you don’t know what to build, you have to figure it out and pave the way yourself.
Jackie: Is there a point where instinct becomes a liability?
Yoni: Instinct is critical for a founder. There are things only I can feel and distinguish — things nobody else will catch. I still listen to my instinct a lot. But instinct doesn’t scale. You can’t delegate it, and you can’t build an organization around it. It took me a few years to understand how to shift from managing everything to setting direction — so the organization could navigate by itself.
Managing scaling and structure
Jackie: What’s the biggest thing you learned going from managing the work to leading the people?
Yoni: Early on, I had visibility into everything. But when we grew from 70 to 150 people, the “star” model — where everything flows through you — just stops working. We tried OKRs and other systems. Some of it helped, but none of it fully clicked.
What actually worked was defining a vision that was so clear, everyone could picture it. All departments, all teams, all pointing in the same direction. It’s less about systems and more about setting context — a north star that acts like a magnet. When there were no gaps in the story, when everyone was truly aligned, the organization just moved toward it. You didn’t have to push.
AI inside a 330-person team
Jackie: Your website says 96% of your 330-person team uses AI daily. How do you make sure people are still doing the creative, innovative thinking — and not just leaning on AI’s predictive defaults?
Yoni: Right now, with a human in the loop, creativity still happens — it just happens faster. Where I want to get to next is automating certain tasks end-to-end with AI. At that point, the risk increases: if there’s no human verifying the output, creativity can start to erode. Humans in the loop are crucial. That’s where judgment and original thinking will continue to come from.
The biggest lesson from 10 years
Jackie: If there’s one takeaway from today — what is it?
Yoni: Listen to yourself. Do what’s right for you. The best companies aren’t the ones who do everything by the book. If you follow best practices across the board, you end up with average practices — because everyone else is doing the same thing. If you want to be excellent, there need to be one, two, maybe three things that only you do that way. That’s what makes the whole company stand out.
About Yoni Tserruya
Yoni Tserruya is the co-founder and CEO of Lusha. A builder at heart, Yoni started Lusha with a simple belief: go-to-market teams should spend their time on the right conversations — not buried in research, admin work, or bad data. That belief shaped Lusha into a product-led company focused on accuracy, verified data, and helping GTM teams and AI agents reach the right buyer at the right time. Outside of work, Yoni is a husband and father of four.
Connect with Yoni: Website | LinkedIn | Company LinkedIn | Facebook
This episode of The Art of Entrepreneurship is for founders navigating the tension between instinct and structure as they scale. Listen to the full episode here.
