Scale lead generation by finding, verifying, and contacting leads

About FindThatLead

Gerard: FindThatLead is the bridge between you making a sale and not making it. If you have the power to find anyone’s email, I can tell you we find that we will find a way so you going to be able to do it. So we are going to help you to find those emails to generate those sales.

Anyone can find anyone’s email, you just go to Google and put it there. Try it. I’m going to tell you, we’re going to make sure we find that, we make sure it’s deliverable, and we make sure it’s in a short time. So obviously, timing. Timing is going to make sales guys generate more sales because they’ll be spending less time on searching and prospecting.

Also, there are a bunch of tools for sending emails or for prospecting. So anything that will help you as a salesperson to generate more sales, FindThatLead is going to be behind and give you support.

FindThatLead best features

Gerard: Sending emails is one of our best features. Oh man, this is something we’ve been building. Everything started with a crappy extension eight or nine years ago. It worked very well. It was amazing. Just… it was not enough. And from there, we built a dashboard. From there, we build a tool that integrates with many CRMs. From there, we generated sending emails tool only for cold emails.

So in a way, everything works, and we help you generate the emails and data. So you are going to be able to close more deals. And lately, we developed Scrab.in, which is the LinkedIn automation tool that, once connected with FindThatLead, is going to give you a much broader reach, and you’re going to be able to do actions on both platforms. Number one – LinkedIn. Number two – Email.

And as a marketer, you always have the power of your campaigns in a way to not just be on, like LinkedIn or Facebook, or Twitter. The good thing about emails is that it’s your area, and they cannot change the rules by tomorrow – not showing or shadowing or not being able to send 20 emails or 20 messages like LinkedIn does.

So, my point is to use all the platforms and make sure you are degenerating leads on all the platforms.

Regarding who can use it, I would say guys who don’t like to program and guys who don’t like to learn how to use a tool. People who are able, with just a few clicks, to download the Chrome extension and to go directly. People who want to close deals will just find that list. And this is primarily, I would say, in the sales business.

We are based in Spain, but our main market is the US market.

How does the FindThatLead Chrome extension works?

Gerard: Yes, you go to Chrome Extensions to FindThatLead, and it’s very simple. You go to any webpage, and once you click the Chrome extension, you will find many emails.  You can then define if you want a specific person or a specific role. And from there, you will also find phone numbers, addresses, and a few other data points.

Once you click, the magic becomes once you go to the dashboard, and this is because we analyze the technologies behind millions of websites. So we will have the user have more power over what data he wants. So imagine if you want only to have guys who use cloud software, plus Amazon, plus Shopify in Spain retail. We have it.

So it’s going to make sure we help you generate a list to generate more customers. We’re not just an email verification but also a list-building tool. It’s a simple tool. That’s super powerful! And I don’t want to say that one of the important things is we are in Spain, and we are more price sensitive than any of all of our competitors.

We are a super dedicated team caring more about the quality of the data and the liberty of the emails. We’re very much into the product and very little into the marketing.

How do you differentiate in such a competitive market?

Gerard: It is Christian. It’s been, just let you know, companies like ZoomInfo, Apollo, and Hunter. We’ve been here for nine years, so a few were not there before we arrived. We know a few things about emails, lead generation, and data. We see many people come in, but not everyone is sustained.

So it’s easy to build a list. It’s difficult to make it as a business. And what I want to tell you is once you have very focused persistence on data quality, updating the data, ensuring that the emails are going to be deliverable, and ensuring that UX is easy for people when they go to the platform. This is when a company stands with the same values as we started in the beginning.

So we want to help 1 million marketers to find the best email for future best customers. So we are doing it, and at the moment, we are accomplishing crazy, amazing things.

FindThatLead pricing plans

Gerard: The pricing range from $49 to $400. It will depend on how many tiers. As a solopreneur or in a small company of three or four, you can choose a package that is between 50 to 150 euros. This is going to give you, depending if you go to a prospector, between 500 and a thousand correct emails to contact people and on the Scrab.in side, it is going to be able to take many actions.

I want to tell you that you’re going to be able to send up to 500 messages, for example. Scrab.in is the second version, we connected it with ChatGPT, and what we are doing now is automating and personalizing the messages on insider LinkedIn at the same time you generate data to send emails. So the important thing here is – More than the data. What message are you going to do? What product are you going to sell? We make sure the data’s correct, so you don’t have to bother. And that’s why FindThatLead is your best partner, your best ally, to have the contacts correct so you can focus on your product and basically just send the emails.

FindThatLead best integrations

Gerard: Yeah, obviously, we have the usual – HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive, Zapier, which is whatever you want to choose. We try to say, and that was one of the things is, we want to keep the user as much as inside, but also to have to freedom, if they want to connect with any other one, we can give them access to connect to any others.

It’s not integrations that we usually aim for. Also, one of the things that we work for is to understand emails very strongly. Instead of sending emails from your CRM or any other tools, we want your prospected leads to be kept in FindThatLead. You can download the CSV and Excel. But the important thing is that everything can be managed on FindThatLead.

Why they’re not fighting Apollo and ZoomInfo

Gerard: The good thing is for the time we’re being, for where we are from and how we are fighting, we don’t charge people for our marketing, we make sure our product is sustainable and cheap, so anyone can pay between a hundred to four, between 50 to a hundred dollars per month. And the amount of data that you get, Christian, sometimes it’s like…

We don’t have sales guys, so we don’t have salespeople. The product is cheap by itself. It’s good by itself. And the magic is – We are very focused. Christian and I we’re very focused on the product, and that’s why we shine. Seriously. And sometimes… we are based in Spain. So my English is not amazing. I’m not going to be fighting with other big companies or any other about it. And this is something that we are very proud of. That the product has been very strong for the few years that we’ve been, and it’s kept growing since day one, obviously.

The story of founding FindThatLead

Gerard: Yeah, it’s 2014, I think it was the 1st of November. We were just with Cristian and me one morning, and I had to verify some emails. I remember it was this tool called SalesLoft. Oh man, these amazing guys! And Christian, my business partner, in just a morning, just to make the script of the permutations and then it… Wow.

He just pours it with. We got the wrong domain, LeadGen wrote wrongly, and I think we uploaded it on Chrome Extension. And I did some promotions on Upwork. What I did is I went to a thousand people and networked with them, saying: “Hi guys, I would like you to find a list of emails. Can you please use this FindThatLead tool to generate the first ten customers?”

And we had like, I don’t know, it was like 1000 versus 600 or something like that. And I was like: “What the duck? We probably have a business in here!”

And since then, it’s just like… Christian, I’m the worst marketer in the world. Just to let you know, I’m the worst CEO in the world. I am a terrible business person.

To be honest, I am surprised at how amazing FindThatLead is doing.

I’m just like, I’m so proud of the team, I’m so proud of the people. Sometimes I have customers that know 10 times better how to use FindThatLead than myself. And we are building it! So it’s amazing that the community and the tool and everything is, is kind of growing by itself, and we are very proud. Like, I dunno, you type in YouTube FindThatLead, and it’s like lots of videos from random people that I never met.

Why they chose fulfillment over growth

Gerard: Cristian, it’s a small success, but you feel so proud that people in China are making videos on how to use FindThatLead. It’s like, wow, man, that’s, I build it with Christian, and there is nothing more feeling of success than this.

And I can tell you that it’s not just the revenue, we’re happy about the revenue. We’re happy about the growth. We live a very freely automated life and are very happy where we are, but it’s about fulfillment. And this is one very important thing internally that we keep, we’re a small team, and we want to keep it as small, and for us, its fulfillment and being happy with what we do, man. This makes the whole difference.

Yeah, sometimes I get too much, and I forget, you know, but it’s good. I just had a baby. I’m traveling around the world with my van, and I’m on my van now, so this is my life. It sounds better than what it is, but it’s really one of the new things. I want to be present with my family. I want to be present in my own life while building a good sustainable business that is not raising money or where everything is bootstrapped. Everything is always using FindThatLead tools.

It’s now, after six or nine years, we are actually starting to really build an SEO strategy. Just to let you know, we never had an SEO strategy. Never. And I can tell you, like, if you go to Google Analytics, you can see I had like 96, right? Something like this of our traffic was people going into Google and tapping FindThatLead. We had a massive amount of traffic, and by now, doing a little bit of SEO, it’s kind of like we see crazy growth.

We are doing it not because we want it but because other people are doing it. The products are not of higher quality, they’re lower than ours, but the SEO is better. So that’s why we do it now.

My main focus for many years was, no, I don’t want to spend any time on paid ads, Google ads, or Facebook ads. Just focus on sending emails, which is how we’ve been going for the last eight or nine years.

It’s true that it’s a moment that if you want to make it above 1, 2, 3, or 4 million ARR, you really need to grow up there. So, in this case, for any starting company, we’re very slow, just like slower than anyone in the world, you know? But we’re there, we’re happy, and we’re growing. And after nine years with Cristian, my business partner, who is my, like my brother, I feel so proud of what we built. And more business partners like Alejandro are coming into the team and are so proud of what we built.

I know this is the best part of building a tool that people are using without you telling them how to use it. There’s no better success story than ours. And in terms of, wow, man, with my problems! I have ADHD, I’m super distracted. Everything that you can have, I have it, and I have suffered. And we are here, man! Duck, yes!

If you compare it to Apollo or ZoomInfo, it’s like, oh man, we’re not making any better. If you compare my personal growth and development…

I want you to be understanding that for being a small company, we run like a big one. But we ensure every customer is well looked after and will talk with me or the CTO. There are not many more people to talk to, so we try to see and know the customers. So, this is still an important part of us.

Living a happy life

Gerard: It is, it is Cristian. When I see companies expanding like lemlist, which was a bootstrapped company, but now it isn’t. When I see the type of growth that there has as a company, which is brilliant, it’s amazing. But I would be worried about the state of mind of the founders, how are they running personally?

How is their life? Is it sustainable? Can they go for 10 more years? I can tell you not. I’m sure it’s not, it’s not sustainable. Any upper growth… and I’m not saying that I wouldn’t like to be there. Obviously, as an entrepreneur, we all always want to see our business grow. But in a way, understanding what it’s good for me and what is good for my team? What is good, what is steady growth, healthy growth? And this is, for me, the step we take; sometimes, the universe takes you where you want to go. We know, and this is something that I always talk to Christian about: “Would you work 10 more years for FindThatLead?”

And yes, we would do 10 more years for FindThatLead.

And we have some business partners in the company that are like… well, you can sell it. We really want to sell it. What for? If I make a good set of money, why do you want to sell a company that is making money for you? It’s good. Well, in a way, if you listen to this… this is not just a promotion of the tool but also a “look after yourself, my friends.”

Look after yourself. Love yourself. Use tools that they love their teams in a way. And for us, this is very, very, very important.

How big is the FindThatLead team?

Gerard: It’s between six and nine. And I want to tell you that we would like to be six. But the tech team is bigger than we wish. It’s obviously tech teams are the most important. We were growing to a time last year. We were like around 16, and we were like thinking sales guys and x and y, but it’s something that I don’t like to manage people, Cristian, and we got in new people to manage the team, and no, I don’t, I can’t, it doesn’t set, no! It’s funny, it doesn’t set, Cristian.

I cannot push it, and it’s something that… It’s how it is. Yeah, we will be, I think this year, we will keep the team as it is. It’s difficult to, as you were saying, give to someone, to delegate. It’s easy to delegate to the sales team, but not for me, my friend. Finding the right, let’s say, partners or agencies, whoever if you do it internally, and one of the guys that I really love is Hunter, for example.

Why Gerard appreciates Hunter, their main competitor

Gerard: Hunter has grown massively, and François Grante is a reference for me. He is an entrepreneur, small team, good clothes, steady & very good income. And to me, it’s something that I follow or try to follow. I’m way behind, just to let you know. Hunter is amazing. The product, it’s my main competitor. Just to let you know.

And it’s funny because I know my email delivery is better than theirs. I know my emails are checked before them, but what I’m telling you is a business model. François is amazing at creating this, the UX is beautiful. They launched actually at around the same time we were built. We were in November 2014.

They were, I think, in February 2015. So we were very behind, they did SEO like no one. And we, I didn’t know what it was SEO at the time. And obviously, I didn’t know what UX was. I didn’t know anything, and, in a way, being in Spain, we are the only tool for email generation. And that’s how the business has been developing, being a tool, finding emails way before the market was ready in Spain.

It was desert for a very long time, man. We were very lonely for a long time. Now it’s his life. Everyone knows in Spain about FindThatLead. We have many customers and people. Above all, marketing is growing. Growth marketing, growth hacking, sending emails, cold emails.

The importance of building a product people love

Gerard: This is on the big companies like lemlist & Woodpecker that did amazing work. They did amazing work. Generating push for us, which is amazing! We are always happy to integrate with any cold email or email generation. And to me, I recommend trying all the tools in the market and automate as much as possible. Don’t remember to love what you’re doing and to connect with people that, in the end, it’s people we connect with.

You’re not going to make much business unless someone really loves your ducking product because they have to put the card on there, man. Your card, it’s like your money. No one is going to put their money into your business unless they really feel safe, loved, and secure with it.

So make sure you do that. Everyone is going to look before buying a tool. Buying a Growth Hacking Tool is about someone telling me it’s working, I check Google, and they have good reviews. They seem to be honest guys, they’ve been in it for a long time… and I’m happy and proud, man. I’m happy and proud to find that heat in the team.

What has been your biggest challenge through the years?

Gerard: First, accepting that is always a difference between creation and reality of applying any new products or any new ideas that the customers want and the team design. That’s number one, patience. Number two, doing the SEO much better than our competitors. I would say we’re working like Expandi.io, which is doing amazing, or lemlist, which are parallel products. They are not direct competitors, but they are guys that are really pushing. They’re really pushing the SEO.

It’s a beautiful battle, and we’re working towards that. And we obviously keep pushing and sending emails. And obviously, with the beauty of ChatGPT, any ducking guy can write emails… amazing!

It’s like poetry, Christian! I used to make more mistakes in a sentence than anyone on the planet. So now, with ChatGPT, I feel like God. Anyone can feel like God. Wow, man.

So make sure you have a good product. Marketing now is easy. It’s like writing the copy email. Sending the email… easy! Go spend time with your family, enjoying your life. Because the big challenge is understanding that AI and new tools are coming. And sometimes it’s not being afraid, but being next to your fears, and this is very nice.

The CEOs Gerard admires & their SaaS companies

Gerard: Okay, let me see what I use on a daily basis. Well, apart from ChatGPT, FindThatLead, Scrab.in… I will tell you I really like to look at what Lemlist does, and I think they’re beautiful. They just… Perfect expansion of a business. Guillaume did it amazingly beautifully on sales and cold emails. If you have to follow someone, follow Guillaume and get inspired. I don’t think there are many Guillaumes.

The guy from Expandi.io, Stefan, also is doing amazing work. There are not many guys I know in the world like the founders of Expandi.io or lemlist. I would congratulate them! But not for the product, I can tell you that. But for the way they put in marketing and business and growth and how they communicate, amazing. It’s something that I have tried for a few years now, and I didn’t achieve.

So it took me a long time, many hours of acceptance that I couldn’t make it, and to admire people that do it. They’re amazing.

Oh, good software… Lavender is doing good. And the CEO is the explanation of the software. And I think when I saw ChatGPT coming in so strong, I thought, oh, I don’t know if Lavender is going to make it.

But it seems it’s going to stay. And I hope they stay because the marketing strategy is amazing as well. So, obviously, FindThatLead and Scrab.io.

What’s your best piece of advice you have for founders?

Gerard: Just believe in yourself more than anything else, right? And if you don’t feel it, you don’t believe it, just go to have a shower. Sit down again and believe it, and believe it and believe it. And don’t get distracted and be patient and try to listen to cases of success. Try to send… not try! Send emails to any CEO of any competitor of yours and tell them that you admire them and that you want to speak with them.

Speak to anyone that can guide you, and don’t get distracted. Make love to your wife. Be loyal to your wife. Have kids somewhere around the world. Enjoy your life because it’s more about the process that will stay. Not the angle to probably making a hundred million or something company or having many users. And in the end, it will most probably come. It’s in the process, my friend.

You say I’m super wise, but I’m super old, Cristian. I’m 40 years old.

I really enjoyed this podcast. Haven’t been in a podcast for long. I had my baby six months ago, and it changed my life forever. So thanks. I’m very happy and thank you for taking me because we tried once and I couldn’t come, and this time I was very happy to be here, my friend.