Scrubby

How Three Founders Revolutionized Email Validation with Scrubby's AI Solutions

Founders

Profitable

Yes

Year Started

2021

Customer

B2B

Founders

Profitable

Yes

Year Started

2021

Customer

B2B

Who is Erik Paulson?

Erik Paulson, co-founder and CEO of Scrubby, is a seasoned entrepreneur with over two decades of experience in lead generation, having founded successful ventures like Vendisys while utilizing cutting-edge technology to revolutionize the field. Anirudh Kausal, co-founder of Scrubby, is a technical strategist and cybersecurity advisor specializing in AI-driven prospecting tools, playing a significant role in advancing the company's technological capabilities. Nick Abraham, co-founder of Scrubby and a cold email expert, has extensive entrepreneurial experience, with a successful history in lead generation and a significant online following.

What problem does Scrubby solve?

Scrubby helps businesses avoid losing valuable leads by validating tricky and risky emails that typical tools miss, boosting email deliverability and campaign success.

How did Erik come up with the idea for Scrubby?

Erik Paulson's journey to founding Scrubby began with his deep understanding of the challenges in lead generation. Through his previous ventures, he noticed that a significant hurdle for businesses engaging in cold email outreach was email deliverability. Many email validation tools disposed of potentially valuable leads because they were deemed risky, which inspired Erik to explore a more comprehensive solution that could recover these leads without compromising quality.

Drawing from his experiences at Vendisys, alongside co-founders Anirudh Kaushal and Nick Abraham, Erik's team harnessed AI-driven tools to redefine email validation. They identified the industry's shortcomings, realizing that businesses often discarded emails flagged as risky or from catch-all domains. This insight prompted their mission to innovate beyond standard SMTP checks and offer a secondary validation layer for these email types, creating a tool that businesses desperately needed.

The development of Scrubby was driven by Erik's commitment to overcoming the challenge of recovering high-quality leads that were previously overlooked. The team gathered feedback from their lead generation agency's experience, validated the concept, and continuously refined their approach. This experience was crucial in understanding the real-world impact of improved email validation on outreach success, enabling them to deliver a practical solution that has transformed lead recovery for businesses globally.

How did Erik build the initial version of Scrubby?

Erik Paulson co-founded Scrubby with Anirudh Kaushal and Nick Abraham to address the challenges of email deliverability in the B2B marketing space. The development process involved enhancing traditional email verification tools, which typically discard risky emails, by incorporating an additional layer of validation for catch-all and risky emails. This unique approach allowed businesses to recover a significant portion of valid data, revitalizing up to 40% to 60% of emails that would otherwise be discarded. The building of Scrubby centered around creating a user-friendly platform where users can simply upload CSV files of email lists, and the system validates them efficiently, integrating seamlessly with major email platforms like Zerobounce and Neverbounce. An API was also developed to offer flexible integration options for other business software solutions. The team faced challenges in making the platform simple yet robust, ensuring that advanced validation methods were easy to use and consistently reliable.

How did Erik launch Scrubby and get initial traction?

Early Email Outreach

Scrubby initially got the word out through targeted B2B email campaigns. They leveraged their existing network and past clients to introduce the Scrubby platform as a solution for email validation challenges, focusing especially on clients who had previously struggled with email list deliverability and validation. The founders used their expertise in lead generation to craft personalized emails, ensuring high engagement rates from potential users.

Why it worked: Email outreach allowed direct communication with potential customers who were already familiar with the challenges of email validation. By targeting a network that had experienced these issues firsthand, Scrubby was able to effectively communicate the value of their solution and secure initial users quickly.

Partnerships with Lead Generation Companies

Scrubby formed strategic partnerships with lead generation companies, positioning their tool as an essential component for businesses conducting B2B outreach. By integrating with popular platforms and offering their services as a complement to existing lead generation strategies, Scrubby was able to tap into an existing market of businesses in need of efficient email validation.

Why it worked: Partnering with established lead generation companies provided Scrubby with credibility and access to a customer base already in need of their services. This strategy capitalized on the trust and relationships those companies had built with their clients, resulting in a quick acquisition of customers who needed reliable email validation.

Demonstrations and Webinars

To spread the word about Scrubby and its unique offerings, the founders conducted online demonstrations and webinars. These sessions showcased how Scrubby differentiated itself from other email validation tools, particularly highlighting its ability to validate catch-all and risky emails. The webinars actively engaged participants by demonstrating real-time email validation results and answering questions about the platform's capabilities.

Why it worked: Live demonstrations and webinars provided potential customers with clear, real-world examples of Scrubby's effectiveness, building trust and encouraging sign-ups. This approach allowed for interactive engagement, helping skeptical users understand the tangible benefits of using Scrubby over other solutions.

What was the growth strategy for Scrubby and how did they scale?

Cold Email Outreach

Scrubby's primary method for customer acquisition is cold email outreach. By using their email validation platform, they can effectively sanitize and optimize email lists to enhance deliverability and engagement rates. Their product reduces bounce rates and ensures emails reach legitimate inboxes, thus increasing response rates and lead generation.

Why it worked: The platform’s unique ability to validate catch-all and risky emails means businesses using Scrubby can recover and utilize up to 60% more of their email lists, which directly boosts potential outreach and revenue. The optimization of email outreach results in higher success rates, making this channel a cornerstone of Scrubby’s growth strategy.

AI-Powered Tools

Scrubby, along with Erik Paulson’s other ventures like Golden Leads and AIA, uses AI to refine and enhance B2B outreach. Golden Leads provides data enrichment, expanding lead opportunities, while AIA aids in creating personalized outreach content with AI-generated avatars.

Why it worked: These tools allow for highly personalized and scalable lead generation processes. The AI-driven enhancements make outreach more efficient, allowing businesses to connect with decision-makers on a personal level, resulting in more meaningful interactions and higher conversion rates.

Partnerships and Integrations

Scrubby has integrated with major email platforms like Zerobounce and Neverbounce. These partnerships streamline the email validation process for businesses, making it easier to ensure the cleanliness and quality of their email lists.

Why it worked: By integrating with well-established platforms, Scrubby can offer a seamless experience for users looking to improve their outreach efforts. These partnerships expand Scrubby’s functionality and appeal, as users of these platforms are likely to appreciate added value without major workflow changes.

What's the pricing strategy for Scrubby?

Scrubby prices its email validation services at $27 monthly for 1,000 credits, with bulk options scaling down to 1.9 cents per email for 100K credits.

What were the biggest lessons learned from building Scrubby?

Innovate Continuously: Scrubby's approach to validating risky and catch-all emails illustrates the importance of innovating beyond existing solutions. This allowed them to recover up to 4X more leads for clients, proving that creatively addressing existing gaps can significantly enhance business outcomes.
Adapt to Market Needs: Scrubby identified a critical market need—better email deliverability for B2B campaigns—and tailored their platform to address this. Aspiring founders should stay vigilant and ready to pivot their offerings based on market feedback and evolving needs.
Focus on Usability: Simplicity was key in Scrubby's tool design, making it user-friendly and accessible for businesses of all sizes. By focusing on ease of use, they ensured their tool could be adopted widely without extensive onboarding processes, encouraging adoption.
Leverage Team Strengths: The founders leveraged their diverse strengths—technical strategy, cyber security, and entrepreneurial expertise—to build a comprehensive solution. Recognize and utilize the unique skills of your team to address multiple aspects of your product or service.
Maintain Resilience: Addressing challenges like high bounce rates and catch-all emails required persistence and continuous improvement. Building a business requires resilience and readiness to solve tough problems for sustainable success.

Discover Similar Business Ideas Like Scrubby

I Created The Best Resume Builder In The World ($2.5M/Year)

Rezi, an AI-powered resume builder, skyrocketed from a simple $9.69 Microsoft Word template to serving over 2.6 million job seekers and achieving a monthly recurring revenue of $215K, showing how clever branding, strategic early decisions, and creative growth hacking can turn a side project into a profitable SaaS business.

$215K Monthly Revenue

Read by 18,958 founders

How I Developed A $3.5K/Month Tool That Converts HTML To PDF

A passionate computer-coder entrepreneur shares the story behind his successful PDFShift business which after a year and a half generates $3.2k of monthly revenues with the focus now on growth.

$8.5K Monthly Revenue

Read by 11,700 founders