Interview with Liviu Tanase of Zerobounce
As founder and CEO of ZeroBounce, Liviu Tanase has built one of the most trusted names in email deliverability. Under his leadership, the company has evolved from a single email validation service into a full suite of deliverability tools. Most recently, it launched ZeroBounce ONE, a unified platform that simplifies how businesses improve their email performance.
Speaking with The European Business Review, Tanase shares how his approach to leadership has evolved, what AI means for the future of communication, and why the human touch will always remain at the core of technology.
You’ve built several successful ventures. What personal qualities or habits have been most critical in helping you sustain momentum as an entrepreneur?
Two traits have really helped me sustain momentum: I’m stubborn, and I have a lot of energy for what I do. I wouldn’t call being a workaholic a quality, but I doubt I would have gone very far without persistence and drive.
When it comes to habits, I make a point of staying in tune with what’s happening in the world, especially in tech. The best products anticipate a need before the market even realizes it. So I stay curious, follow new innovations closely, and think ahead about what challenges people might face next. Of course, I’m not always right, but it’s a great exercise in imagination and entrepreneurship.
How has your perspective on leadership changed from your early days as a founder to leading ZeroBounce today?
My perspective on leadership has changed completely. When I started my first business, all I could think about was the product and how to deliver the best experience to our customers. I didn’t think much about building a team culture or developing people. New people would join us and we’d throw them in the water and let them learn to swim.
Investing in your team is tremendous, because happy employees create happy customers. And happy customers always come back.
Today, I lead two companies, and ZeroBounce alone has more than 100 employees. While I’m still very focused on the quality of our products, I’ve learned that leadership is about much more than that. I ask myself: What kind of culture are we building? Do our employees have a sense of purpose? How can we make their experience better?
Investing in your team is tremendous, because happy employees create happy customers. And happy customers always come back.
Looking back at your career, what has been the most unexpected lesson about building technology companies that you wish you had known earlier?
The most unexpected lesson was to trust my instincts more. You can never be 100% sure your product is going to work, and that uncertainty never goes away completely.
When you’re first starting out, you’re even more unsure. Of course, you rely on market data and initial customer feedback. But mostly, you operate based on gut instinct and a belief that what you’re building will serve its purpose and be of service to people.
When I first ran the concept of ZeroBounce to some of my business partners, they thought it was a terrible idea. A niche B2B software-as-a-service (SaaS) company? They thought the chances of making it successful were slim. But I had another email marketing company and could sense how the market was going to shift.
Email validation is now a must-have for all mass senders – and I’m glad I trusted my instinct and went on to build ZeroBounce. It’s now the go-to email deliverability platform for half a million customers around the world. We’re beyond grateful they choose us every day.
ZeroBounce has become a recognized name in email deliverability. What leadership strategies have helped you keep the company competitive in such a fast-changing industry?
I could sum it up this way: we never rest on our laurels. That mindset runs through everything we do – from product development to the way we treat every one of our customers.
We started as an email validation company, and that foundation helped us become a recognized name in the industry. But we’ve continued to add new services to the platform because we listened to our customers’ feedback through the years. From email scoring to deliverability tools and an email finder, all these services have shaped ZeroBounce into the company we are today.
Many of the features are actually a direct result of customer feedback. We read and respond to every message, social media post, and review – and share all suggestions with our product team. In a real sense, we’ve built ZeroBounce together with our customers.
Another key strategy has been investing in education from day one. Our marketing and PR team launched with a blog, and since then, our content library has grown tremendously. We now publish original studies, reports, guides, and host webinars that draw large audiences. When you think and act like a publisher, people begin to see you as a trusted source of knowledge. That’s something we’ll always strive for.
What is the larger mission that drives ZeroBounce, and how do you keep your team aligned with that vision as you grow?
Our mission has always been to help people use email safely and more effectively. That hasn’t changed since day one. It’s the foundation for everything we do, from how we build our tools to how we support our customers.
Every team member learns about this mission from the start, but more importantly, they see it in action every day. It comes through in our decisions, our priorities, and the way we treat our customers. That shared sense of purpose makes it easy for everyone to move in the same direction.
We also talk about our mission often – whether in company-wide meetings or in everyday chats – because it’s not a one-time effort. It’s something you keep alive through constant communication and example.
Your team recently launched ZeroBounce ONE. How does this new platform represent the next chapter for your company and reflect the way you approach innovation?
ZeroBounce ONE™ is tied to our mission of helping companies succeed with their email communication. We thought of a way we could serve them even better by making our entire platform easier to access and use.
ZeroBounce ONE is a subscription that brings together our email deliverability suite, plus 25,000 monthly email validation credits, at a price lower than what the credits alone used to cost.
Previously, 25,000 validation credits cost $175 per month. Now, for just $99 per month (or $79 per month billed annually), ZeroBounce ONE customers gain not only the same 25,000 credits, but all our other tools – Email Warmup, DMARC Monitor, Blacklist Monitor, Inbox Placement Testing, Email Server Testing, and Email Finder – at no additional cost.
Marketers kept telling us deliverability tools felt expensive and fragmented as they had to use separate vendors. ZeroBounce ONE unifies everything into one subscription so businesses don’t have to choose between validation and deliverability. They can get both.
At a time when many SaaS subscriptions are soaring in price, ZeroBounce ONE defies the trend and sets a new standard for value. We’ve made enterprise-grade deliverability tools affordable and accessible to every marketer. And we’re giving them more than ever – for less than they were already paying.
AI is changing the way companies think about personalization, automation, and data quality. From your perspective, what role will AI play in shaping the future of email deliverability?
AI can analyze massive data sets, detect patterns almost instantly, and help companies make smarter decisions, like predicting which emails might bounce or when to send for the best results.
Our team sees AI as an incredible support system for humans, not a replacement. The human side – strategy, empathy, understanding what makes communication meaningful – still matters just as much. I think the companies that thrive will be the ones who use AI to amplify human expertise, not replace it.
Beyond deliverability, how do you see AI transforming the broader communications ecosystem, and what opportunities or risks does it create for companies like yours?
AI is changing how we create, personalize, and deliver messages across every channel, from email to chat to social. Companies can now reach people faster and with more relevance than ever before.
But that also comes with responsibility. The easier it becomes to automate communication, the greater the risk of losing authenticity. If every message starts to sound the same, people will tune out. That’s why the real opportunity is in using AI to enhance human connection, not replace it.
For companies like ours, AI opens incredible possibilities to make communication safer, smarter, and more effective. At the same time, it challenges us to stay ethical, transparent, and focused on the human being at the other end of every message.
Fast-forward to the next decade. What do you hope ZeroBounce will stand for in the industry, and how do you envision email’s place in the future of global communication?
A decade from now, I hope ZeroBounce continues to stand for trust, innovation, and reliability. We’ve built our reputation on accuracy and security, and I want us to keep pushing those standards higher while helping businesses communicate more effectively.
If ZeroBounce can keep that human element alive, and help companies reach people in a genuine way while protecting their data and reputation, then we’ll have done our job well.
Email will keep evolving, but it will always be at the heart of digital communication. What will change is how intelligent it becomes: more automated, more personalized, and better integrated with other channels. AI and automation will make it smarter, but the human intention behind every message will still matter most.
If ZeroBounce can keep that human element alive, and help companies reach people in a genuine way while protecting their data and reputation, then we’ll have done our job well.
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