@ashwinkumar_k Great question! With messages, we aren't interested in message content at all, but metadata like headers, footers, and signatures. Unfortunately Gmail's API permissions aren't granular enough to request just those things, hence the permissions. We're very careful about this, so great question. You can find our privacy policy here: https://www.elucify.com/privacy/

@dweisburd Hi David, we will have a paid version that is still being built that doesn't require sharing business contacts. We will also have another version targeted towards enterprises.

@stevenbuccini That's exactly one of the reasons we created Elucify. Finding emails should be like Googling a restaurant: totally free, look it up and just find the email. Thanks for the kind words!

@chrismessina How about providing your opinion? ;) Personally, I *really* dislike the idea of people sharing my email address in return for them getting access to other emails. If what you say is true, it's snake oil. Would love to learn more from the creators.

@chrismessina I noticed you didn't reply to my last 3 messages so thought I'd circle back in case you missed them. haha

@chrismessina Hey Chris, that's a really really good question. There's no right answer but I can share how I think about it. For me, whether it's OK to exchange your contacts comes down to how one views contact information in general. Today, a person's email address is something almost anyone can get if he or she spends enough energy/effort looking for it. The tricky part is actually getting your messaged delivered -- the spam networks put in place by gmail and the various email reputation networks are getting smarter every day. If a very small percent of people mark your email as spam, you will not be able to deliver your email to very many people. Our goal is to enable people who have legitimate products and services who are reaching out to people who can legitimately benefit from them. To filter out "bad guys", we also require all accounts be tied to a legitimate business domain and in the future we may put even more stringent requirements if we find our users abusing the data we have access to. We also never touch non-business related emails, so no relatives, grandmas, etc will end up in our system. Full disclosure, I'm one of the founders of Elucify. I've spent an incredible amount of time thinking about the implications, and I myself get a lot of sales/marketing emails. Happy to continue the conversation over email as well at gerald@getelucify.com.

@paul__walsh @chrismessina Hey Paul, apologies just saw this! I put an answer below -- happy to continue the conversation here as well as over email as well. Having access to emails is incredibly powerful (to do good and bad) and it comes down to whether 1. the people who have access to it are doing legitimate business with it (ie, non profits, up and coming companies with valuable products, and not viagra or scam related things) and 2. whether there is a strong system in place to penalize bad actors that fall through the cracks. Gmail and other email spam guards are very powerful and can quickly hone in and prevent bad actors from delivering emails. Also, in the status quo today, there are providers like Rain King, Data.com, ZoomInfo, etc that give large corporations access to all this data for very high prices that are out of reach for business that have not made it yet. We are coming up with a business model that enables smaller businesses to have access to the same resources, so long as they do not abuse them.

@geraldfong @chrismessina There is a right answer. It's ok for me to post my email address where I want as it's my property. It's not ok for you to share my email address unless you ask me for permission. You can of course, do as you please. But if you want my respect, or to do business with me, you will respect my wishes. We have this concept called "opt-in" for good reason. And it's why Mailchimp doesn't allow you to spam the shit out of people without asking for their permission first.

@kallefreese Hey Kalle! Glad to hear :) CEO of Elucify here -- yeah we started working on this because all three of us ran into this problem during our past startups/experiences. Naveen and I were doing sales for an engineering consulting firm and Mihir was doing sales at Dropbox. We realized this was a problem, teamed together, and has led up to this!

@nraush Feel free to email me directly @ mihir@getelucify.com and we can get you set up!

@sridhar_kondoji Hey Sri! Good question -- this is a bit different from that. Our product is a standalone resources that you can go to to find emails of your prospects. We also have funding, location, employee size, and web technology information on various companies as well. Let me know if you have any more questions about the product, always happy to answer them offline at gerald@getelucify.com (or message through the intercom bubble on our product!)

@robertdvis Thanks Robert!

@engmsaleh Thanks for the kind words! Send me an email @ mihir@getelucify.com and we can get you set up on an account!

@sastrytumuluri thanks for your feedback. We don't like spam either! We definitely monitor the system to make sure no one is abusing or using it for spam, which is why we require business emails for signing up. We have a paid option where users can opt-out of sharing contacts coming soon as well. We're all ears to this feedback, thanks for contributing.

@mihir_deo Could you elaborate on "monitoring the system ... [to prevent spam-use]"? It seems that most email spamming would occur outside your system.

@mrsharma Thanks Nik! We're lucky to have you as an early user. We love helping people close deals and revenue!

@peresztegi Hey Zoltan, our products are similar in that they both use a crowdsourced model, but the product itself is quite different. Our product gives full information about the company, as well as easily accessible contacts for people across the organization. We also don't cap the number of contacts you can look up (clearbit connect limits it to about 50 per month). We also offer a bulk export product for free alongside that you can use to get 100 contacts per week. Really respect the design, product, and need Clearbit Connect is hitting! Just solving slightly different use cases.

@peresztegi yes and no... Clearbit focuses on email lookup and enrichment without discovery capabilities, while this is much more about easily building and filtering out a list of leads from a community-driven database using a wizard (that does all the discovery heavy lifting in your stead).

@wilhempujar @peresztegi Good clarification! I was mainly commenting on only Clearbit Connect, Clearbit has some other good services out there! (Fraud, logos, etc) The CEO and I know each other personally as well.

@eriktlee Thanks for the kind words Erik!

@stefan_nordbruch thanks for the feedback. We have entire SDR teams at legitimate companies using Elucify for their prospecting efforts, and I don't believe they are sending spam at all. Since we require business emails to sign-up, we do try to make sure only people with legitimate businesses are getting access to the data. If you take a look at the product, the way to look up emails is very "ABM" style where you individually look up companies and emails of people at those companies. It's not a large database where you immediately can download millions of emails from it to use, we do gate the access. You do have to spend some time on Elucify to personally prospect and find the emails of the people you want to prospect.

@mihir_deo Thanks for the feedback. That sounds better, however, I am still at odds with the concept. There are pretty stringent rules what a company can do with the emails of its own customers. I wouldn't blindly give out a contact's details to another contact without asking if it is ok first - unless I know both very well. Now why would I be happy for strangers to contact my business partners or clients?

@eric_ho Thanks Eric!