Built by the team that survived platform shutdowns and rebuilt twice.
TexAu's story isn't "we raised $5M and scaled to unicorn status." It's "we got sued by LinkedIn, got shut down by Meta, learned hard lessons, and rebuilt the entire product around what actually works." Here's what we learned.
Founder & CEO
Vikesh Tiwari
In 2019, I started TexAu as a LinkedIn automation tool in a Bombay apartment. We got 5,000+ teams using it within 3 years. Then we got sued by LinkedIn. We pivoted. Then Meta shut down our Meta API access. We adapted again.
Those weren't setbacks. They were the best lessons we could've paid for. LinkedIn and Meta forced us to stop trying to be everything and start listening to what our users actually needed.
From LinkedIn scraper to enrichment platform.
2019
Where it started: LinkedIn, but sideways
Working at an agency in India, prospecting for B2B leads. The process was insane: LinkedIn to Hunter to Google Sheets to CRM, repeat. Built an automation tool to fix it — TexAu V1, a LinkedIn scraper. It worked. Really well.
2021
5,000 teams using TexAu V2
Growth hackers, agencies, founders, all using it to automate LinkedIn data extraction and enrichment workflows. Then LinkedIn sued us. A cease-and-desist letter and forced shutdown of our LinkedIn scraping features.
2020-2023
What the lawsuit taught us
We pivoted from "scraping data from LinkedIn" to "enriching data you already have using legitimate data sources." Most users weren't building complex automations. They were enriching lead lists, doing outbound, and keeping CRMs current.
2023-2024
Getting shut down by Meta taught us to simplify
Meta shut down our API access. Another platform, another shutdown letter. That's when it clicked: we're building on platforms we don't control. Made the call to rebuild from scratch as a single-purpose enrichment platform.
2024-2026
Building what actually matters
Complete rewrite. New architecture. New UI. New data sources. Launched V3 in March 2026 with waterfall enrichment across 12 sources, email verification at 97% accuracy, AI lead scoring, and native bidirectional sync with 5 CRMs.
What we've built vs. what we learned
We Built
- A table where you paste leads and get enriched data back
- Waterfall enrichment that cascades through 12 sources automatically
- Email verification at 97% accuracy
- AI lead scoring
- Native integrations with 5 CRMs and 6 outbound tools
- Per-client workspace isolation for agencies
- Pay-on-match credit system (failed lookups are free)
What We Learned (this matters more)
- Simplicity wins. Our most successful features are the ones that do one thing well. The features we killed were the "advanced" ones nobody used.
- Your ICP matters more than TAM. We stopped chasing "we could serve everyone" and started building obsessively for agencies and founders.
- Honesty builds credibility. We say "we're new, we're 10 people, we just launched." Instead of inflating metrics, we tell the real story.
- Platform risk is real. We depend on one thing: giving you enriched leads. That's the smallest platform risk possible.
10 people. No middle management. Your feature request goes from Slack to production in days.
We're not a big company. We're not trying to be. We're big enough to build a real product. Small enough that a founder's feedback changes our roadmap.
We launched V3 in March 2026. We're now generally available to everyone. We have paying customers. We have real integrations that work. We're growing 25% week-over-week. We're not at scale, and we're not pretending to be.
That's honest. And that's where we actually deliver value.
What we're building next.
We launched V3 in March 2026. The roadmap for Q2 includes:
- Advanced AI scoring with custom training on deal velocity
- Bulk prospecting searches (free, unlimited)
- Workflow templates for common enrichment patterns
Real momentum. Real product. Real team. More coming every week.
We launched V3 in March 2026. New teams are joining every day. You're next.
Free for 14 days. No credit card required. Paste your first lead list and watch TexAu fill in the missing data. You're not trying a startup's experiment. You're trying a platform built on 7 years of real feedback.