Bright Data CEO Or Lenchner joins Yoel Israel to discuss how companies use public web data, why collecting it becomes harder at scale, and what his career reveals about product leadership.
Every online action generates or depends on data. Booking a flight, comparing products, training an AI model, ordering a ride, and analyzing an investment opportunity all require information gathered from different sources.
The central business challenge is no longer whether the information exists. It is whether a company can find, collect, organize, and continuously access the right information at the scale its operation requires.
Or Lenchner, CEO of Bright Data, joined Yoel to explain how public web data supports companies across industries. He also discussed his unconventional path to becoming a technology CEO, Bright Data’s legal battle with Meta, and why a BattleBots sponsorship made sense for a company serving engineers.
What Makes Data Valuable?
Data alone does not guarantee a useful outcome. Its value depends on the purpose it serves, the quality of the information, and a company’s ability to put it to work.
Or explained that the breadth, depth, freshness, and quality of data can directly influence the performance of a product. That is especially important for AI systems, but the principle applies far beyond AI.
An e-commerce business, for example, may need current information about competitors’ prices, shipping times, product descriptions, customer reviews, and images. A hedge fund evaluating property investments may want information about taxes, schools, housing prices, transportation, and nearby services.
The relevant information may already be publicly available, but collecting enough of it to support a major business operation is a separate problem.
“Your ability to access data, which is a matter of technical skills, budget, knowledge, and sometimes not knowing what you don’t know, will eventually determine the success of whatever you’re trying to achieve,” Or said.
How Bright Data Collects Public Web Data
Bright Data provides infrastructure that helps approximately 20,000 customers collect publicly available information from the web.
Or described the company as a web data collection platform that allows customers to choose how much of the process they want to manage themselves. Its services range from underlying infrastructure to curated and structured datasets that are ready for use.
That flexibility matters because companies have different technical capabilities, budgets, and priorities. One may want to handle most of its data operation internally, while another may prefer a more complete external solution.
The company does not decide what conclusions customers should draw from the information. Instead, it gives them the tools to see and access what is publicly available.
“We don’t rebuild or replace their brains,” Or explained. “We’re giving them the eyes, the ears, and sometimes even the hands and legs.”
When Does a Company Need External Data Infrastructure?
Or does not believe every business needs Bright Data. If a company only wants to gather a small amount of information once, he recommends doing it independently. Handling the process directly can help a team understand the information and refine what it needs.
The difficulty begins when data becomes a continuous requirement.
At scale, websites may attempt to block automated collection, even when the information is public. A company can build an internal collection system that works initially, only to have it fail after the resulting data stream has already become essential to its operations.
Or described the situation as a continuing technical contest. Bright Data’s infrastructure and 11 years of experience are designed to maintain access when customers need large amounts of public information repeatedly.
According to Or, customers reach the web through Bright Data’s platform nearly 80 billion times each day.
How Companies Use Web Data
Large retailers provide one of the clearest examples of public web data in practice.
A global retailer may compete with dozens of companies across multiple markets. Each competitor can change its prices, shipping times, product descriptions, and other details throughout the day.
Monitoring those changes manually would be too slow. Instead, data feeds can send current information into the retailer’s systems, allowing it to adjust prices and operations in real time. This may happen across millions of products, multiple regions, and many daily updates.
The same principle applies to travel, banking, cybersecurity, marketing, and investment. When large datasets are combined with analysis tools, companies can make decisions faster than a team reviewing each source manually.
However, Or emphasized that Bright Data does not replace the company’s expertise. A customer still understands its own market, risks, and objectives better than an infrastructure provider can.
From Unsolicited Feedback to CEO
Or did not follow the typical path of a technology executive with an engineering background or experience in a military technology unit.
He joined Bright Data in 2015 after reviewing one of the company’s consumer products through a website he had built for browser extensions. He thought the technology was strong but the product execution needed work, so he emailed his feedback directly to Ofer, Bright Data’s founder and CEO at the time.
The message was blunt, but it also contained specific recommendations.
Ofer responded, and what followed became a six-hour working session. Within two weeks, Or sold his interests in his existing businesses and joined the company as a product manager. He became CEO in 2018.
Or still approaches his role from a product perspective. Rather than presenting company strategy as a broad statement, he defines two or three organizational “obsessions.” These are the priorities that receive concentrated attention across Bright Data until leadership decides that another area has become more important.
Changing those priorities is among his most consequential responsibilities because moving an entire organization in a new direction creates a significant operational bet.
Defending Access to Public Information
As the value of data increased, Or expected a major technology company to eventually challenge Bright Data’s work.
That challenge came from Meta, which sought to stop Bright Data customers from accessing public information on Facebook and Instagram. Or noted that Meta had previously been a Bright Data customer itself.
The dispute reached a California court, where Bright Data won. Or said Meta’s argument centered on an alleged breach of its terms of service, while Bright Data maintained that its activity involved publicly available information.
For Or, the case represented a broader principle: legitimate businesses should be able to access information that has been made public. Bright Data operates for profit, but he sees the commercial model as what allows the company to expand that access.
Finding the Audience Through BattleBots
One of Bright Data’s more unusual marketing decisions was sponsoring BattleBots, a competition featuring 200-pound robots designed by experienced engineers.
The idea came from Bright Data CMO Yanai Zernik. The company wanted to reach engineers who might need large-scale web data in the future, and BattleBots offered a concentrated audience of people who build complex technical products.
At a BattleBots event held alongside the annual AWS conference in Las Vegas, approximately 200 people registered, but Or said 600 attended. Bright Data later agreed to sponsor the entire league.
Unlike sponsorships that depend on estimating impressions, this partnership gives Bright Data direct access to customers and prospects whose work closely matches its services.
For Or, that relevance makes the return easier to understand. The company is not simply placing its name in front of a large audience. It is creating an experience for the engineers most likely to require its infrastructure.
Building Around Access, Scale, and Execution
Or’s view of data is practical: information becomes valuable when a business can access it reliably and use it for a defined purpose.
That same emphasis on execution appears throughout his leadership. It shaped the email that brought him to Bright Data, the company’s flexible product structure, its defense of public web access, and its decision to meet future customers through robot combat.
As more products and AI systems depend on continuously updated information, collecting public web data is becoming part of the infrastructure behind them. The advantage belongs to companies that understand not only which information they need, but how they will keep accessing it when the requirement reaches scale.
