Eran: We used to send everybody in the company a daily SMS with All their information about what happened last night. And all of our investors got the same SMS every morning. That's one of the best thing we've done. Welcome to the Logan Bartlett show. On this episode, what you're going to hear is a conversation I have with co founder and co CEO of monday.com, Eran Zeman. Eran has built Monday into a business worth over 14 billion. Eran and I talk about a number of different things, including the operating discipline and That has allowed Monday to blow past a number of their initial competitors. As well as his views on how AI is going to change the potential for businesses like his.
Some of the implications that exist for things like pricing. It seems like almost nobody cares about cash. Like everybody talks about financial value. But at the end of the day, you cannot go to the supermarket and pay with cash. LTV, like, you cannot do that. As well as the culture that Monday. com has been able to build.
A really fun conversation with someone that I've long admired and been curious about how they've been able to execute in a otherwise very competitive market as well as they have thus [00:01:00] far. You'll hear that discussion with Eran here now.
Eran,
Logan: Thanks for doing this. Great. Uh, great to have you on.
Eran: Thanks for having me.
Logan: So, so maybe first for people that don't know, how, how do you describe what monday. com is?
Eran: Oh, wow. Uh, one word is a work platform, uh, but I'm going to need probably more than one word to describe
Logan: That's good. Yeah, yeah. We have, we have a lot of time here, so feel free to filibuster or talk as long as you want.
Eran: Great.
Eran: So, um, basically Monday is a platform where one of the main principles that we had from day one is to make it a hundred percent flexible, which is very different from, I would say, traditional software. Um, we give people the freedom to shape how to use the software, uh, to feed their specific needs.
This has been a core principle for us from day one. Um, essentially, um, you know, every business is different. Every business operates in a different industry and [00:02:00] it just seems all right to build one solution that will be rigid for everybody that's going to force them to use our software in a very specific way.
So from day one, we operate on this principle that we're going to give the superpower to our users to shape the software to their needs. And they basically do whatever makes sense to them for their own business. Um, I know it sounds a little bit high level, but you know, being a developer,
Logan: to the, we can dive into the specifics of all of that. One of the, one of the things that I heard you say that I thought was interesting is that you're not a big believer in ideas, uh, but instead you fell in love with this, this problem. Uh, and that was how you, how you oriented the business.
Can you, can you describe what this problem, uh, is that, that, you know, you, you, you started pursuing for Monday?
Eran: yeah, I think as a founder, often people's intuition is let's find a problem that nobody tackled before, or let's think about, you know, a brilliant idea that nobody thought about before. And, um, I have this passion [00:03:00] for, uh, let's think about an industry that's actually fully packed with other players. It shows that, you know, there's a lot of demand from customers and let's try to think how we can disrupt it and build something better for, uh, those people.
If you think about it, you know, our initial product was, uh, mostly focused on work management and project management. That's probably one of the most back categories out there. And then afterwards we went for CRM service. Uh, Dev, you know, those industry has been existed for years. Uh, but we just came with a different approach.
Uh, we wanted to build something, uh, as I said, that gives a lot of freedom to our users, um, and just give them something that didn't have before, uh, as a tool. I think that a lot of work management software, for example, or project management software, they come with this concept of we found the best way to manage, or we found the perfect structure for people to lay out information.
And I don't think a perfect structure [00:04:00] exists. I think, uh, that's the wrong way to think about things. I think, uh, we need to give them the best tools and the best, um, building blocks to help them solve their own problems.
Logan: I, I want to get into the operating side of things, but, but maybe from philosophical product architecture standpoint, this, as you mentioned, it's a, at least the original category you went after is certainly a, uh, a crowded one. And some of the names that I think were, were ahead of you in terms of scale and maybe valuation as well, companies like Asana and, uh, Smartsheet and, and, uh, Airtable perhaps as well.
We're all, uh, buzzy at different points in time from a product and insight standpoint. Was it, was it this flexibility that you think allowed you, um, to be, uh, more better received by, by the market? I mean, I think you've surpassed all those businesses from evaluation standpoint and I realize you, you've operated very well, but was it, was the insight, this, [00:05:00] this flexible architecture that sort of allowed for modularity that maybe those other systems were a little too inunated to do?
Eran: Yeah, but, um, I don't think, uh, it's a product. I think it's just a totally different business direction and we built a different kind of business. Um, when we went public initially, about three and a half years ago, um, investors compared us to the companies you mentioned, um, you know, their son of the world, the smart sheets, uh, private players.
And that shifted over time because, you know, investors, the market and customers realized that what they buy is something much wider than that. It's the Monday platform. And work management and project management was one use case that was built on top of that platform. But for example, you know, now we have Monday CRM and Monday dev.
No player in each one of those categories competes in the other categories. So you won't find a CRM player competes in the work management and vice versa. So. What we built is very unique. We just built a [00:06:00] different kind of business that initially can be compared to Asana or Smartsheet. But over time, the course that we took and the path that we took is very different compared to those companies.
Uh, and definitely the flexibility allowed that, but also create a huge product differentiation compared to the other players.
Logan: I guess I want to go down this rabbit hole a little bit.
Logan: So, so from the, from the start, did you think that you would have this underlying platform and build applications on of it? Uh, or was that something that you realized along the way that this was possible?
Eran: Well, I would like to say yes, but that's not the truth. So, uh, when we started, um, we had one concept in mind is that we want to build a platform that's a hundred percent of flexible, uh, both my partner, Roy and myself were developers. So we hold always that in mind, this concept of we have the superpower where we can write code.
Now with the AI, it's, it's not such a superpower anymore, [00:07:00] but, uh, we have this ability to customize our own software, let's say. And we wanted to give it to other people. Um, and nobody knew what low code no code meant at the time. Nobody knew what, you know, platforms were at the time, but we just had this crazy concept that we stuck with throughout the way.
And along the way, um, we found that because of that belief in that, um, concept that we kind of stuck with, um, it just led us through this path because when we launched our first version of the product. We thought initially it's going to be mostly startup tech companies using us, you know, traditional industries.
I had no idea that, you know, today 70 percent of our customers are going to be non tech companies. I had no idea that we're going to have customers from, you know, hotels management all the way to retail to other verticals that I have no idea how to operate in, but they use the money abilities to build their own software.
So I couldn't predict the path that we went through. Um, and definitely [00:08:00] not building like a full fledged CRM. Or dev or service that actually came from our users do it at themselves on the platform. So we were very open throughout the way and China changed. What can be achieved with the platform, but the core principles of that, you know, flexibility that I've mentioned, it's been since day one.
Logan: Is there a broad insight there that you would, uh, potentially espouse for Founders that are listening and thinking about their, um, their journey and where their product can take them. It sounds like maybe you were less opinionated about where you were headed and more receptive to being nimble along the way.
I realized at one point, like the pulse way back when the former name of monday. com. Was centered on like an entirely different, uh, application of maybe this, this product that that versus the one you ultimately found initial success with. And so I guess is that something that you would recommend [00:09:00] for founders in general?
Or do you think that was unique to your end market?
Eran: Now, I think that's something that I recommend to other founders as well, because, uh, like you said, um, something that we really believe in is falling in love with the problem and what are you trying to build. Um, and essentially we, we saw a huge vacuum in the work management space and other markets as well.
Um, but we were open to change the products along the way. And I think a lot of founders kind of fall in love with one specific solution. And I don't know any successful company, you know, I don't think back in the days, take Microsoft, for example, they would imagine they're going to have gaming consoles or AI or even assets.
But this is how you create a huge company. You change it up along the way. I don't think that's a disadvantage. I think a lot of founders feel that. If they change course along the way, they somehow failed. And I think the opposite that just proved that you're resilient and [00:10:00] you can operate and you can change because the reality changes all the time, the market changes.
Logan: In entering a competitive market, uh, in sort of thinking about when there's a bunch of different solutions there, did you have, did you feel like there was a product, this product architecture, uh, in, in flexible structure around, you know, pursuit, not necessarily being prescriptive about how the problems are going to be solved.
Did you think that was ultimately going to be enough of the differentiator? Or was it just competence in your ability to operate and execute? Because I want to get into some of the specific things that you did from an tactical level. You guys have almost been a machine in terms of just your operating execution and all of that.
So I I'm curious, do you think it was requisite to have the product insight or were you just confident in your ability to out execute people from a marketing standpoint, a customer success standpoint, [00:11:00] whatever, whatever incremental thing there was?
Eran: Um, yeah, I would say both, uh, because, uh, it could be an execution machine, but if you don't get the right product, you know, nothing can help you. And, uh, you might have the most amazing product, but. Uh, if you fail to execute, uh, eventually the company's going to fail. So definitely, I think you should have both.
I would say that, um, having a strong DNA in the company and being open to change and makes you much more resilient over time, but, uh, definitely having the right product, uh, was a huge, um, game changer for us. And, and again, I think, uh, it's not a matter of, you know, yet another feature. Um, I think, uh, what I'm trying to emphasize here that, you know, I really see this as an evolution of, of SaaS software because, you know, definitely Salesforce was, uh, kind of the first pioneer of building the, you know, cloud software, SaaS subscription, um, you know, principle and, and so on, which created a huge trend of, of many SaaS [00:12:00] software out there.
But I feel that with Monday and just other players doing that, we built on the second generation of that, which is. To give more power to our users and to allow them to use software the way that suits them. So I don't think it's a matter of, uh, you know, a feature or a nuance in how we build the product, just a completely new way to help people adopt and use products over time.
Logan: Uh, so I spent six years at Battery Adventures before joining, uh, Redpoint. I've been here now for five years, but I remember, uh, you were raising what I think was your series B, uh, and when you were at DePulse and I was, I was kind of brought in as a ancillary member of the deal team because I had spent time in broader project management.
And there were two things that stood out to me about, uh, about your business that were perhaps, um, counterintuitive, uh, at the time or not conventional wisdom that you guys were executing on, uh, and, and I think has powered you in a meaningful way to where you are today. [00:13:00] One was, uh, performance marketing and in big brain, and you guys were unapologetic about this being something that you wanted to pursue.
And I think that was, uh, at least, um, I don't know, look down upon a little bit in the venture community. I know that was certainly my sentiment at the time, so I can at least speak for myself. And the other one was, um, was more cash based, um, uh, burn and thinking about collections and all of that stuff.
And so I'd love to talk about those two things, uh, maybe separately on the, for, for people that don't know, can you explain maybe what big brain is and how you thought about performance marketing in, in the early days and driving growth for Monday?
Eran: Sure.
Eran: Um, first of all, I think I'll worry myself with probably one of the worst, uh, razors of venture funds. Uh,
Logan: I don't know. You guys did a good, you know, listen, venture fundraising is a means to an end. Uh, and so I think if you build a good enough business, ultimately you get to be [00:14:00] pretty good at fundraising because people will find you. Uh, so I, I, I think you did a good enough job to get to where you are today.
Eran: Yeah. Yeah. No, I appreciate that. I, I think it's better to build a, a good business to be lousy at, at raising money than the opposite.
Logan: I think that's right. I think that's right. One of those, one of those ends up sustaining itself and one of those ends up, uh, you know, burning, burning up or going bankrupt or whatever.
Eran: I, I'll take it.
Eran: Um, so yeah, so, so, um, first of all, uh, we build a platform called Big Brain. Uh, just, uh, uh, to explain what it is. It's, it's not a product that we sell. Uh, it's, it's a system we built in-house. Actually, it's not very intuitive, but we started, we were like six or seven people total in the company.
So like super early days and, um, you know, our initial intuition, let's use something off the shelves, you know, analytic software off the shelf. Uh, but I don't know, since day one, we had this huge inspiration that we want to build [00:15:00] a big company. Um, and we said that, you know, if we want to be successful, we have to control our own destiny.
We have to control information. And we cannot fly and fly blind. We have to know exactly what's going on. I would need to optimize, uh, and build a business that's very efficient because back in the days, unlike, you know, um, what happened in the later years, uh, we didn't have a lot of resources to rake money from our serious aid was actually 1.
4 million. Uh, well, because it's called like a seed round, but, um, you know, we have to be very efficient in how we spend money. So since day one, we tracked. Everything, literally everything, um, every campaign, click every visit to our website, every banner view, every YouTube ad being watched. And then because we built it on our own platform, uh, we could track a user all the way.
Throughout the signup funnel conversion to payment, eventually expansion and so [00:16:00] on. So you could see like a complete user journey years back, uh, with all the data, all the touch points, everything that converted that user into a pain account and eventually how they expended over time. And. First of all, having that data, that's kind of the main work we've done over the years.
And then on top of that, what we built is a very efficient, uh, business marketing engine that can kind of crunch all that data and let us know in a very specific way, which campaign that we're running is very effective and which one we're losing money on. And also that, uh, going back to your second point, like the question is, what do you optimize for like LTV, cat, um, you know, MBR.
ACV, what are you optimized for? Because you can collect all the data, but then what's, what's the target function. Um, and, and for us, you know, it was always cash because, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm the sass geek freak, [00:17:00] whatever you want to call it. Like, uh, I know all the metrics in the in and out, but, um, I don't know if it's because cash was, um, you know, out there in the last six or seven years, but it seems like almost nobody cares about cash.
Like everybody talks about, you know, like, um, financial value and. Financial costs, but nobody talks about what actually goes in and goes out out of the company bank account. But at the end of the day, you know, I always say to people, I joke that you cannot go to the supermarket and pay with LTV. Like you cannot do that.
People need cash, uh, in order to operate their business. Um, so we always try to optimize for that. Like how much should we spend? Actual spend going out? When do we get the cash back? Do people pay us annually or monthly? Um, do the upgrade and so on. And I think that eventually what made Monday a very efficient cash machine over time.
Logan: I'm curious. I [00:18:00] want to unpack both of those a little bit more, but, uh, going back to big brain and, um, setting up the, the culture or the operating discipline to, to track everything. I'm curious. At a quite literal level, how did you go about staffing against it and and building the culture so that you could maybe test all these different things and track it?
Was Big Brain, was that a dedicated group internally that sat, um, that didn't have like a singular functional responsibility but, but, um, went across organizations or how did you ultimately build that up?
Eran: Yeah. So, so practically, uh, initially it was, uh, Ryan, myself, you know, we're both developers, but then we got out of that group of seven people, we had one dedicated developer for that, you know, percentage was, was a lot. Um, right now, right now it's, it's a huge team over a hundred people in the company.
Logan: And how many people do you guys have today?
Eran: 2400.
Logan: Okay. Wow. So it's a, it's a big portion of, uh, of the business [00:19:00] 5 percent or whatever.
Eran: but that's, that's probably one of the best ROI we ever have. And we have in the company, the having big brain, we probably would have been twice the amount of people we are now just to operate the business without big brain. So again, this is an estimation, but you know, throughout the years, we always thought about what are we doing?
That's manual. What are we doing? That doesn't involve the thinking, but it's rather like, you know, malware or just optimizing things that can be. Um, being done using a script or an algorithm. And let's put that into big brain because we want people to focus on deep work. We want to focus on, you know, moving the company forward and not operating the company and big brain is saving us so much time and money.
Uh, over the years, and I just feel we would have been probably a different company if we haven't built this tool, uh, internally.
Logan: And initially it was focused on performance marketing, but it sounds like it's maybe extended from that. Or do I, do I have that correct?
Eran: Yeah, initially it [00:20:00] was focused on performance marketing. Uh, also, we had all the company metrics on it, so, you know, our, our groups and, uh, all the breakdowns, all the cohorts and DR. Actually, BigBrain, uh, was open and still today, open for every employee in the company. Everyone. Um, you know, whether you're a VP or you just joined two days ago, you can see everything.
Uh, that kind of tied up to our transparency, um, um, principle that was very deep in our DNA. Uh, so we had everybody's eyes on the company metrics. Everybody knew how much cash we're spending, how much cash is in the bank, uh, how much we're collecting, how was the ARR yesterday, last month. Um, so everybody still have access to big brain.
So initially it was focused mostly on performance marketing and just seeing general company analytics, I would say.
Logan: And the 100 people today, is it mostly engineering or does it have a bunch of different, um, uh, [00:21:00] functional, um, types of people within the, within big gray?
Eran: Yeah, I would say mostly engineering, um, data analytics people. Um, but also product people, uh, we care a lot about the user experience in big brain because they could build the most amazing tool, but it's nobody uses it internally. It doesn't worth the investment. So we care about a lot about usage interaction.
Um, just make it, you know, uh, super efficient for everybody in the company.
Logan: And I guess the cash point, um, maybe it sounds obvious, but, um, or at least it sounds obvious when you say it at a high level, but, but as you drill in at a, um, at a more fundamental level, there's, there's obviously trade offs in prioritizing cash, uh, collections. And so I'm curious how you thought about like a dollar of ARR that you could get over the course of 12 months, let's say it was paid quarterly or, or something like that versus.
Uh, [00:22:00] what was the appropriate trade off to get that cash all collected up up front? Uh, and like, how did you sort of think about what balance you wanted to optimize for the overall A. R. R. Versus what you could collect individually from a customer at that point in time?
Eran: Yeah, I think, I think that that's the point, because I think a lot of people, when they think about, we want to be more aggressive or we just raise another round, we can spend more in acquiring customers. Uh, you know, let's say we got a great LTVO. 100, 000, but so we could spend more to acquire those customers.
But that's not the point because when you, um, recycle cash quickly, you can reinvest that into the business. I always say that our best investor has been our customers because. The fact they pay for the, the tool upfront, the fact we managed to, um, get them on [00:23:00] board quickly, allowed us to get the cash back, reinvest that into marketing.
Essentially, let's say out of that 1. 4 I mentioned in our seed round, we spend, you know, I don't remember the exact number, but about 5 million in performance marketing using that 1. 4. So that's being aggressive. So that's, that's. capturing more larger portion of the market and being very efficient as opposed to, you know, spending that 1 million on getting, you know, great customers with long LTV, then, then you have to wait out for that LTV to become real test.
You can reinvest in the business. So for us, you know, being very efficient and aggressive and grow rapidly was how can we, you know, quickly grab a significant portion of the market, uh, to fulfill our potential as a company, if it makes sense.
Logan: Yeah, totally.
Logan: Um, I'm curious, as you mentioned, like plowing more money back into performance marketing, if I remember [00:24:00] correctly, or what I had heard from investors way back when, Um, you obviously had to diversify the different channels of acquisition that you went after. And I forget what the first one was that you targeted, maybe it was, it was a Google Adwords or something.
What was the Facebook? Maybe
Eran: And, uh, we'll see you soon, actually.
Logan: How did you, how did you think about like the platform risk, uh, or going deep into a single channel? Versus A B testing others from the start and figuring out what other ones could find different efficacy around it. Did you try to be diverse initially or did you just go as far as you could in one and when you started to saturate that go after others?
Eran: It was more about going deep initially on Facebook ads, but that actually led to a great outcome because I feel that if we were very specific to begin with, uh, we're probably wouldn't have realized the potential of what the platform can deliver because, you know, essentially, you know, everybody is on Facebook or YouTube, even if [00:25:00] you're a, you know, a level executive or a CEO or, you know, You know, a fortune 500 company, uh, executive, um, you'd probably would be on, on Facebook at some point or YouTube.
So you probably, you have access, uh, for everybody tech or non tech. And just because we did more of a broad messaging, uh, just captured different type of audiences and verticals that we couldn't have imagined. That. Have potential to be our customers. And then eventually when we went on to do go another platform, I feel just the inventory that we felt that we could target was much wider than what we initially thought it was.
Logan: Yeah, I remember, uh, you guys are super successful with different, um, um, Like landing pages, uh, and you would have pretty bespoke, uh, at least on Google SEO, when I would type in, I don't know, HR onboarding template or something, uh, you guys always ranked really, really high in terms of like building sort of [00:26:00] modular presentations of, uh, what the, the functionality could exist within it.
And, uh, obviously it was under the same underlying primitives or platform within it. But, um, a lot of different modular applications of it that you were then enabled, uh, Sort of tie out to, I assume, Google ads in that case or Facebook or YouTube or whatever in terms of personalization.
Eran: Yeah, I think that eventually the way people, you know, search tools online, um, they have a very specific intent or a business need thereafter. And they need immediate satisfaction, usually. Um, and, um, you know, I often joke with people that, you know, we build this very modular platform, but nobody goes on Google and search for a flexible platform.
Nobody does that. That's, that's what we want to build. But nobody searched for
Logan: Yeah, yeah, VC is like that, but customers like problems being solved, right?
Eran: And it makes sense. Uh, so we, we, we always said we [00:27:00] need to serve our customers and drive them towards our grand vision and not vice versa, like wait for our customers to convert to our vision, we need to be there where they are. So we, you know, uh, what we've done is like you said, um, because money can be anything for everyone.
Uh, we package it, uh, for different people needs and get them started. And then eventually they discover. What they can actually do with the platform,
Logan: I want to talk about AI more generally in a second, but I guess I'm curious just because we're on the performance marketing thread. I assume you guys have been experimenting with some of the different types of advertising that you can do, uh, in this generative AI world. I'm curious, are there any interesting takeaways or things that have been counterintuitive to you in the early days of playing around with some of this stuff?
Eran: uh, in terms of the actual ad creation or other stuff.
Logan: I mean, all of the above. I guess maybe, how do you think about advertising on some of the AI platforms that are coming out? Like, uh, I assume at some, I mean, [00:28:00] Perplexity said that they're going to start doing advertising, I think next year, Chattubt at some point, I assume we'll have some. Some advertising, uh, stuff around that.
So I guess that's an interesting question, but, um, that might be a little more speculative. I'm curious on the more generative side of actually presenting these ads on things like Instagram or Facebook or YouTube, where you can actually create copy or, or different types of A B tests around things that are generative in some way.
I'm curious what you guys have seen in that.
Eran: Yeah. I mean, we do use some tools to generate, um, you know, ads, but I would say it's a significant, um, way for us to generate ads right now. It might change in the future. It still involves some humans behind the process, but, uh, uh, in terms of advertising on AI platform, definitely open to it. I mean, we're, we're open to it.
And the platform, I would say, um, but, um, you know, once that's become available, uh, we'll be happy to explore it.
Logan: Yeah, it feels like, uh, you don't know which side of the coin, it's [00:29:00] like the old adage of marketing. I don't know which 50 percent works and I don't know which side, like being early to some of those things. I have to assume it either presents a total waste of time and it's not going to be effective or it's like enormously.
Beneficial and super effective and very underpriced. And it's hard to know which one it's ultimately going to be. So I assume you need to, you want to be out in front of some of these things, trying to figure out which bucket it's going to go into.
Eran: Yeah. I mean, look, eventually it's a free market. So, uh, those things even out over time. So, uh, we'll try, uh, if there's a, you know, huge benefit to that, I'm sure other players will notice that.
Logan: Yeah. Yeah. Time it typically, there's usually a couple of quarters or
Eran: Yeah.
Logan: you know, people not being totally perfect with it. Um, uh, so on the AI side, I'm curious, um, how.
Logan: You all think of, uh, the opportunity as well as, uh, things you're thinking about maybe on the risk side for, for AI as it relates to Monday's business.
Eran: Yeah, uh, well, first of [00:30:00] all, I'm, I'm super excited for it. Uh, genuinely excited for it, both on a personal level, but mostly on the company level. Um, actually, um, you know, we, we've been working on a few things within Monday. Um, so just to give you a high level overview. Um, so far, the way we kind of see AI, uh, incorporating into Monday is in three ways.
Um, one, um, we build something that we call AI blocks. What it does, basically, is that people build automation on the top of Monday. Automations, integration, basically, uh, you can think about it like an automated workflow. Uh, that they build for themselves. Anybody with their own business. And we built those, all of those blocks in those automations are AI driven.
So you can do a lot of work that used to be manual, uh, used to be done by people, uh, using AI, whether it's to extract specific information. Uh, from a document [00:31:00] all the way to autosigning people to different tasks based on based on their skills or anything like that. And that actually, uh, that's been like literally exploding on our platform.
Just, uh, we're a public company, so I can quote what we said on the last earning call, um, that grew 250 percent Q over Q, you know, you know, something growing 250 percent Q over Q that means, you know, It's growing super quickly. Uh, we get great feedback and customers have been adopting more and more of those AI features.
So that's one thing that we added to the platform. Um, the second thing we're doing is we have those different products, um, Monday CRM, uh, work management, so on, um, Monday service as well. So for those, in each one of those categories, we build AI capabilities. Um, Monday service is going to be able to auto answer, um, tickets.
Um, Monday CRM, uh, and it's going to be able to, uh, [00:32:00] do automatic exploration emails, uh, and so on. But that's something you would see in other places in the industry. And I say, we have to do it just to, uh, compete with other players. Uh, and the third thing, which I'm very excited about, um, and really ties to Monday's vision is we're building, um, just the same way you build a new board or, um, a new dashboard in Monday.
You're going to be able to build a new agent, uh, an agent that's specific for your business. So we took the same principle of giving that superpower to our users, the same way we've done it with the Monday platform. Just allow them to build their own AI bots or AI agents, if you like. So that agent not only can help you with the Monday platform, but can actually help you with your own business.
So, uh, automate some of the things you do in your hotel, for example, or your shop or your, you know, uh, tech company, whatever it is, just super intuitive, uh, easy to use and build your [00:33:00] own the Monday way. So I'm very excited for this because it truly ties with our vision of giving complex tools to our customers, just in a very intuitive and easy to use way and allowed it to build themselves.
And we now going to give access to the most advanced technology. To almost everybody, uh, or all of our users, which really excites me.
Logan: As you think about this move or shift to people doing work within your system, to people using your system to do work, and maybe this agentic world that we're moving towards, I'm curious, a lot of our companies are dealing with, um, or considering the implications from a pricing standpoint, uh, and I realize you guys are a public company, Company and so there's only so much that you can share around this, but I'm curious how you guys you've historically been a little more centered on seat based pricing.
Do you think that that proves to be the model [00:34:00] going forward for you and you just figure out some of the add ons that are some of the agentic? Things that that are automations that you're gonna offer as well. Or do you think that the model actually maybe shifts to more usage as perhaps less people are actually logging in on a daily basis to do the work instead of letting your system do the work for them?
Eran: Yeah, I actually think that, um, AI probably not going to lead to, um, you know, seat compression, maybe on some very specific tools like, uh, you know, um, service oriented tools or. You know, sales oriented tools, but, uh, I don't think that's going to lead to cease compression. However, um, I do, I agree that, um, probably we need to price AI features differently, uh, based on construction and actual usage.
And I feel that's a great thing. I think, uh, you know, the, the fact that, you know, SAS software, um, just aligned the values of customers and software makers that you can cancel at any [00:35:00] time you have everything on the cloud, I think that, you know, consumption based pricing on AI just leads to more alignment between the value customers get and, uh, the company expenses and what they invest in.
And I think it makes a lot of sense. I think most companies are headed towards that direction and probably We're going to explore as well.
Logan: You alluded to something earlier about where, um, product insights came from and some of the realizations, uh, that you had about the potential of Monday. Perhaps coming from seeing the number of different customers that were using it for different things. I think sales and service or maybe one of the examples I had heard you mention that a lot of the material transformative features or functionality that you built out, though, did not come from the the product.
Customers and instead came from your own intuition about what the product or the platform could do. Can you maybe speak to [00:36:00] that and how you think about the balance of listening to your customers versus, um, thinking about what the future could or should look like from your own intuition?
Eran: Yeah, I think that's, um, a fine balance you need to, um, work on because, uh, of course we're listening to customers and, uh, you know, we'll process their feedback and, and do a lot of things that are requested by our customers. But like you said, and I said this before, the most, um, you know, the most significant changes that we've done that made the most impact on our business were actually not future requests for our customers, but.
Whether us driving towards our vision, um, when we initially launched automations, none of our customers wanted, like nobody asked for that. Uh, but that was one of the most significant things we ever done. Um, same goes to the products, by the way, uh, they've done it on our own platform. Uh, we've seen our customers go above and beyond building their CRM on Monday.
Uh, [00:37:00] which was marketed to them as a, you know, project management software. Like, why would somebody do this? And not in the hundreds and not in the thousands, in the tens of thousands. So we realized there's something here. Um, and, um, nobody asked for a specific project product, uh, but we just saw what they're been doing with the platform and decided to take this a step forward.
That was a huge decision on our side. You know, Monday used to be like this one tool, um, you know, doing that Monday from a single tool, a single software into multi products, we, it was a huge change for us. And, and, uh, again, it's a bet that we chose, uh, and we believe in and, you know, paid off tremendously, uh, strategic,
Logan: In the early days of building the company, um, you guys, uh, both co founders, uh, were technical by background, but I get the sense that you, um, dove into some of these competencies that you hadn't [00:38:00] had exposure to in the past, be it, be it, um, marketing as, as one example. I I'm curious how you thought about.
balancing, um, building up your own knowledge and being the, uh, the, the person that became a domain expert in an area that you didn't have competency in the past versus bringing in different people to augment your knowledge and having trust for delegation, uh, that, you know, this isn't going to be my core competency and I'll trust Other people to run, um, whatever XYZ function and I'm just not going to go as deep into it.
So I guess the question is, how did you pick what areas to go learn versus hire people in just to augment, uh, the blind spots you had?
Eran: um, it's easy.
Eran: We just chose to run that machine ourselves. That's,
Logan: Okay. Yeah. So you just do it all. I guess that's, that's, uh, what the kids [00:39:00] are calling founder mode these days. Were there
Eran: I mean, we, we are the amazing people, but, uh, We, we never thought it was a good idea to let somebody build what we call it, like a black box within the company. Um, and, uh, we always cared about every tiny detail. I, you know, I, myself were, like I said, we're developers, but we're also obsessed with details.
And data, um, I'm not sure every manager loves that, but, uh, that's, uh, what we care about. And, um, we also try to think from our own perspectives on what we feel is right. I would say that along the way, you know, you mentioned you saw us when you were in battery ventures, but, uh, Uh, we all, we didn't always go through that conservative path.
I would say like, you know, with performance marketing, with big brain, with the name change, with, um, the fact we didn't have a sales team, product like growth, like we always felt like we're misunderstood or, you know, people look at us like we're, [00:40:00] um, you know, thinking in a different way, but we always been loyal to what we feel is right.
And, um, I think it just led us in a path that's unique to us. Uh, it created a lot of opportunity for us as a company as well. Um, this is who we are. I don't know. Uh, but, uh, you know, we're both come from developer background, uh, that we wanted to learn how to do marketing our way, uh, with code, with data and analytics.
And I think that what's helped create a marketing engine that's very unique.
Logan: To care about, or, uh, that were more, um, like eating your vegetables versus eating dessert in some ways, uh, or did you. Find enjoyment in the totality of the operating details and things to focus on.
Eran: Um, no, I mean, we, we learned a lot along the way and made a lot of mistakes. Um, look, initially, [00:41:00] um, we had like, um, going back to, you know, 2018, 2019. I thought we never going to have a sales team within the company. Um, that was obvious to us maybe a little bit before, uh, we were sure that best way to succeed is to build an amazing product and then And an enterprise company is going to adopt it.
Like we didn't know how enterprise companies work. Like, uh, that's the main thing we had to learn is the hard way. Like, uh, we, we learned that, um, you know, larger companies require different process of implementation, different sales process, uh, the way we frame it to ourself always is we need to build a bit better products for our large customers and a better product and not just the software itself.
It's also the process around it. It's the buying process. Are you convey information to them? How you explain to them what's the value you deliver? Uh, so we always think about building products. Just sometimes those products involve humans. Uh, as far,[00:42:00]
Logan: I'm curious, how did you ultimately find religion or change your perspective on hiring salespeople? Was it a, was it a customer, uh, was it an executive or ultimately how did you switch your perspective around it?
Eran: yeah, I mean, look, we, we want to win. Uh, we want to be successful. Uh, we want to build a huge company and we'll do whatever it takes. Um, and we have our strong beliefs, but sometimes we're wrong. And, um, you know, we'll do whatever it takes. And at some point where you realize that somebody is not working as you expected, you try to go back to all those principles and re examine them.
And we've done this several times throughout the life of the company. And now I'm super excited about the amazing sales team we have. We have almost a thousand CRO group. So. It's one of the most amazing teams. I love it. I'm obsessed about it. It's, uh, I just feel it's, it's such, it's basically what made the company, what it [00:43:00] is today.
So without it, we were totally different company.
Logan: I'm curious about the customer success side of things. So, so, um, I think you, uh, I heard you read, uh, uh, delivery happiness, uh, and that proved to be pretty influential in terms of how to service customers. Can you maybe speak to, uh, To that and, um, the, the philosophical perspective that you all have about, um, customer service and, and how you go about, um, responding to customer requests or inquiries or, uh, or, uh, you know, anything along those lines.
Eran: Yeah. So, so we're obsessed, uh, with delivering an amazing service to our customers. Uh, it's been like this from the very beginning. Um, I just feel eventually when you build a, you know, an amazing software or a business. Uh, almost the only interaction the customers have with the company, which is a human interaction is with people with customer support.
Those are the [00:44:00] people they meet. This is their perception of who the company is, and you want to have them, you want them to have the most amazing experience. So I feel that that's a major part of building a very strong brand, uh, over time. And, uh, we, we built a few, um, cool things. Um, um, maybe, maybe I'll start with something a little bit unrelated, but I think, uh, worth mentioning, uh, when we were a small company, I remember one day, like 30 people, okay.
Like really small. Uh, I remember one day, um, Uh, I got a complaint about a customer support team that didn't answer a ticket within a few hours and, uh, Actually, it was a lunch break. So I went to the, to the room and the phone was ringing and nobody was there, uh, to answer the phone. They were all in a lunch break.
And I remember asking myself like, um, what happened? Like, what, what, how can we improve this? And, you know, um, and, and at this point I realized that we need to measure them in a better way. So one thing [00:45:00] that I feel a lot of community misses. What do you optimize for? What is it time for them to wait customer satisfaction?
So we work really hard to get the KPIs, right? Like, what do we optimize for? Uh, and we have a very sophisticated system within big brain of measuring that our customer success is really doing the best for our customers. Because sometimes if you optimize just one metric, you get the wrong result. Because if you optimize for answering time, people might answer quickly, but inefficiently.
Uh, it's the optimates for other metrics, getting the right KPIs is the most important thing. And then, um, we had another thing that I'm really proud of. Um, you can email directly to Roy and myself. So we have like email to the CEO, uh, feature, uh, which I really like people that are frustrated or feel they're.
It doesn't get the service that they wanted. They can actually email Roy myself and we go through those emails every day. I don't answer them [00:46:00] directly, but I go through them. We have a team dedicated for that. Uh, it's also something that we really care about.
Logan: It makes a lot of sense. And, um, I mean, it's a great principle to have, uh, I think from the early days to you guys said set like an SLA around response time or how quickly you're going to get back to customers. Was that, was that something you had seen, uh, in the data or was that just a philosophy that you, you wanted to, uh, impart within the business?
Eran: Um, we said that, um, the first thing to create a great service is to answer to people quickly. That's, uh, the bare minimum we need to focus on. So that was kind of the initial. Metric that we try to optimize for, and then we made it more complicated just to make sure to get the best service as well, and not just a quick answer in time, this was a great start to start optimizing that team in that process.
Logan: I know that you think of a bunch of elements of running the business, like shipping products. I'm [00:47:00] curious how that applies to things like culture. Like, how do you think about setting a product ethos in different departments and how to make the org operate consistently from that approach?
Eran: First of all, one core principle that we always had is giving people as much ownership and autonomy as possible. So even now, uh, with the new products that we launched, each one of those teams is independent. They make their own decisions, they have their own KPI, and they drive the company forward, which I love because We created this startup mentality within a large organization, and they're very ambitious.
They're quick to respond, um, and they feel the ownership is on their shoulders. So I think that's something we've created that's very efficient. If you look at the like sheer percentages, our R& D is relatively small compared to other companies, just [00:48:00] in terms of expenses. We always believe that having a small team that's very effective is much better than have a lot of developers, uh, move in very slowly.
So we always optimize for talent. We always optimize for quick decision making. I think a lot of time being wasted on choosing a or B where I feel choosing either is the right thing to do. It's good. So it's just about, let's move forward. Like makes decision. You bring smart people, probably either choice is going to be great.
Let's move forward. So we give them the ownership, uh, and we say, we trust you, you know, go for it. And that led to the most amazing results, uh, within the company. I think that companies, um, begin to slow down where you have to get management confirmation confirmation for everything you want to do. So we try to avoid this as much as we can.
Logan: Yeah, I've heard the false trade off, especially when shipping products, but I think this applies to anything when, um, do you want it to be high quality, uh, or do you want it to be fast? And I [00:49:00] think consistently all the, uh, the best product teams or engineering organizations that I work with, They, they tend to ship fast and they tend to ship high quality.
And so it's this false dichotomy that we put in that, that time and, uh, quality are at odds with one another. And I assume that applies to your A or B. Why, why not both kind of philosophy there?
Eran: Yeah, the faster you ship, the faster you get feedback, the better product you create over time.
Logan: What types of people, uh, have you found to be successful? Within your organization, and I guess as you as you interview or think about traits that are that you uniquely seek out versus, uh, versus not, uh, that might be different than other organizations
Eran: I think people that like to take ownership, like to drive things forward, doesn't like to be micromanaged, um, and want to make their own decisions are the people who flourish, uh, in Monday. Um, you [00:50:00] know, even though we're a public company and, uh, we might look from the outside, like, uh, You know, success story, uh, inside, uh, internally, like we feel we're constantly failing and we feel that we haven't accomplished like 1 percent of our potential.
So, uh, I just feel we have so much we can accomplish as a company. And everybody shared this thing that we're just getting started. And I love it. Like there's a feeling of, um. You know, we're still hungry. We have so much we can accomplish. I just feel we, we have so much potential that I don't want to waste.
I feel like we were given the most amazing opportunity as a company. Um, even the platform, just the broad customer base, the different product suites. Uh, there's so much we can do and no one to blame, uh, like only ourselves. Like, uh, it's, it's on us to deliver. We have huge STEM, huge customer base, the love, the product, uh, [00:51:00] almost no limitation.
It's really up to our own execution. So on one hand, it's a little bit, it's a little bit nervous, but on the other hand, you could feel your own destiny. So, uh, I love the challenge.
Logan: in interview settings. One of the things that this maybe is really dated, so I'll make the reference and you feel free to correct how you're doing it today, but, um, that uh, Open ended questions to hear how people talk through or think about, um, different problems. And one of the examples that I had heard you reference was, um, I think related to the Facebook and I think it was like a timeline or chronology of friend related things versus maybe a more algorithmic seed in having people talk through how they would think about the trade offs.
Can you speak to, maybe I have the example wrong, but can you speak to. Maybe the interview questions or what you try to get out of a [00:52:00] process like that.
Eran: Yeah. Um, also interviews is something that, uh, we learn how to do the right way. I still feel we have a lot to improve, but, uh, I think traditionally, uh, the way people interview people is, um, they go through their CV. Uh, uh, I don't know the way I experienced it is then people, you know, for 45 minutes talking about the resume, it's, it's usually.
Um, doesn't give you a lot of information about the person in front of me. Uh, and I try to avoid that. I try to minimize that part to five minutes and then I try to ask them questions. Not about their history or their work experience, but actual questions. That probably they're going to need to answer on their first day at the job.
Um, but I cannot ask them questions about Monday because like, they have no knowledge on that. Uh, so I try to find a different product or a company that might be a consumer oriented company that they might [00:53:00] be using. And then ask them like intuitive questions and just see how they think and then challenge them and then see how they react to that.
So learn more about their thought process and how they, you know, uh, think and, and. Um, handle conflict or handle uncertainty. Um, and that gives me a lot more information about the person as opposed to just go through their work history.
Logan: Do you uniquely take on this responsibility or is this something that you encourage the the rest of the team to to do as going through an interview process?
Eran: No, no, it's something we, we apply throughout the, the company, um, as like one of the principles that we do when we hire people.
Logan: Are there other things you've learned about the uh, the interview process or hiring from a candidate standpoint? I'm not sure if it's related to the batching references or how to run an effective process. I trust given your operational rigor that you Thought about and maybe A B tested a bunch of ways of [00:54:00] going about interviewing.
So I'm curious if there's any lessons there.
Eran: No, surprisingly, I think the most important thing, um, when you interview a person is to get, it might be not intuitive, but to get as much confidence as you can before the interview. So. When we are supposed to meet somebody, we try to find my son as much as many people that work with that person before through our own network or the network of our network, and try to find as much information about that person for people who actually worked with him or her before.
So that gives you a lot of insight of what's working and what's not. And if you really been deliberate about the questions. Uh, and also find the best candidates, um, before the interview. So that, that's something we, we try to focus on, uh, in our process.
Logan: You guys went public, you said three and a half years ago. Is that something you encourage other people to do? Uh, is, has that been a net benefit for, for the business? Or is it, um, just, [00:55:00] just a stop along the way? And you know, you're, you're indifferent to the pros and the cons of it.
Eran: Look, I, I, I love the fact that we went public. Um, if I, if I had to go back in time, I would do it again. The process itself wasn't as enjoyable as, as you might think. Uh, uh, but, um,
Logan: I've, I've been through it as an, uh, a observer. So I think it's not very enjoyable, but so maybe that the average person would think, uh, but yes,
Eran: uh, but, uh, I think being a public company brings a lot of benefit. I personally really love the quarterly cadence, the fact that we have to think as a quarter. I used to love board meetings, uh, before going public. And people ask me why, because it's forced me to think, it forced me to prepare, it forced me to, um, think about a strategy.
And now we need to do this in, in front [00:56:00] of all of our investors, all of our public investors. And, you know, one thing that, uh, was, I wouldn't say surprising, but I sent out the public investors. Are super sophisticated. I always thought that the private investors, you know, knew exactly how SaaS companies work and really understand the business model, but I would say public investors are as sophisticated.
It's not more, I mean, uh, because they also super interested in financial. Information. So for me, the whole process of learning from investors, getting feedback, um, and, and our approach both for me and myself, we try to learn like genuinely learn from people and we ask investors, what can we do better? What are we doing wrong?
We don't try to appear as somebody who has all the answers, but rather that we own a living process. And I feel this builds a lot of confidence and also help really help us in our journey as a public company.
Logan: it's interesting. I think some of the smartest [00:57:00] people are public market investors. And so I, I, I agree with your sentiment that. There was, there was probably 10 years ago when the SAS, there were, there were maybe, or 12 years ago or 15, whatever it was when there were six or eight SAS businesses, and most of them were kind of enterprise oriented, uh, that there was.
Just a lack of appreciation or understanding for some of the things related to how to build SAS businesses. And so the private market had a much deeper appreciation or understanding of all that stuff. But now I don't know if it's 75 or 80 or 65 or whatever the number is, but there's, there's so many, uh, data points out there and the public market is just so, Attune to the different changes that occur in these businesses, and they're just very good pattern matchers against all that stuff.
And so I find them to be super sophisticated in terms of their understanding and observations around detail and all that.
Eran: Yeah. A hundred percent. I agree.
Logan: Have [00:58:00] you found that, um, that there's been more of a short term focus, uh, in the public markets, or have you been able to balance Kind of the medium term objectives with, uh, with, with the near term and the expectation setting with your, your public investors.
Now,
Eran: That was actually not a surprise for me because, uh, Like all the investors that we talk with are all long term, uh, and, um, you know, even now on the last earnings call, our stock actually went down, uh, after the earnings call. And I was surprised we got great feedback from investors, uh, long term investors, and they really kind of look at the business, what's working, uh, so a lot of them really focus on the long term and we got great feedback from them.
Um, so. I just feel that, um, you know, similar to a private company, uh, and the public company also, obviously you've got the edge funds, you've got the. Retail investors, you don't have control on, and they see kind of [00:59:00] short term gains, but there's a lot of long term investors, great ones that really supportive and can hold for the longterm.
They understand the strategy, they care about the product, they care about the vision. Um, and that was, you know, great to see, uh, in our journey as a public company.
Logan: one of the things that became evident to me in, in prepping for this, as well as this discussion is just how, how detail oriented, uh, you and Roy seem to be and, uh, just the operating rigor, um, that, that you have for the, for the business. I'm interested. Is that something that you've always. Ben, and does that date back to, uh, to, to you as a kid, did you have like a meticulously clean room and, uh, you know, you, you were always on top of all this stuff, homework done well in advance of it being due, or is that something you've learned professionally, uh, to, to be, to focus on?
Eran: Um, look, if you ask my mom, my room was not clean, but, uh, my folders and my computer were [01:00:00] very, uh, tight. So, uh, I, I, uh, organize what I care about. Um, but I don't know, I, I take joy out of making this machine, this company more efficient. Uh, it just feels satisfying. Um, to know that, um, we're doing something, right.
It's feel satisfying. We, we have the same here that we love to hear problems, worry myself. We love to hear problems. Uh, we love to touch problems. We love to go deep and that just encourage everybody on every level to share what's not working. I think a lot of companies. They have this tendency to ignore problems and they tend to grow over time and become serious problems.
And I think one of the things that really help us scale and grow is that we always try to figure out what's not working. And once we do, we have this sense that we can fix it, [01:01:00] whether it's big or small. So, um, we get excited. Hadn't fun finding the problem is weird as it may sound.
Logan: I'm interested. Um, you all have, have a bunch of data that you run the business on and metrics that you track. How many, you know, metrics do you think about on a daily basis? Are there, is it, is it six KPIs that you sort of use as the, the North star and then another 150 that fall out of it? Or do you track 30, uh, as, as kind of the, the core framework by which you, you run the business on a daily basis.
Eran: Yeah. So it's actually a big brain, uh, built. Uh, internal mobile app that's called, uh, Monday morning. Uh, it's a tool we use internally, uh, that people have on their mobile. And, uh, you can see in real time on all the main KPIs. Um, so I would say on a daily basis, I probably track around 10 to 15, [01:02:00] um, many KPIs, but this app, and you know, if you go on Big Red on your laptop computer, you can drill down to anything you like.
So if something is outgrowing as we expected, we can drill down and see the information, different teams focus on different types of the business, but usually on a day to day basis, um, wait. Uh, try to kind of share the high level, um, KPIs. Actually, when we were a private company, um, we used to send everybody, the company, a daily SMS with all the information about what happened last night and all of our investors, um, got the same SMS every morning.
That's one of the best things we've done. And nobody was surprised in the end of the quarter. Nobody was surprised for the board meeting, full transparency with your investors. And it's one of the things that really, um, I'm proud of. And I think traded the very efficient board for us, uh, over,
Logan: Do you think that led to better accountability within the organization? I can imagine that could be a little anxiety [01:03:00] inducing, uh, in different organizations, but it sounds like you guys found a way to just be transparent and upfront about it.
Eran: I think being transparent removes anxiety because anxiety comes from problems, uh, and problems you don't fix, not because something that I've seen happen, even to the best companies, you have bad orders, you have bad years, you have bad month, nobody's perfect. But the fact that it's out there and you talk about it and you fix it just reduces the anxiety.
So I just feel that being transparent and, um, you know, immediate, uh, in how you tackle things and fix them, just remove the anxiety
Logan: You're one of the few public companies that I know of that has involved with a co CEO model. Um, how, how have you. Been able to make the partnership work, uh, as well as it has, uh, your, are you 12 years in now? Uh, 11, something like that.
Eran: 12th.
Logan: 12. [01:04:00] Um, do you guys end up dividing different functional areas of responsibility or do you both oversee, um, the entirety of the, the areas within the organization?
How does that work?
Eran: Yeah. So first of all, uh, right. My parking is, is really the most amazing Parker, uh, I could hope for. And, uh, when we started a company. Um, originally he was the CEO and I was the CTO, although he is as technical as I'm, uh, but um,
Logan: did you guys land on that? By the way,
Eran: it was just, he started a few months before me, so, uh, and, uh, we didn't care. So, uh, we just said, okay, let's do it this way.
Um, and um, but I, I remember first week he told me, Elana, I want us to do everything together. And I said, of course. We, whatever. We're we're co-founders. They said, no, no, no. I want us to do everything together. It says as like CEOs. And I said, okay, uh, and that's kind of stood in my character as well. And what's so special about Roy, uh, [01:05:00] a lot of things, but, um, he doesn't have an ego, like, uh, he doesn't care about himself.
He cares that the company is going to be successful. That's something I always appreciated about him. Uh, it's not about himself. It's about the company. And, uh, that also made me kind of let go of my own ego. And I said, look, I'll do everything with you. And I don't care about the time, whatever you want, we'll do it together.
And we've done this and, you know, it's funny because in the early days we would admit investors, maybe, uh, like people in your team and we would confuse them because, you know, I sometimes might talk about the business model and Roy will talk about technical part, but he was officially CEO, I was officially CTO, and I saw their confused, uh, look on their face, uh, and then after a few years we decided to make it official, uh, to be co CEOs.
Uh, but it's been like this from day one, um, and, um, look, I, I really feel it's, it's like a hack that we have on, uh, on building companies because we share the burden. We talk about everything. [01:06:00] We talk hours every day. Uh, we actually both live next to the office. We walk home almost every day. We talk for hours and hours.
Um, and, uh, just feel, you know, assured the burden, uh, with somebody, I'm not alone. A lot of people describe being a CEO as a very lonely job and we're not lonely. Uh, we got each other and the great leadership. So, uh, I just feel, uh, it's a, it's a huge benefit. And also, uh, when we go to investor conferences, we, one of the only companies that have two rooms, so we meet twice the amount of investors.
Logan: you can divide and conquer. It sounds like you do everything together. Minus, uh, you can divide and conquer a little bit on the investor and the investor conversations. I guess I guess I didn't have this in my, uh, research. But how? So how did you? How did you two get to know each other? Originally,
Eran: Yeah, so I actually know Roy since I was 18. Uh, we've been in the same unit, uh, in the intelligence force. Uh, he's actually five years older than me. So he actually [01:07:00] recruited me to the team. It was part of the team. And, uh, we both, I started before Monday and, uh, we kind of talked throughout the years, but then eventually we decided to do something together, um, as co founders after.
Like 10 years that we know each other.
Logan: are there any lessons from your co founding journey that you would In part to people that are listening, either have already started a business with, with an existing co founder, or maybe thinking about starting a company and evaluating who the right co founder should be,
Eran: Yeah, I think, um, eventually a lot of companies fail because of founder relationship, uh, and people, uh, I think, um, undervalue how much this is important because it's, it's, it's. Such as a significant part of making a company successful on scale, this relationship, and because of the fact we were both without ego, the fact that we care about the company being successful, and we knew what we care about, uh, when [01:08:00] we built the company, we were very aligned.
The deal today, I think that really helped us go through, and we went through a lot, you know, ups and downs and hard times and good times, but we, our relationship has always been very stable. And I think that really gives us a lot of confidence, um, towards the future as well.
Logan: what are the, uh, good things and potentially, uh, bad things about, uh, these, these, these. Podcast platforms is they, uh, they're, they're fairly persistent. And so, uh, I think this is going to be up on YouTube or Apple podcasts or Spotify for, for a while.
Logan: If someone's listening to this in five years time, um, where, where do you hope, uh, Monday is from a business standpoint, um, what, what do you hope to be accomplishing that you can maybe call your shot now, uh, November of 2024?
Eran: Um, but I'm not the best person to predict the future, but,
Logan: You've done a good job with Monday or at least building towards the future in some [01:09:00] way. So you're, you're as good as any.
Eran: uh, tell you what we aim for, uh, as a company. Um, look, uh, Monday have built this amazing platform. We're very proud of, it's very unique. And we built those products on top of it. Eventually. Um, I see a future where companies buy Monday for their business and run the core of what drives their business on Monday.
Uh, whether it's work management, CRM, dev service, another tool. And by doing that, the compounded, the compound value of using different tools from the same vendor, just. Releases so much information, create everything much more smooth, um, between different software. A lot of the information, as you think about today, is siloed.
If you use, you know, Salesforce, for example, and Zendesk, and JIRA, you know, great platform, but eventually they'll communicate with one another, and data is captured and siloed. We're doing each one. And Monday really liberates, uh, that information, make everything [01:10:00] accessible across all tools. And on top of that, um, everything is so flexible.
So it truly suits your business. So definitely see a future where, you know, companies be course will, uh, by Monday and use it throughout their company. And on top of that, definitely AI is going to be a major part of that. So. I feel Monday has one of the biggest potential to be a significant driver in AI adoption for our own customers.
So I see a future where a lot of the work has been done using AI on Monday. Other work has been managed on our different products and companies literally run on Monday.
Logan: Well, uh, as we, as we wrap here, I, one last one for you. I'm curious if, if there's a, um, piece of, of conventional wisdom, uh, either in Silicon Valley or about, um, operating companies that you hear, uh, espoused. From, from, I don't know, BC's people with podcasts or, uh, or, uh, anyone else blogs that, uh, that you disagree with, or you just found to [01:11:00] be.
Fundamentally untrue. Are there any counterintuitive things that stand out to you that, that, that you disagree with?
Eran: Well, a lot, but, uh, I would say my main one, um, is that, um, it's something I mentioned before, but failing is one of the most amazing things that, um, you can do as a person. And as a company and selling awesome, uh, makes you perfect over time. And this is something that I'll not only do myself, but also is a key and core part of our company DNA.
And we encourage people to try and sell. And we said to them, like, we're behind you. We trust you failing as part of the process of making the most perfect company. And, uh, let's just continue and sell until we, um, succeed.
Logan: Yeah, well, that's great, Ron. Thanks for doing this. It was great to have you on and, uh, yeah, really appreciate you making the time.
Eran: Thank you so much.[01:12:00]
Logan: Thank you for joining the Logan Bartlett show with co founder and co CEO of monday. com, Ron Zentman. If you enjoyed this discussion, I'd really appreciate it if you subscribe on whatever podcast platform you're listening to us on, as well as share with anyone else that you think might find it interesting.
We look forward to seeing you back here next week with another great guest on the Logan Bartlett show. Have a great weekend, everyone.