0:00 A great PM basically for me is someone
0:02 that is relentless until he gets this
0:04 impact until he validates that this
0:07 impact is in place. In some cases doing
0:10 the biggest impact is not developing
0:12 another feature. It's about making the
0:14 current value more accessible. You've
0:15 been at this for 8 years. You said
0:17 there's 250,000 customers at this point.
0:20 What would you say is the most
0:21 counterintuitive thing you've learned
0:23 through this journey of building Monday?
0:25 We really have an approach of very
0:28 radical transparency about everything
0:31 before we went public. We actually
0:33 shared every bit of information with our
0:36 employees. Instead of demoralizing
0:37 people, I think that this is something
0:39 that gives them a sense of deep
0:41 partnership. We really want everyone's
0:43 brains in the challenge and not just one
0:45 centralized brain and a lot of working
0:47 hands. You basically realized that your
0:51 competitors were shipping a lot faster
0:53 than you were. that made you shift the
0:55 way you think about product and the way
0:56 you operate. Some of our competitors did
0:59 something that we can only imagine. We
1:01 said, "Okay, we need to treat it
1:02 differently." We received a gift from
1:04 our competitors. They showed us that
1:06 it's possible. Use your competition,
1:08 know it, and take it and set ambitious
1:10 goals and believe in yourself and you
1:12 can do amazing
1:13 things. Today, my guest is Daniel Ara.
1:16 Daniel's currently chief product and
1:18 technology officer at monday.com. He
1:20 joined when they were just around 40
1:22 employees. And a few years in, Daniel
1:24 and the Exec team realized that their
1:26 competitors were able to move a lot
1:28 faster than they were and ship a lot
1:30 more often than they were. And that
1:32 spurred a transformation in how they
1:34 build and operate their teams. Very few
1:37 companies are able to transform like
1:38 this, and even fewer recognize that
1:40 something is wrong. In our conversation,
1:42 Daniel shares a bunch of very specific
1:44 insights and suggestions into how to go
1:46 about making change or even recognizing
1:49 that something is wrong. Daniel shares
1:51 moments when it felt like everything was
1:53 going to crumble, why it's important to
1:54 know that the skills that got you to
1:56 where you are today aren't the skills
1:57 that are going to take you to the next
1:58 level, why it's so important to orient
2:00 all your teams around impact, and so
2:03 much more. If you enjoy this podcast,
2:05 don't forget to subscribe and follow it
2:06 in your favorite podcasting app or
2:07 YouTube. Also, if you become an annual
2:09 subscriber of my newsletter, you get a
2:11 year free of paid accounts at Superhum,
2:14 Linear, Notion, Granola, and Perplexity
2:17 Pro. Check it out at
2:18 lennisnewsletter.com and click bundle.
2:21 With that, I bring you Daniel Ara. This
2:24 episode is brought to you by Interpret.
2:26 Interpret unifies all your customer
2:28 interactions from Gong Calls to Zenesk
2:30 tickets to Twitter threads to app store
2:32 reviews and makes it available for
2:34 analysis. It's trusted by leading
2:35 product orgs like Canva, Notion, Loom,
2:38 Linear, Monday.com, and Straa to bring
2:41 the voice of the customer into the
2:43 product development process, helping you
2:44 build best-in-class products faster.
2:47 What makes Interpret special is its
2:48 ability to build and update customer
2:50 specific AI models that provide the most
2:52 granular and accurate insights into your
2:54 business. Connect customer insights to
2:56 revenue and operational data in your CRM
2:58 or data warehouse to map the business
3:00 impact of each customer need and
3:02 prioritize confidently and empower your
3:04 entire team to easily take action on use
3:07 cases like win- loss analysis, critical
3:09 bug detection, and identifying drivers
3:11 of churn with interprets AI assistant
3:14 wisdom. Looking to automate your
3:16 feedback loops and prioritize your
3:17 roadmap with confidence like notion,
3:19 Canva, and linear? Visit
3:24 enterp.com/lenny to connect with the
3:26 team and get two free months when you
3:28 sign up for an annual plan. This is a
3:30 limited time offer. That's
3:33 interpret.com/lenny. This episode is
3:35 brought to you by Air Table Product
3:37 Central, the unified system that brings
3:39 your entire product or together in one
3:41 place. No more scattered tools. No more
3:44 misaligned teams. If you're like most
3:46 product leaders, you're tired of
3:47 constant context switching between
3:49 tools. That's why Air Table built
3:51 Product Central after decades of working
3:54 with worldclass product companies. Think
3:56 of it as mission control for your entire
3:58 product organization. Unlike rigid point
4:00 solutions, Product Central powers
4:02 everything from resourcing to voice of
4:05 customer to road mapping to launch
4:07 execution. And because it's built on Air
4:09 Table's no code platform, you can
4:11 customize every workflow to match
4:13 exactly how your team works. No
4:15 limitations, no compromises. Ready to
4:17 see it in action? Head to
4:20 airtable.com/lenny to book a demo.
4:22 That's
4:27 airtable.com/lenny. Daniel, thank you so
4:29 much for being here and welcome to the
4:31 podcast. Thank you so much for having
4:33 me. We're gonna get into the story of
4:36 Monday. We're going to talk about your
4:38 journey over the last 8 years building
4:39 and scaling this company and all things
4:41 you've learned along the way. But I want
4:42 to start with a very specific moment
4:45 that you shared with me where you
4:47 basically realized that your competitors
4:51 were shipping a lot faster than you were
4:53 able to get stuff out a lot more quickly
4:55 and more often than you guys. And that
4:58 made you shift the way you think about
5:00 product and the way you operate. Can you
5:02 talk about that moment and that in that
5:03 lesson and and what you took away from
5:05 that? Yeah. Wow. You you take me a while
5:08 back, you know, h I think it was when we
5:12 were relatively a small team. I think we
5:14 were something around like 30 people and
5:18 uh you know, including engineers and
5:20 product and everyone. It's actually that
5:23 back in the days we did so many things
5:26 and actually we had an amazing amazing
5:28 execution. We had a, you know, a weekly
5:32 update where we would share everything
5:34 that we did with the company and it was
5:37 al always, you know, super long and
5:39 super like with so many different
5:41 things. H, and we really felt good about
5:44 ourselves at that point to be honest
5:47 about the the execution. And then I
5:50 remember one day you know coming to the
5:53 office and just looking on one of our
5:56 competitors and we at Monday we have
5:58 like one of the main things that we have
6:00 in the product is our boards. It's like
6:02 the the heart and soul of the product
6:05 and it's you can think about it as a
6:07 table and it has different column types
6:10 data types that you can capture within
6:12 the board and work with and you know
6:15 back then we had five of these and I was
6:18 actually coding the sixth one to be
6:21 honest and each and every one of these
6:24 like took us like four months to develop
6:26 you know together with defining the
6:28 product and everything and at This
6:31 morning we actually saw that one of our
6:34 main competitors back then has actually
6:37 launched 30 new columns. 30? Yeah. And
6:42 you know we said
6:45 okay at first we we didn't really know
6:48 what to do and you know we thought about
6:51 it and I remember that even we said okay
6:55 we're going to take even some time out
6:58 of the office. So back then Roy and Ian
7:01 which are the founders and also together
7:04 with me and Tal which is
7:07 uh was one of the main tech leads in
7:09 Monday for a long time and few others we
7:13 went outside the office and we said
7:16 listen we need to do things differently
7:19 something doesn't make sense and you
7:22 know I remember back then that for me
7:24 this realization of like understanding
7:27 that we are doing so much but suddenly
7:30 some of our competitors did something
7:32 that we can only imagine and actually
7:34 transformed the product because it's a
7:36 different type of platform if you'll
7:38 think about it. Uh it it was really hard
7:42 personally first of all admitting that
7:44 although you worked like
7:46 crazy you didn't do something that
7:50 really transformed the product because I
7:52 remember back then when we did a
7:53 conversation we said okay we're doing so
7:56 much what is the most meaningful thing
7:58 that we did over the last 3 months and
8:02 you know suddenly the answer was you
8:04 know there's so many things but it
8:06 wasn't something specific
8:09 And after like you know acknowledging
8:12 that and you know it's a very hard thing
8:15 personally especially when you work so
8:17 hard and you put your entire heart in in
8:20 what you do. H we said okay
8:24 now we need to treat it differently. We
8:27 received a gift from our competitors.
8:30 They showed us that it's possible. Now
8:33 we we need to think how. And in order to
8:35 do that, we need to think differently
8:37 because remember like we said, okay, if
8:40 we're going to add 25 more, multiply it
8:42 by four months, we're small team. We
8:46 we're lost. Okay, we can't make it. So
8:50 we said, okay, we need to take upon
8:51 ourselves an ambitious goal like 25
8:55 columns in one month. And this is the
8:57 goal that we took upon ourselves. And
9:00 you know I think that the fact that our
9:02 competitors did it give us
9:04 like didn't give us the excuse of saying
9:07 it's not possible. So in a way it was
9:10 the biggest favor that we can ask for
9:13 and you know long story short month and
9:16 a half afterwards we had 30 columns in
9:19 Monday and we did it you know by
9:22 thinking totally different and by the
9:24 way afterwards you know we did it over
9:26 and over again. And so if you think
9:28 about Monday, it's basically a platform
9:29 for work and you have different building
9:31 blocks. Columns is one of them. But we
9:34 did the same drill exactly with H
9:38 dashboards and widgets and then with
9:39 automations and so on. So I think this
9:42 was so transformative because a we
9:45 understood that you need to constantly
9:48 think especially at these phases. How
9:50 would you how would you transform
9:52 completely the product in the next 3
9:54 months? And if you can't answer that and
9:56 you say listen I'm doing so much thing
9:58 but you can't point this exact thing you
10:01 have a focus problem in my eyes and
10:04 second that is that you
10:06 know put ambitious goals it will make
10:10 you think differently and you know we
10:12 really love now to do it even with when
10:14 we don't know it's possible and it
10:17 actually like works for us time after
10:19 time and let's think about it you know
10:22 the team that was there suddenly became
10:25 invincible because you know it's such an
10:30 amazing amazing experience that you have
10:32 a goal that you don't know how you're
10:33 going to do it and you succeed and then
10:37 it makes you feel that everything is
10:39 possible. There's so much here and uh I
10:42 have so many threads I want to follow
10:43 on. One is just there's the kind of
10:45 there's this metaphor of the 4-minute
10:47 mile where no one thought it was
10:48 possible and then someone did it and
10:49 then everyone started beating that
10:51 record. So, I like that this is
10:53 highlighting there's just so much power
10:54 in seeing somebody else accomplish
10:56 something you thought was impossible and
10:57 that unlocks the way you think. And uh I
11:00 love that you saw it as a gift. A lot of
11:02 people a lot of companies do this.
11:03 They're in this place and they're like
11:04 no way. It's like when the iPhone
11:06 launched like no no one no one needs
11:07 that. That's not there's no keyboard.
11:09 And a lot of people like are uh like
11:11 deny that it's a a thing they should be
11:14 paying attention to. I love that you saw
11:16 it as like okay we need to we need to
11:18 move that things have changed. we're not
11:20 doing things uh we're not going to be
11:22 competitive long term. I think it's also
11:24 very much about focus and I think that
11:26 you know it's very hard to get to very
11:29 good execution but it doesn't guarantee
11:31 that you are working in the right way
11:33 and many times in my eyes you know
11:36 simple questions can provide the most
11:38 and the deepest insights about your work
11:40 and I think that for us the fact that we
11:44 managed to leverage it as you said and
11:46 see it as a gift is one of the most
11:48 important things use your competition
11:50 know it use it to your advantage
11:53 and you know take it and set ambitious
11:56 goals and believe in yourself and and
11:58 you can do amazing things. Another I
12:01 think uh piece a lot of people are
12:03 probably resonating with here is uh
12:05 starting a company that's small growing
12:07 things are going great and then all of a
12:09 sudden things start to slow down and in
12:12 some cases you don't realize that
12:13 they've slowed down and that's what it
12:14 happened in your case sounds like in a
12:16 lot of cases the founders like what the
12:17 hell's going on why is it taking three
12:18 to four weeks to ship one type of new
12:20 column and so is there anything by the
12:23 way what was the scale of the company at
12:25 this point it's a good question
12:28 h if I'm not mistaken it was around uh
12:32 2018 uh back then
12:36 how it's safe to assume like 150 200
12:40 people in the company but we we were
12:42 relatively small I recently had Brian
12:44 Singer on the podcast who created the
12:45 shape up method from base camp and
12:47 that's kind of his uh piece of advice
12:49 too is around like 50 to 100 people
12:51 things start to really change and slow
12:53 down and that's where a lot of companies
12:55 start to go sideways so that reate
12:56 Right. So that's really interesting. And
12:58 by the way, this these columns you're
12:59 describing, just to make it clear, this
13:01 is like a new type of like data like new
13:03 format of column like it's a new data
13:05 format that you're building. It's not
13:07 like just add another column to some
13:09 database. Yeah. So so actually like
13:12 exactly it's a new type of column but
13:14 it's a whole product around it. Like if
13:17 you think about it for instance you have
13:18 a column that captures dates. So it's
13:20 pretty straightforward but you can also
13:22 have like formula column which is like
13:24 more complicated and has like more
13:26 complex product around it. I think one
13:29 of the best benefits for us as platform
13:31 is that suddenly when we will like when
13:36 we set the goal of adding so many
13:38 different columns, we actually stopped
13:40 for the first time and say what is a
13:42 column like and we also like organized
13:45 all the product architecture around it.
13:47 And you know these kind of things like
13:49 sounds really trivial in retrospect but
13:52 you know we really defined okay each
13:55 column need to have like specific
13:57 capabilities. It should be able to
13:59 export it to Excel. It's it should be
14:01 able to be filtered and sorted and so
14:04 many different other things. But
14:05 basically we defined what is it and then
14:08 create an infrastructure for all these
14:10 shared things making the work of adding
14:13 a new column just thinking about the
14:16 specific product that you want to
14:17 provide with each one of these columns.
14:19 And the story about it is actually even
14:21 more interesting. We the way we actually
14:24 achieved it is that we said okay in two
14:27 weeks we're going to have an acathaton
14:29 in which each one of our developers is
14:32 going to take one column and implement
14:35 it in one
14:36 day and you know if you think about it
14:39 from four months to one
14:41 day it's like mindblowing and back then
14:44 I remember people said how can it be but
14:47 then tal that I told you about build an
14:51 infrastruure structure. He sent it to
14:53 me. I did a column at night, you know,
14:55 just to to see the how the how it works.
14:59 And on the day that we did the columns,
15:02 like everyone knew what they are going
15:03 to do, what they are trying to solve.
15:05 And we just did it. And two weeks
15:07 afterwards, it was in production, which
15:09 was amazing. What we want to do here is
15:12 help people avoid these moments where
15:14 they're almost like too late and
15:16 realizing that things have slowed down.
15:17 So I think a really another important
15:19 lesson here is the power of ambition and
15:21 thinking crazily big. A lot of people
15:24 think that when you ask your team we
15:26 need to build 25 columns in a month or
15:28 whatever it was people would be like I
15:30 burned out or feeling super depressed
15:32 but really people get excited there's
15:34 all this opportunity to think really
15:36 differently. It reminds me at our B&B
15:38 Brian Jesy was very famous for you give
15:40 him a goal here's our goal for the year
15:42 and he's like what it would take to 10x
15:44 this goal just like what would it take
15:46 to do that and he's always pushing you
15:48 to think a lot bigger when you're like
15:50 because your first reaction is like what
15:52 no no why would you leave us alone but
15:57 then you realize if you really think big
15:58 it changes everything about how you
16:00 approach the problem as you described
16:02 where it's like instead of like in a day
16:04 what would it take to build this in a
16:05 day yeah and and I think by the way this
16:08 is something which is really important
16:10 about setting ambitious goals. If you
16:12 set a like a different goal I want to
16:14 reduce it from 4 months to 3 months. So
16:17 many times this translates in people
16:19 heads to I want you to work harder. I
16:22 want to you to work longer hours. And
16:24 this is not the message here. It's about
16:26 working smarter. And I think that many
16:28 times when we talk about speed of
16:31 execution, you know, there's fake speed,
16:33 which means trying to do the same work
16:36 by skipping stages or not doing the high
16:38 quality that you want. But there's the
16:40 real speed and speed like organizations
16:44 and speed of execution. Many times it's
16:47 about doing things right. It's about
16:50 understanding a what is going to move
16:53 the needle and work only on that. not
16:55 working in a lot of things that you tend
16:57 to invent when you're trying to solve a
17:00 problem and B is like you know about
17:04 like thinking as you said like uh
17:08 thinking differently and I think that
17:10 for the goals this is why we really
17:12 wanted the goal that you really
17:14 understand from the first minute that if
17:17 you work the same way you cannot achieve
17:19 it even if you'll sleep in the office so
17:22 you need to change dramatically
17:25 how you think and you know the advanced
17:27 phase of it is that today we're doing it
17:30 on things that we didn't see others
17:32 doing and you know we have the
17:34 confidence because we have the
17:36 experience of like trusting ourselves
17:38 that this is an exercise for us that
17:41 will make us actually think about
17:43 different solutions I know another
17:45 element of this that is really important
17:47 to you that you has shifted the way you
17:49 all operate is focusing on impact
17:52 there's a lot of focus on just building
17:53 a lot of stuff and you realize there's a
17:55 lot of power in thinking from
17:56 perspective of how do we have the most
17:57 impact talk about that this is the core
18:01 and the main thing that we also measure
18:04 like our teams and this is how I see a
18:07 great PM so a great PM basically for me
18:09 is someone that is relentless until he
18:12 gets this impact and I until he
18:15 validates that this impact is in place
18:18 and you know for us it really changed
18:21 how we think about things it really
18:23 changed how we set goals for our teams.
18:25 So in many ways PM in MAD first and
18:28 foremost is responsible for creating the
18:31 shared understanding on what would be
18:33 impactful for our customers. Okay, it's
18:36 not about uh the solution and what we
18:38 are going to build. It's about what's
18:40 the problem, what's the opportunity and
18:42 second how we will know that we move the
18:45 needle. And without these two things you
18:48 can build so many different things and
18:49 you know it's like songs for the draw
18:52 like I built. So you know such huge part
18:56 of what I build was never used by users
18:59 the way I thought it was going to use.
19:02 So I think that for me having the this
19:06 understanding of what we want uh to
19:09 change for our customers and also how we
19:11 know we did it is a huge huge part of
19:13 the the PM role and for us you know uh
19:16 it means that we pay a lot of time in
19:20 setting goals in making sure that we
19:22 really understand both again the
19:25 opportunity but not only that but how
19:27 we'll see and we'll know for sure that
19:30 we move the needle in many ways. is you
19:32 know it changes the the conversation. So
19:34 PMs you know and their teams many times
19:37 like are spending a lot of time at the
19:39 problem area before they think about the
19:41 solution. The solution is not the case
19:43 anymore. It's not like there are so many
19:45 different solutions. And once you do
19:48 that and you have these goals suddenly
19:51 it reduces also a lot of the discussions
19:53 that you have about the different
19:55 solutions because everyone knows that
19:58 everything is going to be tested on real
20:00 life. So they make make it everyone
20:04 treat it differently and also in that
20:06 way you know it makes you think much
20:09 more holistically which I also think is
20:11 something that is very special at Monday
20:14 is that we give our teams like real life
20:18 goals as much as we can and then you
20:21 know in some cases doing the biggest
20:24 impact is not developing another feature
20:28 it's about making the current value more
20:30 accessible It's about connecting better
20:32 to the go to market motion that you
20:33 have. It's about understanding how your
20:37 customers are going to learn what you
20:38 built and use it. And you know this
20:42 realization is something that
20:44 we try very hard to stay on it. And it's
20:50 hard because like people tend to build
20:51 things like we all love to build things,
20:54 right? And when you start to build
20:56 things, you get excited and suddenly you
20:59 lose track of why why you're doing it
21:02 and what do you need to change. And I
21:05 think that in that sense, this is the
21:06 most important part about like uh this
21:09 point of impact. And you know this is
21:12 also how we measure ourselves. So we can
21:14 work extremely hard. It doesn't mean
21:16 that we are successful. It doesn't mean
21:18 that we are doing our work right. Okay.
21:21 And it's not only for the PMs. It's for
21:24 the entire team. So the entire team
21:26 succeeds or fail together based on the
21:28 value that we bring to our customers.
21:30 And we have a lot of like different ways
21:33 in order to make sure that we stay
21:35 honest to this principle. There's a lot
21:38 of people listening to this that work at
21:40 say modern tech companies, very high
21:42 growth tech companies that are just like
21:44 duh, this is how you should work. A lot
21:46 of people hearing this are like I don't
21:48 really understand what like how like
21:49 what am I doing wrong? What am I
21:51 missing? maybe uh what's a sign that
21:54 you're not oriented around impact? I
21:56 think the the most obvious sign for me
21:59 is
22:00 that you are building something without
22:05 the aim or without the initial aim of
22:08 what it should change for your users and
22:10 how you are going to to measure it. So
22:12 in my eyes it's many times the fact that
22:14 you don't have a goal or the goal is is
22:17 like many times you know for me smell
22:19 for that is that I hear people use the
22:22 word we're going to enhance we're going
22:24 to augment we are going to extend value
22:28 and this and this and no it's not enough
22:31 what is it going to change for users and
22:33 how you are going to see it that it
22:35 actually happened and then you start
22:37 asking yourself all the questions right
22:39 because once you have a goal that you
22:41 are committed to suddenly you think
22:43 about the target audience because you
22:45 need enough like like bigger big enough
22:48 target audience for instance in order to
22:49 to get to your uh you know uh to your
22:52 goals you need to make sure that what
22:55 you build actually going to touch all of
22:57 these people and and I can share just a
22:59 recent example you know and and you know
23:01 these things sound trivial and maybe an
23:03 example would you know like uh help
23:05 resonate with that because I know many
23:07 people are thinking like that and you
23:10 know we we have a very like uh uh
23:14 interesting offering that we just
23:15 introduced with AI. It's called AI
23:18 blocks. Okay. And basically it means
23:21 that with no code you can integrate
23:24 blocks which contain AI actions within
23:27 your existing workflows and you know 70%
23:30 of Monday's customers are non- tech and
23:32 for them this makes AI accessible for
23:35 them and has a huge huge value and we
23:37 started building these blocks and we
23:39 released it to customers and we measured
23:41 you know discoverability and adoption
23:44 and retention and so on and something
23:48 that we do in order to to stay connected
23:50 to the numbers. So each team at Monday
23:53 has like what we call the daily numbers
23:55 update. So we have a think about it like
24:00 a a message that the team is building
24:02 with all the numbers that care that they
24:04 care about because we really want people
24:06 to leave these numbers. So for AI for
24:08 instance for the AI blocks it was the AI
24:10 actions. So we had AI actions how many
24:14 accounts like are using these AI actions
24:17 and so on and so on.
24:19 And you know we got amazing responses
24:22 from our customers. We see great success
24:25 of them getting value from their
24:27 actions. But you know one day like in
24:30 this like it's a we we use a slack
24:32 channel in which uh one of our internal
24:35 systems big brain is sending us this
24:37 messages every day and then we have
24:39 conversations about it. Okay. And you
24:42 know one day we saw we noticed that the
24:45 amount of accounts that are using AI is
24:49 super super low comparing to the entire
24:51 population that we have and you know we
24:54 have
24:55 250,000 paying companies that use Monday
24:59 and we saw only like few thousands
25:02 there and you know until this point
25:05 everyone will like in a very good
25:06 feeling that we're making an amazing
25:08 product we get really good feedback
25:10 we're building great value. We're adding
25:13 value but we sat down and say okay why
25:16 it's only like this and this then
25:19 someone say yeah you know since AI is
25:22 new we need to do change of uh the terms
25:26 of service for for customers before we
25:28 are opening it to them and this is
25:31 planned you know for like in the next
25:33 quarter or something like that and said
25:36 what no we need to do it now you know we
25:39 need to now open it for everyone because
25:43 this is actually what would be the most
25:46 impactful thing to do and then like you
25:49 know the team went and set with legal
25:52 and sent with everyone and with two
25:54 weeks time it was open to 98% of Monday
25:58 customers you know and I think in that
25:59 sense you know this is a very good
26:01 example because we could have continue
26:03 building value and it's great but the
26:07 impact wouldn't be the impact that we
26:11 were we're aiming for and this is a very
26:13 important point and you know we I think
26:16 in that sense staying really connected
26:18 to your teams to your numbers sorry this
26:21 is something that I really feel strongly
26:24 about I feel that you need to get your
26:28 numbers in push you need to live by them
26:30 and you know for me it's like so
26:32 exciting to see a conversation that says
26:34 oh wow today there were a lot of new
26:37 accounts that are using what I'm
26:39 let's see why it happens and you know
26:41 these kind of things that I see the
26:43 conversation about it's amazing and also
26:46 you know for in this case seeing the AI
26:48 actions go it's like you want to drive
26:51 it and push it forward and in many ways
26:54 I feel that this is a very good example
26:57 on where you can actually build a lot of
26:59 value you can work really fast you can
27:01 deliver a lot of features but the
27:03 problem lays in other place in order to
27:05 get the impact that you want yeah
27:08 there's so much joy and watching
27:09 watching her number go up. Uh so just to
27:12 close the loop here to help people see
27:14 if they're impact driven working from a
27:17 perspective of how do we drive the most
27:19 impact is one simple way of thinking
27:21 about it is uh you're working backwards
27:23 from a goal that is going to drive
27:25 business growth and revenue basically in
27:28 the end. If you're working backwards
27:29 from a number and a metric and a goal
27:31 and then thinking through what are the
27:33 levers that will most move this metric
27:36 that's a sign you're thinking impact
27:39 through by impact versus let's just keep
27:40 shipping features that the sales team
27:42 wants. Yeah. And I think another thing
27:44 for me like it's an exercise that I
27:46 really you know I really encourage
27:49 everyone to do for me it was
27:51 like after the columns hackathon and
27:54 everything that we talked about I said
27:55 okay each quarter and this is when we
27:58 were much smaller but it can be each
28:01 month it can be each two weeks
28:03 but how do I imagine the company and the
28:08 product is going to be different and
28:11 better for our customers in a quarter
28:13 from now and from that you know work it
28:16 backwards but if you if you are just
28:18 saying we'll have better security we'll
28:20 have better performance we'll have less
28:22 bugs we'll have more like enhancements
28:25 to the I don't know this and this
28:27 feature it's not enough you need to
28:30 constantly build value which is pivotal
28:33 to your customers and if you don't do it
28:35 and if it's hard for you to answer about
28:37 this question h it's a it's a very good
28:40 sign that you are not input driven and
28:41 you know I love to do it also with teams
28:44 and individuals like what are the things
28:46 that you are most proud of that you did
28:49 in the last three months and if it's
28:51 like takes you a lot of time to think
28:54 you're not very focused and you're
28:56 definitely not maximizing the impact
28:58 that you want due to that in my eyes I
29:01 like that exercise as a kind of a like
29:03 versus waiting for your competitors to
29:04 do something and then realizing we're
29:06 way behind it's forcing yourself every
29:08 quarter to think about this so do you do
29:10 this as like you have a meeting or or
29:12 someone in your calendar or how do you
29:13 how do you actually operationalize this?
29:15 So it's actually very you know today we
29:17 are like under the builders organization
29:20 which is the engineering product
29:21 management product design we are 700
29:23 people uh so we have a lot of different
29:26 like uh ways and methodologies to do it
29:29 in different levels but I'll give you an
29:32 example from the company level and from
29:33 the team level maybe because these are
29:35 the most interesting ones. So we just
29:38 recently had our early kickoff. Each
29:41 each and every year we do a yearly
29:43 kickoff for our company and one of the
29:46 most you know exciting sessions
29:48 obviously is what we are going to do
29:50 with our product as a product company
29:52 and I really to like to have a slide in
29:55 which I like write and I just share it
29:59 when I'm going to stand here in a year
30:02 from now what is going to be different
30:04 for our customers and you know this is
30:07 on the company level and I have one
30:09 slide and it talks about like our
30:10 offering and it talks about the value
30:12 that they are getting in a way that next
30:16 year I want to you know each year to
30:20 start my my presentation with the slide
30:22 from last year and see where we are and
30:26 you know in in this level it can be
30:28 something like our CRM continues with a
30:31 very strong momentum and becomes a
30:33 product suite when we give much more
30:34 robust value to our customers. This can
30:36 be an example okay with an additional
30:39 product of CRM marketing I would just
30:41 say but uh on a team level what we did
30:45 and maybe I'll take an example from the
30:47 early days you know we really did uh we
30:50 really love to do each each and every
30:53 two weeks I told you we would write like
30:56 a an update for the entire company about
30:59 what we did and the way we did it is
31:01 that each and every one of our team
31:03 members actually for write wrote uh his
31:07 highlights and then we would share it
31:10 with the the company. And this exercise
31:12 really made us sit every two weeks and
31:17 think on an individual level but also on
31:20 a team level and you know every one of
31:22 our team members used to write to to
31:25 read these updates and say then we had a
31:28 good two weeks or we had a bad two weeks
31:30 we did a lot of impact or we did not not
31:34 enough impact. So I really encourage to
31:36 create these points in time where you
31:38 sit down and you force yourself to
31:40 understand whether what you did is what
31:43 you thought you're going to achieve or
31:45 not. That's great. I really like the the
31:47 slide idea. It's basically there's all
31:48 this power in just working backwards
31:50 from something in the future. Uh however
31:53 you come up with it. So it's just like
31:55 in a year we're going to have there's
31:56 just like working backwards from a goal,
31:58 working backwards from a big vision.
32:00 Those are such good exercises. You know,
32:02 obviously Amazon's famous for working
32:03 backwards. There's a whole book called
32:04 Working Backward from their PR approach.
32:07 Uh, okay. I want to go in a slightly
32:09 different direction. I want to zoom out
32:11 a little bit. So, you've been at this
32:13 for eight years building Monday. You
32:16 said there's 250,000 customers at this
32:18 point. What's like the revenue scale?
32:20 Give people a couple stats to give them
32:21 a sense of just how large this company
32:23 has gotten. We recently announced that
32:25 we crossed the the $1 billion in
32:29 ARR. Um, we are serving as I said
32:32 250,000 customers across the globe from
32:36 virtually any industry that you can
32:38 think about like more than 200 different
32:40 business verticals. It could be both
32:43 tech and non techsavvy customers. The
32:46 vast majority of our customers are non
32:48 tech and you know from like a customer
32:51 that is building airplanes and cruise
32:54 ships all the way to real estate,
32:56 construction, finance, tech and
32:59 everything you can basically think of
33:02 and if I like just for reference and
33:05 seeing our growth base. So when I joined
33:07 Monday 8 and a half years ago where we
33:12 back then we were called the pulse uh we
33:15 had around 4 million in AR and we you
33:18 know scaled from the from there to 1
33:22 billion and from like around 30 40
33:25 people at the company to 2500 right now.
33:29 Awesome. when you talk about the product
33:31 you're building to a lot of people it's
33:32 like oh it's like project management
33:34 software all this like column like
33:35 what's the big deal but I had Drew Hston
33:37 on the podcast and he made this really
33:39 interesting point when he talks to
33:41 people working at SpaceX who are like
33:42 launching rockets to Mars and he talked
33:45 about people building ships like if you
33:46 really boil down what are they doing
33:48 dayto-day they're sitting in tools like
33:50 Monday putting together tasks and doing
33:52 to-dos and sharing documents like this
33:55 is kind of what the world runs on so
33:57 it's important to have that perspective
34:00 With that, putting that aside for a
34:01 second, I think very few people have
34:03 seen what you've seen having a seeing a
34:06 company scale this way. Also, the
34:08 transformation you just shared of just
34:10 like almost ship shipping too much and
34:13 being slow to like, okay, let's rework
34:14 things to shipping 25 columns in a month
34:17 and all these things like very few
34:18 people have seen this. So, there's a lot
34:19 to learn from this journey that you've
34:20 been on. So, I have a bunch of questions
34:22 and a different bunch of different ways
34:24 of approaching some of your biggest
34:25 lessons from this journey. The first is
34:28 let me just ask you this question. What
34:30 would you say is the most
34:32 counterintuitive thing you've learned
34:34 about building product and leading teams
34:36 through this journey of building Monday?
34:39 Maybe first of all is about like
34:41 something that we really care about
34:43 which is transparency.
34:46 I I'm like let me tell you a story like
34:49 I I uh sat down for dinner at my family
34:52 and many many different members of my
34:55 family are like entrepreneurs or like
34:57 working as an executive in tech
35:00 companies and so on and you know back in
35:03 the days we as Monday before we went
35:05 public h we actually shared every bit of
35:10 information with our employees you would
35:12 get into our
35:13 office and you You'd see a dashboard
35:16 with how many paying accounts do you
35:18 have, how many people have churned
35:20 today, how many signups do we have and
35:23 so many different things. Even if you
35:25 came for an interview, you would see
35:26 these numbers. And I remember sitting in
35:28 this dinner and everyone would tell me,
35:30 listen, you are making a mistake. How
35:33 can you do it? When thing goes south,
35:35 you know, you'll demoralize the team and
35:38 people like uh, you know, will get upset
35:41 about it. And I think this is you know
35:45 for me one of the most important things
35:49 when you hire and you have such a
35:51 talented team you want to share them you
35:54 want to share with them everything and
35:57 the reason for that is that then you are
36:00 working on every challenge together and
36:03 instead of demoralizing people I think
36:05 that for the right people and the people
36:06 that like you know are working at Monday
36:11 this is something that gives them. So
36:13 like you know a sense of deep
36:16 partnership and as a leader you know
36:18 there were many situations in my
36:20 professional life that I knew some bit
36:22 of information and I felt you know all
36:25 the weight on my shoulders and I love to
36:27 call it the dark side of the moon. you
36:29 are there alone, right? like you are
36:31 coming to the office there's nothing you
36:33 know like more demoralizing as or like
36:36 depressing as a as a leader that you
36:38 feel awful because something that you
36:41 know and you're coming to the office and
36:43 everything is great and everyone are
36:46 like happy and I think in Monday we we
36:49 really wanted to do it differently and
36:51 we really have an approach of like very
36:55 radical transparency about everything
36:57 and this actually makes everyone parts
37:00 of what we are doing and in a way we
37:03 like to say we really want everyone's
37:05 brains in the challenge and not just one
37:08 centralized brain and a lot of working
37:10 hands and I can share examples you know
37:13 when for instance suddenly people would
37:16 come up to the office we have dashboards
37:18 across everywhere in the office like
37:21 each team has its own dashboards we have
37:23 our company dashboards with metrics and
37:25 so on and I remember cases in which
37:27 someone said listen what happened to the
37:30 conversion. And you know, think how
37:32 powerful it is when you have everyone at
37:36 a company looking at these things and
37:38 many of the things that we discovered,
37:41 many of the things that we saw as
37:43 challenges and problems is things that
37:45 people saw due to this
37:47 transparency. So I think
37:49 that's maybe the you know
37:52 counterintuitive part is
37:54 that don't be afraid to share the
37:57 information. And it's exactly the other
37:59 way around and I can probably share
38:01 share that you know even today as a
38:03 public
38:04 company we really share everything that
38:07 we can you know and also like if you are
38:10 product manager at
38:11 Monday you are signing like a 10b5
38:15 program for selling your stocks meaning
38:18 that we found a way to make everyone
38:21 still see the data because we think this
38:23 is the most important part and I think
38:25 this is one thing that I really believe
38:28 in and really changed how we work and
38:30 also how people are feeling about being
38:33 partners in building Monday and not just
38:36 working at a company is that thing they
38:38 sign that's just like autoell stock so
38:40 they're not selling based on information
38:42 based on announcements that's coming.
38:44 Okay, got it. So every PM basically has
38:46 to automatically uh can't like decide
38:49 I'm going to sell my stock tomorrow
38:50 because this number's tanking. Yeah. So,
38:52 so you know like uh we want to give
38:54 people the choice but like usually we
38:56 really feel that in most cases you
38:58 really need to know this information in
39:00 order to do your work and that's so
39:02 interesting and I I I think people even
39:05 prefer just like dollar cost average
39:07 sell you know it's like it makes life
39:09 easier not having to try to time all
39:10 these things. I definitely think so.
39:12 Yeah, that's really interesting. Uh and
39:15 that's and that's just product managers
39:17 or how far does that all go? No, so
39:19 basically when we became public, you
39:22 know, I remember still like one of the
39:25 conversations that we had with uh like
39:28 uh the bankers and the lawyers about
39:30 like uh listen guys, things would need
39:33 to change. You cannot have a dashboard
39:35 with all your financials at the entrance
39:37 of the the building. Uh it doesn't make
39:40 sense as a public company. and we
39:42 understood it but we didn't want to let
39:44 go of what we cared about because we
39:46 really believe this is one of the main
39:47 drivers to the business having this
39:49 transparency and having this like shared
39:52 brains uh you know mode so we tried to
39:57 think about ways in order to do it so uh
40:02 now if I'll like fast forward you know
40:04 we're almost four years public uh and we
40:07 have an internal app called Monday
40:09 morning and in Monday morning You have
40:12 two parts. Part A and part B. Part A is
40:15 for the
40:16 every company employee contains a lot
40:19 about engagement and a lot of data that
40:22 can be shared with everyone and part B
40:24 is confidential and it's by role. Okay.
40:26 So it's the company management. But I
40:28 think the important point is that we see
40:31 product management as something that got
40:34 to have these numbers. So we thought
40:36 about it really hard and you know it's a
40:38 it's a lot of logistics to do like so
40:41 many plans 105 plans but I think it's
40:44 worth it. Yeah. This is so interesting.
40:46 Like a lot of companies talk about
40:47 transparency and you guys are I think
40:50 radical transparency is a good way to
40:51 describe this because I've never heard
40:52 of a company doing this where you have
40:55 to sign this. They didn't hear about it
40:58 as well apparently and yeah it was it
41:01 took time to you know to get to these
41:03 solutions. That's so funny. So for
41:06 people that are listening to this are
41:07 like, "Hey, maybe we should explore
41:08 this." What's like one thing you'd
41:10 suggest they that they could do to start
41:12 moving down this road? And the benefit
41:14 again is you I guess maybe again remind
41:16 people of the benefits of doing this
41:18 because it sounds like a lot of work and
41:19 risk. So I think that as a young
41:22 startup, it's actually not such a hard
41:26 work. When we were very small, you know,
41:29 back in the days, we had like like the
41:31 daily numbers concept that we now have
41:32 for the teams. We had the daily numbers
41:34 for the company, how much paying
41:35 accounts, how many upgraded, downgraded
41:38 and so on daily. And you saw people
41:40 reacting to it like on a daily basis. So
41:42 this is something that you can do in
41:43 virtually one hour and it like changes
41:47 how people see you know their role
41:50 within the company. It focus everyone to
41:52 the company's KPIs because everyone
41:54 understand what you care about and so
41:56 on. So this is one thing that you can do
41:58 extremely fast and I don't see any
42:01 disadvantage aside from the fact that
42:03 people are afraid many time you are
42:05 afraid and I can share like it's so much
42:08 like it's even like a big relief that
42:11 you don't need to think can I share it
42:13 can I don't share it like can I like you
42:16 just let it go and everything would be
42:19 okay and I can share from my experience
42:21 that we shared everything and the second
42:24 thing which is really practical you know
42:25 it's the office dashboards. We really
42:27 believe in it. So, you know, you buy a
42:30 TV, you put it on the wall, you start a
42:34 conversation due to it. What do we want
42:36 to show on this TV? And you know, when
42:38 we was like a smaller startup and we set
42:42 allin-one office space, we had our
42:44 company
42:45 goals dashboard and it also had like a
42:49 we programmed it to have sounds on
42:51 meaningful events. So when you add like
42:54 for instance new paying account you had
42:56 the Omar Simpson saying like the the
42:58 saying with the $1 million I'll become a
43:00 millionaire or something like that uh
43:02 for you know new signup you add the tick
43:05 and so on. So suddenly everyone are
43:08 living it you know it becomes part of
43:10 the cadence of the company. So these are
43:12 just two ideas to make it super easy and
43:16 the change happens immediately. I love
43:18 how that connects back to the whole
43:19 point about impact people all aligning
43:21 around here is what we're trying to
43:22 drive. Like if the Simpson sound is
43:24 going off, all that's a sign that this
43:26 matters and this something we should be
43:28 driving up and it creates such a
43:30 partnership. You know, I remember like
43:31 reaching to the first time where we had
43:34 $1 million collection in one month,
43:36 breaking the record of like new paying
43:38 accounts for one day. Everyone are
43:40 living. But in many companies, you know,
43:42 only the management or the founders are
43:44 like filling. And I think that in that
43:46 sense you already feel that you have a
43:48 great power because everyone are around
43:51 the same things and it makes
43:53 conversations different because everyone
43:55 understands what matters to you at that
43:57 point. This is awesome. Uh really cool
43:59 counterintuitive lesson. I feel like a
44:00 whole podcast could be done on like how
44:02 to do this effectively. I want to move
44:03 on but I guess if people want to start
44:05 implementing this at the company, let's
44:07 just say they should come talk to you
44:08 and you could give them a bunch of
44:09 advice. I would love to. This episode is
44:12 brought to you by Vanta and I am very
44:14 excited to have Christina Casiopo, CEO
44:16 and co-founder of Vanta joining me for
44:18 this very short conversation. Great to
44:20 be here. Big fan of the podcast in the
44:22 newsletter. Vanta is a longtime sponsor
44:25 of the show, but for some of our newer
44:27 listeners, what does Vanta do and who is
44:29 it for? Sure. So we started Vanta in
44:32 2018 focused on founders helping them
44:35 start to build out their security
44:36 programs and get credit for all of that
44:39 hard security work with compliance
44:40 certifications like SOCK 2 or ISO 2701.
44:44 Today we currently help over 9,000
44:46 companies including some startup
44:48 household names like Atlassian Ramp and
44:50 Ling Chain start and scale their
44:52 security programs and ultimately build
44:54 trust by automating compliance,
44:57 centralizing GRC and accelerating
44:59 security reviews. That is awesome. I
45:02 know from experience that these things
45:03 take a lot of time and a lot of
45:05 resources and nobody wants to spend time
45:07 doing this. That is very much our
45:09 experience both before the company and
45:11 to some extent during it. But the idea
45:13 is with automation, with AI, with
45:15 software, we are helping customers build
45:18 trust with prospects and customers in an
45:20 efficient way. And you know our joke, we
45:22 started this compliance company so you
45:24 don't have to. We appreciate you for
45:25 doing that. And you have a special
45:27 discount for listeners. They can get
45:28 $1,000 off Vanta at
45:31 vanta.com/lenny. That's
45:34 venta.com/lenny for $1,000 off. Thanks
45:38 for that, Christina. Thank you.
45:40 any other big counterintuitive lessons
45:42 from the journey that you think would be
45:44 fun to share? One thing I really love
45:46 about what we do in Monday is that we
45:49 really love to take risks, not for the
45:53 sake of it, but we are not afraid to do
45:56 bold moves. And many times when you want
45:59 to do bold moves, you have a lot of
46:01 concerns, especially when you start to
46:02 be successful because you you're afraid
46:04 that you are going to break everything
46:05 that you built till now. And for me, you
46:09 know, one of the most pivotal moments in
46:12 the company life is when we decided
46:14 that, you know, back in the days, as you
46:16 said, we we were a platform, but we had
46:18 a go to market of a project management
46:20 tool. And we said, listen, people are
46:22 doing so many different things on top of
46:24 Monday. They are building a CRM with
46:27 Monday, and they are building a software
46:29 for managing their dev cycles and they
46:31 are building so many different things.
46:33 And we took a decision, strategic deci
46:35 decision to become like a a
46:38 multi-product company which is built on
46:40 top of this platform. And we actually
46:43 did something which is really
46:44 counterintuitive. You know the the first
46:46 thought that comes to mind at least for
46:48 me is why maybe not just launch a new
46:52 product do it relatively on the side
46:55 gradually understand if it's successful
46:57 and if it would be successful double
47:00 click on it. But we actually did it in a
47:02 very different way. We actually
47:05 announced five different new
47:08 products simultaneously on the same
47:11 time. And you know we had so many like I
47:14 can't stress enough
47:16 how you know how hard it is to think
47:20 about it because like I remember when we
47:22 talked about and doing it people say
47:24 what but we are going to confuse our
47:26 current users and it's going to help
47:27 conversion and how are we going to do
47:29 the marketing now when we have so many
47:31 different goto markets and the sales
47:33 they don't know how to navigate people
47:35 to different and what about pricing so
47:38 many different
47:39 concerns but we decided to do it because
47:42 we really want to create a pivotal lip
47:46 and I think that in that sense you know
47:48 fast forward to to this day like part of
47:52 these products were really successful
47:54 for instance Monday sell CRM is like
47:57 like going faster than Monday back in
48:00 the days like you know and it's amazing
48:01 to see it and some of them we understood
48:05 that they don't need to be separate
48:07 products and we collapse them back to
48:09 the main product but the point is is
48:11 that we managed to learn and to change
48:14 both internally at the company how the
48:16 perception of everyone around what we
48:18 are building but also externally like
48:21 this move changed dramatically the
48:23 competitive landscape that we live in
48:26 and you know I think there was a lot of
48:28 friction many people at the company were
48:31 like having a lot of friction with it it
48:33 was really really really hard but
48:36 looking back it's such I'm so happy with
48:39 this move and the fact that we did it
48:41 like that because just imagine what
48:43 would happen if we would choose one of
48:45 them and it wasn't the successful
48:47 products and our conclusion can be that
48:50 multi product won't work for us. we
48:52 really managed to transform the company
48:54 in a very short amount of time and also
48:56 to create new
48:57 reality you know and I think that people
49:02 need to remember that and I'm constantly
49:04 reminding it to myself and I think this
49:06 is something that we are constantly
49:07 working you know uh with each other in
49:10 order to make sure that we we remember
49:13 it that not taking bold risks not making
49:18 bold moves it's a risk for itself okay
49:21 And many times like you know people want
49:23 the inertion, people want just the
49:25 incremental value but if you want to do
49:28 lips many times you need to let go of
49:30 things that were successful for you in
49:31 the past and this is very
49:33 counterintuitive and we did a lot of you
49:35 know a lot of mental models to help us
49:37 cope with it. So I remember that when we
49:40 were small and we had for instance like
49:42 20,000 paying customers. So we said
49:45 listen but most of Monday's customers
49:47 are not customers of Monday yet. So we
49:49 need to think about them as well, you
49:51 know, and this is something that really
49:52 helps you because many times you need to
49:55 do things that affect like the current
49:58 success that you have. H but I think
50:01 it's this is another very very important
50:04 thing that I'm constantly reminding to
50:06 myself. There's kind of this other
50:08 recurring theme that I'm noticing of
50:09 just like thinking
50:11 big and taking leaps. And I love this
50:14 point you made of not doing that is
50:16 actually a big risk. Not taking risk is
50:18 a big risk. That's a really powerful
50:19 point and it's innately scary to do
50:21 something risky. And so I love the push
50:23 here of just like take more risks
50:26 because it's so easy and this comes back
50:29 again to the beginning of the
50:30 conversation where you we're just like
50:31 building things the way they've always
50:33 been built and looking back and like
50:34 what have we even done? What have we
50:36 done over this year of hard work and
50:38 tons of features? I think a lot of
50:40 companies get in that place where
50:41 they're just like what are we like at
50:42 Airbnb I had this exact Brian is
50:44 constant like what are we even shipping
50:46 all these billions of experiments that
50:47 are moving the numbers like what are we
50:48 even doing like I don't know anything
50:50 that we ship that's really exciting and
50:52 so I think this is a really good
50:53 reminder and push to just like think
50:55 bigger and take and you need to take big
50:58 leaps um so love that is there uh any
51:02 other big counterintuitive lessons
51:04 before we move in a different direction
51:06 I really believe that many time like uh
51:08 spending spending more time on working
51:10 on something will not yield to better
51:13 results or to better products. And you
51:16 know, I think that many times like we as
51:20 people that are building products for
51:22 others h get to a point where the
51:25 feedback that we we want to get in the
51:28 bottom of our heart, you know, is like,
51:30 "Wow, what an amazing product you have
51:31 built." And I think this is a very bad
51:35 feedback to
51:36 get for initial things that you are
51:39 doing because it means that you know I I
51:43 feel that in many ways the the point in
51:45 which you make real people use your
51:48 product is really scary because you you
51:50 suddenly you know put your work out
51:53 there and then in order to to like
51:57 actually and you afraid that they will
51:59 say listen it's a lousy product. It's
52:01 not a good product. But actually we
52:03 really encourage people to get really
52:06 fast to production to put preps for
52:08 themselves that is cop by time and not
52:11 by effort. And you know many times I saw
52:15 that more time creates more questions.
52:19 It creates more complications. It
52:21 creates more assumptions that we put for
52:23 ourselves in thinking what our users
52:26 need and we invent things you know and
52:30 we we do it all from good reasons. We
52:32 want people to like what we build. We
52:34 want them to get value. But for me like
52:36 this is a very important point that many
52:39 time many times
52:41 using like the setting traps mechanism
52:46 of saying listen we have three weeks
52:49 let's think about it and scope it by
52:51 time it makes you extremely focused and
52:55 you know this is very important because
52:58 you know
52:59 uh we really want to get feedback from
53:03 customers that say yeah listen this is
53:05 on the direction I'm still missing this
53:06 and this and this and also we really
53:08 love the fact of this is not a good
53:10 product and I can give you a recent
53:12 example you know even when now we you
53:14 know we work with big customers and of
53:16 course like there are different ways to
53:17 implement what I said h then you are a
53:20 small startup but we are building like a
53:22 new offering of enterprise work
53:24 management think about it like a way of
53:26 managing projects at a huge huge scale
53:28 you know thousands of projects like tens
53:31 of thousands of employees and so on so I
53:34 really love using the deadline prep and
53:37 it makes you focused. It makes you
53:38 sharper and thinking and we just had a
53:40 recent example with the offering I was
53:42 telling you about of like enterprise
53:44 work management, managing projects at
53:46 scale and you know this is an enterprise
53:47 product. So you have all the reasons in
53:50 the world to say no I can't release it
53:52 yet. I need more time. I need to do more
53:54 things. They won't use it. They need
53:56 this and this and this. And I think that
53:59 we actually released the first like
54:01 alpha version to them and we got a
54:04 feedback of listen guys this is
54:05 premature we need more like more
54:08 comprehensive value but we got exactly
54:10 the feedback of what and this is
54:12 priceless and and my response to the
54:14 teams is well done like I think you did
54:17 an amazing job in like releasing it and
54:19 making sure because you know many times
54:23 being so afraid of releasing it and like
54:26 uh thinking if I just have one, two,
54:28 three more weeks, I will build a better
54:31 product. I think it's not it's not true.
54:34 This is such good advice. It resonates
54:36 so much with recent other conversations
54:38 I've had. So, just to clarify what
54:39 you're saying, basically you have a time
54:41 box. When you say traps, it's basically
54:43 a a set amount of time. We're going to
54:44 spend three weeks on this feature and if
54:47 it doesn't if it we don't hit the three
54:49 weeks, we just cut scope essentially. Is
54:50 that the idea? I think yeah, it's it's
54:53 like this is the basic version of it.
54:55 But now for us and we really love doing
54:59 it as an exercise for ourselves. For
55:01 instance, let's say now as a public
55:02 company we say listen we are working on
55:04 something we want to announce it on the
55:06 next earning and put a trap for
55:09 ourselves. Why? Because again it makes
55:12 you sharp. It makes you super focused
55:15 about things and you know I think that
55:18 in many ways this results in a much
55:21 better product because you are not
55:23 building things that you invented. You
55:26 are staying really true to what your
55:27 users needs the real you know core of
55:31 the value and it's really funny to see
55:33 the dynamics of teams you know when they
55:36 are planning you know from the bottom
55:37 up. So it starts like you know with
55:40 something that uh like let's say you
55:42 done everything great okay you have the
55:44 opportunity you understand you have the
55:46 KPIs everything is in place but now
55:48 you're starting to plan it and suddenly
55:50 people are raising you know concerns and
55:53 issues and it becomes a sport to say
55:57 what can go wrong and like being fear
56:00 driven and then you tend to you know
56:02 protect yourself and adding more content
56:04 and more content and then when you see
56:06 what happens It's actually like it's
56:08 going to be shipped in two years. Let me
56:11 say okay no okay we have earnings in 2
56:14 months what can we ship to this earnings
56:17 and let's put a trap and then you
56:19 suddenly see the conversation changes.
56:22 First of all, it makes everyone really
56:23 focused on what's the core of the
56:25 value and it removes all the theoretical
56:28 discussions that people have and things
56:30 like that and you know the results are
56:34 amazing and you need to remember when
56:35 you do it you need to continue
56:37 afterwards if you like according to
56:39 feedbacks and and not let it go just but
56:42 what you did in the first version but in
56:44 many ways I really love the fact that
56:47 you know the first version get a
56:48 feedback which is not everything is
56:50 perfect because if this is the the
56:52 feedback. It means that we built too
56:54 much and probably it's not focused
56:57 product enough and when you build a lot
56:59 of features this can be like you know
57:02 the death by thousand cuts because in
57:05 each corner of the product you add more
57:06 than you need like yeah there's so much
57:09 here that that connects the other
57:10 conversation we just had. We had Garav
57:12 Mistra from he's co of captions and he
57:14 made this point that if people aren't
57:16 complaining about your product like you
57:18 you want to see people complaining
57:19 because that means they care like
57:21 there's something there that they care
57:22 about. If they're if you're not hearing
57:23 any complaints they could care less
57:24 about what you're building and that's
57:25 not that's a bad sign. I really loved
57:28 it. Yeah. Their company actually goes to
57:30 the extreme of what you're describing.
57:31 Every engineer ships a feature a
57:34 marketable feature every week. That's
57:36 their pace. I really connected to it.
57:38 And by the way about user feedback I
57:40 think you know uh it's really it's
57:42 really nice because like uh many times
57:46 you know people associate like uh they
57:49 they only measure themselves by user
57:52 feedback the specific point and I think
57:55 this is also maybe you know something
57:57 that is uh counterintuitive. Not every
58:00 customer feedback is the feedback that
58:02 will drive you to the you know to the
58:04 end result of the best product out
58:06 there. uh there are many aspects to it.
58:08 I can share you know just one example
58:10 about us. We as a you know in the
58:14 beginning of the company we for instance
58:17 uh didn't want to have a free trial and
58:20 part of it is that we really wanted to
58:23 hear feedback about our product only
58:25 from people that the product means
58:28 something to them. the the best proxy
58:30 for that is that they are paying because
58:32 it means they get real value and you
58:34 know in that sense it helps us it helped
58:36 us at the beginning to be to stay super
58:40 focused about like you know separating
58:41 the wheat from the shaft in the with the
58:44 the customer's feedback so I think uh
58:46 it's a super important point and we need
58:48 to take customer feedback in context the
58:51 other really interesting point here that
58:53 you're making is this idea of we had uh
58:55 I think I mentioned this already Ryan
58:57 Singer he's the creator of this method
58:58 shape
58:59 which is very centered around appetites
59:01 over deadlines. There's so much like so
59:03 many everyone listening to this has
59:04 probably gone through an exercise where
59:06 like let's redo our landing page and
59:08 it's like yeah it'll probably have some
59:10 impact. Let's spend some time on this.
59:11 It ends up taking like six months and
59:14 everyone's like why did we spend six
59:15 months redoing this freaking landing
59:17 page like I would have given it three
59:19 weeks and then moved on. And the way to
59:22 do that is you just commit up front. We
59:23 will spend three weeks on this. We'll to
59:25 get as much done as we can in three
59:27 weeks and then we'll move on. People
59:29 talk about this very hard to actually
59:30 do. So I love that's how you actually
59:31 approach some of these bigger features
59:33 you work on. Do you guys practice shape
59:35 up by any chance or this is just like a
59:37 thing you do? Uh no actually I wasn't
59:40 familiar with it but I definitely going
59:41 to check it out. Yeah. Okay cool. Yeah
59:43 it's a it's a whole method. Uh and we'll
59:45 have I think the episode right before
59:46 this is actually that episode. Okay. Let
59:48 me go in a different direction and kind
59:49 of keep extracting lessons from this
59:51 journey because that was a really
59:52 fruitful place to go. So let me ask you
59:54 this question. What's one thing that you
59:56 wish you'd known before stepping into
59:58 the role that you're in today? This is
60:00 an interesting question. I think you
60:02 know there are many aspects to it and
60:06 maybe if I'll take the the personal
60:08 aspect. So you know I've been in charge
60:10 of like the the product and technology
60:12 from from like since I joined the
60:14 company. But with that my role has
60:18 changed I think like dozens of times.
60:20 Like I I feel I'm very fortunate to work
60:24 in one company but actually work in
60:26 dozens of different companies. think
60:28 about the scale that we talked about
60:29 like each point is a different uh it's
60:32 actually a different company and a
60:34 different role and different challenge
60:36 and I think that you know something that
60:39 maybe is counterintuitive personally for
60:42 me was that in many of the phases that
60:46 we undergo with I felt that what got me
60:49 to this phase is is not necessarily
60:52 what's going to make me successful in
60:54 the next phase and if I want to be even
60:56 more blunt you know there will like
61:00 personally times when suddenly I saw how
61:03 my biggest you know strength uh for
61:06 instance
61:07 like mastering all the details and
61:10 having everything in my head knowing
61:12 exactly what's happening on every corner
61:14 of what we do this is was probably
61:17 something that gave a lot of value when
61:20 we were small but as we got bigger I
61:23 think like it suddenly created you know
61:26 even a damage
61:27 you know continuing to do the same thing
61:31 and in many ways it takes time to do
61:34 this realization and I think that a good
61:37 advice that I would love to have is that
61:41 don't be afraid again to to let go of
61:43 things that you think are superpowers
61:47 many times your superpowers that brought
61:49 you to this point and made you
61:50 successful many times you think that if
61:52 you let it go you won't be successful
61:54 and it's frightening but I really feel
61:57 that you need to constantly evaluate
62:00 what your current
62:02 role is actually is actually what what
62:06 is the role like and what is needed in
62:08 order to be successful in it and not
62:11 continue with the inertion and this is
62:13 something that I wish someone has told
62:15 me yeah it took me time in many cases
62:18 you know many I did it too late is there
62:21 anything that helped you realize this or
62:23 get good at this is it like coaching is
62:25 it just doing it and surviving driving
62:26 and failing and be like, "Oh, I see."
62:30 I think all of the above.
62:32 I think that one sign for that for me
62:37 was that in many cases I felt uh I'm
62:42 doing a very good job but then people
62:45 like uh it can be like I I'll give you
62:48 an example okay like uh for instance
62:51 doing a company like leadership QBRS
62:54 okay quarterly business reviews so when
62:57 we just started it with it very early
62:59 you know I would actually tell about
63:03 everything and you know I remember one
63:05 meeting that I went out of the meeting
63:08 and I say wow I really managed to you
63:10 know convey everything and explain
63:13 everything and very like in a very
63:15 articulated way and like one of my
63:19 colleagues in the core leadership team
63:21 said I didn't understand anything like
63:25 what is the bottom line of all of this
63:28 and you know it was like uh
63:31 uh you suddenly realize that what you
63:34 thought is is good is not necessarily
63:37 what the other people needs from you at
63:40 this point and you know like uh after
63:43 understanding that I I went and asked
63:45 like what would be beneficial for you he
63:47 said listen I want to keep in my head
63:49 like the three most meaningful things
63:51 that you are currently facing with I
63:53 don't want to hear everything and you
63:57 know like it's hard But uh but this was
64:01 a point for me that I realized that I
64:03 need to change and I need to change
64:05 something and the the like the
64:07 requirements are different and like at
64:10 the beginning you know I tried to say
64:12 but listen it's very it's important that
64:14 you know like you you're sticking to it
64:16 right but uh we need to let it go
64:18 sometimes and think like from the
64:21 beginning. There's this phrase that
64:23 someone shared on this podcast once
64:25 where in as you rise in your career, you
64:28 often go from the person that is
64:30 pitching leaders on something to the
64:31 person being pitched. And that's a
64:33 really weird place to move from, you
64:36 know, having to learn how to be give
64:37 great feedback, delegate, let go of
64:40 things. And I love that this this is a
64:42 good example of that. Yeah. Since we're
64:45 getting a little vulnerable and open
64:46 about stuff, I want to try this
64:48 question. you haven't you've done a lot
64:50 of podcasts, you've done a lot of
64:51 interviews, you've been all over the
64:52 place. Is there anything you haven't
64:53 shared anywhere else that might be
64:55 helpful to share here about the the
64:57 journey you've been on? Yeah. So maybe
64:59 continuing with the same point you know
65:02 like uh it's a crazy journey and it's
65:05 crazy personal journey if you think
65:06 about it like uh I remember Roy once
65:10 said if someone would have interviewed
65:12 me to a public company worth you
65:16 know like I would say 10 billion dollars
65:19 in market cap and managing 2500
65:22 employees. I'm not sure that I would
65:24 interviewed myself and get myself to the
65:26 job and I can you know for me there were
65:29 a lot of moments and it's constantly
65:32 happening h you know when things you
65:36 know are going sideways and things
65:38 doesn't work and you see so many things
65:40 are breaking down and you know you can
65:43 be on the same day super happy and
65:46 suddenly on the lowest point there is
65:49 and I can share you know many times I
65:51 I've asked myself like uh whether I'm
65:55 the right person to lead it, whether we
65:57 need like someone that is coming with
65:59 all the experience to this phase and I
66:02 remember like talk that I had with he
66:06 tell me he told me something listen
66:08 first of all as the one who built
66:11 it no one would be able to do it like
66:13 you and I think it's an important you
66:16 know thing to remember when times are
66:18 tough I really believe that you know if
66:22 you have the passion and if you have the
66:24 will and and if you are willing to do
66:28 the hard work in order to constantly
66:30 adjust and evolve and you know to be
66:33 vulnerable and also you know to say
66:36 about yourself like I didn't understand
66:38 something now I need to learn it and I
66:40 need to do things
66:42 differently you know it's a very
66:44 important point if you want to do this
66:46 kind of a of a journey and it's hard and
66:50 something I can share you know I can
66:53 reassure everyone that are listening to
66:55 us you know if you're feeling it you're
66:58 not the only one everyone are feeling it
67:00 from once in a while be confident about
67:02 yourself be vulnerable in order to learn
67:05 and to evolve and I really love to do
67:08 like a a mental you know mental exercise
67:11 of like saying like we we said about the
67:14 product so let's say I'm I'm Daniel of
67:19 like next six months, how do I want to
67:22 look back on these six months and what
67:24 do I want to say about myself that I
67:26 learned that I evolved and this helped
67:28 you get out from the state of like
67:31 everything is okay I'm good and it makes
67:34 you like want to learn and want to
67:37 evolve and also like stay in doing mode
67:43 like I don't believe in like I think the
67:47 one one thing that really characterized
67:49 me is that I can be like very you know
67:51 it can be very difficult and very
67:53 challenging time but on the next day I'm
67:57 already bouncing back with energy and in
68:01 order like to come and do things and win
68:03 it and you know there are a lot of
68:06 things that we as leaders needs to do in
68:08 order to to help ourselves to keep like
68:10 this mental you know state so I like to
68:14 run I like to do things that are
68:16 unrelated to work in order to get back
68:18 to my center but then quickly bounce
68:23 back and to really believe in myself in
68:26 the team around me. So this is yeah this
68:29 is something maybe very personal but uh
68:33 I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one you
68:35 know feeling it. I appreciate you
68:37 sharing that. There's a a post that I
68:40 did a long time ago with a coach and she
68:42 it was about imposttor syndrome and she
68:45 made this really powerful point that uh
68:48 like you are actually an imposttor in
68:50 the role you're in. You've never done
68:51 this before.
68:53 Like most people are imposters in their
68:55 role. They've never been as chief
68:57 product officer in a lot of cases.
68:59 They've never led teams this large. And
69:02 first of all, just realize that you
69:03 actually are. And second of all, that's
69:06 okay. And most people are like you said.
69:08 And then third of all, this advice you
69:10 shared about how to work through that is
69:11 really powerful. Just like know many
69:13 people feel this way, uh work hard, I
69:15 think is a really important part of
69:17 this. Just like know there's another day
69:18 and that you can bounce back. Remember
69:21 that everyone are people. No one is born
69:25 to be like in the world that he's
69:27 currently at. And you know another thing
69:29 that you know in Monday we are scaling
69:31 so fast. So even people that are coming
69:33 with experience and I had you know the
69:36 chance to see it over and over
69:38 again because we are going so fast each
69:41 one of us will get to a point which is
69:43 the first time he's doing it sooner or
69:46 later. So experience matters and we have
69:50 like a a lot of people that are coming
69:52 and bringing experience from from the
69:54 outside but also remember that and
69:56 remember that everyone are people and
69:58 like no one was born in a position.
70:02 Yeah. And and a company's like like
70:04 yours it's people have described it as
70:07 like every six months you have a new
70:08 job. Exactly. Exactly. We had Cheryl
70:12 Sandberg once did a talk that I was at
70:13 where people are complaining. We're
70:16 we're just like so much is changing.
70:17 We're growing. Every the culture is not
70:19 as strong as it was and there's just
70:21 like things not working. Our processes
70:23 are no was hiring as hard. And she's
70:26 just like this is the problems you want
70:28 because you're growing very fast and
70:31 that's very good versus if you were not
70:34 growing it'd be much more painful and
70:35 hard. So be thankful to see the problems
70:38 you're facing. I couldn't agree more.
70:42 You talked about things breaking along
70:44 the way and things you had to deal with.
70:45 Is there an example of something? I love
70:47 these stories of just like maybe a
70:48 moment of crisis along the journey where
70:50 you thought like okay things are going
70:51 to fall apart. This is over. See you
70:53 everyone. Yeah to be honest we have so
70:56 many like uh but again this is the
71:00 problems uh that you are lucky to have.
71:03 Uh but uh yeah may maybe I'll give you
71:06 an example like uh you know I remember
71:08 this day that uh someone from our
71:11 customer success team has approached me
71:13 and say listen Daniel we have a spike in
71:15 performance issues with in the board and
71:19 you know again like our boards is this
71:21 table of like think about it like of
71:24 data and on each time where we add new
71:27 functionality and we make the platform
71:29 more mature people are taking it to the
71:31 extreme. So if you look back 8 years
71:34 ago, so these kind of tables usually had
71:36 like let's say five columns and 100
71:39 rows. And if you look about it today,
71:41 it's like hundreds of columns, you know,
71:44 tens of thousands of rows and like so
71:47 performance was always a challenge and
71:49 struggle like in making sure that
71:50 everything works uh smoothly and this is
71:53 also a value to us. We really believe
71:55 that performance is the number one
71:57 feature uh that makes people use your
72:00 system. So you know he came to me and I
72:04 remember that like suddenly seeing the
72:06 spike in the
72:07 tickets you know it's super hard right
72:10 like you say wow it's something super
72:12 hard you don't necessarily have a magic
72:15 wand of like fixing it immediately and
72:19 what we did we actually again connected
72:22 everyone to it the first thing I did was
72:24 like taking this graph to everyone in
72:27 the team and showing in thinking
72:29 together what we can do And we did a lot
72:32 of things and we worked really hard and
72:34 we managed to to make this situation
72:36 better. And uh you know and then time
72:40 passed by and you are like continuing
72:42 and then it happened
72:44 again. H and I can share that on the
72:48 first on the third
72:49 time I said okay we had enough like uh
72:54 we need to think totally different in a
72:57 different way. And uh back in the days
73:01 this is where I think like many of our
73:04 core like long-term projects have born.
73:07 The signature one would be Monday DB.
73:10 It's like a it's an a name we use for
73:12 like an underlying data infrastructure
73:15 that we've been building in the last 3
73:17 years or so. So think about a very small
73:20 team and a very small startup. I
73:23 remember the day that we said listen we
73:26 need few of our most talented
73:30 people they are now not going to
73:32 contribute features anymore we are
73:34 putting them on like a separate like uh
73:39 place and let's think and solve this
73:42 problem while thinking about 100x and
73:46 you know it really like in many ways so
73:48 different from what we talked about in
73:50 so many other of the examples
73:53 And I think now we said listen instead
73:56 of being like fixing an issue we want
73:59 this to be our competitive edge. We have
74:01 a very unique uh product architecture
74:04 where everyone can build their own
74:06 schemas of the table and you know it's
74:08 like a crazy thing in terms of
74:10 technology behind that. We want to do
74:12 something that will not only solve the
74:15 problem but also will serve us as a
74:16 competitive edge. And we took a huge
74:19 risk because you know we took a lot of
74:20 people and put them aside for that or
74:23 like not a lot of people but the very
74:25 talented people. And I think in
74:30 retrospect by the way we released Monday
74:32 DB I think one and a half years ago like
74:35 the the first version it did a huge huge
74:37 change to customers and in many ways
74:39 this is what like actually makes us
74:41 today a platform which is enterprise
74:43 grade.
74:45 So my lesson from that is that if you
74:47 feel about something it is
74:50 strategic, you need to not only solve
74:53 problems but be super proactive and also
74:57 again like
75:00 uh this contradicts the fact of like
75:03 what are the goals, what are we going to
75:04 achieve because you need to lean on like
75:06 something which is strategic. So with
75:09 the everything that we said at the
75:10 beginning of the conversation, there is
75:12 also things that you need to do because
75:14 this is the company you want to build.
75:16 This is the product that you want to
75:17 build and you don't necessarily get the
75:20 you know uh lookus of getting conviction
75:25 from things that happened in the past or
75:27 from data. You need to just go with your
75:30 intuition and take this risk. And I'm
75:32 super happy that we did it. Yeah. But
75:34 this is an example where things really
75:36 broke, you know, and uh what we did with
75:38 it. There's a couple other stories of
75:40 crisis I'm thinking back to and they're
75:42 all seem to be a database started
75:44 reaching capacity and we were about to
75:46 fall apart because this growth was too
75:48 fast. So that's an interesting lesson
75:50 for people to hear just like try to
75:52 anticipate this a little more and uh
75:54 sounds like that's what you realize is
75:56 like let's think 100x from now not just
75:59 like a couple years from now. There's
76:01 reminds me of so Brian Johnson he's this
76:03 uh dude that's trying to live forever or
76:06 as long as he can and he makes this
76:07 really interesting point that I promise
76:09 connects to what you're talking about
76:11 which is he's like okay what is what is
76:13 your goal he asked everyone what's your
76:14 life goal and so they're like I want to
76:16 do this and this and that okay to
76:18 accomplish that the base goal you're not
76:20 even thinking about is you need to not
76:22 die and that's actually the number one
76:25 goal everyone should have don't die and
76:27 I feel like that's infrastructure in
76:30 companies It's like you have all these
76:31 metrics and goals, but really the goal
76:33 underneath that is your infrastructure
76:34 needs to scale. So it makes sense why
76:36 this is outside of like okay we have all
76:38 these metrics and goals like not
76:39 necessarily treating it as a as a tax or
76:42 as a risk but rather like you know for
76:44 for our offering like as a platform this
76:47 is like actually now one of our core
76:49 advantages. Mhm. So it's super important
76:52 as well that value to customers comes in
76:54 different ways, shapes and forms and you
76:56 need to to think about the experience
76:58 and not only about like uh you know and
77:02 many times the general experience start
77:04 with things that are reliable performant
77:07 that you can count on them and suddenly
77:09 you even use them differently because
77:11 they are fast. So I think this is
77:13 another important uh like aspect to it.
77:16 That's such a good point. when you have
77:17 a problem, something that's slowing you
77:18 down or might crumble the company, just
77:20 not flipping it from how do we just put
77:22 the band-aid here. It's how do we turn
77:24 this into a strategic advantage if we
77:25 really invest the time. I I I like that
77:28 a lot. Okay, to start to close out our
77:31 conversation, I'm going to take us to AI
77:33 corner, which is a recurring segment I
77:35 tried to get to more and more with this
77:37 podcast. And the question is, how have
77:40 you what's an example of you using AI
77:42 tools in your day-to-day work to do
77:44 better work to do faster work that you
77:47 think might be helpful to other folks? H
77:49 maybe I start with a personal one, you
77:51 know, like uh
77:54 I'm not it's not about work, but I think
77:56 it really shows that for me it was like
77:59 a moment of
78:01 like really saying this this has so much
78:05 potential in it. Uh, so I actually
78:08 prepared myself for a marathon and
78:10 unfortunately I got injured in my knee.
78:14 So yeah, so I went to do an MRI scan and
78:18 I finished the scan and they gave me
78:20 this disc with the results and then they
78:23 said, "Listen, uh, you need to schedule
78:25 a doctor appointment. It's 5 days from
78:28 now." Okay. I said I took it put it in
78:31 charge and asked for like the results an
78:34 explanation of line by line what what
78:36 does it mean and then I of course went
78:39 to the doctor and said these are the
78:40 results but I think like for me you know
78:42 this is this is something that I was
78:45 really happy about using it and it also
78:49 opens my mind a lot because I think that
78:51 if you think about it from the product
78:53 perspective and this is how we think
78:55 about AI in Monday the technology is
78:58 amazing. Yeah, you you can do so much
79:00 with it, but you know there's still the
79:03 part of like productizing it because
79:06 every person that I talked with him
79:08 about this example like with enthusiasm
79:11 he said how did you think about putting
79:13 your MRI there and I said I don't know
79:16 like I just did but this is all like
79:18 creating products that actually allow
79:20 people to leverage this technology and
79:23 more on the work side you know I use it
79:25 a lot I think like for
79:28 Like one recent example I would say is
79:31 like we
79:32 really worked hard towards like
79:34 determining the the pricing for AI
79:37 offering that I was mentioning earlier
79:42 and just in like two hours I was manag I
79:46 managed to get a full perspective on
79:48 what everyone else are doing you know
79:51 and we have analysts and we have product
79:54 managers and but the fact that I was
79:56 independent and managed to get like you
79:58 know the initial thoughts and like all
80:00 the information in just a bit. It was
80:03 mind-blowing. So I use it a lot in order
80:05 to understand things that are like very
80:08 extensive like what the competitors are
80:10 doing. What is the history of this and
80:12 that and I think it helped me a lot in
80:15 that sense. These are awesome examples.
80:18 And is this all chat JPT? Is that the
80:20 tool of choice?
80:22 You know it's hard. I have like my own
80:24 periods right now. It's changing from
80:26 one week to another. H this do actually
80:30 were with chipdia. Very cool. The first
80:33 example my wife does all the time. My
80:35 mother-in-law was in the hospital and
80:36 we're waiting for the doctor to show up
80:38 and she just put the chart in Chad GPT.
80:40 It's like what's what's the problem? And
80:42 it's exactly what he told us. And it
80:44 feels like like it feels like we're in a
80:46 world now where an engineer without say
80:47 cursor or one of these tools is just not
80:50 like that's not that's not possible
80:53 anymore. And it feels like now with
80:55 going to doctors is like if you don't do
80:57 this and see what it says like you're
81:00 missing out on a big gap. There's this
81:01 New York Times story I don't know if
81:02 you've seen where they actually compared
81:04 a doctor's analysis versus a doctor plus
81:07 JGPT plus just
81:10 JPT and uh guess guess what was the the
81:14 the best most accurate uh diagnosis.
81:17 Yeah I want to say chaptt you know but
81:21 that's exactly what it was. not even a
81:22 doctor with chachi PT you know I'll tell
81:25 you I'll tell you a story about it so in
81:27 the MRI you know I I did it because I I
81:30 wanted to to go skiing and I didn't know
81:32 if I can do it or not so I asked Shaj
81:35 and he said like uh all the
81:37 recommendations and what I need to do
81:38 and so on and then when I was at the
81:40 doctor I said I asked him the same
81:42 question can I do ski he said I don't
81:45 know I never ski you know so it's not
81:48 only about like getting the information
81:50 straight away and getting accuracy It's
81:52 the fact that you can continue and deep
81:54 dive with it. And this is something that
81:55 also like when I was in the pricing, you
81:57 know, it's not only the bit of
81:59 information, but the fact that you can
82:00 continue and continue and continue. It's
82:02 like it's definitely super super
82:05 impressive and it doesn't get annoyed.
82:07 It doesn't get bored. It's and it's very
82:08 supportive. Yeah, it's always good
82:09 intense or not, but yeah. So kind.
82:14 Amazing. Okay. Well, Daniel, we've we've
82:16 covered a lot of ground. This was
82:17 extremely fun. Before we get to our very
82:19 exciting lightning round, is there
82:20 anything else that you wanted to share?
82:22 Any other nuggets of wisdom you want to
82:24 leave listeners with? I think that in
82:27 many ways like the the things that we
82:29 managed to achieve in Monday is due to
82:31 the great people and culture that we
82:34 have and you know in early days we used
82:37 to take it for granted in a way that uh
82:40 not the people but the culture the fact
82:42 that everyone understand it the fact
82:43 that everyone are practicing it and then
82:45 you say okay culture is like something
82:47 that you can't put your fingers on but
82:51 now as we scale like I really see how
82:55 this is what actually drives everything
82:58 forward. Uh so maybe just to say like on
83:03 a personal note that a huge part of how
83:05 I see my role is about like the people
83:09 and also about how we work together and
83:11 what kind of an environment we want to
83:13 build to ourselves and we talked a lot
83:15 about it during the the episode but you
83:18 know I really feel that I can't
83:20 underestimate on how meaningful it is
83:23 and how like grateful I am that I'm
83:25 working with such talented people and
83:28 doing what I
83:29 That's awesome. Uh, I bet we could do a
83:31 whole other episode on just culture and
83:33 what you've learned building a culture,
83:34 what the culture is like at Monday. But,
83:36 uh, we got to we got to get to our very
83:38 exciting lightning round. Daniel, are
83:40 you ready? I'm ready. All right. So,
83:43 I've got five questions for you. First
83:44 question is, what are two or three books
83:46 that you find yourself recommending most
83:48 to other people? The first one I would
83:50 say is like uh is the No Rules rules
83:55 book by Netflix. uh back in the days we
83:57 we used even the the slides uh but I
84:00 think we took a lot of inspiration out
84:02 of it and I think that although we have
84:04 different cultures many of the things
84:06 around like you know
84:08 execution like uh excellent people and
84:11 so on are things that like I can really
84:14 resonate with and this is something that
84:16 we really like uh to give people away
84:20 after talking about our culture and so
84:22 on to get inspiration also from other
84:24 cultures uh And another maybe on a on a
84:28 different way you know aspect is a book
84:32 that actually our our co is giving to me
84:38 h it its name is nonviolent
84:41 communication and it's about effective
84:44 ways of communication and understanding
84:47 the people and their needs and how to
84:50 communicate in a way that actually
84:52 promotes you know an effective
84:54 communication And what I liked about
84:57 this book is uh you know me and Roy we
85:00 love to to talk a lot and like after we
85:03 both read the book like our way of
85:05 talking like change so it's very
85:07 practical so I also like like to give it
85:10 away to our leadership and people within
85:12 the team because I think it has like
85:14 real value in it. Uh, I'm trying to
85:17 remember the framework of nonviolent
85:18 communication is like I observed you
85:21 speaking too much in this meeting and
85:23 that made me feel like I wasn't listened
85:26 to. Something like that, right? I forget
85:28 exactly. You shouldn't be judgmental.
85:29 You just need to say facts and talk
85:32 about how you feel like in so yeah.
85:35 Yeah. And I know I'm kind of joking
85:36 about it, but it's actually really
85:37 powerful. And we had we had uh Carol
85:39 Robin on the podcast who created this
85:42 program at Stanford called Tetify which
85:44 is similar to this whole process this
85:46 whole approach to talking. And by the
85:47 way, I love the combination of Israeli
85:50 uh directness and nonviolent
85:52 communication. I want to see that in
85:53 action.
85:55 Yeah, definitely.
85:58 Okay, next question. Do you have a
86:00 favorite recent movie or TV show that
86:01 you really enjoyed? So to be honest, I I
86:05 don't watch TV so much. like I get bored
86:07 really fast and uh going back to other
86:10 things but uh but like uh when I do
86:14 watch TV so many times it's like u in
86:18 order to clear my head so it's not that
86:20 kind of exciting things maybe a
86:23 different thing that I'm doing is like
86:24 playing on the PlayStation with my son
86:27 you know FIFA just to vent
86:30 out yeah and in terms of serious maybe
86:33 like one thing that pops up is like the
86:36 formula. I really liked it. Formula 1 in
86:40 Netflix. Drive to Survive. Drive to
86:42 Survive. Exactly. Yeah. I I really loved
86:44 seeing the dynamics and everything
86:46 behinds, you know, it looks like
86:47 something simple of like driving cars,
86:50 but you see that there's so much into
86:52 it. Uh so it's also something that uh
86:55 like really interesting and like opens
86:57 your mind to watch. Yeah. I haven't I
87:00 haven't started the new season yet. I
87:01 wonder if it's great. Yeah. Likewise.
87:04 Yeah.
87:06 Okay, next question. Do you have a
87:07 favorite product you've recently
87:08 discovered that you really love? So, you
87:10 know, I don't want to like to to fall
87:13 into the all the trap, you know, in
87:16 terms of product. So, maybe I I'll say
87:18 something which is not so recent, but
87:20 product that I love
87:22 and I I really like to take
87:26 pictures and one product that I really
87:28 love is Google Photos. H I think that
87:31 you know they managed to create
87:33 something which takes like the
87:35 technology edge but to a place where
87:38 myself as a human like really can
87:40 connect to it and and get a lot of value
87:43 from it. So I'm like a really heavy user
87:46 of that. Yeah. Yeah. That is a magical
87:48 product that I think people under
87:50 underappreciate. Yeah. Next question. Do
87:53 you have a favorite life motto that you
87:55 often come back to find useful and work
87:57 here in light? Stay positive. Like I
88:00 think uh being positive, saying uh
88:04 saying like the good things is a huge
88:06 huge power and it's a huge driver and it
88:10 allows you to to give energy to the
88:13 people around you and it's contagious.
88:15 So I really love you know staying
88:18 positive making sure that we keep being
88:21 optimistic and it doesn't mean that you
88:23 need to you know uh let go of the
88:27 problems and don't uh like uh see the
88:29 problems but also think about always
88:32 look forward and always think how you
88:34 can take the current situation make it
88:36 better and I learned with the way that
88:39 uh it's really more fun and actually
88:42 brings better results this way. I'm
88:44 1,000% aligned with that. Final
88:47 question. I know you were in the army at
88:48 one point in your life. Is there
88:50 anything that you learned from that
88:52 experience that helps you build better
88:54 products? The funny thing is is that I
88:58 think that like many things that I did
89:01 in army, I was actually
89:03 commanding of like a very big group of
89:06 people in in the army. And I think uh
89:09 it's not about building products but
89:11 more about building teams and being
89:13 building building like uh this sense of
89:16 purpose sense of shared like
89:19 belonging and I think that in that way
89:22 many things are quite similar to be it's
89:26 it might be like counterintuitive but
89:29 many things are quite
89:31 similar and from that many many of the
89:34 things of like being together although
89:36 it's like a hierarchal
89:38 environment is something that I take
89:41 with me and a lot of like practical ways
89:43 to lead the big organization. I would
89:46 say Daniel, this was awesome. You're
89:48 awesome. Uh so much stuff that we went
89:50 through, so many golden nuggets. I think
89:52 we're going to help a lot of people with
89:53 building products, building teams,
89:55 scaling, surviving all these scaling
89:57 challenges that keep coming up in these
89:59 conversations. Two final questions.
90:01 Where can folks find you online if they
90:02 want to reach out? Maybe talk about
90:04 being more transparent. And then how can
90:06 listeners be useful to you?
90:08 Uh so online like I think that two main
90:11 ways is like by LinkedIn I would say and
90:15 second is
90:17 podcasts like I'm guessing in a lot of
90:20 podcast and I think that this is like a
90:22 cool way to share things through stories
90:25 and through like practical examples and
90:29 you know in terms of listeners being
90:31 useful to me. So first of all they in
90:33 many ways they already are useful to me.
90:36 I I really love your podcast and like uh
90:39 I'm ging a lot of you know insights from
90:41 others and this is something I I really
90:43 love. Uh so many of people that probably
90:47 listening were also contributing to
90:49 that. So thank you for that and I really
90:51 hope with that that this episode would
90:53 also be meaningful to people and that
90:55 they will take value out of it and if
90:58 they are it would be amazing to hear
91:01 about it. Like I remember, you know,
91:03 someone that sent me a picture of his
91:05 new dashboard in the office and what he
91:08 he do with that and add like additional
91:11 ideas of what what he can do that we we
91:14 actually took also here in Monday. So if
91:17 you do something even if it's small, let
91:19 me know. It's super fun to hear and also
91:22 interesting. All right, there's the call
91:24 to action. If you implement some of
91:26 Daniel's advice, especially put up new
91:28 dashboards or monitors in your office,
91:31 please send photos over LinkedIn, it
91:33 sounds like, is the best medium. Daniel,
91:35 thank you so much for being here. Thank
91:37 you very much, Lenny. It was a pleasure.
91:40 Bye,
91:41 everyone. Thank you so much for
91:42 listening. If you found this valuable,
91:44 you can subscribe to the show on Apple
91:46 Podcast, Spotify, or your favorite
91:48 podcast app. Also, please consider
91:50 giving us a rating or leaving a review
91:52 as that really helps other listeners
91:54 find the podcast. You can find all past
91:57 episodes or learn more about the show at
92:00 lennispodcast.com. See you in the next
92:02 episode.
Chrome Extension