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Inside monday_com’s transformation: Radical transparency_ impact over output_ & the path to $1B ARR

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A great PM basically for me is someone

that is relentless until he gets this

impact until he validates that this

impact is in place. In some cases doing

the biggest impact is not developing

another feature. It's about making the

current value more accessible. You've

been at this for 8 years. You said

there's 250,000 customers at this point.

What would you say is the most

counterintuitive thing you've learned

through this journey of building Monday?

We really have an approach of very

radical transparency about everything

before we went public. We actually

shared every bit of information with our

employees. Instead of demoralizing

people, I think that this is something

that gives them a sense of deep

partnership. We really want everyone's

brains in the challenge and not just one

centralized brain and a lot of working

hands. You basically realized that your

competitors were shipping a lot faster

than you were. that made you shift the

way you think about product and the way

you operate. Some of our competitors did

something that we can only imagine. We

said, "Okay, we need to treat it

differently." We received a gift from

our competitors. They showed us that

it's possible. Use your competition,

know it, and take it and set ambitious

goals and believe in yourself and you

can do amazing

things. Today, my guest is Daniel Ara.

Daniel's currently chief product and

technology officer at monday.com. He

joined when they were just around 40

employees. And a few years in, Daniel

and the Exec team realized that their

competitors were able to move a lot

faster than they were and ship a lot

more often than they were. And that

spurred a transformation in how they

build and operate their teams. Very few

companies are able to transform like

this, and even fewer recognize that

something is wrong. In our conversation,

Daniel shares a bunch of very specific

insights and suggestions into how to go

about making change or even recognizing

that something is wrong. Daniel shares

moments when it felt like everything was

going to crumble, why it's important to

know that the skills that got you to

where you are today aren't the skills

that are going to take you to the next

level, why it's so important to orient

all your teams around impact, and so

much more. If you enjoy this podcast,

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That's

airtable.com/lenny. Daniel, thank you so

much for being here and welcome to the

podcast. Thank you so much for having

me. We're gonna get into the story of

Monday. We're going to talk about your

journey over the last 8 years building

and scaling this company and all things

you've learned along the way. But I want

to start with a very specific moment

that you shared with me where you

basically realized that your competitors

were shipping a lot faster than you were

able to get stuff out a lot more quickly

and more often than you guys. And that

made you shift the way you think about

product and the way you operate. Can you

talk about that moment and that in that

lesson and and what you took away from

that? Yeah. Wow. You you take me a while

back, you know, h I think it was when we

were relatively a small team. I think we

were something around like 30 people and

uh you know, including engineers and

product and everyone. It's actually that

back in the days we did so many things

and actually we had an amazing amazing

execution. We had a, you know, a weekly

update where we would share everything

that we did with the company and it was

al always, you know, super long and

super like with so many different

things. H, and we really felt good about

ourselves at that point to be honest

about the the execution. And then I

remember one day you know coming to the

office and just looking on one of our

competitors and we at Monday we have

like one of the main things that we have

in the product is our boards. It's like

the the heart and soul of the product

and it's you can think about it as a

table and it has different column types

data types that you can capture within

the board and work with and you know

back then we had five of these and I was

actually coding the sixth one to be

honest and each and every one of these

like took us like four months to develop

you know together with defining the

product and everything and at This

morning we actually saw that one of our

main competitors back then has actually

launched 30 new columns. 30? Yeah. And

you know we said

okay at first we we didn't really know

what to do and you know we thought about

it and I remember that even we said okay

we're going to take even some time out

of the office. So back then Roy and Ian

which are the founders and also together

with me and Tal which is

uh was one of the main tech leads in

Monday for a long time and few others we

went outside the office and we said

listen we need to do things differently

something doesn't make sense and you

know I remember back then that for me

this realization of like understanding

that we are doing so much but suddenly

some of our competitors did something

that we can only imagine and actually

transformed the product because it's a

different type of platform if you'll

think about it. Uh it it was really hard

personally first of all admitting that

although you worked like

crazy you didn't do something that

really transformed the product because I

remember back then when we did a

conversation we said okay we're doing so

much what is the most meaningful thing

that we did over the last 3 months and

you know suddenly the answer was you

know there's so many things but it

wasn't something specific

And after like you know acknowledging

that and you know it's a very hard thing

personally especially when you work so

hard and you put your entire heart in in

what you do. H we said okay

now we need to treat it differently. We

received a gift from our competitors.

They showed us that it's possible. Now

we we need to think how. And in order to

do that, we need to think differently

because remember like we said, okay, if

we're going to add 25 more, multiply it

by four months, we're small team. We

we're lost. Okay, we can't make it. So

we said, okay, we need to take upon

ourselves an ambitious goal like 25

columns in one month. And this is the

goal that we took upon ourselves. And

you know I think that the fact that our

competitors did it give us

like didn't give us the excuse of saying

it's not possible. So in a way it was

the biggest favor that we can ask for

and you know long story short month and

a half afterwards we had 30 columns in

Monday and we did it you know by

thinking totally different and by the

way afterwards you know we did it over

and over again. And so if you think

about Monday, it's basically a platform

for work and you have different building

blocks. Columns is one of them. But we

did the same drill exactly with H

dashboards and widgets and then with

automations and so on. So I think this

was so transformative because a we

understood that you need to constantly

think especially at these phases. How

would you how would you transform

completely the product in the next 3

months? And if you can't answer that and

you say listen I'm doing so much thing

but you can't point this exact thing you

have a focus problem in my eyes and

second that is that you

know put ambitious goals it will make

you think differently and you know we

really love now to do it even with when

we don't know it's possible and it

actually like works for us time after

time and let's think about it you know

the team that was there suddenly became

invincible because you know it's such an

amazing amazing experience that you have

a goal that you don't know how you're

going to do it and you succeed and then

it makes you feel that everything is

possible. There's so much here and uh I

have so many threads I want to follow

on. One is just there's the kind of

there's this metaphor of the 4-minute

mile where no one thought it was

possible and then someone did it and

then everyone started beating that

record. So, I like that this is

highlighting there's just so much power

in seeing somebody else accomplish

something you thought was impossible and

that unlocks the way you think. And uh I

love that you saw it as a gift. A lot of

people a lot of companies do this.

They're in this place and they're like

no way. It's like when the iPhone

launched like no no one no one needs

that. That's not there's no keyboard.

And a lot of people like are uh like

deny that it's a a thing they should be

paying attention to. I love that you saw

it as like okay we need to we need to

move that things have changed. we're not

doing things uh we're not going to be

competitive long term. I think it's also

very much about focus and I think that

you know it's very hard to get to very

good execution but it doesn't guarantee

that you are working in the right way

and many times in my eyes you know

simple questions can provide the most

and the deepest insights about your work

and I think that for us the fact that we

managed to leverage it as you said and

see it as a gift is one of the most

important things use your competition

know it use it to your advantage

and you know take it and set ambitious

goals and believe in yourself and and

you can do amazing things. Another I

think uh piece a lot of people are

probably resonating with here is uh

starting a company that's small growing

things are going great and then all of a

sudden things start to slow down and in

some cases you don't realize that

they've slowed down and that's what it

happened in your case sounds like in a

lot of cases the founders like what the

hell's going on why is it taking three

to four weeks to ship one type of new

column and so is there anything by the

way what was the scale of the company at

this point it's a good question

h if I'm not mistaken it was around uh

2018 uh back then

how it's safe to assume like 150 200

people in the company but we we were

relatively small I recently had Brian

Singer on the podcast who created the

shape up method from base camp and

that's kind of his uh piece of advice

too is around like 50 to 100 people

things start to really change and slow

down and that's where a lot of companies

start to go sideways so that reate

Right. So that's really interesting. And

by the way, this these columns you're

describing, just to make it clear, this

is like a new type of like data like new

format of column like it's a new data

format that you're building. It's not

like just add another column to some

database. Yeah. So so actually like

exactly it's a new type of column but

it's a whole product around it. Like if

you think about it for instance you have

a column that captures dates. So it's

pretty straightforward but you can also

have like formula column which is like

more complicated and has like more

complex product around it. I think one

of the best benefits for us as platform

is that suddenly when we will like when

we set the goal of adding so many

different columns, we actually stopped

for the first time and say what is a

column like and we also like organized

all the product architecture around it.

And you know these kind of things like

sounds really trivial in retrospect but

you know we really defined okay each

column need to have like specific

capabilities. It should be able to

export it to Excel. It's it should be

able to be filtered and sorted and so

many different other things. But

basically we defined what is it and then

create an infrastructure for all these

shared things making the work of adding

a new column just thinking about the

specific product that you want to

provide with each one of these columns.

And the story about it is actually even

more interesting. We the way we actually

achieved it is that we said okay in two

weeks we're going to have an acathaton

in which each one of our developers is

going to take one column and implement

it in one

day and you know if you think about it

from four months to one

day it's like mindblowing and back then

I remember people said how can it be but

then tal that I told you about build an

infrastruure structure. He sent it to

me. I did a column at night, you know,

just to to see the how the how it works.

And on the day that we did the columns,

like everyone knew what they are going

to do, what they are trying to solve.

And we just did it. And two weeks

afterwards, it was in production, which

was amazing. What we want to do here is

help people avoid these moments where

they're almost like too late and

realizing that things have slowed down.

So I think a really another important

lesson here is the power of ambition and

thinking crazily big. A lot of people

think that when you ask your team we

need to build 25 columns in a month or

whatever it was people would be like I

burned out or feeling super depressed

but really people get excited there's

all this opportunity to think really

differently. It reminds me at our B&B

Brian Jesy was very famous for you give

him a goal here's our goal for the year

and he's like what it would take to 10x

this goal just like what would it take

to do that and he's always pushing you

to think a lot bigger when you're like

because your first reaction is like what

no no why would you leave us alone but

then you realize if you really think big

it changes everything about how you

approach the problem as you described

where it's like instead of like in a day

what would it take to build this in a

day yeah and and I think by the way this

is something which is really important

about setting ambitious goals. If you

set a like a different goal I want to

reduce it from 4 months to 3 months. So

many times this translates in people

heads to I want you to work harder. I

want to you to work longer hours. And

this is not the message here. It's about

working smarter. And I think that many

times when we talk about speed of

execution, you know, there's fake speed,

which means trying to do the same work

by skipping stages or not doing the high

quality that you want. But there's the

real speed and speed like organizations

and speed of execution. Many times it's

about doing things right. It's about

understanding a what is going to move

the needle and work only on that. not

working in a lot of things that you tend

to invent when you're trying to solve a

problem and B is like you know about

like thinking as you said like uh

thinking differently and I think that

for the goals this is why we really

wanted the goal that you really

understand from the first minute that if

you work the same way you cannot achieve

it even if you'll sleep in the office so

you need to change dramatically

how you think and you know the advanced

phase of it is that today we're doing it

on things that we didn't see others

doing and you know we have the

confidence because we have the

experience of like trusting ourselves

that this is an exercise for us that

will make us actually think about

different solutions I know another

element of this that is really important

to you that you has shifted the way you

all operate is focusing on impact

there's a lot of focus on just building

a lot of stuff and you realize there's a

lot of power in thinking from

perspective of how do we have the most

impact talk about that this is the core

and the main thing that we also measure

like our teams and this is how I see a

great PM so a great PM basically for me

is someone that is relentless until he

gets this impact and I until he

validates that this impact is in place

and you know for us it really changed

how we think about things it really

changed how we set goals for our teams.

So in many ways PM in MAD first and

foremost is responsible for creating the

shared understanding on what would be

impactful for our customers. Okay, it's

not about uh the solution and what we

are going to build. It's about what's

the problem, what's the opportunity and

second how we will know that we move the

needle. And without these two things you

can build so many different things and

you know it's like songs for the draw

like I built. So you know such huge part

of what I build was never used by users

the way I thought it was going to use.

So I think that for me having the this

understanding of what we want uh to

change for our customers and also how we

know we did it is a huge huge part of

the the PM role and for us you know uh

it means that we pay a lot of time in

setting goals in making sure that we

really understand both again the

opportunity but not only that but how

we'll see and we'll know for sure that

we move the needle in many ways. is you

know it changes the the conversation. So

PMs you know and their teams many times

like are spending a lot of time at the

problem area before they think about the

solution. The solution is not the case

anymore. It's not like there are so many

different solutions. And once you do

that and you have these goals suddenly

it reduces also a lot of the discussions

that you have about the different

solutions because everyone knows that

everything is going to be tested on real

life. So they make make it everyone

treat it differently and also in that

way you know it makes you think much

more holistically which I also think is

something that is very special at Monday

is that we give our teams like real life

goals as much as we can and then you

know in some cases doing the biggest

impact is not developing another feature

it's about making the current value more

accessible It's about connecting better

to the go to market motion that you

have. It's about understanding how your

customers are going to learn what you

built and use it. And you know this

realization is something that

we try very hard to stay on it. And it's

hard because like people tend to build

things like we all love to build things,

right? And when you start to build

things, you get excited and suddenly you

lose track of why why you're doing it

and what do you need to change. And I

think that in that sense, this is the

most important part about like uh this

point of impact. And you know this is

also how we measure ourselves. So we can

work extremely hard. It doesn't mean

that we are successful. It doesn't mean

that we are doing our work right. Okay.

And it's not only for the PMs. It's for

the entire team. So the entire team

succeeds or fail together based on the

value that we bring to our customers.

And we have a lot of like different ways

in order to make sure that we stay

honest to this principle. There's a lot

of people listening to this that work at

say modern tech companies, very high

growth tech companies that are just like

duh, this is how you should work. A lot

of people hearing this are like I don't

really understand what like how like

what am I doing wrong? What am I

missing? maybe uh what's a sign that

you're not oriented around impact? I

think the the most obvious sign for me

that you are building something without

the aim or without the initial aim of

what it should change for your users and

how you are going to to measure it. So

in my eyes it's many times the fact that

you don't have a goal or the goal is is

like many times you know for me smell

for that is that I hear people use the

word we're going to enhance we're going

to augment we are going to extend value

and this and this and no it's not enough

what is it going to change for users and

how you are going to see it that it

actually happened and then you start

asking yourself all the questions right

because once you have a goal that you

are committed to suddenly you think

about the target audience because you

need enough like like bigger big enough

target audience for instance in order to

to get to your uh you know uh to your

goals you need to make sure that what

you build actually going to touch all of

these people and and I can share just a

recent example you know and and you know

these things sound trivial and maybe an

example would you know like uh help

resonate with that because I know many

people are thinking like that and you

know we we have a very like uh uh

interesting offering that we just

introduced with AI. It's called AI

blocks. Okay. And basically it means

that with no code you can integrate

blocks which contain AI actions within

your existing workflows and you know 70%

of Monday's customers are non- tech and

for them this makes AI accessible for

them and has a huge huge value and we

started building these blocks and we

released it to customers and we measured

you know discoverability and adoption

and retention and so on and something

that we do in order to to stay connected

to the numbers. So each team at Monday

has like what we call the daily numbers

update. So we have a think about it like

a a message that the team is building

with all the numbers that care that they

care about because we really want people

to leave these numbers. So for AI for

instance for the AI blocks it was the AI

actions. So we had AI actions how many

accounts like are using these AI actions

and so on and so on.

And you know we got amazing responses

from our customers. We see great success

of them getting value from their

actions. But you know one day like in

this like it's a we we use a slack

channel in which uh one of our internal

systems big brain is sending us this

messages every day and then we have

conversations about it. Okay. And you

know one day we saw we noticed that the

amount of accounts that are using AI is

super super low comparing to the entire

population that we have and you know we

have

250,000 paying companies that use Monday

and we saw only like few thousands

there and you know until this point

everyone will like in a very good

feeling that we're making an amazing

product we get really good feedback

we're building great value. We're adding

value but we sat down and say okay why

it's only like this and this then

someone say yeah you know since AI is

new we need to do change of uh the terms

of service for for customers before we

are opening it to them and this is

planned you know for like in the next

quarter or something like that and said

what no we need to do it now you know we

need to now open it for everyone because

this is actually what would be the most

impactful thing to do and then like you

know the team went and set with legal

and sent with everyone and with two

weeks time it was open to 98% of Monday

customers you know and I think in that

sense you know this is a very good

example because we could have continue

building value and it's great but the

impact wouldn't be the impact that we

were we're aiming for and this is a very

important point and you know we I think

in that sense staying really connected

to your teams to your numbers sorry this

is something that I really feel strongly

about I feel that you need to get your

numbers in push you need to live by them

and you know for me it's like so

exciting to see a conversation that says

oh wow today there were a lot of new

accounts that are using what I'm

let's see why it happens and you know

these kind of things that I see the

conversation about it's amazing and also

you know for in this case seeing the AI

actions go it's like you want to drive

it and push it forward and in many ways

I feel that this is a very good example

on where you can actually build a lot of

value you can work really fast you can

deliver a lot of features but the

problem lays in other place in order to

get the impact that you want yeah

there's so much joy and watching

watching her number go up. Uh so just to

close the loop here to help people see

if they're impact driven working from a

perspective of how do we drive the most

impact is one simple way of thinking

about it is uh you're working backwards

from a goal that is going to drive

business growth and revenue basically in

the end. If you're working backwards

from a number and a metric and a goal

and then thinking through what are the

levers that will most move this metric

that's a sign you're thinking impact

through by impact versus let's just keep

shipping features that the sales team

wants. Yeah. And I think another thing

for me like it's an exercise that I

really you know I really encourage

everyone to do for me it was

like after the columns hackathon and

everything that we talked about I said

okay each quarter and this is when we

were much smaller but it can be each

month it can be each two weeks

but how do I imagine the company and the

product is going to be different and

better for our customers in a quarter

from now and from that you know work it

backwards but if you if you are just

saying we'll have better security we'll

have better performance we'll have less

bugs we'll have more like enhancements

to the I don't know this and this

feature it's not enough you need to

constantly build value which is pivotal

to your customers and if you don't do it

and if it's hard for you to answer about

this question h it's a it's a very good

sign that you are not input driven and

you know I love to do it also with teams

and individuals like what are the things

that you are most proud of that you did

in the last three months and if it's

like takes you a lot of time to think

you're not very focused and you're

definitely not maximizing the impact

that you want due to that in my eyes I

like that exercise as a kind of a like

versus waiting for your competitors to

do something and then realizing we're

way behind it's forcing yourself every

quarter to think about this so do you do

this as like you have a meeting or or

someone in your calendar or how do you

how do you actually operationalize this?

So it's actually very you know today we

are like under the builders organization

which is the engineering product

management product design we are 700

people uh so we have a lot of different

like uh ways and methodologies to do it

in different levels but I'll give you an

example from the company level and from

the team level maybe because these are

the most interesting ones. So we just

recently had our early kickoff. Each

each and every year we do a yearly

kickoff for our company and one of the

most you know exciting sessions

obviously is what we are going to do

with our product as a product company

and I really to like to have a slide in

which I like write and I just share it

when I'm going to stand here in a year

from now what is going to be different

for our customers and you know this is

on the company level and I have one

slide and it talks about like our

offering and it talks about the value

that they are getting in a way that next

year I want to you know each year to

start my my presentation with the slide

from last year and see where we are and

you know in in this level it can be

something like our CRM continues with a

very strong momentum and becomes a

product suite when we give much more

robust value to our customers. This can

be an example okay with an additional

product of CRM marketing I would just

say but uh on a team level what we did

and maybe I'll take an example from the

early days you know we really did uh we

really love to do each each and every

two weeks I told you we would write like

a an update for the entire company about

what we did and the way we did it is

that each and every one of our team

members actually for write wrote uh his

highlights and then we would share it

with the the company. And this exercise

really made us sit every two weeks and

think on an individual level but also on

a team level and you know every one of

our team members used to write to to

read these updates and say then we had a

good two weeks or we had a bad two weeks

we did a lot of impact or we did not not

enough impact. So I really encourage to

create these points in time where you

sit down and you force yourself to

understand whether what you did is what

you thought you're going to achieve or

not. That's great. I really like the the

slide idea. It's basically there's all

this power in just working backwards

from something in the future. Uh however

you come up with it. So it's just like

in a year we're going to have there's

just like working backwards from a goal,

working backwards from a big vision.

Those are such good exercises. You know,

obviously Amazon's famous for working

backwards. There's a whole book called

Working Backward from their PR approach.

Uh, okay. I want to go in a slightly

different direction. I want to zoom out

a little bit. So, you've been at this

for eight years building Monday. You

said there's 250,000 customers at this

point. What's like the revenue scale?

Give people a couple stats to give them

a sense of just how large this company

has gotten. We recently announced that

we crossed the the $1 billion in

ARR. Um, we are serving as I said

250,000 customers across the globe from

virtually any industry that you can

think about like more than 200 different

business verticals. It could be both

tech and non techsavvy customers. The

vast majority of our customers are non

tech and you know from like a customer

that is building airplanes and cruise

ships all the way to real estate,

construction, finance, tech and

everything you can basically think of

and if I like just for reference and

seeing our growth base. So when I joined

Monday 8 and a half years ago where we

back then we were called the pulse uh we

had around 4 million in AR and we you

know scaled from the from there to 1

billion and from like around 30 40

people at the company to 2500 right now.

Awesome. when you talk about the product

you're building to a lot of people it's

like oh it's like project management

software all this like column like

what's the big deal but I had Drew Hston

on the podcast and he made this really

interesting point when he talks to

people working at SpaceX who are like

launching rockets to Mars and he talked

about people building ships like if you

really boil down what are they doing

dayto-day they're sitting in tools like

Monday putting together tasks and doing

to-dos and sharing documents like this

is kind of what the world runs on so

it's important to have that perspective

With that, putting that aside for a

second, I think very few people have

seen what you've seen having a seeing a

company scale this way. Also, the

transformation you just shared of just

like almost ship shipping too much and

being slow to like, okay, let's rework

things to shipping 25 columns in a month

and all these things like very few

people have seen this. So, there's a lot

to learn from this journey that you've

been on. So, I have a bunch of questions

and a different bunch of different ways

of approaching some of your biggest

lessons from this journey. The first is

let me just ask you this question. What

would you say is the most

counterintuitive thing you've learned

about building product and leading teams

through this journey of building Monday?

Maybe first of all is about like

something that we really care about

which is transparency.

I I'm like let me tell you a story like

I I uh sat down for dinner at my family

and many many different members of my

family are like entrepreneurs or like

working as an executive in tech

companies and so on and you know back in

the days we as Monday before we went

public h we actually shared every bit of

information with our employees you would

get into our

office and you You'd see a dashboard

with how many paying accounts do you

have, how many people have churned

today, how many signups do we have and

so many different things. Even if you

came for an interview, you would see

these numbers. And I remember sitting in

this dinner and everyone would tell me,

listen, you are making a mistake. How

can you do it? When thing goes south,

you know, you'll demoralize the team and

people like uh, you know, will get upset

about it. And I think this is you know

for me one of the most important things

when you hire and you have such a

talented team you want to share them you

want to share with them everything and

the reason for that is that then you are

working on every challenge together and

instead of demoralizing people I think

that for the right people and the people

that like you know are working at Monday

this is something that gives them. So

like you know a sense of deep

partnership and as a leader you know

there were many situations in my

professional life that I knew some bit

of information and I felt you know all

the weight on my shoulders and I love to

call it the dark side of the moon. you

are there alone, right? like you are

coming to the office there's nothing you

know like more demoralizing as or like

depressing as a as a leader that you

feel awful because something that you

know and you're coming to the office and

everything is great and everyone are

like happy and I think in Monday we we

really wanted to do it differently and

we really have an approach of like very

radical transparency about everything

and this actually makes everyone parts

of what we are doing and in a way we

like to say we really want everyone's

brains in the challenge and not just one

centralized brain and a lot of working

hands and I can share examples you know

when for instance suddenly people would

come up to the office we have dashboards

across everywhere in the office like

each team has its own dashboards we have

our company dashboards with metrics and

so on and I remember cases in which

someone said listen what happened to the

conversion. And you know, think how

powerful it is when you have everyone at

a company looking at these things and

many of the things that we discovered,

many of the things that we saw as

challenges and problems is things that

people saw due to this

transparency. So I think

that's maybe the you know

counterintuitive part is

that don't be afraid to share the

information. And it's exactly the other

way around and I can probably share

share that you know even today as a

public

company we really share everything that

we can you know and also like if you are

product manager at

Monday you are signing like a 10b5

program for selling your stocks meaning

that we found a way to make everyone

still see the data because we think this

is the most important part and I think

this is one thing that I really believe

in and really changed how we work and

also how people are feeling about being

partners in building Monday and not just

working at a company is that thing they

sign that's just like autoell stock so

they're not selling based on information

based on announcements that's coming.

Okay, got it. So every PM basically has

to automatically uh can't like decide

I'm going to sell my stock tomorrow

because this number's tanking. Yeah. So,

so you know like uh we want to give

people the choice but like usually we

really feel that in most cases you

really need to know this information in

order to do your work and that's so

interesting and I I I think people even

prefer just like dollar cost average

sell you know it's like it makes life

easier not having to try to time all

these things. I definitely think so.

Yeah, that's really interesting. Uh and

that's and that's just product managers

or how far does that all go? No, so

basically when we became public, you

know, I remember still like one of the

conversations that we had with uh like

uh the bankers and the lawyers about

like uh listen guys, things would need

to change. You cannot have a dashboard

with all your financials at the entrance

of the the building. Uh it doesn't make

sense as a public company. and we

understood it but we didn't want to let

go of what we cared about because we

really believe this is one of the main

drivers to the business having this

transparency and having this like shared

brains uh you know mode so we tried to

think about ways in order to do it so uh

now if I'll like fast forward you know

we're almost four years public uh and we

have an internal app called Monday

morning and in Monday morning You have

two parts. Part A and part B. Part A is

for the

every company employee contains a lot

about engagement and a lot of data that

can be shared with everyone and part B

is confidential and it's by role. Okay.

So it's the company management. But I

think the important point is that we see

product management as something that got

to have these numbers. So we thought

about it really hard and you know it's a

it's a lot of logistics to do like so

many plans 105 plans but I think it's

worth it. Yeah. This is so interesting.

Like a lot of companies talk about

transparency and you guys are I think

radical transparency is a good way to

describe this because I've never heard

of a company doing this where you have

to sign this. They didn't hear about it

as well apparently and yeah it was it

took time to you know to get to these

solutions. That's so funny. So for

people that are listening to this are

like, "Hey, maybe we should explore

this." What's like one thing you'd

suggest they that they could do to start

moving down this road? And the benefit

again is you I guess maybe again remind

people of the benefits of doing this

because it sounds like a lot of work and

risk. So I think that as a young

startup, it's actually not such a hard

work. When we were very small, you know,

back in the days, we had like like the

daily numbers concept that we now have

for the teams. We had the daily numbers

for the company, how much paying

accounts, how many upgraded, downgraded

and so on daily. And you saw people

reacting to it like on a daily basis. So

this is something that you can do in

virtually one hour and it like changes

how people see you know their role

within the company. It focus everyone to

the company's KPIs because everyone

understand what you care about and so

on. So this is one thing that you can do

extremely fast and I don't see any

disadvantage aside from the fact that

people are afraid many time you are

afraid and I can share like it's so much

like it's even like a big relief that

you don't need to think can I share it

can I don't share it like can I like you

just let it go and everything would be

okay and I can share from my experience

that we shared everything and the second

thing which is really practical you know

it's the office dashboards. We really

believe in it. So, you know, you buy a

TV, you put it on the wall, you start a

conversation due to it. What do we want

to show on this TV? And you know, when

we was like a smaller startup and we set

allin-one office space, we had our

company

goals dashboard and it also had like a

we programmed it to have sounds on

meaningful events. So when you add like

for instance new paying account you had

the Omar Simpson saying like the the

saying with the $1 million I'll become a

millionaire or something like that uh

for you know new signup you add the tick

and so on. So suddenly everyone are

living it you know it becomes part of

the cadence of the company. So these are

just two ideas to make it super easy and

the change happens immediately. I love

how that connects back to the whole

point about impact people all aligning

around here is what we're trying to

drive. Like if the Simpson sound is

going off, all that's a sign that this

matters and this something we should be

driving up and it creates such a

partnership. You know, I remember like

reaching to the first time where we had

$1 million collection in one month,

breaking the record of like new paying

accounts for one day. Everyone are

living. But in many companies, you know,

only the management or the founders are

like filling. And I think that in that

sense you already feel that you have a

great power because everyone are around

the same things and it makes

conversations different because everyone

understands what matters to you at that

point. This is awesome. Uh really cool

counterintuitive lesson. I feel like a

whole podcast could be done on like how

to do this effectively. I want to move

on but I guess if people want to start

implementing this at the company, let's

just say they should come talk to you

and you could give them a bunch of

advice. I would love to. This episode is

brought to you by Vanta and I am very

excited to have Christina Casiopo, CEO

and co-founder of Vanta joining me for

this very short conversation. Great to

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for that, Christina. Thank you.

any other big counterintuitive lessons

from the journey that you think would be

fun to share? One thing I really love

about what we do in Monday is that we

really love to take risks, not for the

sake of it, but we are not afraid to do

bold moves. And many times when you want

to do bold moves, you have a lot of

concerns, especially when you start to

be successful because you you're afraid

that you are going to break everything

that you built till now. And for me, you

know, one of the most pivotal moments in

the company life is when we decided

that, you know, back in the days, as you

said, we we were a platform, but we had

a go to market of a project management

tool. And we said, listen, people are

doing so many different things on top of

Monday. They are building a CRM with

Monday, and they are building a software

for managing their dev cycles and they

are building so many different things.

And we took a decision, strategic deci

decision to become like a a

multi-product company which is built on

top of this platform. And we actually

did something which is really

counterintuitive. You know the the first

thought that comes to mind at least for

me is why maybe not just launch a new

product do it relatively on the side

gradually understand if it's successful

and if it would be successful double

click on it. But we actually did it in a

very different way. We actually

announced five different new

products simultaneously on the same

time. And you know we had so many like I

can't stress enough

how you know how hard it is to think

about it because like I remember when we

talked about and doing it people say

what but we are going to confuse our

current users and it's going to help

conversion and how are we going to do

the marketing now when we have so many

different goto markets and the sales

they don't know how to navigate people

to different and what about pricing so

many different

concerns but we decided to do it because

we really want to create a pivotal lip

and I think that in that sense you know

fast forward to to this day like part of

these products were really successful

for instance Monday sell CRM is like

like going faster than Monday back in

the days like you know and it's amazing

to see it and some of them we understood

that they don't need to be separate

products and we collapse them back to

the main product but the point is is

that we managed to learn and to change

both internally at the company how the

perception of everyone around what we

are building but also externally like

this move changed dramatically the

competitive landscape that we live in

and you know I think there was a lot of

friction many people at the company were

like having a lot of friction with it it

was really really really hard but

looking back it's such I'm so happy with

this move and the fact that we did it

like that because just imagine what

would happen if we would choose one of

them and it wasn't the successful

products and our conclusion can be that

multi product won't work for us. we

really managed to transform the company

in a very short amount of time and also

to create new

reality you know and I think that people

need to remember that and I'm constantly

reminding it to myself and I think this

is something that we are constantly

working you know uh with each other in

order to make sure that we we remember

it that not taking bold risks not making

bold moves it's a risk for itself okay

And many times like you know people want

the inertion, people want just the

incremental value but if you want to do

lips many times you need to let go of

things that were successful for you in

the past and this is very

counterintuitive and we did a lot of you

know a lot of mental models to help us

cope with it. So I remember that when we

were small and we had for instance like

20,000 paying customers. So we said

listen but most of Monday's customers

are not customers of Monday yet. So we

need to think about them as well, you

know, and this is something that really

helps you because many times you need to

do things that affect like the current

success that you have. H but I think

it's this is another very very important

thing that I'm constantly reminding to

myself. There's kind of this other

recurring theme that I'm noticing of

just like thinking

big and taking leaps. And I love this

point you made of not doing that is

actually a big risk. Not taking risk is

a big risk. That's a really powerful

point and it's innately scary to do

something risky. And so I love the push

here of just like take more risks

because it's so easy and this comes back

again to the beginning of the

conversation where you we're just like

building things the way they've always

been built and looking back and like

what have we even done? What have we

done over this year of hard work and

tons of features? I think a lot of

companies get in that place where

they're just like what are we like at

Airbnb I had this exact Brian is

constant like what are we even shipping

all these billions of experiments that

are moving the numbers like what are we

even doing like I don't know anything

that we ship that's really exciting and

so I think this is a really good

reminder and push to just like think

bigger and take and you need to take big

leaps um so love that is there uh any

other big counterintuitive lessons

before we move in a different direction

I really believe that many time like uh

spending spending more time on working

on something will not yield to better

results or to better products. And you

know, I think that many times like we as

people that are building products for

others h get to a point where the

feedback that we we want to get in the

bottom of our heart, you know, is like,

"Wow, what an amazing product you have

built." And I think this is a very bad

feedback to

get for initial things that you are

doing because it means that you know I I

feel that in many ways the the point in

which you make real people use your

product is really scary because you you

suddenly you know put your work out

there and then in order to to like

actually and you afraid that they will

say listen it's a lousy product. It's

not a good product. But actually we

really encourage people to get really

fast to production to put preps for

themselves that is cop by time and not

by effort. And you know many times I saw

that more time creates more questions.

It creates more complications. It

creates more assumptions that we put for

ourselves in thinking what our users

need and we invent things you know and

we we do it all from good reasons. We

want people to like what we build. We

want them to get value. But for me like

this is a very important point that many

time many times

using like the setting traps mechanism

of saying listen we have three weeks

let's think about it and scope it by

time it makes you extremely focused and

you know this is very important because

you know

uh we really want to get feedback from

customers that say yeah listen this is

on the direction I'm still missing this

and this and this and also we really

love the fact of this is not a good

product and I can give you a recent

example you know even when now we you

know we work with big customers and of

course like there are different ways to

implement what I said h then you are a

small startup but we are building like a

new offering of enterprise work

management think about it like a way of

managing projects at a huge huge scale

you know thousands of projects like tens

of thousands of employees and so on so I

really love using the deadline prep and

it makes you focused. It makes you

sharper and thinking and we just had a

recent example with the offering I was

telling you about of like enterprise

work management, managing projects at

scale and you know this is an enterprise

product. So you have all the reasons in

the world to say no I can't release it

yet. I need more time. I need to do more

things. They won't use it. They need

this and this and this. And I think that

we actually released the first like

alpha version to them and we got a

feedback of listen guys this is

premature we need more like more

comprehensive value but we got exactly

the feedback of what and this is

priceless and and my response to the

teams is well done like I think you did

an amazing job in like releasing it and

making sure because you know many times

being so afraid of releasing it and like

uh thinking if I just have one, two,

three more weeks, I will build a better

product. I think it's not it's not true.

This is such good advice. It resonates

so much with recent other conversations

I've had. So, just to clarify what

you're saying, basically you have a time

box. When you say traps, it's basically

a a set amount of time. We're going to

spend three weeks on this feature and if

it doesn't if it we don't hit the three

weeks, we just cut scope essentially. Is

that the idea? I think yeah, it's it's

like this is the basic version of it.

But now for us and we really love doing

it as an exercise for ourselves. For

instance, let's say now as a public

company we say listen we are working on

something we want to announce it on the

next earning and put a trap for

ourselves. Why? Because again it makes

you sharp. It makes you super focused

about things and you know I think that

in many ways this results in a much

better product because you are not

building things that you invented. You

are staying really true to what your

users needs the real you know core of

the value and it's really funny to see

the dynamics of teams you know when they

are planning you know from the bottom

up. So it starts like you know with

something that uh like let's say you

done everything great okay you have the

opportunity you understand you have the

KPIs everything is in place but now

you're starting to plan it and suddenly

people are raising you know concerns and

issues and it becomes a sport to say

what can go wrong and like being fear

driven and then you tend to you know

protect yourself and adding more content

and more content and then when you see

what happens It's actually like it's

going to be shipped in two years. Let me

say okay no okay we have earnings in 2

months what can we ship to this earnings

and let's put a trap and then you

suddenly see the conversation changes.

First of all, it makes everyone really

focused on what's the core of the

value and it removes all the theoretical

discussions that people have and things

like that and you know the results are

amazing and you need to remember when

you do it you need to continue

afterwards if you like according to

feedbacks and and not let it go just but

what you did in the first version but in

many ways I really love the fact that

you know the first version get a

feedback which is not everything is

perfect because if this is the the

feedback. It means that we built too

much and probably it's not focused

product enough and when you build a lot

of features this can be like you know

the death by thousand cuts because in

each corner of the product you add more

than you need like yeah there's so much

here that that connects the other

conversation we just had. We had Garav

Mistra from he's co of captions and he

made this point that if people aren't

complaining about your product like you

you want to see people complaining

because that means they care like

there's something there that they care

about. If they're if you're not hearing

any complaints they could care less

about what you're building and that's

not that's a bad sign. I really loved

it. Yeah. Their company actually goes to

the extreme of what you're describing.

Every engineer ships a feature a

marketable feature every week. That's

their pace. I really connected to it.

And by the way about user feedback I

think you know uh it's really it's

really nice because like uh many times

you know people associate like uh they

they only measure themselves by user

feedback the specific point and I think

this is also maybe you know something

that is uh counterintuitive. Not every

customer feedback is the feedback that

will drive you to the you know to the

end result of the best product out

there. uh there are many aspects to it.

I can share you know just one example

about us. We as a you know in the

beginning of the company we for instance

uh didn't want to have a free trial and

part of it is that we really wanted to

hear feedback about our product only

from people that the product means

something to them. the the best proxy

for that is that they are paying because

it means they get real value and you

know in that sense it helps us it helped

us at the beginning to be to stay super

focused about like you know separating

the wheat from the shaft in the with the

the customer's feedback so I think uh

it's a super important point and we need

to take customer feedback in context the

other really interesting point here that

you're making is this idea of we had uh

I think I mentioned this already Ryan

Singer he's the creator of this method

shape

which is very centered around appetites

over deadlines. There's so much like so

many everyone listening to this has

probably gone through an exercise where

like let's redo our landing page and

it's like yeah it'll probably have some

impact. Let's spend some time on this.

It ends up taking like six months and

everyone's like why did we spend six

months redoing this freaking landing

page like I would have given it three

weeks and then moved on. And the way to

do that is you just commit up front. We

will spend three weeks on this. We'll to

get as much done as we can in three

weeks and then we'll move on. People

talk about this very hard to actually

do. So I love that's how you actually

approach some of these bigger features

you work on. Do you guys practice shape

up by any chance or this is just like a

thing you do? Uh no actually I wasn't

familiar with it but I definitely going

to check it out. Yeah. Okay cool. Yeah

it's a it's a whole method. Uh and we'll

have I think the episode right before

this is actually that episode. Okay. Let

me go in a different direction and kind

of keep extracting lessons from this

journey because that was a really

fruitful place to go. So let me ask you

this question. What's one thing that you

wish you'd known before stepping into

the role that you're in today? This is

an interesting question. I think you

know there are many aspects to it and

maybe if I'll take the the personal

aspect. So you know I've been in charge

of like the the product and technology

from from like since I joined the

company. But with that my role has

changed I think like dozens of times.

Like I I feel I'm very fortunate to work

in one company but actually work in

dozens of different companies. think

about the scale that we talked about

like each point is a different uh it's

actually a different company and a

different role and different challenge

and I think that you know something that

maybe is counterintuitive personally for

me was that in many of the phases that

we undergo with I felt that what got me

to this phase is is not necessarily

what's going to make me successful in

the next phase and if I want to be even

more blunt you know there will like

personally times when suddenly I saw how

my biggest you know strength uh for

instance

like mastering all the details and

having everything in my head knowing

exactly what's happening on every corner

of what we do this is was probably

something that gave a lot of value when

we were small but as we got bigger I

think like it suddenly created you know

even a damage

you know continuing to do the same thing

and in many ways it takes time to do

this realization and I think that a good

advice that I would love to have is that

don't be afraid again to to let go of

things that you think are superpowers

many times your superpowers that brought

you to this point and made you

successful many times you think that if

you let it go you won't be successful

and it's frightening but I really feel

that you need to constantly evaluate

what your current

role is actually is actually what what

is the role like and what is needed in

order to be successful in it and not

continue with the inertion and this is

something that I wish someone has told

me yeah it took me time in many cases

you know many I did it too late is there

anything that helped you realize this or

get good at this is it like coaching is

it just doing it and surviving driving

and failing and be like, "Oh, I see."

I think all of the above.

I think that one sign for that for me

was that in many cases I felt uh I'm

doing a very good job but then people

like uh it can be like I I'll give you

an example okay like uh for instance

doing a company like leadership QBRS

okay quarterly business reviews so when

we just started it with it very early

you know I would actually tell about

everything and you know I remember one

meeting that I went out of the meeting

and I say wow I really managed to you

know convey everything and explain

everything and very like in a very

articulated way and like one of my

colleagues in the core leadership team

said I didn't understand anything like

what is the bottom line of all of this

and you know it was like uh

uh you suddenly realize that what you

thought is is good is not necessarily

what the other people needs from you at

this point and you know like uh after

understanding that I I went and asked

like what would be beneficial for you he

said listen I want to keep in my head

like the three most meaningful things

that you are currently facing with I

don't want to hear everything and you

know like it's hard But uh but this was

a point for me that I realized that I

need to change and I need to change

something and the the like the

requirements are different and like at

the beginning you know I tried to say

but listen it's very it's important that

you know like you you're sticking to it

right but uh we need to let it go

sometimes and think like from the

beginning. There's this phrase that

someone shared on this podcast once

where in as you rise in your career, you

often go from the person that is

pitching leaders on something to the

person being pitched. And that's a

really weird place to move from, you

know, having to learn how to be give

great feedback, delegate, let go of

things. And I love that this this is a

good example of that. Yeah. Since we're

getting a little vulnerable and open

about stuff, I want to try this

question. you haven't you've done a lot

of podcasts, you've done a lot of

interviews, you've been all over the

place. Is there anything you haven't

shared anywhere else that might be

helpful to share here about the the

journey you've been on? Yeah. So maybe

continuing with the same point you know

like uh it's a crazy journey and it's

crazy personal journey if you think

about it like uh I remember Roy once

said if someone would have interviewed

me to a public company worth you

know like I would say 10 billion dollars

in market cap and managing 2500

employees. I'm not sure that I would

interviewed myself and get myself to the

job and I can you know for me there were

a lot of moments and it's constantly

happening h you know when things you

know are going sideways and things

doesn't work and you see so many things

are breaking down and you know you can

be on the same day super happy and

suddenly on the lowest point there is

and I can share you know many times I

I've asked myself like uh whether I'm

the right person to lead it, whether we

need like someone that is coming with

all the experience to this phase and I

remember like talk that I had with he

tell me he told me something listen

first of all as the one who built

it no one would be able to do it like

you and I think it's an important you

know thing to remember when times are

tough I really believe that you know if

you have the passion and if you have the

will and and if you are willing to do

the hard work in order to constantly

adjust and evolve and you know to be

vulnerable and also you know to say

about yourself like I didn't understand

something now I need to learn it and I

need to do things

differently you know it's a very

important point if you want to do this

kind of a of a journey and it's hard and

something I can share you know I can

reassure everyone that are listening to

us you know if you're feeling it you're

not the only one everyone are feeling it

from once in a while be confident about

yourself be vulnerable in order to learn

and to evolve and I really love to do

like a a mental you know mental exercise

of like saying like we we said about the

product so let's say I'm I'm Daniel of

like next six months, how do I want to

look back on these six months and what

do I want to say about myself that I

learned that I evolved and this helped

you get out from the state of like

everything is okay I'm good and it makes

you like want to learn and want to

evolve and also like stay in doing mode

like I don't believe in like I think the

one one thing that really characterized

me is that I can be like very you know

it can be very difficult and very

challenging time but on the next day I'm

already bouncing back with energy and in

order like to come and do things and win

it and you know there are a lot of

things that we as leaders needs to do in

order to to help ourselves to keep like

this mental you know state so I like to

run I like to do things that are

unrelated to work in order to get back

to my center but then quickly bounce

back and to really believe in myself in

the team around me. So this is yeah this

is something maybe very personal but uh

I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one you

know feeling it. I appreciate you

sharing that. There's a a post that I

did a long time ago with a coach and she

it was about imposttor syndrome and she

made this really powerful point that uh

like you are actually an imposttor in

the role you're in. You've never done

this before.

Like most people are imposters in their

role. They've never been as chief

product officer in a lot of cases.

They've never led teams this large. And

first of all, just realize that you

actually are. And second of all, that's

okay. And most people are like you said.

And then third of all, this advice you

shared about how to work through that is

really powerful. Just like know many

people feel this way, uh work hard, I

think is a really important part of

this. Just like know there's another day

and that you can bounce back. Remember

that everyone are people. No one is born

to be like in the world that he's

currently at. And you know another thing

that you know in Monday we are scaling

so fast. So even people that are coming

with experience and I had you know the

chance to see it over and over

again because we are going so fast each

one of us will get to a point which is

the first time he's doing it sooner or

later. So experience matters and we have

like a a lot of people that are coming

and bringing experience from from the

outside but also remember that and

remember that everyone are people and

like no one was born in a position.

Yeah. And and a company's like like

yours it's people have described it as

like every six months you have a new

job. Exactly. Exactly. We had Cheryl

Sandberg once did a talk that I was at

where people are complaining. We're

we're just like so much is changing.

We're growing. Every the culture is not

as strong as it was and there's just

like things not working. Our processes

are no was hiring as hard. And she's

just like this is the problems you want

because you're growing very fast and

that's very good versus if you were not

growing it'd be much more painful and

hard. So be thankful to see the problems

you're facing. I couldn't agree more.

You talked about things breaking along

the way and things you had to deal with.

Is there an example of something? I love

these stories of just like maybe a

moment of crisis along the journey where

you thought like okay things are going

to fall apart. This is over. See you

everyone. Yeah to be honest we have so

many like uh but again this is the

problems uh that you are lucky to have.

Uh but uh yeah may maybe I'll give you

an example like uh you know I remember

this day that uh someone from our

customer success team has approached me

and say listen Daniel we have a spike in

performance issues with in the board and

you know again like our boards is this

table of like think about it like of

data and on each time where we add new

functionality and we make the platform

more mature people are taking it to the

extreme. So if you look back 8 years

ago, so these kind of tables usually had

like let's say five columns and 100

rows. And if you look about it today,

it's like hundreds of columns, you know,

tens of thousands of rows and like so

performance was always a challenge and

struggle like in making sure that

everything works uh smoothly and this is

also a value to us. We really believe

that performance is the number one

feature uh that makes people use your

system. So you know he came to me and I

remember that like suddenly seeing the

spike in the

tickets you know it's super hard right

like you say wow it's something super

hard you don't necessarily have a magic

wand of like fixing it immediately and

what we did we actually again connected

everyone to it the first thing I did was

like taking this graph to everyone in

the team and showing in thinking

together what we can do And we did a lot

of things and we worked really hard and

we managed to to make this situation

better. And uh you know and then time

passed by and you are like continuing

and then it happened

again. H and I can share that on the

first on the third

time I said okay we had enough like uh

we need to think totally different in a

different way. And uh back in the days

this is where I think like many of our

core like long-term projects have born.

The signature one would be Monday DB.

It's like a it's an a name we use for

like an underlying data infrastructure

that we've been building in the last 3

years or so. So think about a very small

team and a very small startup. I

remember the day that we said listen we

need few of our most talented

people they are now not going to

contribute features anymore we are

putting them on like a separate like uh

place and let's think and solve this

problem while thinking about 100x and

you know it really like in many ways so

different from what we talked about in

so many other of the examples

And I think now we said listen instead

of being like fixing an issue we want

this to be our competitive edge. We have

a very unique uh product architecture

where everyone can build their own

schemas of the table and you know it's

like a crazy thing in terms of

technology behind that. We want to do

something that will not only solve the

problem but also will serve us as a

competitive edge. And we took a huge

risk because you know we took a lot of

people and put them aside for that or

like not a lot of people but the very

talented people. And I think in

retrospect by the way we released Monday

DB I think one and a half years ago like

the the first version it did a huge huge

change to customers and in many ways

this is what like actually makes us

today a platform which is enterprise

grade.

So my lesson from that is that if you

feel about something it is

strategic, you need to not only solve

problems but be super proactive and also

again like

uh this contradicts the fact of like

what are the goals, what are we going to

achieve because you need to lean on like

something which is strategic. So with

the everything that we said at the

beginning of the conversation, there is

also things that you need to do because

this is the company you want to build.

This is the product that you want to

build and you don't necessarily get the

you know uh lookus of getting conviction

from things that happened in the past or

from data. You need to just go with your

intuition and take this risk. And I'm

super happy that we did it. Yeah. But

this is an example where things really

broke, you know, and uh what we did with

it. There's a couple other stories of

crisis I'm thinking back to and they're

all seem to be a database started

reaching capacity and we were about to

fall apart because this growth was too

fast. So that's an interesting lesson

for people to hear just like try to

anticipate this a little more and uh

sounds like that's what you realize is

like let's think 100x from now not just

like a couple years from now. There's

reminds me of so Brian Johnson he's this

uh dude that's trying to live forever or

as long as he can and he makes this

really interesting point that I promise

connects to what you're talking about

which is he's like okay what is what is

your goal he asked everyone what's your

life goal and so they're like I want to

do this and this and that okay to

accomplish that the base goal you're not

even thinking about is you need to not

die and that's actually the number one

goal everyone should have don't die and

I feel like that's infrastructure in

companies It's like you have all these

metrics and goals, but really the goal

underneath that is your infrastructure

needs to scale. So it makes sense why

this is outside of like okay we have all

these metrics and goals like not

necessarily treating it as a as a tax or

as a risk but rather like you know for

for our offering like as a platform this

is like actually now one of our core

advantages. Mhm. So it's super important

as well that value to customers comes in

different ways, shapes and forms and you

need to to think about the experience

and not only about like uh you know and

many times the general experience start

with things that are reliable performant

that you can count on them and suddenly

you even use them differently because

they are fast. So I think this is

another important uh like aspect to it.

That's such a good point. when you have

a problem, something that's slowing you

down or might crumble the company, just

not flipping it from how do we just put

the band-aid here. It's how do we turn

this into a strategic advantage if we

really invest the time. I I I like that

a lot. Okay, to start to close out our

conversation, I'm going to take us to AI

corner, which is a recurring segment I

tried to get to more and more with this

podcast. And the question is, how have

you what's an example of you using AI

tools in your day-to-day work to do

better work to do faster work that you

think might be helpful to other folks? H

maybe I start with a personal one, you

know, like uh

I'm not it's not about work, but I think

it really shows that for me it was like

a moment of

like really saying this this has so much

potential in it. Uh, so I actually

prepared myself for a marathon and

unfortunately I got injured in my knee.

So yeah, so I went to do an MRI scan and

I finished the scan and they gave me

this disc with the results and then they

said, "Listen, uh, you need to schedule

a doctor appointment. It's 5 days from

now." Okay. I said I took it put it in

charge and asked for like the results an

explanation of line by line what what

does it mean and then I of course went

to the doctor and said these are the

results but I think like for me you know

this is this is something that I was

really happy about using it and it also

opens my mind a lot because I think that

if you think about it from the product

perspective and this is how we think

about AI in Monday the technology is

amazing. Yeah, you you can do so much

with it, but you know there's still the

part of like productizing it because

every person that I talked with him

about this example like with enthusiasm

he said how did you think about putting

your MRI there and I said I don't know

like I just did but this is all like

creating products that actually allow

people to leverage this technology and

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YouTube Transcript:Inside monday_com’s transformation: Radical transparency_ impact over output_ & the path to $1B ARR

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Inside monday_com’s transformation: Radical transparency_ impact over output_ & the path to $1B ARR