The Exchanges

Q Okay, and so we pivot, and then we go to the more, kind of, uh, known product that we have today, which is obviously DePulse at this time now, Monday. Um, did we get customers then? Was that immediate traction when we released that V-one?

A So, um, when we had, like, the initial version of the collaboration tool, we had about three or four paying customers. One of them was Wix. Um, so we had a little bit of traction, but when we pivoted the company, that was a really, You know, um, meaningful moment in the life of the company. Uh, we launched our payment system, and I remember to this day, uh, the first time a new customer has actually paid for the software without us talking to them. I actually, um, if you wanted a nice little story, um, I bought a TV, I actually mounted it to the wall, and I built a dashboard that showed the number six. That was the amount of customers that we had. And, uh, every time a new customer came in, There was like, uh, a big, like, uh, um, you know, like Homer Simpson sound, uh, like, woohoo. Uh, I remember one day we sit down writing code, and I hear this, woohoo, in the background, and six turns into seven, seven turns into eight. And, um, you know, I remember even one day that, uh, we had three new pain customers in one day, and I was so excited. I called Roy, my co-founder. I told him, look, we got three new customers in one day. We can conquer the world. I'm sure of that. Like, uh, with that momentum.

AI assessment note: “we had three new pain customers in one day”

Q Okay, and so we pivot, and then we go to the more, kind of, uh, known product that we have today, which is obviously DePulse at this time now, Monday. Um, did we get customers then? Was that immediate traction when we released that V-one?

A So, um, when we had, like, the initial version of the collaboration tool, we had about three or four paying customers. One of them was Wix. Um, so we had a little bit of traction, but when we pivoted the company, that was a really, You know, um, meaningful moment in the life of the company. Uh, we launched our payment system, and I remember to this day, uh, the first time a new customer has actually paid for the software without us talking to them. I actually, um, if you wanted a nice little story, um, I bought a TV, I actually mounted it to the wall, and I built a dashboard that showed the number six. That was the amount of customers that we had. And, uh, every time a new customer came in, There was like, uh, a big, like, uh, um, you know, like Homer Simpson sound, uh, like, woohoo. Uh, I remember one day we sit down writing code, and I hear this, woohoo, in the background, and six turns into seven, seven turns into eight. And, um, you know, I remember even one day that, uh, we had three new pain customers in one day, and I was so excited. I called Roy, my co-founder. I told him, look, we got three new customers in one day. We can conquer the world. I'm sure of that. Like, uh, with that momentum.

AI assessment note: “I built a dashboard that showed the number six... six turns into seven”

Q And we're going to dive into that because it's an incredible stat. Um, but at this point with, we're getting customers. Okay. We've got the woohoo coming in. Uh, you do it much better than me. Um, but we've got that coming in, but you've spent 70 to 80% of your seed round at this point. Your runway is pretty tight. What happens now in terms of funding?

A Um, so actually here, uh, I give a lot of credit to our, um, board members specifically. You mentioned Avi, um, you know, I would say the typical investor seeing that a company spent 80% of their, uh, seed round and didn't reach, like, product market fit, you know, maybe would kind of give up on the company or send that company to do, like, a round day and try their luck outside. But, you know, something I give, um, Avi from Entree Capital a lot of credit. Uh, he saw the potential. He told us. I'll never forget this. I believe in you guys, even though, you know, I, I don't know why, but, uh, I believe in you guys. Uh, don't, don't do an A round. Just go out. Uh, I'll give you the money. Let's do a convertible. Uh, just scale what you're building. And, um, I, I think this was a pivotal moment for the company because if we would go and try to raise funds, you know, it's a, it's a long process, especially when you don't have momentum. Maybe the company wouldn't be what it is today, but. Because it gave us this runway, I think it really helped us kind of leverage the momentum we already had.

AI assessment note: “I'll give you the money. Let's do a convertible. Uh, just scale”

Q Wow. What have been your biggest lessons on board management? You have a great board.

A Uh, wow. It's a big topic. Uh, first of all, my number one rule is never surprise the board. Never. That's like the worst thing you can do. Uh, actually, one of the things we built into BigBrain is, um, I don't know if Avi told you, but, uh, we used to send every day, like a daily SMS of the company performance, uh, every day to our board members. Whether it was good or bad, it was automatic. So when they came to the board meeting, they knew the numbers better than I do. Like, They saw everything, like the board meeting was basically done on, on the numbers and the metrics because, uh, they had full transparency and, um, that's something that I really believe inside the company and also for our board members. And if we had something that, uh, we wanted to make a decision about, we always talk with each one of them individually before the meeting, because the last thing you want is to get into an ego fight. Uh, so just get their opinions and change the things, uh, before the meeting. So, uh, we talk more about the future than waste time on disagreements.

AI assessment note: “my number one rule is never surprise the board. Never.”

Q so much quicker. Um, the, the second one you mentioned was that we're going to see open AI, Anthropic, Gemini, kind of the model companies move into the application layer. We've seen Anthropic do co-work. We've seen Anthropic do legal. Fuck Dario. He just killed my crowd strike over the weekend. Thanks Dario. Cheers. Um, why, why are they not gonna move into the application layer so much more aggressively?

A Yeah, so, so again, I think there's, uh, obviously some truth to that, and they might capture some of the value, but I, I think people overestimate, uh, how much they're gonna capture. I, I wanna take you back in history, uh, you know, I'm old enough to remember when, uh, AWS, uh, built, uh, when Amazon built AWS, and everybody, um, back then said that Amazon is gonna capture all, uh, enterprise software value, because before that, Um, the hardest part about building a company was actually getting the servers up and running, the website working, storage, uh, having, like, 24 seven availability. That was the hard part. That was the heavy lifting. I remember how people got excited when you got a website online. And when AWS came out and it was so easy now to build a website, everybody said, Amazon is gonna capture all the enterprise value because it's just so close to the value they offer. What really happened It's the exact opposite. Uh, we saw a boom of companies building on top of Amazon, and software became, you know, was growing exponentially. Because at the end of the day, I'm not saying Entropic or OpenAI are not capable of building enterprise software. I'm saying the opportunity they have has been the infrastructure of, you know, the LLMs of the future is so massive. And going after enterprise offering It's a whole different business to build, because at the end of the da…

AI assessment note: “going after enterprise offering It's a whole different business to build”

Q Wow. What have been your biggest lessons on board management? You have a great board.

A Uh, wow. It's a big topic. Uh, first of all, my number one rule is never surprise the board. Never. That's like the worst thing you can do. Uh, actually, one of the things we built into BigBrain is, um, I don't know if Avi told you, but, uh, we used to send every day, like a daily SMS of the company performance, uh, every day to our board members. Whether it was good or bad, it was automatic. So when they came to the board meeting, they knew the numbers better than I do. Like, They saw everything, like the board meeting was basically done on, on the numbers and the metrics because, uh, they had full transparency and, um, that's something that I really believe inside the company and also for our board members. And if we had something that, uh, we wanted to make a decision about, we always talk with each one of them individually before the meeting, because the last thing you want is to get into an ego fight. Uh, so just get their opinions and change the things, uh, before the meeting. So, uh, we talk more about the future than waste time on disagreements.

AI assessment note: “my number one rule is never surprise the board. Never.”

Q What have you changed to allow yourself to do that?

A Actually, I went to therapy, and, uh, one of the things my therapist told me, um, which really resonated with me, she told me that You know, I can do the, the extra meeting. I can do the extra thing, but at the end of the day, I'm, I'm, I'm a leader in the company. I'm leading the company. So people look at me and when I'm exhausted, when I'm stressed, um, when I don't, don't have patience, it just reflects on everybody else. And I need to take care of myself in order to be able to take care of the company. And it really hit deep on me. And I just felt I'm, I should treat myself like a professional athlete. I should be at my peak all the time.

AI assessment note: “Actually, I went to therapy”

Q Now, dude, you know, Monday is not your first business. And I remember after your first business, you said something which is failing is part of our success. And I just want to dive into this because I think it's important. What have you learned about embracing failure over the years? And how do you think about that statement?

A Yeah, there's something that really goes with me, uh, in my journey, because, uh, prior to Monday, my first startup, um, I was in the middle of, uh, uni, and, um, basically, um, I built, uh, I think the product is not, doesn't matter that much, but basically built, uh, some sort of a search engine. I tried to compete in a category, which is extremely competitive. I built a search engine for, uh, user reviews, but, I think the more interesting part of it, it was a complete disaster. Like I, I built a product, um, and, um, I worked at it for about 14 or 15 months, um, before, uh, launching it. And, um, after 14 or 15 months, I didn't raise any money. I just felt I wasn't ready. It was a big failure. Like, um, I ran out of money, personal money, um, and ran out of energy. And, um, I remember, um, Thinking to myself, after I closed that company, you know, I wasted all my resources, you know, personal, financial, um, I'm, I'm at point zero. I must have learned something. I didn't spend all that time without learning anything. And, um, after a lot of processing, I, I realized that I've learned that the reason I failed in that company is that I was afraid to fail. You know, it might sound weird, but I was so afraid of negative feedback from customers. I was afraid people are gonna write about me on, on TechCrunch or, uh, um, on a blog post. I thought people are gonna be critical of my…

AI assessment note: “I'm gonna be happy about failures because I wanna learn as quickly as I can”

Q When you think about building that cash cycle that is at velocity and at speed, is it multiple things that lead that to be very efficient? Or is it one or two things which really drove it like annual payments? Like you, I don't know, you tell me.

A A lot of things anywhere. First of all, we track the expenses. We, we, we ask Facebook, we ask Google to, can we pay you? Can we postpone the payments? Like, can we drive campaigns and pay you every night in the days, for example? So we optimize the expense. On one hand. On the other hand, we optimize for campaigns. We actually pick campaigns based on the return, how fast it is to get customers on board. Um, we optimize the onboarding. We optimize the payment form. There's a lot of steps involving to that. The point is we optimize for that. We optimize for that KPI to make the business very efficient. And that's something that's, it's a key part of our DNA up until today. Monday is really efficient in terms of cash flow. It's a huge part of our DNA. It's a huge part of how we think about our business, and, um, we, we started from, from day one, literally.

AI assessment note: “A lot of things anywhere. First of all, we track the expenses.”

Q It's a tough morning when you wake up and it's like, oh, fuck. Uh, I, I totally get it. Can I ask, does, like, you mentioned Roy there. You are co-CEOs. That is a crazy arrangement, um, in traditional startup land. It's worked phenomenally well for you, which is amazing. What have you done to make co-CEOs work?

A When we started the company, actually Roy was the CEO and I was the CTO. Um, so we didn't start as co-CEOs, but, um, I remember like a week into the company, he told me, look, I want us to do everything together. So I told him, of course, like we, we're co-founders, but he told me, look, everything, you know, raise money together, do like be co-CEOs. I told him, okay. And, uh, we would meet investors and, um, it was weird because I would sometimes talk about the business and he would talk about technology and then Next meeting we'll switch roles. Um, I think we got everybody kind of confused. Uh, but after a while he just told me like, let's make it official, kind of name ourselves co-CEOs just so we don't have to explain it to everybody. What's so special about him is that it is one of those people that has no ego. Like you want to do what's best for the company. He doesn't care about his own title or to be on top of somebody else. And I think we have this amazing relationship where We both want to do what's best for the company, and we don't care about kind of our personal perspective. And, um, we're kind of the same and different. Um, we spend a lot of time together. We actually, we walk home every day, like walking. We live in Tel Aviv, so we walk every day. Um, we spend hours just to think and talk about things.

AI assessment note: “he is one of those people that has no ego... We spend a lot of time together.”

Q Yeah, you didn't respond. Um, but my question is, you're sitting with Roy. How do you guys come up with the idea for Dapulse Now Monday?

A Initially, you know, both Roy and I, we, you know, I, I had my own startup. Uh, Roy also had a startup, and I remember us sitting down. I was working in a company called Conduit. Uh, Roy was working at Wix, uh, which you're probably familiar with. And, um, you know, it's, it's come, I guess it's a little bit counterintuitive because I think a lot of founders, when they think about starting a new business, they often try to think about something that nobody thought about before or a new idea. And, um, this is one approach, but we took a very different approach. You know, the, I would say the work management and project management, um, industry was always packed with a lot of tools, but we, we kind of had a different view about the market. We said, look, if we look at the market today, you know, CRM, what's the leader Salesforce, uh, for example, you know, it might be service now, but who, who's the leader today? About managing working processes. Like who is it? Like who, who's the number one vendor that people rely on to manage the core of their work apart from like the CRMs and, and the service part of it. And when you think about it, there was none, and we just felt there's such a huge vacuum today in the market. And it doesn't make sense that there isn't one company that became like the dominant player in that market. So we said, let's try to tackle that opportunity, but One …

AI assessment note: “we just felt there's such a huge vacuum today in the market.”

Q So we raised 25. Let's ask the question of upmarket. SMBs and kind of lower ACVs is kind of where our home is. When do we decide to go upmarket?

A After we've done the B round with, with Insight, um, you know, a few, a few things happen. One, we, We branded the company as Monday. We, we changed names from the polls. Um, and I think it was, uh, about a year after that we, I remember that board meeting, it was in New York. And, uh, you know, one thing that Roy and I said, uh, you know, always that we're never going to have a sales, a sales team in the company. Um, and I remember that we had this warming and, and, uh, we came to the board and said, uh, look, We're probably wrong and, and we have to have a sales team in order to scale the company to the next level. And, uh, we built an amazing sales team, you know, going forward to today where we have more than a thousand people in our sales team, but it was not obvious back in the days.

AI assessment note: “After we've done the B round with, with Insight... about a year after that”

Q Do agents not make Monday a simple system of record or a database, given they do all information and data collection, retrieval, and like migration, and then bring it back to Monday? And is that a good thing or a bad thing?

A I think it's an amazing thing. I think that there will always be room for a system of records. I don't think that anybody will be willing to put their future into an AI bot without having the ability to question, you know, what's going on, see dashboards, graphs, analyze the data. So I think it's very important to track the data. I don't think that will go away. Maybe some of the work being done by people will be done by AI, but it doesn't take away the fact that you need to analyze the data. You need to see it. You need to track it. Um, and also I think there's still going to be a substantial human element, uh, that will be part of that. Um, so I don't think that, you know, SAS tools will go away. I think if anything, some of the work can be replaced by AI, but still the fundamental principle of why those tools exist, uh, is, is strong and will remain going forward.

AI assessment note: “I think it's an amazing thing. I think that there will always be room”

Q Now, dude, you know, Monday is not your first business. And I remember after your first business, you said something which is failing is part of our success. And I just want to dive into this because I think it's important. What have you learned about embracing failure over the years? And how do you think about that statement?

A Yeah, there's something that really goes with me, uh, in my journey, because, uh, prior to Monday, my first startup, um, I was in the middle of, uh, uni, and, um, basically, um, I built, uh, I think the product is not, doesn't matter that much, but basically built, uh, some sort of a search engine. I tried to compete in a category, which is extremely competitive. I built a search engine for, uh, user reviews, but, I think the more interesting part of it, it was a complete disaster. Like I, I built a product, um, and, um, I worked at it for about 14 or 15 months, um, before, uh, launching it. And, um, after 14 or 15 months, I didn't raise any money. I just felt I wasn't ready. It was a big failure. Like, um, I ran out of money, personal money, um, and ran out of energy. And, um, I remember, um, Thinking to myself, after I closed that company, you know, I wasted all my resources, you know, personal, financial, um, I'm, I'm at point zero. I must have learned something. I didn't spend all that time without learning anything. And, um, after a lot of processing, I, I realized that I've learned that the reason I failed in that company is that I was afraid to fail. You know, it might sound weird, but I was so afraid of negative feedback from customers. I was afraid people are gonna write about me on, on TechCrunch or, uh, um, on a blog post. I thought people are gonna be critical of my…

AI assessment note: “I've learned that the reason I failed in that company is that I was afraid to fail”

Q shows, interviews, and he did one that was so fucking hard, and they just shit on him, shit on him, shit on him, and he got in his car and he played Queen under pressure. And he just, like, sang full pitch under pressure, and like, he always thinks to that moment. Like, from a personal perspective, I, What are the things that get you through the really hard times?

A So, so first of all, I want to acknowledge it's, it's hard. Okay. Like, uh, it's hard. And, you know, I told somebody, someone the, the other day that, uh, some days I feel like, um, I was ran over by a truck hit by a plane and barbecued and it's, it's just, uh, 11 AM, you know? So, so definitely there's, there's days like that. Um, but, but I, I, I must say that, uh, I feel very good now, uh, and I feel we're doing the right things. I'll tell you, I'll give you, I'll say two things that really helped me. So, so one, uh, is the people in the company. That's, that's something that's very significant to me because, you know, once we tell them what we're doing and, and focus on doing an execution, I could see in their highs, like, although it's scary and we're changing a lot of things and we're taking big bets, I can, Tell in their eyes that they're excited, that they appreciate we don't ignore the problems, that we don't say everything is okay, we are changing, we are adapting for the future, and people are working incredibly hard, they're dedicated from the bottom of their hearts, and that one gives me a lot of confidence. And the second thing, and I don't want to get too emotional, is, is my family. My wife and my kids, uh, super significant.

AI assessment note: “I'll say two things that really helped me. So, so one, uh, is the people”

Q So we see enterprise spend on technology at eight to 12%. It's a varying range on a number of different verticals and kind of variables. What do you think that will be in 2030? I know it's a hard question, but. Yeah.

A Look, um, I can give you an example from, from Monday. You know, I've, I've actually done this, uh, I've, I've checked it myself. So I think a company like Monday, let's say we have like one billion in expenses, a company like Monday will probably spend, you know, 60, 70% of the budget on headcount and then seven, eight percent on software. But if we can flip the equation, And scale businesses, not on headcount going forward. You know, every, uh, CEO, uh, will be gladly increasing the expense on software because it's gonna be marginal compared to the headcount growth that you plan for your business going forward, and I think this will play out more and more into the future, um, as AI become more dominant, companies will spend much more on software and much less on headcount, uh, going forward because they'll just become more efficient, and they'll gladly spend that.

AI assessment note: “companies will spend much more on software and much less on headcount”

Q What about you personally, dude? We saw ServiceNow CEO spend three million bucks and that was revealed to be less than his car collection, which was a rather annoying title for an article. I have to admit, I saw it and I felt sorry for him. I was also really intrigued to see the cars, which they didn't show. Um, Why not buy it back personally?

A Yeah, so first of all, um, I'm on a 10 B five program, so basically I have to, uh, six months in advance, uh, make a six months plan ahead, so I'm not saying I won't. When the plans open up, uh, I might, uh, buy more shares personally. Again, it's something I need to decide with my wife, you know, it's not a personal decision for me, uh, but definitely it's an opportunity. Uh, but I can share another thing is that, um, you know, not myself or my partner Roy, Or the rest of the leadership team is selling shares. I, in my 10 B five, I have, um, you know, a number I'm not willing to go below in terms of selling shares. And I can say the price now is much, much lower than that number. So I'm not selling any shares personally. And, um, maybe I'll show another thing because it's public information, you know, since the IPO, I still hold again, I don't know the exact number, but probably 80 something percent of my share. So I sold less than 20%. Uh, 14 years in this journey. So, I don't think I need to prove more that I have, like, all my skin is in the game, you know, I'm, I'm a hundred percent in. I believe in the future of the company. And, um, I think the, the, you know, as I said, it's one of the biggest opportunities that we ever had as a company.

AI assessment note: “I'm on a 10 B five program... When the plans open up, uh, I might”

Q A lot of founders are told, wait until you're pulled up market by large enterprises. Is that good advice?

A It worked for us. I, I, I think let's say the opposite is also not optimal. I think that if you start as a small company and you have a, an amazing VP of sales, you know, they can sell anything, even if your product is really crappy. That's, that's a curse. It's, it's, it's not something positive because We work so hard to improve the product because every improvement, you know, just improve our marketing machine, it's improved the retention of our customers, and it's built a DNA, a special DNA in the company. And then when we felt that we're missing, like people knocking on our door saying we want to scale, and there was nobody around to help them, it just felt we have to do it. We have to mature. We had to add this layer, um, into the company in order to scale to the next phase.

AI assessment note: “It worked for us. I, I, I think let's say the opposite is”

Q I completely understand that on the enterprise end, but on the consumer and SMB end, for that journalist, for an investor in a fund, does it not just cannibalize your consumer and SMB business? Yeah.

A Look, I said every, each one of those theories, I think it has some truth to that, but I think it's marginal. I think it's a very small impact, if any. Uh, I think, you know, going back, uh, to the topic itself, I think people underestimate how hard it is to maintain software over time. I think it's, it's very easy to create the first increment of a software, but to change it, adopt it over time, uh, it takes a lot of effort and a lot of dedication to do that. And At the end of the day, from my perspective, businesses have a core business operation they need to focus on. If you think about a software today, it's a very small expense for most companies, and, um, you know, having a dedicated person or a team vibe coding some apps is a huge cost. So I think at the end of the day, vibe coding is amazing technology, but I don't think it's going to disrupt, um, software companies. Um, I'll give you another point of data which I think is relevant. You know, you can see amazing, uh, VCs like yourself and other people in the industry and amazing founders building companies. If you could vibe code, you know, any company in any startup, no company will have value, not in history and not today. And still people invest billions into new companies, new startups, entrepreneurs build new startups. You know, I've, I've read amazing news about ramp raising at thirty billion, uh, Harvey, Legora. …

AI assessment note: “I think it's a very small impact, if any.”

Q native companies. And I think the bolt on AI strategy, sorry, I'm being blunt, could be a you, it could be an air table. It could be a you name that ilk era of company, um, versus an AI native Built from the ground up with AI is just very different in how you build, integrate, and adopt or approach AI as a, as a kind of fundamental platform, no?

A A hundred percent. And we were the victims of this as well. Uh, you know, going back, um, I'll, I'll share a little bit of our journey. So going back a year and a half ago, um, or even two years, you know, when some, Sam Altman wrote that famous tweet, this is Chet GPT. You can play with it. Um, I remember that weight, you know, I'll, I'll give you the kind of the relationship that we had with AI. So initially You know, I was excited. I'm, I'm excited about every new technology. I'm, I'm also a person who like to try things in my own hands and we played with it and it was amazing. Um, but we didn't get it to be honest. Like the, the, I think most of us didn't get it. Uh, maybe some of us got it, but so, and, and, you know, initially also the investors, they didn't know, you know, what it means. And we heard from investors, you know, it's cool. There's hype around it, but we don't know. Um, but something changed about, I would say a year ago. I don't know what it was, to be honest. Like, it's not like one tweet that I've seen or one product. I feel it was, um, you know, combining many data points, but I think it was a collective understanding that things are changing and things are changing forever. And this is where you started to see the change in the market sentiment. And like, I felt like a light bulb moment at that point. And before that, we've done a lot of things. Like, i…

AI assessment note: “A hundred percent. And we were the victims of this as well.”

Q native companies. And I think the bolt on AI strategy, sorry, I'm being blunt, could be a you, it could be an air table. It could be a you name that ilk era of company, um, versus an AI native Built from the ground up with AI is just very different in how you build, integrate, and adopt or approach AI as a, as a kind of fundamental platform, no?

A A hundred percent. And we were the victims of this as well. Uh, you know, going back, um, I'll, I'll share a little bit of our journey. So going back a year and a half ago, um, or even two years, you know, when some, Sam Altman wrote that famous tweet, this is Chet GPT. You can play with it. Um, I remember that weight, you know, I'll, I'll give you the kind of the relationship that we had with AI. So initially You know, I was excited. I'm, I'm excited about every new technology. I'm, I'm also a person who like to try things in my own hands and we played with it and it was amazing. Um, but we didn't get it to be honest. Like the, the, I think most of us didn't get it. Uh, maybe some of us got it, but so, and, and, you know, initially also the investors, they didn't know, you know, what it means. And we heard from investors, you know, it's cool. There's hype around it, but we don't know. Um, but something changed about, I would say a year ago. I don't know what it was, to be honest. Like, it's not like one tweet that I've seen or one product. I feel it was, um, you know, combining many data points, but I think it was a collective understanding that things are changing and things are changing forever. And this is where you started to see the change in the market sentiment. And like, I felt like a light bulb moment at that point. And before that, we've done a lot of things. Like, i…

AI assessment note: “A hundred percent. And we were the victims of this as well.”

Q wins? Which is like, you know, fundamentally the brand of ChatGPT is so strong that they are signing enterprise contracts with a velocity we haven't seen before because of that brand. Anthropic are too. But again, I go back and as a Monday holder, do we not need to jack the shit out of our enterprise brand? Because otherwise they are going to eat the momentum on the enterprise side.

A So, so I think we need to differentiate what enterprise contract means, ok? So, the fact that ChatGPT or Gemini or Entropic are selling a contract that a thousand people, let's say, within Monday can use Entropic, it's, it's great, but that's not the product I'm talking about, ok? That's, it's like, um, comparing Microsoft Office with Monday. It's not the same thing. There's tools that people use individually, which is great. Personal productivity tools. Building agents, but then there's the actual work. It's like claiming that, you know, there's no need for SDR software because you, you bought Entropic. It's a different problem to solve. So I think the problem solving how people and agents are working together in one workspace, if it is a very different product, is a very different problem. I think companies will want guidance on how to do that. They're going to need help. Setting up agents, figuring out what they can automate, uh, with agents, and what they can replace in terms of, um, headcount. And this is not by buying off-the-shelf product, um, that is a generic product. You will need a product that can help you collaborate between humans and agents if it's a very different, uh, product compared to just buying a license to LLM. And I think eventually, if you look at Entropic, OpenAI and Gemini, they have a much bigger opportunity they want to chase. They want to be the ba…

AI assessment note: “It's a different problem to solve.”

Q wins? Which is like, you know, fundamentally the brand of ChatGPT is so strong that they are signing enterprise contracts with a velocity we haven't seen before because of that brand. Anthropic are too. But again, I go back and as a Monday holder, do we not need to jack the shit out of our enterprise brand? Because otherwise they are going to eat the momentum on the enterprise side.

A So, so I think we need to differentiate what enterprise contract means, ok? So, the fact that ChatGPT or Gemini or Entropic are selling a contract that a thousand people, let's say, within Monday can use Entropic, it's, it's great, but that's not the product I'm talking about, ok? That's, it's like, um, comparing Microsoft Office with Monday. It's not the same thing. There's tools that people use individually, which is great. Personal productivity tools. Building agents, but then there's the actual work. It's like claiming that, you know, there's no need for SDR software because you, you bought Entropic. It's a different problem to solve. So I think the problem solving how people and agents are working together in one workspace, if it is a very different product, is a very different problem. I think companies will want guidance on how to do that. They're going to need help. Setting up agents, figuring out what they can automate, uh, with agents, and what they can replace in terms of, um, headcount. And this is not by buying off-the-shelf product, um, that is a generic product. You will need a product that can help you collaborate between humans and agents if it's a very different, uh, product compared to just buying a license to LLM. And I think eventually, if you look at Entropic, OpenAI and Gemini, they have a much bigger opportunity they want to chase. They want to be the ba…

AI assessment note: “we need to differentiate what enterprise contract means, ok?”

Q What do they say? Are you guys all just going, what the fuck, together?

A Uh, not really. Uh, you know, the problem with other CEOs is, uh, people don't expose their emotions too much. I'll say that. Uh, but, uh, I, I think, uh, people feel resilient. I think we give each other confidence. I think some CEOs are I wouldn't say ignoring the problem, but don't understand the magnitude of what needs to change. And I think some are more, are more kind of advanced in how they think about it and understand the magnitude of what needs to be changed. Again, my, my confidence is, is coming from doing and changing. So that gives me a lot of confidence going forward. Uh, so I don't need anybody to kind of pat my back. And I got Roy, my partner and the rest of the leadership team, and we feel very confident on where we're going.

AI assessment note: “not really. Uh, you know, the problem with other CEOs is, uh, people don't expose”

Q So we raised 25. Let's ask the question of upmarket. SMBs and kind of lower ACVs is kind of where our home is. When do we decide to go upmarket?

A After we've done the B round with, with Insight, um, you know, a few, a few things happen. One, we, We branded the company as Monday. We, we changed names from the polls. Um, and I think it was, uh, about a year after that we, I remember that board meeting, it was in New York. And, uh, you know, one thing that Roy and I said, uh, you know, always that we're never going to have a sales, a sales team in the company. Um, and I remember that we had this warming and, and, uh, we came to the board and said, uh, look, We're probably wrong and, and we have to have a sales team in order to scale the company to the next level. And, uh, we built an amazing sales team, you know, going forward to today where we have more than a thousand people in our sales team, but it was not obvious back in the days.

AI assessment note: “After we've done the B round with, with Insight... about a year after that”

Q Yeah, you didn't respond. Um, but my question is, you're sitting with Roy. How do you guys come up with the idea for Dapulse Now Monday?

A Initially, you know, both Roy and I, we, you know, I, I had my own startup. Uh, Roy also had a startup, and I remember us sitting down. I was working in a company called Conduit. Uh, Roy was working at Wix, uh, which you're probably familiar with. And, um, you know, it's, it's come, I guess it's a little bit counterintuitive because I think a lot of founders, when they think about starting a new business, they often try to think about something that nobody thought about before or a new idea. And, um, this is one approach, but we took a very different approach. You know, the, I would say the work management and project management, um, industry was always packed with a lot of tools, but we, we kind of had a different view about the market. We said, look, if we look at the market today, you know, CRM, what's the leader Salesforce, uh, for example, you know, it might be service now, but who, who's the leader today? About managing working processes. Like who is it? Like who, who's the number one vendor that people rely on to manage the core of their work apart from like the CRMs and, and the service part of it. And when you think about it, there was none, and we just felt there's such a huge vacuum today in the market. And it doesn't make sense that there isn't one company that became like the dominant player in that market. So we said, let's try to tackle that opportunity, but One …

AI assessment note: “we just felt there's such a huge vacuum today in the market”

Q Can I go to the IPO? Why did you decide to IPO when you did? You know, we live in a world now where there is such extended windows of private capital. You don't need to IPO, as we're seeing with, you know, Stripe, Databricks, Starlink. How did you think about when was the right time?

A Yeah, I mean, going back to that decision, first of all, it was more random than you might think. But we just felt that, you know, eventually we want to build a huge company. And when we look at the, you know, the most inspiring SaaS companies in the world today, they were all public. And I think, you know, it's adds a layer of maturity, uh, into the business. Um, I really liked the fact that we're a public company because first of all, you know, public market investors really surprised me. They are way more sophisticated than what I thought. I thought that initially when we went public, I thought that, you know, it's all about the private market, those investors, but public market investors are super sophisticated. And smart. And, uh, and also I think that cadence of quarterly, you know, earning reports really add a great cadence to the company. Um, so all in all, I think it was a great move for us as a company.

AI assessment note: “first of all, it was more random than you might think”

Q So, uh. Are we seeing like the complete bundling of SaaS tools? You mentioned that the cool recording elements, you mentioned, you know, quite a few different products within that, which kind of bluntly kill a load of other adjacent products. Are we seeing the bundling of SaaS tooling again?

A Look, I don't think Monday will replace all SaaS tools on the planet, but our vision, our grand vision is that we built from day one, we built the platform. We didn't build the product. I think that's something that a lot of investors got wrong about what we're building, or maybe we didn't explain it properly, but we didn't build a work management or project management tool from day one. You know, the equivalent, we built the equivalent of force.com. Uh, which is for Salesforce. Uh, we built a generic platform, not about work management, not about CRM, just the building blocks. And then work management was the first implementation. And then came CRM and dev and service. And we, the effort that it takes us to customize the platform as a CRM as dev is minimal compared to the compound value that we get because we build it on our Monday platform. And eventually I see, definitely see a future We're accompanied by several tools and consolidate on Monday for the core business use cases, whether it's CRM, work management, that service, and the compound value of using several of those tools, the flow of data, automations, processes is a huge value add. And I feel we have, you know, I'm, the reason I'm excited so much about the future of the company is I really feel You know, from the bottom of my heart is that we have one of the biggest opportunities today in the software market, and we…

AI assessment note: “definitely see a future We're accompanied by several tools and consolidate on Monday”

Q Dude, is it not like the most expensive AdWord, like CRM, like, and respectfully, the competitive land field or landmines that you kind of face is intense. Is it not the most expensive AdWord buy?

A It is, but it's very cost effective for us, uh, and people, um, you know, if we go forward, um, we, we build our multi-product strategy. So, so basically what happened, maybe I'll give you some background before we talk about, uh, Uh, marketing around that. Uh, so basically people, we got everybody using Monday, uh, and one thing that was super surprising for me is that a lot of people use Monday as a CRM, and because it's so customizable, you can build your own boards, which is like kind of the equivalent of a table, and they build contacts, they build like deals, they build dashboards, automation, like a full-fledged CRM. Like, why? Like, it takes so much effort to do that. I'm not talking about a few hundreds or even a few thousands. Tens of thousands of accounts build CRM on top of Monday, and the same goes for death, the same goes for service. Uh, those products were not born out of thin air. They were born because customer demand. And when we interviewed people, like, why did you do, why did you go all that effort to build a full-fledged CRM where you could just buy off-the-shelf product? And they said, like, we want control. I have an idea. What's the best CRM for me? I don't want to use like off the shelf product. That's very rigid. It's built in a very specific way. And, and, and they told me like, um, you know, our only option basically was to go to Salesforce because…

AI assessment note: “It is, but it's very cost effective for us”

Q Do you think private competitors have an advantage on you that you don't have because you're public? If you look at Stripe and Adyen, I think Stripe have an inherent advantage in being private that Adyen don't have because they're public in what they can do, how aggressive they can be, how they approach product, you name it. Do you think that's the case here?

A I think the opposite. The opposite. Because if you kind of relate to what I've said, you know, I feel like I was kicked in the head so many times by now that, okay, I get it. And I feel when you're private, you know, you can try and ignore what's going on and even say, you know, everything is okay. But for me, you know, I get it. And, and I don't blame the investors. I think investors are super sophisticated, And it's, it's an amazing market. And I think when the investors are saying, I got the message, you know, uh, I got the message and they're right. Um, they don't know who's going to be successful, but I think this is where they get it wrong because I feel if you, basically, I think what I'm trying to say, uh, Harry throughout our conversation is, are you playing defense? Or are you playing offense? And I think every, every day I go on Twitter, and I read what people are saying, and everybody is publishing an article, you know, this company has more robust system of records. This company has a moat. This company is enterprise. Who cares? Who cares? What are you arguing? Who's gonna change last? Who have more time? I'm saying the opposite. This is the biggest opportunity. Everybody has to change. Everybody has to change. The faster you change, the better. And I think some, some kind of companies will not be able to change because I don't know, the founders are not there beca…

AI assessment note: “I think the opposite. The opposite. Because if you kind of relate to what”