Calendly

21 statements across 6 episodes · 11 bullish · 3 bearish · 5 people on the record · first statement Feb 26, 2023 by Annie Pearl · said 114 times in 13 episodes since 2022 · across every show →

Mentions by year

brought up most by Lenny Rachitsky (71), Oji Udezue (15), Sam Lessin (9), Annie Pearl (9), Austin Hay (4), Chris Hutchins (2), Naomi Ionita (1), Kevin Yien (1)

tap a year for its mentions
00504100820222023202420252026episodesmentions
04820222023202420252026episodes it came up in
007.5415820222023202420252026episodesmentions per episode
2026 9 mentions in 1 episode
2025 2 mentions in 1 episode
2024 1 mention in 1 episode
2023 97 mentions in 7 episodes 14 per episode
2022 5 mentions in 3 episodes 2 per episode

every mention, scene by scene, with the transcript →

Everything said about Calendly, oldest first

Feb 26, 2023 positive
Disclosure
Pearl: Calendly CPO skips early PM reviews to encourage open debate
“Actually, part of the reason I don't go to the meeting is that I really want everyone to be able to be open and transparent and provide feedback and not feel like there's any sort of Judgment from me or any sort of needing to act a certain way because I'm in t…”
Annie Pearl Feb 26, 2023 ▶ 47:29 Behind the scenes of Calendly’s rapid growth | Annie Pearl (CPO)
Feb 26, 2023 positive
Insight
Pearl: The best PM candidates are brutally honest about product failures
“People being brutally honest around how bad it was and why it failed. You know, the rest of the interview, they're trying to tell you all the wonderful things they did and all the accomplishments they had, and so I think the rawer the answer in terms of how ba…”
Annie Pearl Feb 26, 2023 ▶ 59:24 Behind the scenes of Calendly’s rapid growth | Annie Pearl (CPO)
Feb 26, 2023 neutral
Assertion Supported
Calendly's first 10 users came through its contract development firm
“The first 10 users were actually customer success agents at a company in an educate, in the education space that contracted with the same firm That Tope was using to build Calendly. So he really found his first set of users through the firm that he was using t…”
Annie Pearl Feb 26, 2023 ▶ 41:33 Behind the scenes of Calendly’s rapid growth | Annie Pearl (CPO)
Feb 26, 2023 positive
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Calendly grew from 150 to 600 employees in two years
“When I joined about two years ago, I think the company was about a 150 people, and I think we're about 600 now, and then the product team, we're about, there were about 15 product managers and designers when I joined again about two years ago, and I think we'r…”
Annie Pearl Feb 26, 2023 ▶ 13:57 Behind the scenes of Calendly’s rapid growth | Annie Pearl (CPO)
Feb 26, 2023 positive
Disclosure
Calendly commits to engineering dates only after finishing discovery and solutioning
“Something we've done over the last year is, is really kind of moved to a model of, Talking about dates and promising and committing to dates that are within our control. And so if you think about kind of the product development lifecycle, you know, we can comm…”
Annie Pearl Feb 26, 2023 ▶ 36:31 Behind the scenes of Calendly’s rapid growth | Annie Pearl (CPO)
Feb 26, 2023 bullish
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Pearl: Sales-led growth represents 20% of Calendly ARR
“Our SLG motion, our sales-led growth motion, now represents about 20% of our ARR, and it's actually the fastest-growing segment”
Annie Pearl Feb 26, 2023 ▶ 26:37 Behind the scenes of Calendly’s rapid growth | Annie Pearl (CPO)
Feb 26, 2023 positive
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Pearl: 70% of Calendly signups come through viral loops
“70% of our signups come through that viral loop that you referred to”
Annie Pearl Feb 26, 2023 ▶ 25:39 Behind the scenes of Calendly’s rapid growth | Annie Pearl (CPO)
Feb 26, 2023
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Pearl: PLG represented 99% of Calendly ARR two years ago
“When I joined two years ago, we just hired our first CRO, and the PLG business really represented, you know, 99% of our ARR.”
Annie Pearl Feb 26, 2023 ▶ 26:26 Behind the scenes of Calendly’s rapid growth | Annie Pearl (CPO)
Feb 26, 2023 negative
Disclosure
Calendly deprioritized Venmo integration to focus on sales, recruiting, and CS
“There's lots of small businesses and solopreneurs who would love us to have a Venmo integration. We have a PayPal integration, but you know, our target market that we're really trying to go after as our primary, you know, persona are As I've mentioned, these s…”
Annie Pearl Feb 26, 2023 ▶ 34:51 Behind the scenes of Calendly’s rapid growth | Annie Pearl (CPO)
Feb 26, 2023
Disclosure
Calendly focuses on sales, customer success, and recruiting as core ICPs
“While a lot of the feature work that we'll do to support our target personas of sales teams, customer success teams, recruiting teams will impact folks who are not in those personas. Those are the core ICPs that we're going after.”
Annie Pearl Feb 26, 2023 ▶ 22:10 Behind the scenes of Calendly’s rapid growth | Annie Pearl (CPO)
Feb 26, 2023 bullish
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Pearl: Calendly's team business is growing much faster than solo business
“And I think people would be surprised to learn that our team's business, so multiple users in an organization who want to collaboratively schedule together is growing much faster than our solo user business.”
Annie Pearl Feb 26, 2023 ▶ 43:54 Behind the scenes of Calendly’s rapid growth | Annie Pearl (CPO)
Feb 26, 2023 neutral
Assertion Supported
Calendly launched for free partly because it lacked billing infrastructure
“The entire product was free. Some of this came from honestly not being able to actually build the billing infrastructure that would be required to actually charge. So it came a little bit out of necessity, but it was also free.”
Annie Pearl Feb 26, 2023 ▶ 42:22 Behind the scenes of Calendly’s rapid growth | Annie Pearl (CPO)
Feb 26, 2023
Insight
Pearl: Offer your availability first to reduce scheduling friction
“I think at a high level, I think I recommend first really just kind of opening the door for the person you're trying to schedule time with to share their availability first, right? So instead of just sending the link, I usually start the email with something l…”
Annie Pearl Feb 26, 2023 ▶ 4:39 Behind the scenes of Calendly’s rapid growth | Annie Pearl (CPO)
Feb 26, 2023 positive
Disclosure
Pearl: Calendly conducts quarterly competitive wargaming across product teams
“Another fun one we do is something we call competitive wargaming. So, you know, on a some sort of time interval, at times it's been quarterly, we'll have assigned people into groups for the quarter to own a competitor, and their job is to essentially, you know…”
Annie Pearl Feb 26, 2023 ▶ 47:44 Behind the scenes of Calendly’s rapid growth | Annie Pearl (CPO)
Feb 26, 2023
Disclosure
Calendly shifted engineering horizons allocation from 70/30/0 to 30/60/10
“Now, the year one that I was here, the percentage of resources we spent on sort of that first horizon and the second horizon was about a seventy-thirty split, and we put zero percent of our resources on horizon three. That was too far out in the future, and we…”
Annie Pearl Feb 26, 2023 ▶ 33:42 Behind the scenes of Calendly’s rapid growth | Annie Pearl (CPO)
Mar 2, 2023 positive
Assertion Supported
Rachitsky: Calendly's first product and viral growth came from Ukrainian dev shop
“When Calendly started, they actually had a Ukrainian dev team built the first product. And not only did they help them build the first product, they actually ended up driving the first, all the growth initially, because they saw Calendly and started using it w…”
Lenny Rachitsky Mar 2, 2023 ▶ 38:58 Lessons from working with 600+ YC startups | Gustaf Alströmer (Y Combinator, Airbnb)
Aug 13, 2023 positive
Opinion
Hay: Cal.com is superior to Calendly for multi-calendar sync and modern UX
“I've been a big Calendly user for a long time, but Calendly is pretty expensive. If anyone from Calendly is listening, you want to give me a promo, cool, but it's very expensive, and then I also just found that, like, it is not always graceful at syncing multi…”
Austin Hay Aug 13, 2023 ▶ 1:15:51 The ultimate guide to Martech | Austin Hay (Reforge, Ramp, Runway)
Sep 14, 2023
Disclosure
Calendly and Typeform track three thresholds of increasing user activation
“Like at Calendly and also at Typeform, we have three thresholds of increasing activation, right? And we just try to make sure that people go through each one, as many people as possible. And frankly, we try to figure the drop off between the increasing definit…”
Oji Udezue Sep 14, 2023 ▶ 44:12 Picking sharp problems, increasing virality, and unique product frameworks | Oji Udezue (Typeform)
Sep 7, 2025 positive
Disclosure
Oji Udezue: Calendly required support managers in design reviews before shipping
“Before I shipped anything at Calendly, I did the design review with a support manager. Right. A support manager had to be in the room because the design people and engineering people, as much as we cared, we will shift problems all the time, you know, feature …”
Oji Udezue Sep 7, 2025 ▶ 14:53 How AI is reshaping the product role | Oji and Ezinne Udezue
Jan 15, 2026 negative
Insight
Lessin: Less senior professionals should never default to sending Calendly links
“The default, I really strongly believe the default should not be Calendly. The default in most situations, especially if you recognize the power hierarchy, the busyness hierarchy, if you're the less senior person, if you are the less busy person, You should le…”
Sam Lessin Jan 15, 2026 ▶ 50:10 How to show up in any room with a low heart rate: Silicon Valley’s missing etiquette playbook
Jan 15, 2026 negative
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Lessin claims his anti-Calendly diatribe drove most of the company's monthly growth
“I actually, I think I am not overstating it when saying there was a period with Calendly where I personally had driven most of their growth for the month. I got messages from the board because I went on this diatribe about how much I hate Calendly and how disr…”
Sam Lessin Jan 15, 2026 ▶ 49:31 How to show up in any room with a low heart rate: Silicon Valley’s missing etiquette playbook
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