The Exchanges

Q Can you go deep on one of those? I mean, can we talk about the new docs product a little bit more and, and the team specifically around that and how it split up?

A Yeah. So our docs products actually is one of our larger ones. I think it's, it's, it's kind of an abnormal abnormality there, but it is a big piece of our product. Uh, and so that is, is we, we have a real time collaboration. There's two people working on real time collaboration. So that's, you know, if you picture any doc where you can see somebody's cursor and typing that stuff is, is very complicated to, to make great. Uh, and so we have two people that are fully focused on, on that. Uh, and then within that, that, uh, the rest of that team, we've got five or so front end engineers and, and four, four, three or four backend engineers. Uh, and then you've of course got our Pia, a product manager and you've got an engineering manager, um, there as well. And so docs was, docs was one that we've been working on for a long time in the background. It was probably a six month ongoing project that we've been working on. Um, and we, cause we really felt that, you know, we needed to, to, to be kind of the category leader there in our space and get feature parity with those point solutions in order for people to replace those point solutions with, with ClickUp.

AI assessment note: “There's two people working on real time collaboration... five or so front end engineers”

Q That's always, no one's going to build better than you, Zeb. I mean, when I look at this product, I don't understand how you'd look at anyone and say, you know what, we, we're just going to build a better, sexier version. Why would you ever buy someone and deal with the operational risk there?

A Well, so we're not looking at competitors, competitors to buy where, where we would, we'd have to roll up teams and roll up products. But what we, what we are looking at is somebody that, uh, these companies that built something that we were going to build, that would take us six months, a year to build, we're buying time. Um, and so if we can buy time and find people that are within our culture with our values, um, but that also know how to move really quickly and have built something awesome. Um, then, then that's something that, that we are, we are open to. And like I said, we'll have, we'll have some announcements to make very soon.

AI assessment note: “built something that we were going to build, that would take us six months”

Q that, but my gosh, that was something got in your blood because you raised about half a billion cents then. Um, what's driving sort of, it's like, where have you, this is in my opinion, this kind of capital, you are now a capital allocator. Right. And it's like, how do you allocate capital to hit this productivity goal for the world? So like, where are you allocating capital today?

A Yeah. I mean, I'll start by saying, I think that I'm, I'm still, I still have very much an advocate for bootstrap as long as you can, until you get product market fit through, through getting product market fit after your product, product market fit, raise capital and efficient means when, you know, unit economics and you can spend capital and in sustainable ways. I think so. It's still as, as, you know, as ridiculous amount of money that we have raised a half a billion dollars. It's still, we still very much focus on doing it in a, in a sustainable way where we have a net positive impact after spending every single dollar. Uh, and so to answer your question, you know, we, of course, marketing and paid acquisition is, is a big piece of, of growth and especially particularly in a very competitive category. Uh, we have to out market and outmaneuver our competitors, but product and innovation and R and D always has to be top of mind as, as well. At the end of the day, The only defensibility that we have is moving faster than our competitors, um, and building better, a better product and a better user experience, um, than, than they can as well. So, you know, acquisitions will, will certainly be on, on our radar, um, and, you know, in the very near future, um, as is scaling globally. We were opening offices around the world and, uh, being able to localize our product in, in several…

AI assessment note: “to answer your question, you know, we, of course, marketing and paid acquisition”

Q Yep. Fair statement. Alright, last question here on CAC. It sounds like you know the numbers pretty darn well. I mean, if you're bringing on, you know, a new, a new account with 10 seats at 10 bucks a seat, so a hundred dollars per month account, what are you willing to spend to get that customer?

A Yeah. I mean, we're still figuring out all that stuff out right now, and it greatly depends on what channel you're buying from, and we, we can, we can get customers for as low as like a thousand bucks, um, paying customers for as low as a thousand bucks. I mean, we're shooting, we want to, we want to aim for low, low thousands. Um, but honestly, it's, you know, as, as you know, when you start testing some of this stuff, it gets, it gets expensive. It gets a couple 1003 thousand dollars. Uh, but the reality is our blended pack, it, Become so low because of organic, you know, about 95% of users are still organic is that we can, we can kind of spend a little bit more outside of what our lifetime value would be, I think, for most companies.

AI assessment note: “we want to aim for low, low thousands. Um, but honestly, it's”

Q terms of, I think you have at least in terms of quantifying your engineering power based off number of integrations you've launched and all of your comparable pages where it's ClickUp versus JIRA versus Trello versus Monday. You talk about, again, more integrations. Why is that marketing line working so well? And how have you instrumented your engineering team to pump these integrations out so quickly and keep them updated?

A Yeah, we, we, we say one app to replace them all. That's, that's the familiar messaging that we place, but the reality is, you know, we're not trying to replace every single application. We do think that we can put all of your workplace productivity software in one place. And that is, is ultimately our true mission. Um, and outside of that, we play very nicely with every other integration on, on the market. Uh, and so we, you know, built our, our platform in a scalable way where we can build integrations very quickly. Um, and we can also build features very quickly that, that actually use separate teams that don't even affect our core product themes, um, but are still within that same platform, the same, the same ecosystem. So we've been very mindful of doing that since day one, because essentially we're with, with our vision, we're putting 15 different products inside of one. Uh, and so it's, it's, you know, traditionally that's not the thing to do in software, right? You're supposed to do one thing and do it well. And we've kind of always, uh, been the antithesis of, of that.

AI assessment note: “use separate teams that don't even affect our core product themes”

Q You built this though, but it's still a tough decision. People build internal tools all the time. The decision to actually shut down the past thing, right? Because you have a real opportunity to actually take the leap into the new thing. It's not easy. I mean, or maybe it was for you.

A Well, so, so to be clear, we didn't actually get started on that, that the Craigslist competitor. Um, it was in the idea phase and when we were like, let's just spend a month and create this platform where we can put all of our work there. And, and that's what we did. And long story short, we, we got into it after that month and realized there was a lot more. Um, I had, I've had four near death experiences. I had, I had my third one and that was when we moved out to Palo Alto. Um, and fortunately there we, we, we met neighbors that had Tech companies, had tech companies, and we kind of just started, they started using our, our software, our internal tool, because they asked us what we were working on. Uh, and so, yeah, I mean, I, I didn't want to get in the most competitive, um, market, software market, but it, it, it kind of just kind of happened.

AI assessment note: “to be clear, we didn't actually get started on that, that the Craigslist competitor”