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Zeb Evans

Founder & CEO, ClickUp · 2 appearances on the record.

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founderexecutive@DJ_CURFEW ↗LinkedIn ↗clickup.com ↗

Zeb Evans co-founded ClickUp in 2017, building the workplace productivity and project management platform into a tech unicorn valued at $4 billion. A serial tech entrepreneur, he is known for bootstrapping ClickUp through its initial hypergrowth and subsequently pivoting the platform toward AI-native workflow automation.

33statements → 12claims → 2claims resolved → 3.88/5average certainty → 1.36/5average debate potential → ≈4.0/5argument clarity, estimated → 98said about them ↓

2 supported 0 partly supported 0 contradicted 10 not checkable as stated how the 12 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

12 assertions · 4 insights · 17 disclosures · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 12 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 2 are resolved, and 10 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Zeb argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Assertion Supported
Evans: ClickUp raised its Series A at a $200M valuation
“Our series A was two hundred million.”
Zeb Evans Nov 16, 2021 ▶ 19:43 Clickup Breaks $85m ARR, "On Track for $200m in 2022" says CEO Zeb Evans

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1
none yet certainty 2
none yet certainty 3
100% certainty 4
50% certainty 5

weighted support: a fully supported claim counts one, a partly supported claim counts half. Each filled bar is clickable and opens exactly those claims; "none yet" means nothing said at that certainty level has resolved yet

How they sound: not measured why? →

We measure speaking style by listening to the audio itself, and a fair number needs at least 2,000 words from one person on tape we have measured. There is too little of Zeb Evans on measured tape to publish a rate. This says nothing about how they speak.

Everything Zeb Evans said on Top Founders that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Insight
Evans: Founders should bootstrap until product-market fit before raising VC
“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 economic…”
Zeb Evans Nov 16, 2021 ▶ 3:13 Clickup Breaks $85m ARR, "On Track for $200m in 2022" says CEO Zeb Evans
Insight
Evans: ClickUp's sole defensibility is speed and superior product experience
“The only defensibility that we have is moving faster than our competitors and building better, a better product and a better user experience than they can as well.”
Zeb Evans Nov 16, 2021 ▶ 4:02 Clickup Breaks $85m ARR, "On Track for $200m in 2022" says CEO Zeb Evans
Insight
Evans: ClickUp Rejects the Software Rule to Do One Thing Well
“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 been the antithesis of that.”
Zeb Evans Nov 16, 2021 ▶ 5:51 Clickup Breaks $85m ARR, "On Track for $200m in 2022" says CEO Zeb Evans
Disclosure
Evans used a $5M convertible note to net 30% more equity
“Well, so I put in a cap at five million. So that, so essentially I was investing at a five million valuation. And then when we invested at two hundred million, your nerds, your notes convert at that same, I mean, I got like another 30 or 40% of the company.”
Zeb Evans Nov 16, 2021 ▶ 20:15 Clickup Breaks $85m ARR, "On Track for $200m in 2022" says CEO Zeb Evans
Disclosure
Evans used a fake name on early ClickUp enterprise sales calls
“And I was you know, using a fake name to be the acting salesperson in some of the calls.”
Zeb Evans Oct 8, 2020 ▶ 10:00 Clickup Close To $34m in Revenue, Competing in Project Management Space with 300,000 Paid Seats
Insight
Having the CEO run sales calls makes a startup appear too small
“You kind of appear small when the CEO is the person doing the sales and answering the question.”
Zeb Evans Oct 8, 2020 ▶ 10:24 Clickup Close To $34m in Revenue, Competing in Project Management Space with 300,000 Paid Seats
Disclosure
ClickUp lets users try paywalled features 100 times before blocking access
“We do feature paywalls a little bit differently in the sense where everybody actually gets access to the feature that is paywalled, and they don't really know that it's paywalled until you kind of start using it. You get a hundred uses of every feature.”
Zeb Evans Oct 8, 2020 ▶ 16:25 Clickup Close To $34m in Revenue, Competing in Project Management Space with 300,000 Paid Seats
Disclosure
Evans shut down his profitable previous startup rather than sell it
“I did not sell it. I actually, so I had my third near death experience and I realized during that period that that business was not adding net positive value for the world. I actually felt bad about it. I was like, we were inflating people's egos on social med…”
Zeb Evans Nov 16, 2021 ▶ 16:14 Clickup Breaks $85m ARR, "On Track for $200m in 2022" says CEO Zeb Evans
Disclosure
Evans: ClickUp was down to $25,000 with one month of runway
“We got to a point where, you know, there was, we had like 25 grand left in the bank account. And so that was like enough for another month, another month's runway really. And I had a little bit of money left, but not that much.”
Zeb Evans Nov 16, 2021 ▶ 17:19 Clickup Breaks $85m ARR, "On Track for $200m in 2022" says CEO Zeb Evans
Disclosure
Evans: ClickUp reached cash-flow positivity in 45 days after paywalls
“We added paywalls and we introduced promotions for one of the holidays that was during that month. And literally in a matter of like 45 days, You know, we were net positive. We were cash flow positive.”
Zeb Evans Nov 16, 2021 ▶ 18:22 Clickup Breaks $85m ARR, "On Track for $200m in 2022" says CEO Zeb Evans
Disclosure
ClickUp maintains a monthly gross churn rate between 1% and 2%
“We're under two percent monthly, one to two percent.”
Zeb Evans Oct 8, 2020 ▶ 14:39 Clickup Close To $34m in Revenue, Competing in Project Management Space with 300,000 Paid Seats
Disclosure
ClickUp achieved an exceptional net revenue retention rate of roughly 150%
“We're like one 50.”
Zeb Evans Oct 8, 2020 ▶ 15:59 Clickup Close To $34m in Revenue, Competing in Project Management Space with 300,000 Paid Seats
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Approximately 95% of ClickUp's user base originates from organic channels
“About 95% of users are still organic”
Zeb Evans Oct 8, 2020 ▶ 18:04 Clickup Close To $34m in Revenue, Competing in Project Management Space with 300,000 Paid Seats
Disclosure
Evans: ClickUp pre-Series A notes were funded with personal capital
“Those convertible notes were actually mine that I used from a previous company to fund.”
Zeb Evans Nov 16, 2021 ▶ 2:28 Clickup Breaks $85m ARR, "On Track for $200m in 2022" says CEO Zeb Evans
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Evans: ClickUp Has Over 800 Employees and Roughly 100 Engineers
“Yeah, we have just shy over 800 employees today. And on the engineering side, about a hundred engineers.”
Zeb Evans Nov 16, 2021 ▶ 4:37 Clickup Breaks $85m ARR, "On Track for $200m in 2022" says CEO Zeb Evans
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Evans: ClickUp grew to 800,000 teams, 4x since Series B
“We now actually have 800,000 teams that, that use our product. We had 200,000 when we raised our series B and I believe around a 100,000 in series A. So, you know, you can kind of back the math out there and we've grown roughly four X since our series B.”
Zeb Evans Nov 16, 2021 ▶ 6:15 Clickup Breaks $85m ARR, "On Track for $200m in 2022" says CEO Zeb Evans
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Evans: ClickUp has 85,000 paying customer teams
“85,000 paying teams.”
Zeb Evans Nov 16, 2021 ▶ 6:39 Clickup Breaks $85m ARR, "On Track for $200m in 2022" says CEO Zeb Evans
Disclosure
Evans: ClickUp's Lineup feature was a flop that never gained traction
“A feature called lineup is honestly, it's one of those where, The whole vision for it was to be able to prioritize your work and know exactly what people should work on next. So picture a list of five tasks. That's each person has in your company. That's this …”
Zeb Evans Nov 16, 2021 ▶ 10:45 Clickup Breaks $85m ARR, "On Track for $200m in 2022" says CEO Zeb Evans
Disclosure
Evans: ClickUp's prototyping squad is five engineers plus Evans as PM and EM
“So I'm the PM and the EM. So it's five engineers plus myself.”
Zeb Evans Nov 16, 2021 ▶ 11:21 Clickup Breaks $85m ARR, "On Track for $200m in 2022" says CEO Zeb Evans
Disclosure
Evans: ClickUp was originally an internal tool to build a Craigslist competitor
“We actually were going to do a Craigslist competitor where you could pay in-app and remove sketchiness from Craigslist. And we built ClickUp as an internal tool in order to build Craigslist.”
Zeb Evans Nov 16, 2021 ▶ 12:24 Clickup Breaks $85m ARR, "On Track for $200m in 2022" says CEO Zeb Evans
Disclosure
Evans: Burned through roughly $2 million bootstrapping ClickUp early on
“I think more than that. It's probably, probably two, two million.”
Zeb Evans Nov 16, 2021 ▶ 17:45 Clickup Breaks $85m ARR, "On Track for $200m in 2022" says CEO Zeb Evans
Assertion Supported
Evans: ClickUp raised its Series A at a $200M valuation
“Our series A was two hundred million.”
Zeb Evans Nov 16, 2021 ▶ 19:43 Clickup Breaks $85m ARR, "On Track for $200m in 2022" says CEO Zeb Evans
Assertion Not checkable as stated
ClickUp had approximately 30,000 paying teams as of October 2020
“Yeah, we've got about 30,000 paying teams that use us today, and we've got about, I mean, we have a lot, we have a freemium product as well, so we have a lot of free users.”
Zeb Evans Oct 8, 2020 ▶ 2:39 Clickup Close To $34m in Revenue, Competing in Project Management Space with 300,000 Paid Seats
Disclosure
ClickUp hijacked search by targeting competitor comparisons like Asana versus Trello
“I mean, I think we even did when people, you know, didn't know our name, they weren't searching ClickUp yet. So we did like a sauna verse Trello and just capitalize on those.”
Zeb Evans Oct 8, 2020 ▶ 6:13 Clickup Close To $34m in Revenue, Competing in Project Management Space with 300,000 Paid Seats

Show 9statements(9 left)

The other half of the tape: Zeb Evans's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 95 times in 36 episodes on Top Founders. 3 statements on the record name them. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Nathan Latka 54Phil Reynolds 5Ohad Ronan 2

Statements about Zeb Evans, by other people (3)

Assertion Not checkable as stated
Zeb Evans self-funded ClickUp via personal convertible note at $5M cap
“If you are a second time founder, which Zeb had already made money on the first agency customers, he was his first investor in ClickUp and he wrote himself on a convertible note, a million dollar check into the business. At a three or five million dollar cap.”
Nathan Latka Nov 4, 2022 ▶ 17:44 How Clickup Bootstrapped to $25m, Then Decided to Go All In and Raise $530m to Take on Giants
Assertion Partly supported
ClickUp bootstrapped to $30M ARR before raising capital at $1B+ valuation
“Zeb came on recently, bootstrap a thirty million run rate, then raised thirty million, another hundred million, over a billion dollar valuation.”
Nathan Latka Sep 7, 2021 ▶ 13:44 FlowChat Goes From $0 to $40k MRR in 4 Months Using 1 Tactic
Assertion Partly supported
Latka: ClickUp bootstrapped to a $30M run rate before raising $35M
“And we just had Zeb and that crew on a couple of days ago, actually passed thirty million dollars in terms of run rate, bootstrapped up to that before raising a nice thirty five million dollar round here recently.”
Nathan Latka Nov 24, 2020 ▶ 18:24 GreySuit Hits $4m Revenue Helping 700 Furniture Brands Manage Meta-Data

Every mention by year

tap a year for its mentions
0040108020202020212022episodesmentions
01020202020212022episodes it came up in
002.510520202020212022episodesmentions per episode
2022 75 mentions in 16 episodes 5 per episode
2021 19 mentions in 19 episodes 1 per episode
2020 1 mention in 1 episode

Appearances (2)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
Clickup Breaks $85m ARR, "On Track for $200m in 2022" says CEO Zeb Evans Nov 16, 2021 15m
Clickup Close To $34m in Revenue, Competing in Project Management Space with 300,000 Paid Oct 8, 2020 9m
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