Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth - Inside monday.com’s transformation: radical transparency, impact over output, and their path to $1B ARR | Daniel Lereya (Chief Product and Technology Officer)

Starting point is 00:00:00 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 eight 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.

Starting point is 00:00:30 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 the gift from our competitors.

Starting point is 00:01:05 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 Larea. 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

Starting point is 00:01:45 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, don't forget to subscribe and follow it in your favorite podcasting app or YouTube. Also, if you become an annual subscriber of my newsletter,

Starting point is 00:02:11 you get a year free of paid accounts at Superhuman, Linear, Notion, Granola, and Perplexity Pro. Check it out at Lenny's newsletter.com and click Bundle. With that, I bring you Daniel La Rea. This episode is brought to you by Interpret. Interpret unifies all your customer interactions, from gong calls to Zendesk tickets, to Twitter threads, to Appstore reviews, and makes it available for analysis.

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Starting point is 00:04:10 you can customize every workflow to match exactly how your team works. No limitations, no compromises. Ready to see it in action, head to Airtable, dot com slash Lenny to book a demo. That's Airtable.com slash Lenny. Daniel, thank you so much for being here and welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for having me. We're going to get into the story of Monday. We're going to talk about your journey over the last eight 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

Starting point is 00:04:48 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 in that lesson and what you took away from that? Yeah, wow. You take me a while back, you know. I think it was when we were relatively a small team. I think we were something around like 30 people. and, you know, including engineers and product and everyone.

Starting point is 00:05:21 It's actually that back in the days, we did so many things. And actually, we had an amazing, amazing execution. We had, you know, a weekly update. We would share everything that we did with the company. And it was always, you know, super long and super like with so many different things. And we really felt good about ourselves at that point, to be honest. about the execution. And then I remember one day, you know, coming to the office and just looking on one of

Starting point is 00:05:56 our competitors. And with Monday, we have like one of the main things that we have in the product is our boards. It's like 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.

Starting point is 00:06:17 And I was actually coding the sixth one, to be honest. And each and every one of these 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,

Starting point is 00:06:46 we didn't really know what to do and we thought about it and I remember that even we said okay we are going to take even some time out of the office so back then Roy and Iran which are the founders

Starting point is 00:07:02 and also together with me and Tal which is was one of the main tech leads in Monday for a long time and a few others we went outside the office and we said listen we need to do

Starting point is 00:07:18 things differently. Something doesn't make sense. And, you know, I remember back then that for me this realization of understanding that we are doing so much, but suddenly, some of our competitors did something that we can only imagine and actually

Starting point is 00:07:34 transform the product because it's a different type of platform, if you'll think about 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 three months?

Starting point is 00:08:01 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 you work so hard and you put your entire heart in what you do, 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 need to think how. And in order to do that, we need to think differently.

Starting point is 00:08:37 Because remember, like we said, okay, if we are going to add 25 more multiplied by four months, we're a small team, 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

Starting point is 00:09:20 and we did it you know by thinking totally different and by the way afterwards you know we did it over and over again so if you'll 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 deal exactly with dashboards and widgets and then with automations and so on so i think this was sort of Because, A, we understood that you need to constantly think, especially at these phases, how would you transform completely the product in the next three 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.

Starting point is 00:10:04 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 when we don't know it's possible. And it actually, like, works for us time after time. And last thing 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 I have so many threads I want to follow on.

Starting point is 00:10:43 One is just there's the kind of a thing. There's this metaphor of the four 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 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.

Starting point is 00:11:05 It's like when the iPhone launch, like no, no one needs that. There's no keyboard. And a lot of people like are like deny that it's a thing they should be paying attention to. I love that you saw it as like, okay, we need to, we need to move. Things have changed. We're not doing things. We're not going to be competitive long term. I think it's also very much about focus.

Starting point is 00:11:25 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. most and the deepest insights about your work. And I think that for us, the fact that we manage to leverage it, as he 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 you can do amazing things. Another, I think, a piece a lot of people are probably resonating with here is starting a company that's small, growing, growing,

Starting point is 00:12:07 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 happened to your case sounds like. In a lot of cases, the founders like, what the hell is going on? Why is it taking three or 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. If I'm not mistaken, it was around 2018, back then, how it's safe to assume like 150, 200 people in the company, but we were relatively small. I recently had Ryan Singer on the podcast who created the shape-up method from Basecamp, and that's kind of his piece of advice, too, is around like 50 to 100 people.

Starting point is 00:12:51 Things start to really change and slow down, and that's where a lot of companies start to go sideways. So that resonates. That's really interesting. And by the way, these columns you're describing, just to make it clear, this is like a new type of 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 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

Starting point is 00:13:27 around it. I think one of the best benefits for us as platform. is that suddenly when we were like, when we set the goal of adding so many different columns, we actually stopped for the first time and say, what is the 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 should be able to be filtered and sorted and so many different other things.

Starting point is 00:14:05 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. The way we actually achieved it is that we said, okay, in two weeks we are going to have an Akaton in which each one of our developers is going to take one column

Starting point is 00:14:33 and implement it in one day and you know if you'll think about it from four months to one day it's like mind-blowing and back then I remember people said how can it be but then tile that I told you about

Starting point is 00:14:50 build an infrastructure he sent it to me I did a column at night you know just to to see how it works and on the day that we did the columns, everyone knew what they are going to do, what they are trying to solve, and we just did it,

Starting point is 00:15:06 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 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,

Starting point is 00:15:25 we need to build 25 columns in a month or whatever, 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 Airbnb. Brian Chesky was very famous for you. Give him a goal. Here's our goal for the year. And he's like, what would it take to 10x this goal? Just like, what would it take to do that?

Starting point is 00:15:47 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 date. What would it take to build this in a day? Yeah. And I think by the way, this is something which is really important about setting ambitious goals. If you set a bit like a different goal, I want to reduce it from four months to three months. So many times this

Starting point is 00:16:18 translates in people heads to I want you to work harder. I want you to work longer hours. And this is not a 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 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 thinking differently.

Starting point is 00:17:09 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'll work the same way, you cannot achieve it, even if you will 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 are 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, how do we have the most impact?

Starting point is 00:17:58 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 until he validates that this impact is in place. And, you know, for us, it really changed, how we think about things.

Starting point is 00:18:22 It really changed how we set goals for our teams. So in many ways, PM in Monday, first and foremost is responsible for creating the shared understanding on what would be impactful for our customers. It's not about 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 remove the Nailet. And without these two things, you can build so many different things.

Starting point is 00:18:49 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 our users the way I thought it was going to use. So I think that for me, having this understanding of what we want to change for our customers and also how we know we did it is a huge, huge part of the PMO. And for us, you know, it means that we pay a lot of time in setting goals in making sure that we really

Starting point is 00:19:23 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 you know it changes the conversation so PMs you know and their teams many times like are spending

Starting point is 00:19:38 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

Starting point is 00:19:55 because everyone knows that everything is going to be tested on real life. So they make everyone treated 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.

Starting point is 00:20:27 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. 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 this point of impact and you know this is also how we measure ourselves so we can

Starting point is 00:21:14 work extremely hard. It doesn't mean that we are successful. It doesn't mean that we are doing our work right. 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? What's a sign that you're not oriented around impact?

Starting point is 00:21:55 I think the most obvious sign for me is 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 measure it. So in my eyes, it's many times the fact that you don't have a goal. Or the goal is like many times, you know, for me, a 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.

Starting point is 00:22:30 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 big enough target audience, for instance, in order to get to your goals. You need to make sure that what you build actually going to touch all of these people. And I can share just a recent example, you know.

Starting point is 00:23:00 And, you know, these things sound trivial and maybe an example would, you know, help resonate with that because I know many people are thinking like that and you know we have a very like interesting offering that we just introduced with AI. It's called AI blocks and basically it means that with no code

Starting point is 00:23:22 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 listed to customers and we measured, you know,

Starting point is 00:23:42 discoverability and adoption and retention and so on. And something that we do in order 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 message that the team is building with all the numbers 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 the 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.

Starting point is 00:24:23 We see great success of them getting value from the AI actions. But, you know, one day, like in this, like it's a, we use a select channel in which one of our internal systems Big Rain is sending us these messages every day and then we have conversations about it okay and you know one day we saw

Starting point is 00:24:43 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

Starting point is 00:24:57 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 are making an amazing product we get really good feedback we're building great value we're adding value but we set 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 the terms of service for for customers before we are opening it to them and this is planned

Starting point is 00:25:31 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 continued building value and it's great, but the impact wouldn't be

Starting point is 00:26:09 the impact that we were 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. 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 building. Let's see why it happens. And, you know, these kind of things that I see the conversation about.

Starting point is 00:26:45 It's amazing. And also, you know, in this case, seeing the AI actions go, it's like you want to drive it and push it forward. And in many ways, they 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 in watching, watching her number go up. 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,

Starting point is 00:27:21 is 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 your thinking impact 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 code, and this is when we were much smaller,

Starting point is 00:28:00 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, walk it backwards. But if you are just saying, we'll have better security,

Starting point is 00:28:20 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, it's a very good sign that you are not impot-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 he did in the

Starting point is 00:28:49 last three months? And if it takes you a lot of time to think, you are 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 shit would be way behind. It's forcing yourself every quarter to think about this. So do you do this as like a, you have a meeting or someone in your calendar or how do you, how do you actually operationalize this? So it's actually, you know, today we are like under the builders organization, which is

Starting point is 00:29:20 the engineering, product management, product design was 700 people. So we have a lot of different 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 and every year we do a early kickoff for our company. And one of the most exciting sessions obviously is what we are going to do with our product as a product company. and I really too 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

Starting point is 00:30:05 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 presentation with the slide from last year and see where we are. And, you know, 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 on a team level, what we did, and maybe I'll take an example from the early days, you know, we really did, we really love to do each and every two weeks.

Starting point is 00:30:54 I told you we would write like 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 thought right about his highlights. And then we would share it with 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

Starting point is 00:31:23 used 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 enough impact so I really encourage

Starting point is 00:31:35 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

Starting point is 00:31:46 I really like the slide idea. It's basically there's all this power and just working backwards from something in the future. 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. I think those are such good exercises. You know, obviously Amazon's famous working backwards.

Starting point is 00:32:04 There's a whole book called working back from their PR approach. 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 cost the $1 billion in ARR.

Starting point is 00:32:30 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-tech-heavy 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, eight and a half years ago, we, we, back then we were called the Pulse. we had around 4 million in ARR and we, you know, we scaled from there to 1 billion and from like around 30, 40 people at the company to 2,500 right now.

Starting point is 00:33:29 Awesome. When you talk about the product you're building, to a lot of people, it's like, oh, it's like project management stuff or all this like column, like what's the big deal? But I had Drew Houston 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 you talked about people building ships. Like if you really boil down, what are they doing day to day?

Starting point is 00:33:49 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. Seeing a company skill this way. Also, the transformation you just shared of just like almost 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

Starting point is 00:34:20 journey that you've been on. So I have a bunch of questions and a different, a 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'm like let me tell you a story like I 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 and we actually shared

Starting point is 00:35:08 every bit of information with our employees. You would get into our office and you would 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,

Starting point is 00:35:26 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 things go south, you'll demoralize the team and people like, you know, will get upset about it.

Starting point is 00:35:42 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, we 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,

Starting point is 00:36:11 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,

Starting point is 00:36:25 all the weight on my shoulders and I love to call it the dark side of the moon. You're there alone, right? Like, you are coming to the office. There's nothing, you know, like more demoralizing or like depressing as a leader. that you feel awful because something that you know and you're coming to the office and everything is great

Starting point is 00:36:44 and everyone are like happy. And I think in Monday 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 part 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.

Starting point is 00:37:11 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 our metrics and so on. And I remember cases in which someone said, listen, what happened to the conversion?

Starting point is 00:37:31 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 maybe the, you know, counterintuitive part is that don't be afraid to share the information.

Starting point is 00:37:57 It's exactly the other way around. And I can probably 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.

Starting point is 00:38:24 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 auto sell 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, I can't like decide I'm going to sell my stock tomorrow

Starting point is 00:38:50 because of this numbers tanking. Yeah. So, you know, like we want to give people a choice, but like usually we really feel that in most cases you really need to know this information in order to do your work. That's so interesting. And 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.

Starting point is 00:39:13 That's really interesting. 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 like the bankers and the lawyers about like, listen, guys, things. would need to change. You cannot have a dashboard with all your financials at the entrance of the building.

Starting point is 00:39:39 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,

Starting point is 00:39:48 having these transparency and having these like shared brains, you know, mode. So we tried to think about ways in order to do it. So

Starting point is 00:39:59 now, if I'll like fast forward you know we're almost four years public 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 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 their 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.

Starting point is 00:40:37 And it's a lot of logistics to do like so many plants, 10 B5 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. Yeah. They didn't hear about it as well apparently.

Starting point is 00:40:59 And yeah, it took time to, you know. 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 could do to start moving down this road? And the benefit again is you, I guess maybe again remind people 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 added like the daily numbers concept that we now have for the teams we had the daily numbers

Starting point is 00:41:34 for the company how much paying accounts how many upgraded downgrade 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 they're all within the company it focus everyone to the company's kPI 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 times 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, like, you just let his go.

Starting point is 00:42:17 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 all in one office space, we had our company goals dashboard. And it also had like we programmed it to have sounds on meaningful events.

Starting point is 00:42:52 So when you had like, for instance, new paying account, you had the almost Simpson saying, like the same with the one million dollar, I'll become a millionaire or something like that. For, you know, a new sign up, you add a tick and so on. So suddenly everyone are leaving 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.

Starting point is 00:43:17 I love how that connects back to the whole point about impact. People all lining around here is what we're trying to drive. Like if the Simpson sound is going off, that's a sign that this matters in the something. think we should be driving up. And it creates such a partnership, you know. I remember, like, reaching to the first time where we had one million dollar collection in one month, breaking the record of, like, new paying accounts for one day.

Starting point is 00:43:40 Everyone are living. What in many companies, you know, only the management or the founders are, like, feeling. 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. 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 co-doc to you and you could probably 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 Cassiopo, CEO and co-founder of Vanta joining me for this very short conversation.

Starting point is 00:44:20 Great to be here. Big fan of the podcast and the newsletter. Vanta is a longtime sponsor of the show. But for some of our newer listeners, What does Vanta do and who is it for? Sure. So we started Vanta in 2018 focused on founders, helping them start to build out their security programs and get credit for all of that hard security work with compliance certifications like SOC2 or ISO- 2701. Today, we currently help over 9,000 companies,

Starting point is 00:44:46 including some startup household names like Atlassian, Ramp, and Lang Chain, start and scale their security programs and ultimately build trust by automating compliance, centralizing GRC, and accelerating security reviews. That is awesome. I know from experience that these things take a lot of time and a lot of resources, and nobody wants to spend time doing this.

Starting point is 00:45:08 That is very much our experience, but before the company and some extent during it, but the idea is with automation, with AI, with software, we are helping customers build trust with prospects and customers in an efficient way. And, you know, our joke, we started this compliance company, so you don't have to. We appreciate you for doing that. And you have a special discount for listeners. They can get $1,000 off Vanta at vanta.com slash Lenny. That's V-A-N-T-A-D-A-K-A-Lanee for $1,000 off V-A-V-A-T-A-T-A.

Starting point is 00:45:39 Thank you. Any other big countertuitive 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'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

Starting point is 00:46:12 when we decided that, you know, back in the days, as he said, 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 of 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 decision to become like a multi-product company, which is built on top of this platform.

Starting point is 00:46:41 And we actually did something which is really counterintuitive. You know, 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.

Starting point is 00:47:04 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 it and doing it, people say, what, but we are going to confuse our current users and it's going to have conversion. And how are we going to do the marketing now when we have so many different go-to markets and the sales, they don't know how to navigate people to different.

Starting point is 00:47:36 And what about pricing? So many different concerns. But we decided to do it because we really want to create a pivotal leap. and I think that in that sense, you know, fast forward to this day, like part of this products were really successful. For instance, Monday sales CRM is 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 collapsed them back to the main product. But the point is, is that we managed to learn and to change both internally at the company. company, the perception of everyone around what we are building, but also externally.

Starting point is 00:48:20 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 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

Starting point is 00:48:50 multiproduct 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. 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, with each other in order to make sure

Starting point is 00:49:11 that we remember it, that not taking world risk, not making bold moves, it's a risk for itself. And many times, like, you know, people want the inertia, 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 at 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.

Starting point is 00:49:38 So I remember that when we were small and we had, for instance, like 20,000 paying customers. So I 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. But I think this is another very, very important thing that I'm constantly reminding to myself.

Starting point is 00:50:06 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 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

Starting point is 00:50:43 I had this exact, Brian is constant like, what do we even shift? all these billions of experiments that are moving the numbers, like, what are we even doing? Like, I don't know. Anything that we shipped, that's really exciting. And so I think this is a really good reminder to just, like, think bigger and take, and you need to take big leaps. So love that. Is there any other big counter-tutative lessons before we move in a different direction?

Starting point is 00:51:06 I really believe that many times, like 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, get to a point where the feedback that 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 feel that in many ways, the point in which you make real people use your product is really scary because you suddenly, you know, put your work

Starting point is 00:51:53 out there. And then in order to like actually, and you're afraid that you 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 traps for themselves that is called 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 do it all from good reasons.

Starting point is 00:52:32 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 times, 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

Starting point is 00:52:51 it makes you extremely focused and you know this is very important because you know we really want to get feedback from customers that say yeah listen this is on the direction

Starting point is 00:53:05 I'm still missing 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. 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.

Starting point is 00:53:33 So I really love using the deadline trap. And it makes you focus. 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.

Starting point is 00:53:54 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 my response to the teams is, well done.

Starting point is 00:54:16 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, thinking, if I just have one, two, three more weeks, I will bid about the product. I think 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 set amount of time.

Starting point is 00:54:44 We're going to spend three weeks on this feature. And if we don't hit the three weeks, we just cut scope, essentially. Is that the idea? I think, yeah, it's like this is the basic version of it. But now for us, we really want 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're working on something. We want to announce it on the next earning. and put a trap for ourselves.

Starting point is 00:55:09 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.

Starting point is 00:55:31 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 like, let's say you done everything great. Okay, you have the opportunity. You understand. You have the KPIs. Everything is in place.

Starting point is 00:55:47 But now you're starting to plan it. And suddenly people are raising, you know, concerns and issues and 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. what happens, it's actually like it's going to be shipped in two years.

Starting point is 00:56:10 Let me say, okay, no. Okay, we have earnings in two months. What can we ship to these 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

Starting point is 00:56:28 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 feedback it means that we built too much and probably it's not focused product enough and when you build a lot of

Starting point is 00:56:59 features this can be like you know the death by thousand cuts because in each corner of the you add more than you need. Yeah, there's so much here that connects to other conversation we just had. We had Garav Misra from his CEO of captions. And he made this point that if people aren't complaining about your product, like you want to see people complaining because that means they care. Like there's something there that they care about.

Starting point is 00:57:22 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.

Starting point is 00:57:38 And by the way, about user feedback, I think, you know, it's really nice because, like, many times, you know, people associate, like,

Starting point is 00:57:49 they only measure themselves by user feedback and a specific point. And I think this is also maybe, you know, something that is a counterintuitive. Not every customer feedback is the feedback that will drive you to the, you know,

Starting point is 00:58:04 to the end result of the best, product out there are many aspects to it. I can share, you know, just one example about us. We as, you know, in the beginning of the company, we for instance, 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 best proxy for that is that they are paying because it means to get real value. And, you know, in that sense, it helps us. It helped us at the beginning to stay super focused about like, you know, separating the wheat from the shaft with the customer's feedback. So I think it's a super important

Starting point is 00:58:47 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, I think I mentioned this already, Ryan Singer, he's the creator of this method shape up, 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. And ends up taking like six months.

Starting point is 00:59:13 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 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?

Starting point is 00:59:35 by any chance or this is just like a thing you do? No, actually, I wasn't familiar with it, but I definitely going to check it out. Okay, cool. Yeah, it's a whole method. I think the episode right before this is actually that episode. Okay, let me go in a different direction and kind of keeps 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 you're in today?

Starting point is 01:00:00 This is an interesting question. I think, you know, there are many aspects to it. And maybe if I'll take the personal aspect, so you know, I've been in charge of like the product and technology from like since I joined the company. But with that, my role has changed, I think, like dozens of times. Like 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. It's actually a different company and a different role and different challenge.

Starting point is 01:00:35 and I think that, you know, something that maybe is counterintuitive personally for me was that in many of the phases that we undergoat with, I felt that what got me to this phase 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 were like personally times when suddenly I saw how my biggest, you know, strength 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 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 the damage,

Starting point is 01:01:27 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 let go of things that you finger 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 is the role, like, and what is needed in order to be successful in it and not continue with the inertia. And this is something that I wish someone has told me, yeah, it took me time

Starting point is 01:02:17 in many cases, you know, many cases 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 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 I'm doing a very good job, but then people, like, it can be like, I'll give you an example, okay, like 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 yeah I didn't understand anything like what is the bottom line of all of this and you know it was like you suddenly really really really

Starting point is 01:03:33 realize that what you thought is good is not necessarily what the other people needs from you at this point. And you know, like after understanding it, 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, but this was the point for me that I, realize that I need to change and I need to change something and the like the requirements are different. And like at the beginning, you know, I tried to say, but listen, it's important that you know like you're sticking to it, right? But 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 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 give great feedback, delegate, let go of things. And I love that this is a good

Starting point is 01:04:42 example of that. 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 her about the journey you've been on? Yeah, so maybe continuing with the same point you know, like, it's a crazy journey and it's a crazy personal journey. If you think about it, like I remember Roy once said, if someone would have interviewed me to a public company worth, you know, like I would say $10 billion in market cap and managing 2,500 employees,

Starting point is 01:05:22 I'm not sure that I would interview myself and get myself to the job. And I can, you know, for me, there were a lot of moments. it's constantly happening. 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 show, you know, many times I've asked myself, like, whether I'm the right person to lead it, whether we need like someone that is coming with all the experience

Starting point is 01:06:00 to this phase. And I remember, like, I talked that I had with a run. 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 if you are willing to do the hard work in order to constantly, adjust and evolve and

Starting point is 01:06:32 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 of journey

Starting point is 01:06:47 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 for once in a while. Be confident about yourself. Be vulnerable in order to learn and to evolve.

Starting point is 01:07:06 And I really love to do like a mental, you know, mental exercise of like saying, like, we said about the product. So let's say 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? then 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 the like I think the one thing that really characterize me is that I can be like very, you know, it can be very difficult and very challenging time. but on the next day

Starting point is 01:07:56 I'm already bouncing back with energy and in order to come and do things and win it and you know there are a lot of things that we as leaders need to do in order to help ourselves to keep like this mental

Starting point is 01:08:11 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,

Starting point is 01:08:32 but I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one, you know, feeling it. I appreciate you sharing that. There's a post that I did a long time ago with a coach, and it was about imposter syndrome, and she made this really powerful point that, like, you are actually an imposter in the role you're in. You've never done this before. Like most people are imposters in their role.

Starting point is 01:08:55 They've never been as chief product officer in a lot of cases. They've never led teams this large. And first of all, I'll 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, no many people feel this way. Work hard, I think is a really important part of this.

Starting point is 01:09:17 Just like, no, 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 is 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,

Starting point is 01:09:34 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 is doing it sooner or later. So experience matters. And we have like, a lot of people that are coming and bringing experience from the outside,

Starting point is 01:09:54 but also remember that and remember that everyone are people and like no one was born in a position. Yeah, and the company's 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 just like so much is changing. We're growing every, the culture is not as strong as it was.

Starting point is 01:10:20 and there's just like things not working or processes are no one's hiring is 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 take more. You talked about things breaking along the way and things you have to deal with. Is there an example of something?

Starting point is 01:10:46 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 everyone. Yeah. To be honest, we have so many. Like, but again, this is the problems that you are lucky to have. But yeah, maybe I'll give you an example.

Starting point is 01:11:07 Like, you know, I remember this day that someone from our customer success team has approached me and say, listen, Daniel, we have a spike in performance issues 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, we'll add new functionality and we make the platform more mature, people are taking it to the extreme. So if you look back eight 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 smoothly and this is also a value to us. We really believe that performance is the number one feature

Starting point is 01:11:57 that makes people use your system. So you know, it came to me and I remember that like suddenly seen 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 make this situation better. And, you know, and then time passed by and you are like continuing and then it happened again. And I can share that on the first time, on the third time, I said, okay, weird enough.

Starting point is 01:12:53 Like we need to think totally different in a different way. And back in the days, this is where I think like many of our core like long term projects have bond. The signature one would be Monday DB. It's like, it's a name we use for like an underlying data infrastructure that we've been building in the last three 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 a few of our most talented people. They are now not going to contribute features anymore. We are putting them on like a separate place. And let's think and solve this problem

Starting point is 01:13:42 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, right? 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 product architecture

Starting point is 01:14:04 where everyone can build their own schema of the table and you know it's like a crazy thing in terms of technology behind it 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 them 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 first version, it did a huge,

Starting point is 01:14:37 you change our 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.

Starting point is 01:14:51 You need to not only solve problems, but be super proactive. And also, again, like, 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.

Starting point is 01:15:08 So with 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, looks as 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.

Starting point is 01:15:31 And I'm super happy that we did it. Yeah. But this is an example where things really broke, you know, and what we did with it. There's a couple other stories of crisis I'm thinking back to, and there all seem to be a database started reaching capacity, and we're about to fall apart because their growth was too fast. So that's an interesting lesson for people to hear just try to anticipate this a little more. And it 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 it reminds me of so Brian Johnson he's this dude that's trying to live forever or as long as he can and he makes this really

Starting point is 01:16:07 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 asks everyone what's your life goal and so they're like oh 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 that underneath that is your infrastructure needs to scale.

Starting point is 01:16:35 So it makes sense why this is outside of like, okay, we have all these metrics and goals. Not necessarily treating it as a tax or as a risk, but rather like, you know, for our offering, like as a platform, this is like actually now one of our core advantages. So it's super important as well that value to customers comes in different ways, shapes, and forms. And you need to think about the experience and not. only about like, you know, and many times the general experience start with things that are reliable, performance, that you can count on them. And suddenly you even use them differently because

Starting point is 01:17:11 they are fast. So I think this is another important, 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 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.

Starting point is 01:17:38 And the question is, what's an example of you using AI tools in your day-to-date work to do better work, to do faster work that you think might be helpful to other folks? Maybe I start with a personal one, you know? Like, I'm, it's not about work,

Starting point is 01:17:56 but I think it really shows that, for me it was like a moment of like really saying this has so much potential in it. 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, you need to schedule a doctor appointment five days for me. now. Okay, I said I took it, put it in chat GPT and asked for like the results, an explanation of line by line, what does it mean? And then I, of course, went to the doctor and said,

Starting point is 01:18:40 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. 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, it said, how did you think about putting your MRI there?

Starting point is 01:19:15 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 more on the work side, you know, I use it a lot. I think like for me, like one recent example, I would say is like we really worked hard towards like determining the pricing for AI offering and that I was mentioning earlier. And just in like two hours, I was managed, I managed to get a full perspective on what everyone else are doing, you know.

Starting point is 01:19:50 And we have analysts and we have product managers. sense, but the fact that I was independent and managed to get like, you know, the initial thoughts and like all the information in just a bit, it was mind-blowing. So I use it a lot in order to understand things that are like very extensive, like what the competitors are doing. What is the history of this and that? And I think it helped me a lot in that sense. These are awesome examples. And is this all chat, JPT? Is that the tool of choice? And you know, it's hard. I have like my own periods right now.

Starting point is 01:20:25 It's changing from one week to another. These two actually were with Chad GPD. Very cool. The first example of my wife does all the time. My mother-in-law was in the hospital and we're waiting for the doctor to show up and she just put the chart in chat GPT. It's like what's the problem. And it's exactly what he told us. And it feels like, like it feels like we're in a world now.

Starting point is 01:20:46 We're an engineer without, say, cursor or one of these tools is just not. Like, that's not possible anymore. And it feels like now with going to doctors is like if you don't do this and see what it says, like you're missing out on a big gap. There's this New York Times story. I don't know if you've seen where they actually compared a doctor's analysis versus a doctor plus JATGPT plus just JATGPT. And guess what was the best, most accurate diagnosis? Yeah, I want to say chat GPT, you know, but that's a great. That's exactly what it was, not even a doctor with chat GPT.

Starting point is 01:21:24 You know, I'll tell you, I'll tell you a story about it. So in the MRI, you know, I did it because I wanted to go skiing and I didn't know if I can do it or not. So I asked Chad GPT and he said like all the recommendations and what I need to do and so on. And then when I was at the doctor, I said, I asked him the same question. Can I do ski? He said, I don't know. I never ski, you know. So it's not only about like getting the information straight away.

Starting point is 01:21:50 getting accuracy, it's the fact that you can continue in deep dive with it. And this is something that also like when I was in the pricing, you know, it's not only the bit of information, but the fact that you can continue and continue and continue, it's like, it's definitely super, super impressive. And it doesn't get annoyed. It doesn't get bored. It's, and it's very supportive. Yeah, it's always with good intents or not, but yeah. So kind. Amazing. Okay. Well, Daniel, we've, we've covered a lot of ground. This was extremely fun. Before we get to our very exciting lightning around. Is there anything else that you wanted to share any other nuggets of wisdom you want to leave listeners with? I think that in many ways, like the things that we managed

Starting point is 01:22:29 to achieve in Monday is due to the great people and culture that we have. And, you know, on early days, we used to take it for granted in a way that not the people, but the culture, the fact that everyone understand, the fact that everyone are practicing it. And then you say, okay, culture is like something that you can't put your fingers on. But now as we scale, like I really see how this is what actually drives everything forward. So maybe just to say like on a personal note that a huge part of how I see my role is about like the people and also about how we work together and what kind of an environment we want to build to ourselves. And we talked a lot about it during the episode, but, you know, I really feel that I can't underestimate on how meaningful it is and how, like, grateful I am that I'm working with such talented people and doing what I love. That's awesome.

Starting point is 01:23:30 I bet we could do a whole other episode on just culture and what you've learned. Building a culture with a culture is like at Monday. But we got to get to our very exciting lightning round. Daniel, are you ready? I'm ready. All right. So I've got five questions for you. First question is what are two or three books

Starting point is 01:23:46 that you find yourself recommending most to other people? The first one I would say is like is there no rules rules a book by Netflix. Back in the days, we used even the slides, but I think we took a lot of inspiration out of it. And I think that although we have different cultures, many of the things around like, you know, execution, and like excellent people and so on,

Starting point is 01:24:11 are things that they can really resonate with. And this is something that we really like to give people away. After talking about our culture and so on, to get inspiration also from other cultures. And another maybe on a different way, you know, aspect is a book that actually Roy, our co-CEO is given to me. and its name is a non-violent communication. And it's about effective ways of communication

Starting point is 01:24:45 and understanding the people and their needs and how to communicate in a way that actually promotes, you know, an effective communication. And what I liked about this book is, you know, we love to talk a lot. And like after we both read the book, like our way of talking like changed. So it's very practical. So I also like to give it away to our leadership and people within the team because I think it has like real value in it.

Starting point is 01:25:16 I'm trying to remember the framework of nonviolent communication is like I observed you. That's speaking too much in this meeting. And that made me feel like I wasn't listened to something like that, right? You shouldn't be judgmental. You just need to say facts and talk about how you feel like in that. So yeah. Yeah. And I know I'm kind of joking about it.

Starting point is 01:25:36 it's actually really powerful. And we had Carol Robin on the podcast who created this program at Stanford-Kaltechi-Fili, which is similar to this whole process, this whole approach to talking. And by the way, I love the combination of Israeli directness and nonviolent communication. I want to see that in action. Yeah, definitely. Okay, next question. Do you ever favorite recent movie or TV show that you really enjoyed? So to be honest, I don't watch TV so much. I get bored really fast and going back to other things.

Starting point is 01:26:10 But like when I do watch TV, so many times it's like in order to clear my head. So it's not that kind of exciting things. Maybe a different thing that I'm doing is like playing on the PlayStation with my son, you know, FIFA just to vent out. Yeah. And in terms of serious, maybe like one thing that pops up is like the first. Formula. I really liked it. Formula One. Drive to survive.

Starting point is 01:26:42 Drive to survive, exactly. I really love seeing the dynamics and everything behinds. You know, it looks like something simple of like driving cars, but you see that there's so much into it. So it's also something that like really interesting and like opens your mind to watch. Yeah. I haven't started the new season yet. I wonder if it's great. Yeah. Likewise. Yeah. Okay. Next question. Do you have a favorite product

Starting point is 01:27:07 you've recently discovered that you really love? So, you know, I don't want to like to fall into the, all the AI trap, you know, in terms of products. So maybe I'll say something

Starting point is 01:27:18 which is not so recent, but a product that I love. And I really like to take pictures. And one product that I really love is Google Photos. I think that, you know, they managed to create something which takes like the technology edge,

Starting point is 01:27:36 but to a place where myself as a human, like really can connect to it and get a lot of value for it. So I'm like a really heavy user of that. Yeah. Yeah, that is a magical product that I think people under appreciate. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:27:52 Next question. Do you have a favorite life motto that you often come back to find useful and work here in life? Stay positive. Like I think being positive, seeing the good things is a huge, huge power and it's a huge driver. And it allows you to give energy to the people around you and it's contagious.

Starting point is 01:28:15 So I really love, you know, staying positive, making sure that we keep being optimistic. And it doesn't mean that you need to, you know, let go of the problems and don't like see the problems. but also think about, always look forward and always think how you can take the current situation and make it better. And I learned with the way that it's really more fun and actually brings better results this way. I'm 1,000% aligned with that.

Starting point is 01:28:46 Final question, I know you were in the Army at one point in your life. Is there anything that you learned from that experience that helps you build better products? The funny thing is that I think that, like, many things that I did in the army. I was actually commanding of like a very big group of people in the army. And I think it's not about building products,

Starting point is 01:29:11 but more about building teams and building like this sense of purpose, sense of shared like belonging. And I think that in that way many things are quite similar to be. It might be like counterintuitive, but many things are quite similar. And from that, many of the things of like being together, although it's like a hierarchical environment, is something that I take with me

Starting point is 01:29:41 and a lot of like practical ways to lead the big organization, I would say. Daniel, this was awesome. You're awesome. So much stuff that we went through so many golden nuggets. I think they were going to help a lot of people with building products, building teams, scaling, surviving all these scaling challenges. as they keep coming up in these conversations.

Starting point is 01:30:00 Two final questions. Where can folks find you online if they want to reach out, maybe talk about being more transparent? And then how can listeners be useful to you? So online, like I think that two main ways, is like by LinkedIn, I would say. And second is podcasts. And like I'm guest in a lot of podcasts.

Starting point is 01:30:20 And I think that this is like a cool way to share things for stories and for like practical examples. And, you know, in terms of listeners being useful to me. So first of all, in many ways, they are already are useful to me. I really love your podcast. And like I'm getting a lot of, you know, insights from others. And this is something I really love. So many of people that probably listening were also contributing to that.

Starting point is 01:30:49 So thank you for that. And I really hope with that that this episode would also be meaningful to people and that they will take value out of it. And if they are, it would be amazing to hear about it. Like, I remember, you know, someone that sent me a picture of his new dashboard in the office and what he do with that and add like additional ideas of what you can do that we actually took also here in Monday. So if you do something, even if it's small, let me know. It's super fun to hear and also interesting. All right. There's the call to action.

Starting point is 01:31:25 If you implement some of Daniel's advice, especially put up new dashboards or monitors in your office, please send photos. For LinkedIn, it sounds like, is the best medium. Daniel, thank you so much for being here. Thank you very much, Lenny. It was a pleasure. Bye, everyone. Thank you so much for listening. If you found this valuable, you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Also, please consider giving us a rating or leaving a review, as that really helps other listeners find the podcast.

Starting point is 01:31:55 podcast. You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at lenniespodcast.com. See you in the next episode.

Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth - Inside monday.com’s transformation: radical transparency, impact over output, and their path to $1B ARR | Daniel Lereya (Chief Product and Technology Officer)

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