Startup for Startup is a podcast in which we at monday.com openly share knowledge, experience, and actionable insights among startups. Each episode of the podcast highlights a different challenge we faced on our journey as a growing startup.
Startup for Startup - Global ⚡ by monday.com
Why have we decided to build a startup within monday.com? What makes a founder that closed their company want to start a new one within an existing company? And how does the integration between the two companies work? How many of the big companies you know have started within other companies? Gmail started within Google, Atlassian has companies with a different brand like confluence, and most other examples related to companies acquired by more prominent brands and kept their autonomy. In this episode, Darya Wertheim spoke with Roy Mann, monday.com Co-CEO and Co-Founder, and Noam Ackerman, who leads ‘monday canvas', about how we built a new startup within monday. Roy and Noam shared the experience of starting a new, separate startup - one that is led by its own founder doesn't use any of monday's resources and hires slowly - like any other startup in its first stages. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
There is a number of important points in an employee's life at a company. The most crucial one is probably the onboarding. a good onboarding experience can improve the employees' retention by 82%, and their performance by 70%. It puts a lot of weight on this process - that many companies struggle with. By working right with a few tools, you can improve dramatically the onboarding to your team. In this episode, we'll understand what makes a great onboarding assignment, how to make the onboarding less theoretical, what's the value of a team member that walks the new joiner hand in hand through the first few months, and how to shape the onboarding based on the recruitment process. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
In the age of technology, careers shift all the time. A programmer can wind up in product management. A content writer can find their passion for design and become a graphic designer. More and more, we're becoming comfortable switching career paths, and like any new practice, there's a name for it: job crafting. Though job crafting is all the rage at the moment, not every company - or manager - embraces the idea—and we get it. This kind of change is complex, not only for the one switching careers, but for management, who now needs to fill the role. For managers, is it worth giving an employee the chance to make this kind of change? And if management gives employees the green light on "job crafting", what does the employee need to smoothly make the switch? Tune in as we discuss one of startup's latest habits. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
“Well done!” “Err, good job.” “It's sufficient.” For both the giver and receiver, feedback can feel daunting. As a manager, you face quite a few challenges: you don't want to be so slight-handed that the team member doesn't know what to improve or how, but you also don't want to come across as cold and demotivate the person, or equally as undesirable, causing an argument leading nowhere. Thankfully, there's a scheme - and an attitude - that allows us to get the most out of feedback, helping us navigate a conversation so no one feels defensive. If you're wondering what this conversation looks like, what you can do to prepare yourself for this talk, the wrong way to raise an issue, and more, you're in for a treat this week as we answer all that and more. Wanna hear more about feedback and ask Joe Hirsch YOUR questions? Register now and join us on March 24th: https://www.startupforstartup.com/ww/feedback-event/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Having a bunch of great team members doesn't guarantee team success. Your team needs to be able to run smoothly and independently, effectively collaborating with each other without needing constant reassurance. Vitali Margolin learned this lesson the hard way when he realized that as a CTO of a small startup, his team wasn't capable of making decisions and moving forward without asking for his permission on every single step. He found himself micromanaging, and wanted to know how he could build their confidence to solve minor issues on their own. Along with Vitali, monday customer success managers share the lessons they've learned about building a strong team. What routines are important for improving communication and alignment? How can you create a work environment that supports innovation? And how can you combine a team member's personal ambitions and goals with the team's goals? We answer all that and more in this week's episode! *** On March 24th, 10:00 AM EST, we'll have an online event focusing on feedback. We'll discuss some of our top principles regarding giving constructive feedback. Register now and join us on zoom! https://www.startupforstartup.com/ww/feedback-event/ If you want to get updates on related articles, events and more insightful surprises - subscribe to our newsletter. We never spam! https://www.startupforstartup.com/ww/newsletter_ww/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
The hiring manager has a lot of responsibility: they define their precise hiring requirements, take part in interviews, and most likely - create a home assignment for candidates. After this whole process, they provide a retro look to improve the hiring process. Absurdly, most hiring managers lack this expertise. We answer a few questions around how hiring managers can become stronger at one of the most crucial aspects of their role: hiring the right person. Our guests today identify the best questions to ask in interviews and likens defining the company's needs in the early stages to buying furniture. *** On March 24th, 10:00 AM EST, we'll have an online event focusing on feedback. We'll discuss some of our top principles regarding giving constructive feedback. Register now and join us on zoom! https://www.startupforstartup.com/ww/feedback-event/ If you want to get updates on related articles, events, and more insightful surprises - subscribe to our newsletter. We never spam! https://www.startupforstartup.com/ww/newsletter_ww/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Ask five Heads of CS the following questions and you may end up with five different answers: how do you define KPIs for CS teams? How can we make sure the KPIs cover all of our goals? In CS, a well-defined KPI can boost revenues, while inaccurate metrics can shift the focus from what's important. This week Darya Wertheim spoke with Head of High Touch Customer Success, Tom Ronen, and Head of Client Services, Nir Fogel, about why setting KPIs for Customer Success teams is often a road stricken with potholes. They discuss three main dilemmas related to the topic – Is it better to define individual or team KPIs? Should you connect the KPIs to compensations? And what encourages more growth – Leading or Lagging KPIs? *A short clarification – we know that the term CS can relate to different teams in different companies. At monday.com, CS refers to the teams who help the client implement and scale with the product, not technical support teams. *** On March 24th, 10:00 AM EST, we'll have an online event focusing on feedback. We'll discuss some of our top principles regarding giving constructive feedback. Register now and join us on zoom! https://www.startupforstartup.com/ww/feedback-event/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Quick, describe your company culture in six words. Got it? We'll go next: ownership, inclusion, product-centric, customer-centric, impactful, and speed. When starting the company, monday.com's founders, Eran Zinman and Roy Mann, chose these attributes to guide their company culture. Well, it definitely sounds good - but does that still stand today? Creating company culture is one hell of a challenge, and in this SFS Talks episode, we broke it all down. We'll cover some of the ways values change as a company grows and evolves, whether a company should try to preserve its culture or embrace the changes that occur along the way, and the price it pays for choosing one approach over another. In this week's episode, our founders team up with Head of “Startup for Startup”, Lior Krengel, to divulge the six cultural attributes that lie at the core of monday.com's culture. They share their insights into how to form a company culture, the impact culture has on the hiring process, and why we don't believe in hanging ‘culture posters' on the wall. On March 24th, 10:00 AM EST, we'll have an online event focusing on feedback. We'll discuss some of our top principles regarding giving constructive feedback. Register now and join us on zoom! https://www.startupforstartup.com/ww/feedback-event/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
What does ‘making an impact' really mean? In this episode, we explore how to make a meaningful impact, analysis paralysis, and why making mistakes can be a good thing. Tune in for one of our most exploratory episodes yet! "Impact" is a startup buzzword, but it's harder to know what that looks like in practice. We define impact as using our technology, talent, and teamwork to improve a situation or solve an issue. This is all important, worthy stuff, but how do we actually apply this principle in our day-to-day work? In this episode, we spoke with monday.com's Co-Founder and Co-CEO, a CX team lead, and CX advocate, to understand what it means to be impact-driven and what it looks like when we're not. Lior and Eran's talk: https://www.startupforstartup.com/ww/impact-driven-leadership/ *** On March 24th, 10:00 AM EST, we'll have an online event focusing on feedback. We'll discuss some of our top principles regarding giving constructive feedback. Register now and join us on zoom! https://www.startupforstartup.com/ww/feedback-event/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
What are the challenges in keeping things in-house? How to decide which project should be outsourced, and which shouldn't be? And how can we choose a vendor wisely? At monday, we kept everything in-house since the very early days of the company. Developers, designers, customer experience representatives, marketing associates and managers, video creators - everything. This policy proved itself, but as the company grew, maintaining it became more complex. In this episode we talk with people who share different angles about this dilemma - from a CEO that solely believes in keeping things in-house, to the founder of an outsourcing company. *** On March 24th, 10:00 AM EST, we'll have an online event focusing on feedback. We'll discuss some of our top principles regarding giving constructive feedback. Register now and join us on zoom! https://www.startupforstartup.com/ww/feedback-event/ If you want to get updates on related articles, events and more insightful surprises - subscribe to our newsletter. We never spam! https://www.startupforstartup.com/ww/newsletter_ww/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
IC - Individual Contributor - is a development path companies can offer for those of us who want to move forward, but managing is just not our thing. Many companies promote great employees, only to find out that they don't get the most out of them as managers. It happened to us at monday as well. In this episode, we dived into this issue with the help of two ICs, an HR VP and an organizational psychologist. What does this IC path include? How can you create one in your company? Why would a company even want to invest resources in creating this kind of path? And what does it all have to do with a Canadian teacher born in 1919? *** On March 24th, 10:00 AM EST, we'll have an online event focusing on feedback. We'll discuss some of our top principles regarding giving constructive feedback. Register now and join us on zoom! https://www.startupforstartup.com/ww/feedback-event/ If you want to get updates on related articles, events, and more insightful surprises - subscribe to our newsletter. We never spam! https://www.startupforstartup.com/ww/newsletter_ww/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Working on a product with a team can easily be frustrating. The product manager has his own vision, but the designer rather go in a different direction - and it ends up getting to the developer who just doesn't understand why they think this UI fits the code. This separation between each profession along the process creates misunderstandings, frustration, and often limits every single person to his own field without understanding the whole picture. Luckily, there's a model that helps deal with these issues - but obviously it has downsides as well. *** On March 24th, 10:00 AM EST, we'll have an online event focusing on feedback. We'll discuss some of our top principles regarding giving constructive feedback. Register now and join us on zoom! https://www.startupforstartup.com/ww/feedback-event/ If you want to get updates on related articles, events, and more insightful surprises - subscribe to our newsletter. We never spam! https://www.startupforstartup.com/ww/newsletter_ww/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
When thinking about salespeople's salary - we know that it comes with commissions aside. For years we've known that this is the way to get the most out of your salespeople. Lately, this assumption has been undermined. The rise of behavioral economics' studies, alongside companies that reconsidered their incentives, led to different approaches that can change dramatically not only the way we think about compensation in the sales world, but also about incentives in general. The full TED talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_the_puzzle_of_motivation?language=en *** On March 24th, 10:00 AM EST, we'll have an online event focusing on feedback. We'll discuss some of our top principles regarding giving constructive feedback. Register now and join us on zoom! https://www.startupforstartup.com/ww/feedback-event/ If you want to get updates on related articles, events, and more insightful surprises - subscribe to our newsletter. We never spam! https://www.startupforstartup.com/ww/newsletter_ww/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
A new podcast is coming soon. It doesn't matter if you're a founder, a salesperson, an experienced marketing manager, or a junior developer - this podcast is for you. It's all about sharing our insights from different fields - fields that every startup deals with. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Product and Sales are two departments that are traditionally at odds. While sales reps request certain features in the product to close a deal, the product managers work according to a pre-defined roadmap. Even though both of the departments aim for the company’s success, they usually see different ways to get there. This miscommunication can eventually cost the company a lot. So how do you align the sales and product departments? How do you build processes that improve workflows between departments? And why having a shared KPI isn’t enough for both parties’ success? This week we are talking to Leah Bauman, Product Alignment Manager, and Nir Goldstein, VP of EMEA & APAC Sales at monday.com, who will share the process of creating and defining the new role of Product Alignment, the challenges in creating a bridge between potential customers needs and the product roadmap, and how having a dedicated owner for a process already generated more than 2$ million dollars in the past year, and made many customers happier. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
What are the most important things to focus on when building a partnership program? How to define an ideal partner profile? And how to create that initial reach with relevant partners? Startup for Startup Unplugged: Partnerships event was held on November 18th, and in this Recap episode you’ll hear a few insights from two of the sessions. In this week’s episode we hear Asaf Fradkin, Director of Strategic Partnerships, and Barak Zigdon, Partnerships and Global Resellers Manager at monday.com, share what are the key elements to focus on when starting a partnership program and how to initiate contact with partners in a way that will lay the foundation for a long term relationship. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
How to create a successful partnership with another tech company, and should you collaborate with your competitors? In 2019 the Partnerships department at monday.com, which by then included channel partnerships, academic partnerships and strategic partnerships, expanded its activities and created the Tech Partnerships team, which is in charge of different product integrations or alliances we create with other tech companies. We started with one partnership with Typeform. Today, tech partnerships serve as a major growth engine for the company – not just because of the revenue they generate to the company, but also because of the actual added value they provide for our users. Today, monday.com has dozens of partnerships in the making, including with the big tech five – google, facebook, apple, amazon and microsoft. In this week’s episode we are talking to Oren Stern, VP Partnerships and Alliances, and Amit Goldenberg, Head of Tech Partnerships at monday.com. Oren and Amit discuss the different types of tech partnerships and the value each one provides, and share what every startup has to offer to large tech companies in order to create wins for both sides. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
How can we practice Impact-Driven Leadership? In the first part of this topic, Eran Zinman and Lior Krengel discussed the ideas that stand at the core of our work processes at monday.com. They talked about how important it is to focus on execution in order to succeed in our tasks, and about how perfection is only attainable through iteration. Some of the questions we received following the previous episode were about concerns we all experience regarding this topic: What if we feel we simply ‘can’t’ do something? How can we still move fast in this case? This week Lior and Eran talk about how to practice impact-driven leadership in our day-to-day, discuss our role as leaders, and share techniques for overcoming the fear of moving fast and the “I can’t” approach. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
You know when you start working on a project that seems pretty small, only to end up working on it for days – sometimes even months – more than expected? Those of you who have listened to our podcast before know that we are an impact-driven company. In practice, this means we believe in achieving perfection through iteration – investing our time in learning by executing quickly, analyzing the results, and executing again. Rather than by months on months of research. In this week’s episode, Lior Krengel and Eran Zinman talk about impact-driven leadership and how it can help us move faster. They discuss the reasons for analysis paralysis, how we can overcome it, and why going against our intuition can actually help us in these cases. “Companies are moving so fast today and everything is so dynamic, and I think the ones that fail are the ones who stop innovating and making changes, and eventually slow down and die. The ability to move quickly is relevant whether you’re a small team or a big company, in order to stay in the game and be successful.” (Eran Zinman) See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Our 3rd recap revolves around being customer-centric – which sounds like a nice catchphrase, right? However it’s a huge task for any company, specifically ones that are scaling rapidly. To make this challenge more actionable we want to give you a deeper look into how we achieve this in our day-to-day practice using two examples from our previous episodes. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
There’s plenty of information about fundraising processes – finding investors, building an investment deck, what an optimal term sheet looks like, and so on. But signing a term sheet with investors is only the beginning of a very long relationship. How does the day after the investment look? What are the best practices for communicating with your investors? How do you develop trust between the parties, and how do you maintain it? This week we’re joined by Ken Fox, Managing Partner @ Stripes Group – the investor that led our Round C. We talk openly about the interests of investors and founders, discussing ways to align on goals, the importance of transparency in relationships, and one exceptional dog. https://www.startupforstartup.com/the-day-after-investment-building-beneficial-relationships-with-investors/https://www.facebook.com/groups/startupforstartup/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Customers are the driving force for monday.com’s growth. Early adopters can become potential promoters within their workplaces. We call these amazing folks our champions of monday.com. How can monday.com create opportunities for those champions who want to attract teams in their organization to our platform? How can we identify them in time? This week, Lauren Spera, Enterprise Account Manager at monday.com, takes us through the journey of doing enterprise sales using the flywheel approach. Replacing the traditional funnel approach, it centers around satisfied customers that increase referrals and sales within enterprises. We talk about how to find champions within clients’ teams and when is the right moment to give the flywheel a nudge to increase its momentum? Also, what is the right time to let go and let it work on its own? https://www.startupforstartup.com/enterprise-sales-turning-customers-to-promoters/https://www.linkedin.com/groups/9094462/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Customer Success is the one team in the company that receives feedback from every shape and size of customers; whether they’re coming from a trial or paying and large or small accounts., paying, large or small accounts. We receive roughly 30,000 tickets a month covering many different needs and we answer each ticket as if it were our only user – with empathy and empowerment. But we realized that this wasn’t enough. We could use this information to enhance the platform, reduce our ticket load and empower our users even more. Essentially, we want to share with the rest of our teams what users say about the features we release and pain points they might have and to show trends or correlations between what our R&D and Product do and what users are saying as a result. So how can we turn 30K tickets a month into insights that everyone in the company can work with? This week’s guest is Effie Arman, Head of Customer Success Israel here at monday.com. Effie walked us through what we call ”Voice of Customer” and shared with us how this challenge of turning support tickets into actionable insights is being addressed. https://www.startupforstartup.com/turning-30k-support-tickets-a-month-into-actionable-insights/https://www.facebook.com/groups/startupforstartup/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
In August 2018, our Sales team became a Consulting Group. Beyond the formalities, we wished to understand what this transition means and implies in reality. And so Mitchell Blickman, Senior Workflow Consultant at monday.com, joined us this week to discuss why “consulting” better reflects the way we perceive ourselves and the value we bring to our customers. We also talked about the new practices and KPIs that were adopted to better align with this new approach and learned about the challenges that the team has encountered on the transition and the way the overcame them. https://www.startupforstartup.com/from-sales-to-consulting/https://www.facebook.com/groups/startupforstartup/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
This is an episode about 6 billion dollars. Sounds provocative, but this is the size of the fund managed by one of our investors, Insight Capital Partners. Our guest, Jeff Horing, is a Co-Founder and Managing Director at Insight since 1995. Not only Insight is one of the leading venture capital and private equity firms worldwide, but they have also taken a special interest in Israel, making an investment into companies such Wix, Walkme, SiSense, Jfrog and, of course, monday.com. On this episode, Roy Mann joined us as we “flipped sides” and tried to understand better the investor’s point of view – what challenges do they encounter, what are their own KPIs, and how do they define success? This isn’t just a thought experiment – we strongly believe that understanding how investors think about their own business can be beneficial to every founder in a fundraising process and in general. https://www.startupforstartup.com/the-investor-point-of-view-jeff-horing/https://www.facebook.com/groups/startupforstartup/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Leah Walters, Head of Communications at monday.com walked us through the challenges of doing PR for startups and why communication is essential to success. We discussed how to get the right message out, the difference between Israeli and foreign press and why not all news is good news. We also dug into monday.com’s current NYC billboard campaign and how its effect is being measured. https://www.startupforstartup.com/pr-for-startups-whats-it-all-about-3/https://www.facebook.com/groups/startupforstartup/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.