Chris Cunningham - ClickUp

WEBVTT

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Look, you're absolutely wrong and I don't care, I'm not listening to you and I'll see you when I see you, I remember thinking man, either he's spot on right or he's crazy.

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It's taking those Lego bricks apart and then putting them back together.

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It just gives you such a different perspective.

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The big thing that I'll always, always preach to people that we did is being scrappy.

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Find that own way for you.

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Luck will come to you if you're really pushing and you're looking for it and if you want to come along for the story and if you want to ask me questions.

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You want to dive in, like I'll talk all day long about where we're headed and I can see the vision.

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Oh, there he is.

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What's?

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going on how you doing I'm good how you doing I always love the click up logo right right above head.

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I feel like I should get a.

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See, I don't have anywhere to put it, but maybe I should have a little stand or something where I could get a neon stack list or just the mark.

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I got the website.

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When you're ready, man, I'm going to Echo Neon.

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I tried them all.

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There were like three before I had this one that I like.

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Echo Neon All tried them all.

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There were like three before I had this one that I like Echo Neon.

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All right, I'm grabbing that for the, if the AI can hear me.

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Echo Neon, we're going to find a link.

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We're going to put it in a stack for this episode.

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How are you doing?

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I'm great.

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I'm great.

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Looks like the light's coming a little strong.

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Yeah, I'm good man.

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I got big week.

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We got a lot come out with click on man.

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There's so much going on it's hard to keep up.

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That's amazing again.

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Um, because we're trying to build ai as well, so we're looking to raise it to speak, to kind of really go into the ai agent space, so nice.

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Well, yeah, we are too.

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I think that's the.

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That's the thing right is right, figure out how to get the little, the little micro automations to to do everything behind the scenes, which is, um, which is crazy, um.

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Well, you had a.

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You had a big weekend recently too, right uh how did that go man a lot going on so it was good we went to tony planned out our life.

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You know the future um changed.

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What was the tone?

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What was tony robbins like?

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What was the?

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What was the?

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What was the thing?

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Was the setup?

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it's.

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It was was big, it was actually a little less intimate than I realized, but it's called Date with Destiny and essentially you know you kind of plan out your life Each day, focuses on different aspects of your life, and you know he goes deep Like he literally interviews people like live and kind of helps them find through their problems.

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But I think it's really about like building the proper habits like knowing who you want to be.

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What was your biggest two insights?

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Yeah, I think the biggest for me is like it's easy to start getting into the task right and just every day, wake up and be like I have to have, you know, have this notebook right here with all my things I need to do.

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And I think, rather than doing that, it's better to wake up and really get yourself in the right state.

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That's like one of the big things is get your energy right, get your right.

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So you know, do something moving, think about who you want to be, think about what you want to accomplish, and then you know.

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I think, I think just spending more time to actually plan things, you know, like actually sharpening the tool, rather than just going and and chopping off the wood, because it's very easy to just have so many things to do and just start moving through those things, Rather than, I think, if I took time and planned a little more at the end of each day, at the beginning of each day, at the beginning of each day and really took time to know what I'm spending every single moment on, I think it'll make a big difference in what I'm going after.

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Yep, no, I could see that as well.

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I feel like one of the things I've talked about a lot is this idea.

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I don't know how to have another, better way to say it, but it's sort of getting trapped in the matrix, right when you get in this like whether it's like at school or a job or or even in a relationship, whatever it is that you you sort of cycle through it so much and you, the world becomes smaller and that's kind of all that you focus on, and little, little things become huge things and problems, whatever, and usually something like a life thing will happen or someone will pass away or whatever it is, and it sort of destroys this whole thing, and you go like, okay, wait a second, what do I actually?

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But figuring out how to have that happen on a regular basis, I could see, or even to your point, I think, on a daily basis you can figure out how to sort of not be on the hamster wheel and sort of sit down every morning and go like, okay, wait, fresh day, fresh perspective.

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What am I doing?

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What I?

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want you know and sort of break the matrix daily.

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I can see how that would be so huge.

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Escaping the matrix, that's what everybody wants to do, right?

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Yep, because it is.

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It's one of those that like, and I love it.

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I used to change jobs every two years because, like you know, I would get in a position where it felt, like you know, upper management would be like, hey, if you just hang out and keep doing what you're doing for a number of years, we'll look and see if we can kind of bump you up the ladder or whatever.

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And I'm like wait, wait, wait, wait.

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And so you leave and immediately you can sort of like start something elevated.

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And you talk to a new sort of, a new person, a new group, and they're like why don't you come in and do this VP level job or whatever?

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And you're like, wait, why didn't he get that in the last place?

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And so it's taking those Lego bricks apart and then putting them back together.

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It just gives you such a good perspective.

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Yeah, I remember thinking I think the big question is always like do you start when you get out of college?

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Do you start at a big company, Do you start a startup?

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And I really liked the path I took.

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I started at a large company Cvent right and so you get all the skills they have.

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They're already a big company.

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You learn a lot, you can move up quick and then you know I think after that like I stayed at steven until I got all my stock the company went public, so it was a great start as one of the youngest managers there saw the company go public.

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I learned a ton and then I went into the startup world, right, and then because I felt like I had that base, I had that experience, I had that training, um, and then I went, because the startup is where you can really make larger money, because I could have stated.

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I remember my parents thought I was crazy because I was like, hey, I'm going to go, I'm going to leave this job.

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And I was the man there.

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I knew everyone, I had great, great opportunities there.

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And they were like, hey, we'll move you up to director and VP, probably like a 10-year track.

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And I was like, man, I don't know, it just seems like a years to give away.

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And you know.

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So I told my family I was going to work for my friend from college and we're just going to do a little startup.

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And they were like they thought I was losing my mind, like I remember she had my grandfather, who was a VP at Energizer, like called me and just tell me this is wrong.

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I was like I greatly respect how you did it, but I just think things are different now.

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The best decision ever, right with them.

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And we did an agency and, you know, kept scaling and trying things.

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That's amazing.

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Yeah, I had a similar sort of thing I went to work for.

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Well, I went to junior level computer class in college and they handed out a syllabus and they said today we're learning Microsoft Word.

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And I stood up and I never went back School.

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I was like no-transcript.

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But this was like in back when people are trying to sell like cobalt rack servers and like you know, and you've got to get a website and domain names and all that sort of stuff, and people like what is this and is this the new frontier?

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And I was selling, yeah, hand over fist.

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I was like making big commission checks and I'm the one sort of like you know, drinks on me every day or whatever.

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But then, as the bubble started to burst and things started to sort of fall apart, we had a football field worth of people in there and that got compressed down into like just a handful of people and I'm like I'm going to go do something else.

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But I also talked to my manager at the time and I said I'd like to talk about management and she was like well, you're only 21, you don't need to worry about management, I'm gonna hurt I'm like uh, so I left and went, did my own like web design development agency.

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And same thing my first.

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When I, when I left school, they were like what do you mean?

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You're gonna go like work at this, like web hosting?

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you know what I mean.

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Like, what are you talking about?

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kind of thing.

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And then I was making really good money and they were like, okay, well, this seems good.

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And then I'm like, okay, I'm out.

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And they're like, wait, you're making good money, no like why?

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what are you doing?

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but it's been an interesting journey to basically like just learn all the different things you know what I mean like throughout the journey.

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So that's so cool.

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So you went, you basically went, you went work for a company and then and then you left that to go work and that's where you met Zeb.

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Yeah, so I met Zeb actually in college.

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So we were, we were close friends in college.

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We were always bored and you know, we just felt like that, what they were teaching us was behind.

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And so, you know, we we actually started managing a rapper.

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That was our first little thing we did together.

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He's from my hometown.

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He still works for click up today and uh we.

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We just saw a lot of talent and we were bored, so at the time you couldn't get all online classes.

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We went to virginia tech and they made it impossible to get all online classes.

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But zeb being a genius, he has.

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He built a bot that like quickly applied for all the online classes very fast before like it was possible to.

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So we had online classes, classes we did, took a semester and just worked, you know, online and did this whole rap thing.

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We went on tour.

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We got to open up for, like, wiz Khalifa, mac Miller, it was cool.

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We actually had some success with it and from that, that's amazing.

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That's where we figured out, like the next part and that's no-transcript my salary and he's like you know, I think I can make that in like a month in this job and I'm like well, keep me posted.

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I'll help you on the side.

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So while I was at Cvent, sign, sign me up working relationship and rhythm and all those sort of pieces.

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What was the sort of division?

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of labor and what did he focus on?

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What did you focus on?

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Yeah, I mean, look, Zeb's always a genius.

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He's kind of the you of the product, he's the visionary, he builds everything out.

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You know he had built the back and he had built everything.

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I've always kind of got in where I fit in.

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You know I was sales at the beginning of my career.

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You know, similar to you.

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So I was, I'd been doing sales at Cvent.

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I had managed a sales team there, and so I came and it was running sales and really doing customer service as well.

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I always had an ax for customer service.

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I enjoyed giving like really good customer service.

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I thought it could lead to sales as well.

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So I was managing sales and customer service for the agency.

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And then, same thing like we started an app you know.

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After that, zev had a near-death experience and he was like I don't want to just be these guys who help people grow on social media, I want to change the world.

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So, then we decided to build a social media app called Memory, because at the time, snapchat was the hottest app out, but it had this fatal flaw in that seven seconds and bam, it took away your best memories.

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So we built this app, we got a team together.

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We put some money that we made from the agency that we we we've got a team together we, you know put some money that we made from this from the agency hq is doing really well and we moved to palo, alto california.

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We literally I drove uh, myself and another colleague.

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We got a big uh what do you call?

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like a you, none of you all, but a bigger one, like a very big truck, and put all the camper van yeah, basically like almost like an rv yeah, and we put and I had to act like I had a license for it and I didn't, and I rented it and we drove this thing across country.

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It was so wild.

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We were just turning the wheel and it was crazy.

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The whole back would move the first hour.

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you're just nervous as all get out.

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I was so nervous.

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It started raining, of course, as we were going through Atlanta, I was like this is going to be rough.

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But we got through, didn't have any problems, and you know we moved the whole office there.

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So we moved to Palo Alto, california.

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We moved into a house, just like Silicon Valley, and we this was our mission.

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You know we're going to build this app memory and it started off really well.

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We had a lot of positive feedback.

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People were loving the app, the app was clean, but then Snapchat came out with Snapchat memories and we just completely ripped off our part of it added in and we just lost everything.

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And yeah, that's when we had to pivot.

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You know, we had to figure it out and we we have two different options we had had.

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We basically had built like a very rough version of click up for ourself and then we also zeb was very interested in going after the uh like offer up for that space, like craigslist, but uh, we also decided to go with project management, which most people thought was the craziest route, the toughest route, but you know it worked out, so that that sounds very similar.

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So you built something.

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You had something internally similar that you would use for yourself the toughest route, but it worked out.

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So that sounds very similar.

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So you built something.

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You had something internally similar that you would use for yourself.

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Exactly so.

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Zed hated that developers like Jira and then marketers use Asana and he's like I'm sick of logging in like eight different tools.

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I'm just going to make them use one, because I don't like logging in, logging out.

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So we've just built this thing that we call Mission Control Center.

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It's basically like version one of ClickUp and we would just use that.

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And the way that we decided to go to market with it was we were living on a very prominent street in Palo Alto, so like we had the CTO of Facebook here, ceo of Intel here oh, wow, and they were quite fascinated by us because we were like these young kids that just moved in a house.

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You know, it wasn't a cheap house.

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We were making pretty good money.

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I'm sorry.

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Is this your uncle's house or is someone?

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That's what he said.

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Are you setting up for someone?

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else.

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Yeah, is this your grandpa's?

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Who are you moving this for?

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Because they were very, you know, they all want to know who was living across from them, and so they were very fascinated by us.

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You know, no one likes their project management, like no one really loves who they use.

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So I think maybe it's a risky one, but you should go after it.

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So that's what really got us confident in you know, in the space I love that.

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It's so very similar with Stuart and Slack right that it basically evolved from an internal tool that they were using and then they went.

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We're going to pivot.

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How about this thing We've been using?

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timeframes too.

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You know we were starting.

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Slack was our neighbor and we lived right across.

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We had an office after Palo Alto we had an office in San Francisco and then right next door was Slack.

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It was kind of cool to.

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I mean.

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Obviously they had a faster growth than us, but it was cool to see that and, you know, see the possibilities of what could happen in tech.

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We have very similar.

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I think people shouldn't be afraid to pivot.

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Obviously not always, you know, stay true to your product, but I think it was the best thing we ever did.

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If we just kept trying to build memory, I don't know what happened.

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And if we went a different route, I have no idea what I'd be doing today.

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Yeah, what was like?

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What was the first week or the first moment?

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Do you remember that sort of pivot away from memory to someone says you should go after project management, or there's a conversation, you know, breakfast or coffee, that's sort of like.

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Hey, I think we should take this thing and like what was the first sort of like catalyst that really started, like the click up sort of motion towards you know, the first year.

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Yeah, I would say it was, you know, and the catalyst that really got us going was really just talking to some of our neighbors and them saying like hey, you have a chance at this.

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And I think Zeb, looking at the space and just started, he started really obsessing with playing around with the tools, and we all did.

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And that's when we quickly realized like, hey, like these tools aren't that great, they're not shipping that fast, you know, like how you are with Stacklist, like shipping every week is a big thing, and they were shipping like twice a year.

00:14:26.057 --> 00:14:26.945
And they were shipping like twice a year.

00:14:26.945 --> 00:14:33.616
Right, we just not like, hey, we could build these things, we could do this and we can, and we actually have an advantage because we're, you know, they're already built a certain way.

00:14:33.616 --> 00:14:38.596
We can just start this completely clean slate, completely customizable, you know, just good to go.

00:14:38.596 --> 00:14:39.730
So that's how we dove in.

00:14:39.904 --> 00:14:47.434
And then the first moments where I think I knew it was going to work was, you know, I was our first, the beginning, just trying to sell it, trying to sell it to anyone I could.

00:14:47.434 --> 00:14:54.693
And I'll never forget, you know, our first customer that came along was Perry Worth, and I've been talking to this guy for a while.

00:14:54.693 --> 00:14:58.591
He's in at Accenture and I finally kept talking to him.

00:14:58.591 --> 00:14:59.335
He was like look, you know what?

00:14:59.335 --> 00:15:11.130
Like, you guys aren't as advanced as Hasan and all that, but I see the way you're shipping, I see the way you're building I'm you know, I'll pay for, you know, a couple seats for the year.

00:15:11.130 --> 00:15:15.375
So as soon as I was shocked, he said yes, I had to make up a pricing on the fly and I remember running, running down the house to the hall and be like hey, we have a deal in.

00:15:15.375 --> 00:15:20.201
Like someone's paying for click I don't even know how to take his payment, you know and so that was like the the big moment for me.

00:15:20.201 --> 00:15:21.826
Hey, this here's my bitcoin address.

00:15:22.106 --> 00:15:23.509
Yeah, yeah, exactly I was like what do I?

00:15:23.528 --> 00:15:23.788
do here.

00:15:23.788 --> 00:15:25.331
That was a big moment for me.

00:15:25.331 --> 00:15:27.374
Okay, someone's actually willing to pay for this.

00:15:27.394 --> 00:15:32.280
Like, maybe we're onto something so that was an accenture, like uh, you know, and one of those too that it wasn't.

00:15:32.280 --> 00:15:36.221
It wasn't just somebody that you knew down the street, uh, or whatever that's.

00:15:36.240 --> 00:15:40.802
That's really interesting no, those people actually paid for us yet, so he was the first one that that did.

00:15:40.802 --> 00:15:42.365
I'm still good friends with perry today.

00:15:42.365 --> 00:15:46.113
I mean great, great guy, it was cool, to cool to make that happen that's amazing.

00:15:46.333 --> 00:15:49.966
So you, you and I guess you also had a good because you already had a code base.

00:15:49.966 --> 00:15:51.188
You had something that was working.

00:15:51.188 --> 00:15:59.724
There's not really that sort of like idea to prototype, you know, to sort of POC to prototype, to like let's kind of build something.

00:15:59.724 --> 00:16:01.548
You already had sort of a code base of something.

00:16:01.548 --> 00:16:10.474
In there Was there, was there a little bit of packaging and cleaning and you know, and production readiness that you needed to kind of go through at that point.

00:16:10.875 --> 00:16:18.126
We still probably spent eight months, you know, in like that phase like getting ready, researching and and definitely changed the look of it because we just made it like bare bones.

00:16:18.126 --> 00:16:19.912
So we had to make it, we had to make a better look.

00:16:19.912 --> 00:16:26.111
And then you know, I think Zeb's big thing was creating different views, you know, allowing you to to view all your work in different ways.

00:16:26.111 --> 00:16:32.970
And that was like the big differentiator for us at the beginning, cause it used to be like with Asana you'd have to choose either list view or board view to start, and then you get to work.

00:16:32.970 --> 00:16:37.751
Right, we had it's where you create your task and then you can look at the list view, board view box, whatever view you wanted.

00:16:37.751 --> 00:16:46.557
You know, kanban, gantt, chart, whatever and that's what I think now a but that was a big differentiator for us.

00:16:46.557 --> 00:16:48.837
And the other thing is that we just keep building everything.

00:16:48.837 --> 00:16:54.380
We really want to be the everything app for work and at the beginning that was actually our downfall.

00:16:54.421 --> 00:16:58.706
So I played basketball in a league in Palo Alto and this one guy took interest in me as well.

00:16:58.706 --> 00:17:03.645
I was always the youngest, we were like 26, 27 at the time what are you doing here?

00:17:03.645 --> 00:17:07.048
And I told him and he's like let me come by and see your operation.

00:17:07.048 --> 00:17:08.390
So I did and I found out that he was a.

00:17:08.390 --> 00:17:10.230
I always notice people trying to talk to him.

00:17:10.230 --> 00:17:17.577
He was a big guy at Sequoia and we didn't even know about these investment firms or anything yet, we were just some guys from Virginia and North Carolina.

00:17:17.577 --> 00:17:21.079
So he comes by and he said you guys are kind of on to something.

00:17:21.079 --> 00:17:23.422
Would you want to come by our office?

00:17:23.422 --> 00:17:25.907
We'll treat you to lunch and all that.

00:17:25.928 --> 00:17:29.945
So we come in and we're definitely way too early, but we come in and the guy kind of rips us.

00:17:29.945 --> 00:17:31.309
To be honest, this is the koi guys.

00:17:31.309 --> 00:17:35.351
Look, you guys are like really good at building and a good team, but like one after replace them.

00:17:35.351 --> 00:17:37.195
All is cute, but it's just never gonna happen, right?

00:17:37.195 --> 00:17:38.711
So you need to niche down, choose.

00:17:38.711 --> 00:17:39.354
You know.

00:17:39.374 --> 00:17:45.029
He told us to niche down and I love, uh, you know, at the time I thought maybe zeb I remember one of he was actually right and what he did.

00:17:45.029 --> 00:17:49.998
But he's like, look, you're absolutely wrong and I don't care, I'm not listening to you, you know, and I'll see you when I see you.

00:17:49.998 --> 00:17:59.248
And I remember thinking, man, either he's spot on right or you know he's crazy because we could have still made some work with these guys and sure enough, you know that was what made us different.

00:17:59.248 --> 00:18:15.250
And you know, zeb, some grill or some gift I'll never forget some kind of gift and he still politely turned them down because he didn't believe in me, he didn't believe in my vision.

00:18:15.250 --> 00:18:21.748
So that was a pretty cool moment to see them still want to come back, a very big investment firm and want to invest, but it didn't happen.

00:18:22.308 --> 00:18:48.589
Wow, oh, I love that story and I really I love hearing, especially the stage that we're at, you know, in the sort of like uh, bootstrap early, early small investment angels sort of round of, of the people that I've met recently, that that have talked about the fact that I just interviewed ben hoffman from uh hoffman from contra, and he was saying in the very beginning that people were like this is this is not gonna work, this is a horrible idea.

00:18:49.211 --> 00:18:49.894
You know whatever.

00:18:49.894 --> 00:18:56.555
And now they're on their Series A with 800,000 people on the platform, but I think it's one of those that's really interesting when you go through.

00:18:56.555 --> 00:19:05.432
I sort of struggle a bit with that and we just had our deck redone and it's much more story format.

00:19:05.432 --> 00:19:19.204
It's not the Y Combinator format and I'm actually loving it being a story and if you want to come along for the story and if you want to ask me questions, you want to dive in like I'll talk all day long about where we're headed and I can see the vision and all that sort of stuff.

00:19:19.905 --> 00:19:27.213
But it almost feels like that process of analyzing a company and just looking at it and being like, oh, that's never going work.

00:19:27.213 --> 00:19:28.395
No, no, no.

00:19:28.395 --> 00:19:34.445
You're like that, the sort of quick, dismissive sort of like I see, I see what you are now and it's never gonna work.

00:19:34.445 --> 00:19:44.241
It's so interesting because I know that those investors have to see so many deals that you have to like make really quick sort of judgment calls on stuff.

00:19:44.241 --> 00:19:58.432
But I really appreciate the people who sort of take time to go deep and understand what the vision could look like and how you would approach it and things like that, versus the sort of like I can tell you that's never going to work, and I love the pushback on that as well.

00:19:58.805 --> 00:20:05.893
That's the people you want to invest in right, the ones that are in the details and are really going to listen and go in rather than just take a take on it right away.

00:20:05.893 --> 00:20:19.335
Because, again, I get it, they see a ton of things, so I know they can't invest in everything, but, yeah, at the beginning we weren't even going to take funding, so I think we got to like 20 mil 22 mil in ARR ourselves, so we were okay.

00:20:19.335 --> 00:20:24.976
But I think if we really want to fight these giants, we realized we had to, and David Sachs was a guy who made us realize that.

00:20:25.536 --> 00:20:25.817
Wow.

00:20:25.817 --> 00:20:33.002
And so what was that time period again, when you sort of like you close the Accenture deal, you work on it for eight months, you sort of get it into a good place.

00:20:33.002 --> 00:20:37.192
And then what was the Sequoia sort of period in there?

00:20:37.192 --> 00:20:48.791
Was that the linear progression of sort of you move out there, you have some discussion, you sort of sell Accenture and then you knew that that was enough to sort of get you going so you could focus on and get a production ready.

00:20:48.791 --> 00:20:52.660
And then was it long after that that the Sequoia conversation happened.

00:20:52.984 --> 00:20:54.692
Yeah, I think it was 2016.

00:20:54.692 --> 00:20:58.994
And then I want to say 2017 is when we had that convo.

00:20:59.415 --> 00:21:13.086
Okay, great, so within about a year you went from ideation conversation to sort of first sale conversation.

00:21:13.086 --> 00:21:18.568
To you know, to to sort of first sale, um kind of proving, uh, proving that you could get clients around it, to then production ready, to then um Accenture and starting to have investment conversations.

00:21:18.588 --> 00:21:22.821
Yeah, I want to say it was like seven months, and then once, once I got the first deal, more kept coming and more kept coming.

00:21:22.821 --> 00:21:26.892
Yeah, yeah, we just kept snowballing and and we had some cool moments.

00:21:26.892 --> 00:21:43.391
You know, like the way I would get leads is we built this tool called app gator, and what app gator would do is it would pull reviews from all my competitors and anytime someone gave like a three star below, maybe a two star, one star on captera or get app or trust pilot, I would get a notification.

00:21:43.431 --> 00:21:49.712
I could find them on linkedin, and so I'd hit them on the hey look, I get you hate, you know, trello or sauna we built click.

00:21:49.712 --> 00:21:52.989
For this reason I'd love for you to try it out, right, and I'd have him try it out and then, you know, try to sell them.

00:21:52.989 --> 00:21:54.574
And that's kind of how I started going after my leads.

00:22:01.211 --> 00:22:06.057
So we were very scrappy, you know, early on it was just me as a sales rep If I needed like a solutions.

00:22:06.057 --> 00:22:07.137
We were doing the customer service.

00:22:07.137 --> 00:22:08.799
Even Zeb was still in there responding to tickets.

00:22:08.799 --> 00:22:17.734
So we were super scrappy at the beginning and then after we I'd say the next pivotal moment for us we really had to start hiring employees was we were now in San Francisco.

00:22:17.734 --> 00:22:23.946
We had some customers not making a ton of money, but making some money but we're in an office in San Francisco feeling like this would propel our growth.

00:22:24.567 --> 00:22:27.808
And we used to just scour all the competition, all the websites, everything.

00:22:27.808 --> 00:22:30.371
We were in this Facebook group for Product T.

00:22:30.371 --> 00:22:36.075
Product T was a competitor of ours and they just announced one day they were going to shut down and they were not building an export.

00:22:36.075 --> 00:22:38.895
So everyone was going to lose all their work in like a month.

00:22:38.895 --> 00:22:43.939
And so our CTO was like man, I think I can build an export in time.

00:22:43.939 --> 00:22:48.622
And so he just stays up, works crazy hours, and so we pop in the Facebook group.

00:22:48.642 --> 00:22:49.962
I was so happy to type this message.

00:22:49.962 --> 00:22:54.693
I was like, hey, look, I know you guys have like one week left and you're scampering to figure out where you're going to put your data.

00:22:54.693 --> 00:22:56.238
Here it is, here's an export.

00:22:56.238 --> 00:22:59.247
We'll take all of you and if you need help we'll walk you through it.

00:22:59.247 --> 00:23:08.537
And so we just we took all the customers, had a much nicer you know like client list.

00:23:08.537 --> 00:23:16.005
I think either before or after that too, you know, zeb was kind of like hey look, we're running out of money and I'm like, you know, I'm the sales guy, so I'm like I got to figure something out.

00:23:16.005 --> 00:23:18.153
So I really hustled and I went through all my deals.

00:23:21.586 --> 00:23:23.127
And that's when I closed our first logo.

00:23:23.127 --> 00:23:25.489
That was Home Depot, so I closed that, then I, then we had this happen.

00:23:25.489 --> 00:23:28.391
So we went from like, even though we weren't really Zeb was.

00:23:28.391 --> 00:23:32.473
I didn't know that secretly he had put in another like 1.2 million on a convertible note.

00:23:32.473 --> 00:23:34.255
He had some more put up to.

00:23:34.255 --> 00:23:40.438
But he was just trying to like drive some urgency and see what it did and it was genius because then all of a sudden we were profitable and it was.

00:23:40.438 --> 00:23:42.819
That was really awesome and we had money coming in.

00:24:05.275 --> 00:24:05.795
That's amazing.

00:24:05.795 --> 00:24:06.855
Well, that really is that.

00:24:06.855 --> 00:24:10.538
That's such an amazing journey, shipping fast within a one week sort of cycle.

00:24:10.538 --> 00:24:13.823
When I think about those early teams that really just sort of crank stuff out.

00:24:13.823 --> 00:24:17.109
What was the sort of philosophy and process for that?

00:24:17.109 --> 00:24:18.132
Was it?

00:24:18.132 --> 00:24:28.346
You know, was it sort of Zeb plus one other developer and or a designer and really just sort of like mind melding and shipping, or what was the process?

00:24:28.707 --> 00:24:29.508
Yes, you have Seb.

00:24:29.508 --> 00:24:33.013
Then you have Alex Cherkowski, the co-founder and CTO absolute genius.

00:24:33.013 --> 00:24:37.528
He was on the more development side.

00:24:37.528 --> 00:24:39.993
And then he had a couple other people that still work at this company to this day.

00:24:39.993 --> 00:24:40.500
They're so valuable.

00:24:40.500 --> 00:24:48.374
He found a couple of guys in Ukraine Sergey, then Konstantin, and then he had like two designers and that was a team.

00:24:48.374 --> 00:24:51.828
I mean, they would just move maybe a couple other here and there, but they would just move.

00:24:51.828 --> 00:24:54.144
And this guy, sergey, at the beginning, was just so funny.

00:24:54.144 --> 00:24:55.646
He was now like the number one developer.

00:24:55.646 --> 00:25:04.121
He was uh, he was just like a, a google like app guy, like uh was an android, android app guy oh yeah, flutter and then, yeah, flood.

00:25:04.141 --> 00:25:08.471
And he was just, uh, it was so funny, he was finishing his task before everyone else and just getting like kind of bored.

00:25:08.471 --> 00:25:12.990
And so one day, like they came in, I think Zeb was like joking with me.

00:25:12.990 --> 00:25:13.992
He's like, hey, can I just get this done?

00:25:13.992 --> 00:25:22.303
And they were like, yeah, just go ahead and, you know, commit or whatever I'm not a tech guy, it's something like that Like log to commit or whatever it may be.

00:25:22.303 --> 00:25:24.585
And they said the next, he had taught himself this and got it done.

00:25:24.585 --> 00:25:29.589
So they started giving him more and he was just like a 15X developer and he was just like knocking everything out.

00:25:29.589 --> 00:25:33.573
So he became like the main guy leading everything, just moving so fast.

00:25:33.593 --> 00:25:34.653
Wow, that's amazing.

00:25:34.653 --> 00:25:35.914
He's kind of like a secret weapon for ClickUp.

00:25:35.934 --> 00:25:37.997
But yeah, Zeb has a lean team.

00:25:47.061 --> 00:25:48.442
Met with him every morning.

00:25:48.442 --> 00:26:05.092
You know 6 am type level or and there's so many like levels and processes and like the time it takes to to put the software together just for someone, like for the team to start working on stuff, like there's just so much operational overhead and time spent on that.

00:26:05.092 --> 00:26:13.556
It's so different when it really is just like a handful of people who have have that sort of you know, mind meld around.

00:26:13.556 --> 00:26:21.069
What you're trying to do and and and just make and ship is there's nothing.

00:26:21.069 --> 00:26:22.011
There's nothing like that.

00:26:22.353 --> 00:26:23.958
Um nothing and it's so.

00:26:23.958 --> 00:26:26.141
The best part was I should have told you this too.

00:26:26.141 --> 00:26:37.929
I guess his mindset is very similar to yours it was just ship it, you know, like there'd be bugs, there'd be things, there'd be problems, but we turned into a positive right, like we would get people free click up if they found the bugs, so basically like a free bug team.

00:26:37.929 --> 00:26:40.230
And you know, we were able to ship so fast.

00:26:40.230 --> 00:26:41.790
So there was a little error here and they're fine.

00:26:41.790 --> 00:26:43.251
And if we fixed it, we let them know immediately.

00:26:43.251 --> 00:26:44.292
Hey, we fixed it this fast.

00:26:44.292 --> 00:26:46.134
You know, thank you, we care about this, we.

00:26:46.134 --> 00:26:49.476
You know we'll have a larger bug team soon, but we appreciate it.

00:26:49.476 --> 00:26:51.498
I think to this day we still do it Like now.

00:26:51.498 --> 00:26:52.945
We ship and we work on all staging.

00:26:52.945 --> 00:26:56.002
So we'll see the problems first, it'll be in staging first and then we'll see it.

00:26:56.002 --> 00:26:58.164
Now we can kind of catch it, so it's nice.

00:26:58.484 --> 00:27:02.288
We're always going to we kind of call him the Terminator, but he is that sort of.

00:27:13.079 --> 00:27:27.105
He was playing basketball a couple of weeks ago and went to swat down a basketball and caught one of his fingers and it's been in a cast for weeks, and so literally last week he shipped three or four builds, but every time we meet with him he's only got one hand.

00:27:27.105 --> 00:27:28.920
How are you like?

00:27:29.421 --> 00:27:30.644
how are you shipping this stuff?

00:27:30.644 --> 00:27:32.289
Our biggest nightmare isn't happening.

00:27:32.309 --> 00:27:40.603
You know when a good developer isn't but literally like we're like ship to two mobile builds a week and he's like this, he just got his cast off.

00:27:40.603 --> 00:27:42.827
He's just so like, yeah, exactly.

00:27:42.827 --> 00:27:47.726
And so like today, it's sort of you know, you go through a build and you're like this is pretty good.

00:27:47.726 --> 00:27:50.794
I got two little nodes for you within about five minutes like new builds up.

00:27:50.794 --> 00:27:57.920
I'm like okay, just let me pivot back, let me just tap, like, just like you know you got to keep those people, you got to take care of them.

00:27:57.940 --> 00:28:13.269
Because, though, yeah, I mean, it is not the easiest to find what we call like 10x or 20x developers because, again, a strong developer is worth more than almost any other and the fact fact that, like you, you get a five X marketer Great, you know, like they can probably do some great things, but a five X developer, or 10 X, they can just, they can just.

00:28:13.269 --> 00:28:17.089
It's like they can do more than hiring four or five people, because they move Totally.

00:28:17.631 --> 00:28:27.185
Yeah, and our CTO, Martina, is like that too.

00:28:27.185 --> 00:28:27.326
We're.

00:28:27.326 --> 00:28:28.906
We're just been able to move all the way through.

00:28:28.906 --> 00:28:33.529
It's also so the platform and everything is so stable that we ship on Fridays.

00:28:33.529 --> 00:28:45.077
Um and we're not worried about it at all because we just like we have had very little to no like reports of stuff, especially after shipping, which is which is Fridays.

00:28:45.180 --> 00:28:46.306
Now it's a little tough.

00:28:46.380 --> 00:28:52.180
Now we do it on like now we gotta give ourself a day no, I think you should do it just for just for fun, old time's sake.

00:28:52.180 --> 00:28:56.190
Right 6 pm Friday, just like no more they're like we're not doing this.

00:28:56.471 --> 00:28:58.122
I know you did back in the days that, but this is.

00:28:58.122 --> 00:29:01.951
This is a different beast now, right, totally, where do?

00:29:01.991 --> 00:29:09.171
where do you see, uh, where do you see sort of click up in the next, in the next year, or yeah, I definitely see us on the road to going public.

00:29:09.371 --> 00:29:11.575
That's our mission, that's our goal, that's what we really care about.

00:29:11.575 --> 00:29:15.230
I see us just adding more and more features that people don't see coming.

00:29:15.230 --> 00:29:30.772
I think we've been acquiring some smart companies strategically and I really see our focus on really changing the way that people manage people and they get the most out of everyone, because with AI, I think a big part of your employees is knowing that they're being efficient.

00:29:30.792 --> 00:29:36.671
You're getting the most out of them, so I think that's a big focus for us, also improving a lot of the features we have.

00:29:36.671 --> 00:29:38.865
That's one thing that we sickly do in Stealth right.

00:29:38.865 --> 00:29:49.102
So we have whiteboards, and our first iteration of whiteboards was a Miro no, but we're on V3 now and they're getting very strong, very close same with docs, you know.

00:29:49.122 --> 00:29:50.204
So that that's what I love about click up.

00:29:50.204 --> 00:29:52.030
We'll kind of like quickly jump into it.

00:29:52.030 --> 00:29:57.343
Now we have chat, you know, and and now we're just, we're going to keep iterating until it's as good, if not better, than, the competition.

00:29:57.343 --> 00:30:04.327
That's that's kind of our move, because it's there, we see what's out there, we see what people want, we see what they need, and then I mean click up is mostly dev.

00:30:04.327 --> 00:30:05.670
You know that's what's different from us.

00:30:05.670 --> 00:30:06.912
We're not like we're some massive sales team.

00:30:06.912 --> 00:30:08.595
Our sales team is actually quite small.

00:30:08.595 --> 00:30:09.738
We just we believe in a product.

00:30:09.738 --> 00:30:11.000
We're product, product led.

00:30:11.000 --> 00:30:17.609
So we're gonna keep building a great product, we're gonna keep marketing it and you know, we'll still sell here and there and you know, go go enterprise in a way.

00:30:17.609 --> 00:30:20.780
But you know, I think we've we've really built well off.

00:30:20.780 --> 00:30:22.522
Smbs and agencies love us.

00:30:22.522 --> 00:30:31.115
So, uh, I I think the the real beauty for us is making sure everyone loves us, everyone can use us and we're fast as can be.

00:30:32.579 --> 00:30:34.022
What's your personal?

00:30:34.022 --> 00:30:36.407
Let's jump into the future.

00:30:36.407 --> 00:30:39.753
You're 50, you're 60, what are you doing?

00:30:39.753 --> 00:30:43.266
Have you branched out?

00:30:43.266 --> 00:30:44.249
Are you doing other things?

00:30:44.249 --> 00:30:45.372
Are you doing side things?

00:30:45.372 --> 00:30:47.663
What would you get into?

00:30:47.663 --> 00:30:51.071
Post you know sort of post, click up in the in the downline.

00:30:51.152 --> 00:30:52.701
I'm riding this thing for a while.

00:30:52.701 --> 00:30:55.810
I mean, the fact that I get to work with some of my best friends is pretty awesome.

00:30:55.810 --> 00:30:58.248
You know that we're we're all there from the beginning and I liked it.

00:30:58.248 --> 00:31:10.275
I've like moved in, you know, to switch my role, like, and I kind of had to come to Zab me like, look, we should probably hire someone who's done this before this is getting big.

00:31:10.275 --> 00:31:11.895
I've never led anything like this.

00:31:11.895 --> 00:31:18.083
That's why we brought in Matt Bauman from Pinterest has been incredible, um, and so I love that I was able to move into a role that I love.

00:31:18.143 --> 00:31:24.483
I can speak on stage, I can run our social, I can make great content and, you know, I think maybe I can bring more leads that way.

00:31:24.483 --> 00:31:27.448
From building an incredible brand for ClickUp, I feel like I've.

00:31:27.448 --> 00:31:33.175
Also, my big goal is to solidify myself as the guy who makes the best content in B2B.

00:31:33.175 --> 00:31:40.146
You know, I really think that's my mission and I'd love to help other companies with that in the future and, you know, as long as they're not ClickUp competitors.

00:31:40.146 --> 00:31:43.522
But I think that the world is open for more great content.

00:31:43.583 --> 00:31:45.267
And B2B always follows B2C, as you know and you see the trends, but when?

00:31:45.267 --> 00:31:47.231
And B2B always follows B2C, as you know, and you see the trends.

00:31:47.231 --> 00:31:59.250
But when you know, influencers were first in B2C and it was really heavy and then now it's come into B2B and same with what I think now is more creators, you know, I think like having a solid creator, having someone who consistently builds for your brand, is the new trend.

00:31:59.250 --> 00:32:07.430
I think every company will be hiring a creator soon at some point or not everyone, but most that are trying to fight because there's only been so much space here to compete with and get attention.

00:32:07.670 --> 00:32:36.863
So I think content's becoming really important I love that you kind of have your own product market fit right with your, with your role and your and and what you do and what you love and enjoy, because I think it's one of those that, like, I think, just pushing in just naturally, sort of trying to push into other areas where it's not your right sort of fit in terms of would you be more stressed or would you or or do you get to do exactly what it is that you love and and how you love to do it?

00:32:36.942 --> 00:32:54.880
and and those sort of things is um is so smart um, and I imagine that you enjoy it a lot more when you've got that sort of control over specifically, like um, what you're focused on and how I think the the thing for me is it's almost like I manifested this role right like I always wanted.

00:32:56.323 --> 00:33:04.881
It's tough when a company grows and you know I've always done sales and you know I knew I was good at marketing, but you know I didn't have the track record there so I had to kind of prove that and and do it.

00:33:04.881 --> 00:33:13.181
So I I kind of liked that I almost had to re prove myself within the company and show that I could do this, this new part, uh, and I'm also blessed that they allowed me to do that.

00:33:13.181 --> 00:33:14.588
You know, same with same with Wes.

00:33:14.588 --> 00:33:17.201
He was our COO early on and as we grew he found like a new role.

00:33:17.201 --> 00:33:21.144
So I honestly I couldn't be happier and I just really enjoy.

00:33:22.125 --> 00:33:29.914
I look what we're doing right now, like we're doing this and it'll be content right, like I think that this is this is just one of the most fun things we can do talking and getting better at this skill.

00:33:29.914 --> 00:33:31.943
That's why I really practiced hard at speaking on stage.

00:33:31.943 --> 00:33:36.682
It wasn't the easiest for me, um, so now that's that's like become a very good skill of mine.

00:33:36.682 --> 00:33:41.740
I love speaking, yeah, I love speaking to SAS conferences and crushing the stage, but that took time.

00:33:41.740 --> 00:33:43.041
That took practice as well.

00:33:43.041 --> 00:33:43.522
What would you like so?

00:33:43.542 --> 00:33:44.784
looking back to, if, if so, what would you like?

00:33:44.784 --> 00:34:07.449
So, looking back to, if you had advice that you would give to somebody that was in that early stage, you know, when you guys moved out to Palo Alto or leaving the original company and sort of you know, going into the startup, what's like one or two things that you've, you know, that you've really sort of internalized, that you would pass on to people who are out there sort of thinking about starting something of their own.

00:34:07.890 --> 00:34:16.489
The big thing that I'll always, always preach to people that we did and I can give you know the prime examples is being scrappy, like, find that own way for you.

00:34:16.489 --> 00:34:24.965
You know, like, and whether it be building, you know the tool to get your leads or you know, going after and scouring the competition so you find out about someone leaving.

00:34:24.965 --> 00:34:25.326
You know, like.

00:34:25.326 --> 00:34:29.617
I think luck will come to you if you're really pushing and you're looking for it, right Like.

00:34:29.657 --> 00:34:34.170
Obviously, the product T thing was kind of lucky, but it also wasn't to me because we were searching, we were scouring.

00:34:34.170 --> 00:34:39.521
We deserve that, we were paying attention to more than anyone else in the space and we were hungry enough to go find a way to build it.

00:34:39.521 --> 00:34:49.733
So I think, no matter what you're in, you're going to have to obsess outside the box for how to move quicker and because, especially in today's world, right Like, anyone can almost build anything now.

00:34:49.733 --> 00:34:51.775
So then, also be focusing on brand.

00:34:51.775 --> 00:34:54.929
I think at the beginning, like again, people have the option to buy from anyone.

00:34:54.929 --> 00:35:02.550
So the more you're focusing on the brand and building something cool that stands out, at the same time while you're being scrappy and getting ahead, that's a perfect formula for success.

00:35:03.030 --> 00:35:11.173
Yeah, How's it changed from a sales and marketing perspective when you first started to sort of the environment that we're in now, Obviously we talked about content creation.

00:35:11.173 --> 00:35:20.155
But would you lead with content creation and or, you know, like AI tools or like if you had to sort of do it over again, but with the product in mind?

00:35:28.900 --> 00:35:29.501
I still think that's.

00:35:29.501 --> 00:35:35.804
I mean, I think luckily we had such a great product-led founder, but the product's got to be good, right, it's got to be good, it's got to look good.

00:35:35.804 --> 00:35:40.586
I think that's a key too Make it look good, it's got to be fun to look at.

00:35:40.586 --> 00:35:50.018
But I think, early on, getting into at least a big thing for us and it might changing out of the AI, but you know, was getting really good at that blog content and that written content as well, like to drive traffic.

00:35:50.018 --> 00:35:55.150
But anything you can do to get eyeballs, I think is big, or don't be afraid to try some things outside the box.

00:35:55.150 --> 00:35:58.012
And also get really good at testing and creating like systems.

00:35:58.012 --> 00:35:59.800
You know, like, really create machines.

00:35:59.880 --> 00:36:01.385
That's what we do at ClickUp really well.

00:36:01.385 --> 00:36:17.340
Like, like with this whole creator thing, like I thought in a process, right, I tested first, I spent a little budget first and now I was able to prove roi and say, okay, like with this creator, we're getting millions of impressions and I think if we do a little more and scale this up, we can make.

00:36:17.340 --> 00:36:20.777
You know, we can make more money, we can make more impressions, and so I think that's that's how we do and everything I click on.

00:36:20.777 --> 00:36:24.844
Marketing is that way if you have an idea, you test it cheaply and then you fully execute on it later.

00:36:25.425 --> 00:36:36.552
Nice uh, one last thing I'm curious about is like what's the, what's the ClickUp culture, and has it sort of changed over the years, or and or, you know, are you remote?

00:36:36.552 --> 00:36:40.010
How have you sort of kept the culture or has it evolved, and what is it now?

00:36:40.619 --> 00:36:44.268
I think culture is one of the most important things and we've learned a lot of lessons on culture over the way.

00:36:44.268 --> 00:36:45.644
You know we studied a lot as we grew.

00:36:45.644 --> 00:36:49.157
We studied the whole Netflix model, keep the A players and all of that.

00:36:49.157 --> 00:36:55.246
But I think we've kind of built our own new version of it now and at ClickUp what we found is we don't care about what college people went to.

00:36:55.246 --> 00:36:56.364
We don't care about any of that.

00:36:56.364 --> 00:37:01.945
Really, it's not a big deal for us.

00:37:01.945 --> 00:37:04.487
It's not like you all you have to go to were.

00:37:04.527 --> 00:37:07.311
You know like one was like a camp counselor prior to this.

00:37:07.311 --> 00:37:08.391
Another one worked at Lowe's.

00:37:08.391 --> 00:37:17.630
A lot of our early on customers were people who wrote amazing feedback on our candy board and we were like, wow, they're giving amazing, you should work here.

00:37:17.630 --> 00:37:18.614
You know these suggestions are great Genius.

00:37:18.614 --> 00:37:30.565
I can name, you know, multiple of Zach Blodgett, michael Van Dorn, multiple really cool people that were just writing in and, you know, had jobs like Lowe's or Home Depot, I think both of them before something funny like that, and now they're like top employees at ClickUp.

00:37:30.585 --> 00:37:31.148
Very high up.

00:37:31.981 --> 00:37:35.612
So I think the culture is very kind, very like how can I help?

00:37:35.612 --> 00:37:47.248
And I think we're very direct in the way that we don't waste time with if something's not good, we're not going to sugarcoat it, but we do it in a polite way, and we follow that from Zeb I think Zeb really got this in the more direct we are.

00:37:47.248 --> 00:37:50.273
Hey, this is not good work, but we're down to help you get to good work.

00:37:50.273 --> 00:37:51.335
That's there.

00:37:51.335 --> 00:37:56.503
Everyone loves to help everyone.

00:37:56.503 --> 00:37:57.126
It's very friendly, and we are.

00:37:57.146 --> 00:38:00.501
We're probably about 50-50 in the fact that we have a lot of people in our San Diego office, but still pretty remote as well.

00:38:00.501 --> 00:38:04.045
So we have a lot of people come into office on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

00:38:04.045 --> 00:38:15.271
We provide the food and all that great stuff, but people can come in any day they want, but I'd say Tuesday and Wednesdays are the more packed days, and we also do this part where we still don't understand a lot of the companies remote, and we want that to be fine.

00:38:15.271 --> 00:38:16.302
It's where we get great talent.

00:38:16.302 --> 00:38:27.592
We'll do is, though we'll say like, okay, maybe once a year, twice a year, we'll fly out everyone from a team and just put them up in a hotel and then we'll give them audacious goals to hit and say hey look, if you can hit this, we'll take you out to nice.

00:38:27.612 --> 00:38:30.882
We still think about nice dinners, but we'd see whatever they can accomplish all together in person.

00:38:30.882 --> 00:38:32.967
And it builds camaraderie, it keeps people close.

00:38:32.967 --> 00:38:35.409
We find it's worth the investment every single time and we have.

00:38:35.409 --> 00:38:36.396
It's not like we have to rent space.

00:38:36.396 --> 00:38:37.280
We have the office there.

00:38:37.280 --> 00:38:40.143
We have to deal with the hotels nearby, so we have them.

00:38:40.143 --> 00:38:44.269
Come in, fly them out, pay for the and get some great work done.

00:38:45.271 --> 00:38:45.811
That's amazing.

00:38:45.811 --> 00:38:46.333
I love that.

00:38:46.333 --> 00:38:50.846
And what's your thought on the sort of there's a lot of return to office, right?

00:38:50.846 --> 00:38:56.780
Everyone needs to come back in and everyone's got to come back in, and you can't build anything great, you know, unless people are in the office.

00:38:56.780 --> 00:38:58.824
What's your sort of take on that?

00:39:00.467 --> 00:39:10.123
I love working in the office, like I'm a remote employee myself but you know, mainly because for taxes it is pretty good to be in Florida but I still go back a lot, like every six weeks I'm back in San Diego.

00:39:10.123 --> 00:39:21.387
I do think you get amazing work done in the office, like I think there is no replicating what you can do with people but you can still move very well remote, especially if you have good people who care and want to get it done.

00:39:21.387 --> 00:39:22.050
So I'm not like some.

00:39:22.050 --> 00:39:23.001
You have to be in the office.

00:39:23.001 --> 00:39:26.666
But you know I wouldn't lie and say there's not some benefits to being in the office.00:39:26.666 --> 00:39:34.315


We see it, but we find ways to do it without forcing people to live somewhere or things like that Nice, amazing.00:39:34.519 --> 00:39:37.309


Well, thank you so much for your time today.00:39:37.309 --> 00:39:42.925


We'll hang on for a little bit and we'll catch up for a second, but thanks for coming on.00:39:42.925 --> 00:39:43.427


This is so great.00:39:43.427 --> 00:39:50.351


I love hearing all the early stories and especially not niching down and staying true to that gut.00:39:50.351 --> 00:40:05.148


And now you've got the eye on IPO, which is amazing, so we'll be rooting for you and sending all those vibes, and I want to see the picture of the bell ringing at some point.00:40:05.369 --> 00:40:05.590


Same.00:40:05.590 --> 00:40:06.764


I always dreamed of that.00:40:06.764 --> 00:40:12.567


I remember seeing the C-Van guys my first company to do that and I was like I want to do that as well, so I'm hoping I can do it at a younger age than them.00:40:12.567 --> 00:40:28.998


And yeah, man, we're I'm fans of what you're building as well and I really, really, you know sending you all the good energy to see that come to fruition too top, but it is fine, oh yeah, no, it's, it's so good, it's so good, um, but I, I half and half I.00:40:29.619 --> 00:40:52.108


I I long for the future where you know, where millions of people are enjoying it and and and sharing their favorite things and and I also really enjoy right now, like the three of us, just like it's kind of better you can move a lot stuff out, yeah, every other day the platform and the outs are totally different, which is just so much fun yeah awesome, amazing, cool.00:40:52.108 --> 00:40:53.130


Thanks, we're good to see you.