Monday.com CEO: Failing is part of our success
Eran Zinman, co-founder and co-CEO of work platform Monday.com, on embracing failure in order to scale
In this instalment of our video series, My CEO Secret, we talk to Eran Zinman, who co-founded Monday.com with fellow software engineer Roy Mann in Israel in 2012.
Monday.com is a cloud-based platform that lets companies build their own work and project management tools. This approach is often referred to as ‘low code, no code’. It gives teams the flexibility to build their own apps and control workflows, for example.
When Monday.com went public in the US on Nasdaq in 2021 it was valued at $6.8bn (£5.2bn). This month that valuation rose above $14bn, cementing its reputation as another Israeli tech success story.
It now has more than a quarter of a million customers in over 200 countries. Around 27 per cent of its global revenues come from Europe. The UK is its second-largest market in terms of annual recurring revenue (ARR) from subscriptions. The firm employs more than 2,000 people.
Zinman and his leadership team have been inspired by the mantra common in Silicon Valley that you need to “fail fast” to find success. “People need to fail often in order to learn quickly,” explains Zinman.
This appreciation and acceptance of failure starts at the top. Zinman says he welcomes being directly challenged in meetings by colleagues who “know better than us”.
“I love it, that’s part of the Monday culture,” says Zinman, with a smile.
The company also believes in transparency with employees. It provides an app for staff called Monday Morning, which updates everyone daily on the key company financials.
It has also been transparent about its level of ambition from the outset. For many years, its office in Tel Aviv has had a digital sign that charts its revenue growth, with $1bn marked as a large target.
It hit that target in ARR from global subscribers this August.
