Episode 4: Making Mondays Less Painful

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Hello, it's Luke. Welcome back to SphereCast. This week, Xenia and Isabel interview Alexandra Detweiler, Director of Channel Partnerships, North America, at monday.com.

monday.com is a Work OS, an open, visually driven SaaS platform that allows teams to plan, organize, and track projects, all in one unified place. The platform features fully customizable workflows and a variety of off-the-shelf integrations with some of the world's most popular software solutions. monday.com boasts more than 7,000 reviews of 4.6 out of 5 or higher on reputable review sites, including G2, Capterra, Trustpilot, TrustRadius, and GetApp.

On the podcast, Alexandra digs deep on the value of monday.com, a value that teams from some of the world's largest and most successful companies have come to find. Companies like NBC, BBC Studios, Hulu, Discovery Networks, Adobe, and Coca-Cola. Alexandra also talks through her career journey, including what drove her move from a large enterprise to a scrappy startup and what makes for a good mentor.

And so without further ado, here's our conversation with Alexandra Detweiler.

Hi listeners. Isabel Londoño here from SphereCast, joined by my colleague Xenia and Alexandra from monday. It's great to have you here, Alexandra. Had the pleasure of knowing you for a few months and talked to you in the past. I think you have a really good, interesting journey as a woman in tech, like the three of us are here. You used to work for some really large corporations, and one day you told me you felt like something was missing. What was that, and how did you end up in monday?

That's right. I think you phrased it well, so thanks for having me here today. I did. I come from large tech, which isn't always the natural progression to get to a startup, right? A lot of people stay in startup, and they jump from one to another as they make them successful. You mentioned that itch, and I think we talked about it when I first met you.

I loved my time at Microsoft. I really did. It was instrumental to my learning as an individual and really as a leader. Additional education and classes, and all the different ways that they helped develop me, and almost felt guilty about leaving, but that itch was there. If I can kind of say anything that would be valuable or catch the attention of your listeners is that I probably stayed at the large corporation for two years too long. So, I felt that itch, and I knew that I wanted to create something of my own, but I didn't have the guts to leave. I didn't do it until one day I did, and I said it's now or never.

I've met wonderful people along the way. There's a net to fall back on, but it's time for me to be part of building something not on my own—no one does anything on their own—but Microsoft is a large establishment. So, I sought to find a startup where I could be part of a small team and essentially, Isabel, you know that photo that you see 1975 of Bill Gates and the small team? I was always so inspired by that. Like, will I ever get to be part of a small photo? So, I really wanted to get my hands dirty, and I wanted to be a part of building something and creating an infrastructure, not just working within one.

Yeah, I totally hear you. I've also worked for large corporations, small corporations, it's two different animals. But yeah, so how's your experience so far? Do you think you made the right choice?

I do, but again, it's not easy, and it's not always easy to know right if you've made the right choice. What's the measure? There's the work you do. The people you work with. The results of the company. There's not just one thing that says is this the right choice.

I can tell you thus far, hands down, best choice I've ever made. Again, I guess I couldn't have done it two years earlier because monday wasn't building a North American channel earlier, but it's been absolutely amazing. The team that we're building in the US, partners that we're bringing on, my peers and leaders in our Israel headquarters are all part of working together to create a world-class Work OS. I was drawn to this culture. Really stuck out to me.

That's awesome. So I have to ask, did you take the picture? Do you have the picture to compare in a few years from now?

You know what I have is I have, during these COVID times, it's tough to connect with the US team. We did a virtual wine tasting, and so I have a photo of all the faces sipping their wine. So, maybe that will be the photo that we'll refer to 20 years from now.

That's a good one. The photo with the wine tasting under COVID when the company started, that's a good one.

That's right. That's right. It's all a little different.

All right, this is Xenia with SphereCast. Hi Alex, thank you for joining us. I have a question about monday.com. Can you tell us more about it? What is it?

Yeah, I love it. I love just getting back to the basics. Okay, so first I'll give you a really short answer, and then we can talk about it maybe a little bit more depth, but at its core we are, monday.com is a cloud-based work operating system. I'm going to use the term Work OS where teams can run and plan and track projects and process and everyday work together.

I use it daily, and it's very interesting. But Work OS, that's a new term, right? Can you tell us more about it?

Yeah, absolutely. So, we coined it, it is a new term. We started off at monday.com as a project management tool, right? As we kept growing, though, we found that we served so many different needs for organizations, right? We're helping them run faster, we were helping them be more collaborative, and therefore more efficient.

As we grew, we found that there was more cross-functional teamwork and the ability to collaborate. So, we coined this phrase, right? It's a Work OS, and to our customers, to us, to our partners, it represents what? You use it every day, too, right? It's a better, more flexible, easy-to-use platform that can be used for every employee in an organization.

When I try to explain it to people again, I gave you kind of the clinical answer above, I think of it as a central nervous system, right? A central nervous system for organization, for an entire company to collaborate.

Wow, that's awesome. I know we use it internally, and I know I work with a lot of clients who also use it, so I agree that it is the central nervous system of a business. So, monday.com has been growing exponentially. What do you attribute to the success?

Good question. Well, collaboration software, let's be clear, has seen a tremendous boost in 2020 due to extenuating circumstances and the shift to remote work. So, from a timing perspective, our Work OS became very relative for businesses and organizations as they faced their own unique challenges, right? So, that's number one.

Number two, and I don't know whether I want to say this as yet or but or and, we offer something very unique, and I believe and monday.com believes the market was waiting for us, right? I mean, and that's the ability to control your own processes.

People come to us for all, excuse me, variety of reasons. Maybe on another podcast we can dive into deeper use cases, but maybe it's a missed deadlines, Xenia, or a lack of executive reporting visibility, or they're seeking just better collaboration. They want to manage everything, not just projects, but tasks and processes. So again, timing is good, but timing isn't everything. I truly believe that our Work OS that the market was waiting for us.

I completely agree. The feedback I get from my monday.com clients is that it's totally customizable, which they absolutely love to it fits their needs perfectly, and they can build their own flows in the way that their business operates. This is one of the main reasons why so many customers across industries embrace and love monday.com.

And also, monday.com is intuitive and easy to use for anyone. You don't need to be a developer or have some any sort of technical knowledge. And transitioning teams to new work work software, especially if it's the first time, it can be overwhelming, but with monday.com, it is easy, and it allows better communication, collaboration, visibility for the entire team and their internal, external stakeholders.

Well, I think right there, Xenia, is the reason why you're a fantastic partner, because I think you've said it better. You've said it better than I can, but I love hearing this because what we see on monday.com, and you hit on that, right, is that brilliant and not often seen combination of simplicity and complexity. Simplicity of use, and complexity of use cases and integrations, right?

Right.

Yeah. So, it's intuitive to use, and our customers see that value immediately. Yet, at the same time, we have shared customers that are managing incredibly complex projects and dashboards.

If I just summarize what I think about monday and the value in one short sentence, really, it connects other tools to your tech tech stack, too, right? So, it's easy to use, it's fun to use. Dare I say people tell us that they love it. I think we make work fun again.

Definitely sounds like monday.com is helping make Mondays less painful.

Yeah. So that's that's a good I think that's where we kind of landed on the name.

Is it really?

Yeah. The intention of the name is built right around that. You hit the nail on the head.

So Alex, our audience is largely in the tech field, and our clients often use Jira and Salesforce. How can monday play a role in the tech field?

So, I love this question. When Isabel was asking about my interesting career, I spent 13 years selling to IT, doing development life cycle work at Microsoft. So, my heart goes out to all R&D and developers, and I just love app dev.

So, when I saw that monday really adds a value to app dev, right, so when we look at Jira integration, we see the ability to get the most out of Jira, first and foremost, right? So, adding value to existing product that your customer or a customer has, that's very important first and foremost. But then with monday, having the ability to align the product, right? So, product, design, and support your teams. So, development workflow is then becomes transparent, right? You can enhance your roadmaps, you can track product issues, and you can gain visibility to the entire process. You're creating transparency and enhancing communication across the entire organization, right? Jira is is no longer just being used by one or two groups within a company. The information within Jira is now being pushed out and tracked and made actionable across an organization by integrating it with monday.

I agree. Transparency in process is imperative for any business, and especially during the times of COVID where most of us work remotely.

Yeah. With Salesforce, it's about gaining visibility to the entire sales process. So, perhaps it's giving your non-sales team access to information from Salesforce inside of monday at every stage. It's about keeping your customer-facing teams aligned, right? Let me give you an example: transfer leads between teams as they move through a sales pipeline, and that's removing friction from a customer's journey.

And I think above all else, what I love about the Salesforce and Microsoft integration is just seeing like the supercharge of the workflows, right? Instantaneously having information sync bilaterally between Salesforce and between monday that makes information and tasks actionable. Actionable, it's one of my favorite words, but it's without manual effort.

That's great. My colleagues at Sphere make fun of me because, and I think I said it to you once, I said, "I'm drinking the Kool-Aid, I'm loving monday." And you told me, "No, no, no, you're not drinking the Kool-Aid, you're drinking the champagne."

I remember that. I remember that. I'm like, "Please, it's the champagne."

So they joke with me. Sometimes I'll be talking to Miriam, I say, "Well, I'm going to show you what I did on monday, I'm going to show you my monday board, like have you been drinking the champagne?"

I love that. I love it. That's an inspiration.

Yeah. So speaking of inspiration, I do want to know how a career in tech, especially when you started, big corporations, I bet it wasn't easy. So what's your recipe for success?

It's always a tough question. I think people are expecting to hear like an ABC answer of I followed the footsteps of this person, and that's what got me here.

For me, I find inspiration, I think, the most in people who rise to whatever they're doing, and however they find success in nontraditional ways. I'm attracted to people who fail before they succeed. And whether it sounds cliché or not, I love seeing people succeed because they really did what they loved.

But it's when tech, right, because I work in tech, it's when tech becomes interdisciplinary to me that I just light up. I'm like that is so cool when we solve problems with technology. For me, I would say maybe technology and the arts. We are a gaming family in this household, having worked at Microsoft those years, there was Xboxes very early in my household, but we're also a family of artists. And so, I think from an early stage in my career, I really respected what do we call art, right? Is gaming art? And I remember being introduced early into my years this name, Jade Raymond.

I hadn't, no.

Yeah, so Jade, she's now gone on, and I believe she may be at Google or may have even moved on from Google, but she produced Assassin's Creed, right? One of the most popular games ever out there. She then went out, and she formed her own studio, that was Ubisoft, and then she launched another, Motive Studios, then moved on to Google, right? So, I just love that that was the intersect of two things. I'm inspired by when we see two things cross.

That's a great story. Another thing that I hear a lot about is mentorships. People are always throwing the word nowadays. People tell you to find a mentor, be a mentor, etc. I have mixed feelings about it. I think there's good ways to go about it, and there's not good ways. What's your thought on mentorship?

I think it's an overused term. I think everyone seeks and wants to have, and I think there's extreme value in mentorship. But there's, one, a difference in definition between, let's say, a peer mentor, right? The person who you go to on a daily basis to say, "Am I crazy? Does this make sense?"

That's certainly a peer. And then there's mentorship, which is normally someone in a more senior role.

I was reading Cheryl Sandberg, I like what she says about this, and in Lean In, she made a comment about how mentorships or the strongest relationships and mentorships that you find really spring out of real examples, and they're earned connections, right? I stress that word earned connections, because there's something felt on both sides. And so, those programs where you're like matched with a mentor, I don't see great success in those. They don't feel authentic. The person that you worked with for 3 months, 4 months, 2 years, and it starts to grow into something else, those are authentic. That's what worked for me in mentorship.

As I looked to leave, I talked to my mentors who did it before. When I thought about joining monday.com, I talked to my mentors and learned, and listened from their experiences. I don't have all the answers. My mentors don't have all the answers, but I did over the course of those 24 years surround myself with people who were committed to my success and wanted to help me. And me, them. It's a two-way relationship. It's like a bilateral, not to get back to tech, it's like a bilateral Salesforce sync, right? Both sides benefit.

Yeah. No, absolutely. I've had a similar experience as yours, and yeah, I think you have to find the right connection and the right person, but they can be incredibly helpful.

Well Alex, we are at the end of our podcast here. I know we talked a little bit about your journey, talked a little bit about monday.com, talk a little bit about kind of your how you got to where you were. I know one thing we definitely want to do in another episode, if you're willing to come, is talk a little bit more about those use cases. I'm a firm believer in the in the tool. I do sound like a broken record at Sphere talking about how great it's been, but I'd love to have you again join us and let's talk some more about some of the use cases and people can benefit from using it.

I would love to come back and give some examples. We've got a lot of fun ones. We've got a lot of interesting ones, we've got a lot of unique ones, so I would I accept the invitation, and I'd love to speak with you again.

Sounds awesome. Well, thank you, thank you very much, and thank you to our listeners. And have a great day.

A special thanks to our podcast guest this week, and once again to our sponsor, Sphere Partners, for bringing this episode to life.

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