338: Version Update | How AI is Redefining monday.com’s Core Product

**Darya Wertheim** (0:00)
Hi, everyone, I'm Darya Wertheim, and you've tuned in to Startup for Startup, the series where we talk about how AI is reshaping and redefining Monday.
Today, we're gonna talk about the product shift we're making and the process behind it. Joining me here are Eran Zinman, co-founder and co-CEO at Monday. Hi, Eran.

**Eran Zinman** (0:16)
Hi, Darya.

**Darya Wertheim** (0:16)
And Daniel Lereya. It's been a while since you were here. Hi, Lereya. CPTO, I mean, you see it written down.

**Eran Zinman** (0:24)
Chief Product and Technology.

**Darya Wertheim** (0:26)
Exactly. It's actually easier to say without the acronym. So today we'll talk about how we even approach the product change here at Monday. We'll also explain exactly what the change is, what worked, what didn't work along the way, where we are now, and what's still challenging us. Shall we start?

**Eran Zinman** (0:40)
Let's do it.

**Darya Wertheim** (0:55)
So a recap for those who listened or didn't listen to the previous episodes. We basically talked about what the actual change in AI in SaaS was, right? And also why it's hard to change, Eran. What do we want to talk about today?

**Eran Zinman** (1:08)
Yeah. So we talked about what the change actually is in terms of the value that software gives to humans. After that, we talked about why it's hard to change, a lot of psychological, organizational aspects, and so on.
And today we want to bring it down to earth a bit and talk through our example, through Mandy's example, about what we've changed so far. But I think what's important for Daniel and me to reflect today to you and to everyone is a lot of the thought process, mistakes we made along the way, what we didn't understand, what we didn't understand, sharing insights on the go and doing everything openly and out there. So it's super interesting, in my opinion.

**Darya Wertheim** (1:43)
Yeah, it's even cool to say that some of the products we were talking about, I think haven't even been released to all users yet, right? Like, wow, that's actually, it's really exciting to talk about it at such an early stage. So Daniel, I don't know if you listened to the previous episodes. What Roy and Eran talked about in the previous episodes, they mentioned what Jason Lemkin defined as AI dust.
Like products now, any software can add a little AI dust to its product, sprinkle a chat here and there and say, okay, we're an AI product.
So I want to ask you if we also fell into this pitfall.

**Daniel Lereya** (2:18)
So first of all, of course, but really if I think about our beginning, which sounds to me, I was just telling Eran that it feels like a lifetime already.
Really, when the whole gen AI revolution started, the first thing is that you don't really understand, or at first we didn't understand exactly where it was going to fit in, where it would improve our product, did our product even need to change? That was something that wasn't on our radar at the time. And I think the first period was like experimentation with the technology and trying to understand what this thing could even do.
And this first stage was very much characterized by us being super excited about everything. It's really hard to go back to that in your head, just a year ago, we were super excited to hear an AI having a conversation. We were super excited to see a really good summary of text. And so in the first stage, really, we tried to understand how we bring Monday's direction, which was always to take technology, make it accessible to people, give them the power of that technology and how we actually take AI and do the same thing. And I can share that at first, we didn't really know how to do it. So we started with all kinds of things that seemed like magic and good to us at the time.

**Darya Wertheim** (3:30)
Like what, for example?

**Daniel Lereya** (3:31)
Just as an example, we have a formula column in the product. You can think of it like a formula in Excel, meaning it's something super powerful, but also complex to write the formula.
We said, okay, we have a crazy idea, very innovative and revolutionary. Let's build this formula using AI.
And I remember we were so excited to see our customers who until that moment didn't even think they could do it, suddenly doing really complex things with formulas.

**Eran Zinman** (3:56)
I'll just explain the scenario for a second, okay?
If you have, like in Excel, in the past, you can do a formula say equals AI5 or some if and such. So we also have something like that. Or you can write some or roll up or all kinds of things like that.