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# Lessons from Eran Zinman
- URL: https://www.antoinebuteau.com/lessons-from-eran-zinman/
- Published: 2026-06-30T17:16:37.000Z
- Updated: 2026-07-18T21:43:56.000Z
- Description: Eran Zinman is the co-founder and co-CEO of monday.com, where he built the internal data engine Big Brain and promoted extreme organizational transparency. His methods connect rapid product shipping and engineering velocity with the demands of organizational scale.
- Author: Antoine Buteau
- Tags: Profile, Tech Entrepreneurs & Founders Profiles

![Visual summary of operating lessons from Eran Zinman.](https://www.antoinebuteau.com/content/images/2026/06/lessons-from-eran-zinman-profile-infographic.webp)

## Lessons from Eran Zinman

Eran Zinman is the co-founder and co-CEO of monday.com, which he took public alongside Roy Mann in 2021\. He built the company's internal data engine, "Big Brain," and instituted a culture of extreme organizational transparency. This profile documents his practical methods for shipping product, maintaining engineering velocity, and managing scale.

### Part 1: Product Design and Development

1. **On building for the user:** "If you build something that people actually want to use, rather than something management forces them to use, adoption happens organically." — [*Source: \[SaaStr*](https://www.saastr.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
2. **On horizontal software:** "We avoided building a tool tailored exclusively for software engineers or marketers. We wanted to build a primitive that anyone could shape to their own workflow." — [*Source: \[The Twenty Minute VC*](https://www.20vc.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
3. **On early product friction:** "In the beginning, dapulse was too rigid. When we stripped away the constraints and gave people a board with columns, usage exploded." — [*Source: \[Startup for Startup*](https://www.startupforstartup.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
4. **On visual management:** "Color operates as a fundamental communication tool that lets a manager understand a project's status in a fraction of a second, rather than serving as a cosmetic choice." — [*Source: \[TechCrunch*](https://techcrunch.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
5. **On feature prioritization:** "We never build features because one big enterprise asked for them. We build them because we see a systemic need across thousands of smaller accounts." — [*Source: \[The Logan Bartlett Show*](https://open.spotify.com/show/5heQOcsD4E8KjXQkC1J42b?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
6. **On simplicity:** "The hardest engineering challenge is keeping the user interface completely intuitive while adding enterprise complexity under the hood." — [*Source: \[Forbes*](https://www.forbes.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
7. **On the Work OS concept:** "Software should never dictate how you work. A Work OS provides the building blocks so the team can dictate how the software works." — [*Source: \[monday.com Blog*](https://monday.com/blog?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
8. **On avoiding feature bloat:** "You have to be willing to kill features. If data shows less than two percent of users are adopting a new capability, we remove it." — [*Source: \[SaaStr*](https://www.saastr.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
9. **On product speed:** "Latency is a feature. If a tool is slow, people will avoid logging in. Performance optimization matters as much as adding new buttons." — [*Source: \[Startup for Startup*](https://www.startupforstartup.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
10. **On continuous iteration:** "We release to production multiple times a day. If you wait for a feature to be perfect, you miss out on months of real user feedback." — [*Source: \[The Twenty Minute VC*](https://www.20vc.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*

### Part 2: The Co-CEO Model and Leadership

1. **On the co-CEO dynamic:** "It only works if there is zero ego. Roy and I do not care who gets credit for a good idea, as long as the company wins." — [*Source: \[The Twenty Minute VC*](https://www.20vc.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
2. **On dividing responsibilities:** "We avoid drawing hard lines between who manages what. It stays fluid based on who is most passionate or capable of solving a specific problem at the time." — [*Source: \[The Logan Bartlett Show*](https://open.spotify.com/show/5heQOcsD4E8KjXQkC1J42b?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
3. **On resolving disagreements:** "When we disagree, we look at the data. If the data lacks clarity, we run an A/B test. We let the market decide rather than arguing in a boardroom." — [*Source: \[Startup for Startup*](https://www.startupforstartup.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
4. **On sharing the psychological burden:** "Being a founder is incredibly lonely. Having a true partner means you have someone to absorb the stress when things get dark." — [*Source: \[SaaStr*](https://www.saastr.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
5. **On impact-driven leadership:** "Leadership involves defining the metric of success and giving the team complete autonomy to figure out how to move that metric." — [*Source: \[Calcalist*](https://www.calcalistech.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
6. **On hiring executives:** "We look for people who can scale with the company. Someone who excels at ten million in revenue might not be the right person at a hundred million." — [*Source: \[Forbes*](https://www.forbes.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
7. **On setting company direction:** "Strategy operates as a few clear KPIs that everyone in the company understands and memorizes, rather than a long document." — [*Source: \[The Logan Bartlett Show*](https://open.spotify.com/show/5heQOcsD4E8KjXQkC1J42b?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
8. **On ego management:** "The moment a leader starts prioritizing their own status over the product, the culture begins to rot." — [*Source: \[Startup for Startup*](https://www.startupforstartup.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
9. **On founder evolution:** "Your job changes every six months. You go from writing code to managing coders to managing public markets." — [*Source: \[The Twenty Minute VC*](https://www.20vc.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*

### Part 3: Transparency and Data (Big Brain)

1. **On absolute transparency:** "Every employee has access to our revenue numbers and churn rates. Transparency prevents office politics." — [*Source: \[SaaStr*](https://www.saastr.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
2. **On building internal tools:** "We could not find an off-the-shelf BI tool that met our needs, so we built Big Brain to track every single dollar and user interaction in real time." — [*Source: \[The Logan Bartlett Show*](https://open.spotify.com/show/5heQOcsD4E8KjXQkC1J42b?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
3. **On democratization of data:** "If only management can see the data, only management can make decisions. We want a junior engineer to see the data and fix a problem before I even know it exists." — [*Source: \[Startup for Startup*](https://www.startupforstartup.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
4. **On measuring everything:** "If you cannot measure it, you should avoid doing it. We track the return on investment of everything down to the last marketing dollar." — [*Source: \[TechCrunch*](https://techcrunch.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
5. **On single source of truth:** "Arguments happen when people have conflicting data. Big Brain ensures that everyone in the company looks at the exact same dashboard." — [*Source: \[The Twenty Minute VC*](https://www.20vc.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
6. **On avoiding vanity metrics:** "We ignore total registered users in favor of daily active users who actually pay us. Focus on what impacts the bottom line." — [*Source: \[Forbes*](https://www.forbes.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
7. **On data and accountability:** "When everyone can see the results of your project, you do not need a manager to tell you to work hard. The data creates built-in accountability." — [*Source: \[Startup for Startup*](https://www.startupforstartup.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
8. **On automated reporting:** "I receive automated text messages with our key metrics every day. It keeps the pulse of the business front and center." — [*Source: \[The Logan Bartlett Show*](https://open.spotify.com/show/5heQOcsD4E8KjXQkC1J42b?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
9. **On using data to say no:** "Data makes it very easy to kill bad ideas quickly without hurting feelings." — [*Source: \[SaaStr*](https://www.saastr.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
10. **On predicting churn:** "We use our internal data to flag accounts that are slipping away weeks before they actually cancel, giving us time to intervene." — [*Source: \[The Twenty Minute VC*](https://www.20vc.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*

### Part 4: Scaling and Product-Led Growth (PLG)

1. **On PLG fundamentals:** "The product has to sell itself. If a user needs a demo to understand how to use it, your product is broken." — [*Source: \[SaaStr*](https://www.saastr.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
2. **On the B2B versus B2C mindset:** "We treat our software like a consumer app. B2B buyers are simply regular consumers who happen to be at work." — [*Source: \[TechCrunch*](https://techcrunch.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
3. **On moving upmarket:** "We started with small teams, proved the value, and let those teams champion us to the rest of their enterprise." — [*Source: \[The Twenty Minute VC*](https://www.20vc.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
4. **On sales teams in a PLG model:** "Our sales team avoids cold calling. They wait for a user to invite five colleagues, and then they reach out to help them roll it out to fifty." — [*Source: \[The Logan Bartlett Show*](https://open.spotify.com/show/5heQOcsD4E8KjXQkC1J42b?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
5. **On global expansion:** "We localized the product and accepted local currencies very early on. You cannot rely solely on the US market if you want hyper-growth." — [*Source: \[Startup for Startup*](https://www.startupforstartup.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
6. **On pricing strategy:** "Pricing should remain simple and tied directly to value. If users feel nickeled and dimed, they will churn." — [*Source: \[SaaStr*](https://www.saastr.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
7. **On templates and onboarding:** "Providing pre-built templates for specific industries reduced our time-to-value from days to minutes." — [*Source: \[monday.com Blog*](https://monday.com/blog?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
8. **On maintaining culture while scaling:** "You keep the culture by maintaining small, autonomous squads. The moment a team gets too big, it slows down." — [*Source: \[Forbes*](https://www.forbes.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
9. **On customer diversity:** "Having customers across hundreds of different industries insulated us during economic downturns." — [*Source: \[The Twenty Minute VC*](https://www.20vc.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*

### Part 5: Engineering Culture and Execution

1. **On hiring engineers:** "We hire engineers who are product-minded. They must care about the user experience and customer outcomes alongside writing clean code." — [*Source: \[Startup for Startup*](https://www.startupforstartup.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
2. **On technical debt:** "We intentionally incur technical debt to move fast, but we schedule dedicated time to pay it off before it cripples us." — [*Source: \[The Twenty Minute VC*](https://www.20vc.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
3. **On autonomous squads:** "We organize into small teams of developers and a product manager. They own a metric and can ship code without asking for permission." — [*Source: \[The Logan Bartlett Show*](https://open.spotify.com/show/5heQOcsD4E8KjXQkC1J42b?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
4. **On continuous integration:** "If a developer writes code in the morning, it should be running in production by the afternoon." — [*Source: \[SaaStr*](https://www.saastr.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
5. **On over-engineering:** "The biggest mistake engineers make is building for a scale that does not exist yet. Build for today and rewrite it when it breaks." — [*Source: \[TechCrunch*](https://techcrunch.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
6. **On testing:** "Automated testing is the only way you can maintain velocity as the codebase grows. Manual testing creates a bottleneck." — [*Source: \[monday.com Blog*](https://monday.com/blog?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
7. **On open source:** "We rely on open source heavily, but we build our core intellectual property completely in-house." — [*Source: \[Forbes*](https://www.forbes.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
8. **On debugging:** "When something breaks, we do not look for someone to blame. We look for the flaw in the system that allowed it to break." — [*Source: \[Startup for Startup*](https://www.startupforstartup.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
9. **On remote engineering:** "We rely heavily on asynchronous communication. If you need a meeting to unblock your code, the system is flawed." — [*Source: \[The Twenty Minute VC*](https://www.20vc.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
10. **On product constraints:** "Engineers love constraints. Give them a tight deadline and a clear goal, and they will find an elegant workaround." — [*Source: \[The Logan Bartlett Show*](https://open.spotify.com/show/5heQOcsD4E8KjXQkC1J42b?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*

### Part 6: Marketing and Customer Acquisition

1. **On performance marketing:** "We treated YouTube and Facebook ads as an exact science. We measured the payback period on every single campaign." — [*Source: \[SaaStr*](https://www.saastr.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
2. **On brand vs. performance:** "Early on, we spent zero on brand. Every dollar had to yield a measurable sign-up. Brand awareness occurred as a byproduct." — [*Source: \[The Twenty Minute VC*](https://www.20vc.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
3. **On ad creative:** "We made our own ads in-house using screen recordings of the product. High-production commercials convert worse than raw, authentic demonstrations." — [*Source: \[Startup for Startup*](https://www.startupforstartup.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
4. **On content marketing:** "Content only works if you actually answer the user's question immediately, rather than forcing them to read a long essay." — [*Source: \[TechCrunch*](https://techcrunch.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
5. **On acquisition costs:** "We felt comfortable spending heavily on marketing because our internal data proved the cohorts would pay back in less than a year." — [*Source: \[The Logan Bartlett Show*](https://open.spotify.com/show/5heQOcsD4E8KjXQkC1J42b?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
6. **On ignoring competitors:** "We never mention competitors in our marketing because it validates them. We talk entirely about our users' problems." — [*Source: \[Forbes*](https://www.forbes.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
7. **On global marketing:** "You cannot simply translate English ads. You must adapt to the context and the cultural nuances to get good conversion rates." — [*Source: \[Startup for Startup*](https://www.startupforstartup.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
8. **On viral loops:** "The best acquisition feature we built was the ability to invite a guest to a board for free. It introduced our product to external vendors seamlessly." — [*Source: \[monday.com Blog*](https://monday.com/blog?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
9. **On scaling spend:** "You cannot scale marketing spend linearly. At a certain point, the algorithms saturate and you have to find entirely new channels." — [*Source: \[SaaStr*](https://www.saastr.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*

### Part 7: Navigating Failure and Resilience

1. **On celebrating failure:** "We host events where we stand up and present our biggest failures. Normalizing failure removes the fear that paralyzes execution." — [*Source: \[The Twenty Minute VC*](https://www.20vc.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
2. **On early struggles:** "We almost ran out of money multiple times. You survive by focusing entirely on the customers who actually love the product." — [*Source: \[TechCrunch*](https://techcrunch.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
3. **On hiring mistakes:** "A bad hire reflects a failure of your hiring process. Correct the process quickly and part ways amicably." — [*Source: \[Startup for Startup*](https://www.startupforstartup.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
4. **On sunk costs:** "We spent months building a chat feature that nobody used, so we deleted it. Holding onto a mistake just because it took time to build is a fallacy." — [*Source: \[SaaStr*](https://www.saastr.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
5. **On market volatility:** "You cannot control the public markets or the macro economy. You can only control your net retention and your shipping velocity." — [*Source: \[The Logan Bartlett Show*](https://open.spotify.com/show/5heQOcsD4E8KjXQkC1J42b?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
6. **On pivoting:** "We realized dapulse was a terrible name that confused people. Rebranding to monday.com felt terrifying but necessary for mainstream adoption." — [*Source: \[Forbes*](https://www.forbes.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
7. **On managing morale:** "During downturns, transparency becomes even more important. You have to show the team the real numbers and exactly how the company plans to navigate it." — [*Source: \[The Twenty Minute VC*](https://www.20vc.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
8. **On resilience:** "Startups operate as a series of existential crises. You get better at managing the anxiety, but the crises never really stop." — [*Source: \[Startup for Startup*](https://www.startupforstartup.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
9. **On learning from churn:** "Every time a customer cancels, it provides a free lesson. We interview churned users more rigorously than active ones." — [*Source: \[Calcalist*](https://www.calcalistech.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*

### Part 8: Artificial Intelligence and the Future

1. **On the AI shift:** "AI is transitioning software from a system of record that you have to manage to a system of action that actually does the work for you." — [*Source: \[The Twenty Minute VC*](https://www.20vc.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
2. **On vibe coding:** "We are entering an era where users avoid needing to know how to code. They describe what they want and the AI generates the workflow." — [*Source: \[SaaStr*](https://www.saastr.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
3. **On AI integration:** "Bolting a chatbot onto a product is insufficient. AI must be deeply embedded into the native data structures to be genuinely useful." — [*Source: \[The Logan Bartlett Show*](https://open.spotify.com/show/5heQOcsD4E8KjXQkC1J42b?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
4. **On efficiency:** "AI allows us to maintain our output without growing headcount linearly. It acts as a massive lever for cash efficiency." — [*Source: \[TechCrunch*](https://techcrunch.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
5. **On the threat to SaaS:** "Companies offering basic workflow organization will be disrupted. You have to offer proprietary data and AI-driven insights to survive." — [*Source: \[Forbes*](https://www.forbes.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
6. **On data privacy with AI:** "Enterprise customers fear their data leaking into public models. Trust and enterprise-grade security will dictate AI adoption." — [*Source: \[monday.com Blog*](https://monday.com/blog?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
7. **On AI agents:** "The future goes beyond generating text; it involves autonomous agents that can schedule meetings and close tickets without human intervention." — [*Source: \[The Twenty Minute VC*](https://www.20vc.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
8. **On breaking silos:** "AI can read across every department's databases instantly, eliminating the old problem of marketing and sales having mismatched data." — [*Source: \[Startup for Startup*](https://www.startupforstartup.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*
9. **On human oversight:** "No matter how good the AI gets, humans will still define the strategy and govern the final output. The role shifts from doer to editor." — [*Source: \[SaaStr*](https://www.saastr.com/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)*\]*