Brief Summary
This episode of The Peel with Turner Novak features an interview with Zeb Evans, founder of ClickUp, a productivity platform. Zeb shares his entrepreneurial journey, highlighting multiple near-death experiences that shaped his perspective and work ethic. He discusses the importance of hiring the right people, particularly users who understand the product's value, and the challenges of scaling a company while maintaining a startup mentality. Zeb also delves into ClickUp's product development strategy, emphasizing the importance of rapid iteration and customer feedback. He shares insights on the company's growth hacking tactics, the decision to raise a significant amount of money in 2021, and the future of AI in the workplace. Finally, Zeb emphasizes the importance of journaling and routine for personal growth and development.
- Zeb Evans, founder of ClickUp, shares his entrepreneurial journey, highlighting multiple near-death experiences that shaped his perspective and work ethic.
- He discusses the importance of hiring the right people, particularly users who understand the product's value, and the challenges of scaling a company while maintaining a startup mentality.
- Zeb also delves into ClickUp's product development strategy, emphasizing the importance of rapid iteration and customer feedback.
- He shares insights on the company's growth hacking tactics, the decision to raise a significant amount of money in 2021, and the future of AI in the workplace.
- Finally, Zeb emphasizes the importance of journaling and routine for personal growth and development.
Early Life and First Businesses
Zeb recounts his early entrepreneurial experiences, starting with selling toys as a child and later selling candy in elementary school. He shares how a near-death experience at age 10 led him to discover online marketplaces like Alibaba and eBay, which he used to sell DVDs and clothing. He also discusses the challenges of selling bootleg DVDs and the lessons learned from that experience.
College, Disney, and a Robbery
Zeb describes his decision to attend Virginia Tech, despite his dislike for school, and his subsequent experience working at Disney World. He highlights the valuable lessons he learned about customer service, including the importance of empathy and understanding customer expectations. He also shares his experience being robbed at gunpoint, which solidified his decision to drop out of college and pursue his entrepreneurial ambitions.
ClickUp's Origins and Early Growth
Zeb explains how ClickUp was initially developed as an internal tool to improve productivity within his previous company. He emphasizes the importance of the ability to switch between list and board views, a feature that was unique at the time and contributed to ClickUp's early growth. He also discusses the company's commitment to rapid iteration and weekly release cycles, which allowed them to quickly adapt to customer feedback and build a product that met their needs.
Hiring Mistakes and Scaling Challenges
Zeb recounts the challenges of scaling ClickUp from 100 to 800 employees in a year, highlighting the mistakes made in hiring managers who didn't share the company's mission and values. He emphasizes the importance of having managers who care about both their team and the company's success, and the need to strike a balance between empathy and objectivity. He also discusses the technical challenges of scaling the platform, including the need to re-platform and rebuild the architecture to ensure reliability and performance.
Growth Hacking and Early Customer Acquisition
Zeb describes ClickUp's early growth hacking tactics, including a script that scraped review websites to identify dissatisfied customers of competitors. He explains how they used this information to reach out to potential customers on LinkedIn and highlight the benefits of ClickUp. He also discusses the importance of consistent growth and the challenges of bootstrapping a company in a competitive market.
Investors and Raising Money
Zeb shares his experience with investors, including the initial reluctance to raise money and the decision to pursue funding in late 2019 due to competitive pressure. He describes the process of meeting with investors and the feedback he received, including a thoughtful rejection from Andreessen Horowitz. He explains why he ultimately decided to raise money in May 2020, highlighting the importance of having the right partners and the impact of COVID-19 on the market.
The Importance of Hiring Users
Zeb emphasizes the importance of hiring users as product managers, arguing that they have a deep understanding of the product's value and are more likely to be passionate about its success. He discusses the challenges of hiring experienced product managers from larger companies and the importance of finding individuals with product intuition and the ability to iterate quickly.
Generative AI and the Future of ClickUp
Zeb discusses ClickUp's early adoption of generative AI, highlighting the company's focus on using AI to improve productivity and automate tasks. He describes the development of AI-powered features, including project update builders, standup replacements, and task automation tools. He also discusses the company's investment in universal search, which allows users to connect and search across multiple applications, and the potential for AI to create a significant moat for ClickUp in the future.
ClickUp's New Chat and Video Calling Feature
Zeb announces the upcoming launch of ClickUp's new chat and video calling feature, emphasizing the importance of communication as a core product within most companies. He highlights the benefits of integrating communication into ClickUp's existing platform, including seamless access to other features and AI-powered functionality. He also discusses the potential for AI to revolutionize communication within the workplace, automating tasks and providing instant answers to questions.
The Future of Startups and AI
Zeb expresses concerns about the potential impact of AI on the startup ecosystem, arguing that the rapid development of AI-powered tools could erode the differentiation that startups rely on. He suggests that the future may be dominated by "super apps" that offer a wide range of functionality within a single platform. He also discusses the importance of serving new customers who are not currently using software tools, and the potential for AI to unlock new use cases in industries like healthcare and plumbing.
Journaling and Routine
Zeb concludes the interview by discussing the importance of journaling and routine for personal growth and development. He shares his own experience with journaling for over 11 years and the benefits he has derived from reflecting on his experiences and lessons learned. He also discusses his personal routine, including his approach to sleep, diet, and exercise, and how these practices have helped him manage his narcolepsy and maintain a high level of productivity.
