Monday.com reports earnings

Investment Analysis Clubs Saul’s Investing Discussions
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Looks good to me. The best part is that they actually came in with a positive non-GAAP EPS of $0.05 compared to expectations of a loss of $-0.54.

● Revenue was $136.9 million, an increase of 65% year-over-year, or 68% on an FX-adjusted basis.
Customers with 50k+ in ARR grew 116%

● NDRR was over 120%

● NDRR for 50k+ customers was over 145%

● GAAP operating loss was $28.2 million compared to a loss of $29.2 million in the third quarter of 2021; GAAP operating margin was negative 21% compared to negative 35% in the third quarter of 2021.

● Non-GAAP operating loss was $2.2 million compared to a loss of $9.4 million in the third quarter of 2021; non-GAAP operating margin was negative 2% compared to negative 11% in the third quarter of 2021.

● GAAP net loss per basic and diluted share was $0.51 compared to GAAP net loss per basic and diluted share of $0.65 in the third quarter of 2021; non-GAAP net income per basic share and diluted share was $0.06 and $0.05, respectively, compared to non-GAAP net loss per basic and diluted share of $0.26 in the third quarter of 2021.

● Net cash provided by operating activities was $20.0 million, with $14.0 million of adjusted free cash flow, compared to net cash provided by operating activities of $3.8 million and $2.9 million of adjusted free cash flow in the third quarter of 2021.

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About Q3 Revenue

They told us on 8/8/2022 that they would deliver up to $131M in revenue, expecting YoY % growth of 58%, a QoQ % growth of 5.9%. They delivered $136.9M, a beat of 4.5%, YoY growth of 65% and almost 11% QoQ. Bravo.

MondayDotCom customers are 54% USA Based, so there was a hit of 3% of revenue due to a strong dollar growth. Monday would grown revenue up to 68% adjusting for the FX (Foreign Exchange headwind). Roughly they would have delivered another $2.5M probably but that’s speculation.

Their revenue Run Rate is now at $547.6M. So far I am pleased with their Rev Growth, it was above my modeled expectation of $133M

Adjusted Gross Profit was 121.7M, a 89% Profit Margin, continuing as previous Qs.

Their Deferred Revenue came in light at 189.4M (See Balance Sheet), an increase of 6.5% over last Q. This deceleration worries me a bit.

Operating Income

Their Adjusted Operating Income outlook last Q was a loss of $24M and they delivered a loss of $2.2M, much better. Some may not like that it came from SBC of over $26M but I don’t mind. Adjusted Operating Margin was -2%, an improvement over -12% last Q.

Cash Flow

Net Cash from Operations was positive $20M, 15% of Revenue compared to -$15.6M last Q, a great improvement. Last 4 Qs (TTM) Net cash is positive at $6.5M

Adjusted Free Cash Flow came in at $14M, over 10% margin (% of Rev). Last 4Qs (TTM) FCF is a loss of -$11.4M so with each Q I am looking for path towards TTM positive FCF.

Customers

Very happy to see they added 163 enterprise customers, They now have 1323 with ARR of $50K+. Those customers represent 26% of ARR, an improvement of 2% (last Q was 24%) and their NDRR came in at 145% (it was 150% last Q)

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We don’t know the number of accounts with 10+ users but we know that they contribute 76% of ARR, every Q we improve that metric. NDRR for that cohort is steady 135% over the last 4 Quarters. Yeah!

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Finally they told us the overall NDRR for all customers went down to 120% from 125% last Q.

Let me squeeze in my own spreadsheet for customer growth; warning: time goes from right to left. I think the Revenue and 50K+ customer growth are the key metrics for me to watch

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I am particularly pleased that after 5 months of releasing Monday Products on top of workOS they now report over 3000 new paying customers just for those products (last Q it was over 1000) so that’s a huge improvement of 2000 customers in last Q. (on earnings call they mentioned that only newly signed up customers get those products, and soon they will open it up to the existing customers)

headcount and offices

They added 63 employees in Q3, for a total of 1552. The revenue per employee increased. We now can see Monday going after North American accounts by opening office in New York, Chicago and Miami. I think there is opportunity here since they generate 54% of revenue from North America.

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Earnings Call

I listened to the Earnings Call but I didn’t make notes. I’ll await the transcript and listen to it again. (I usually read and listen to ER calls 2 or 3 times for every company I invest it, it’s that due diligence, I don’t see any shortcut so I do recommend you listen and read transcripts)

Roy, Eran and Eliran were very calm, confident and reassuring on the call. They emphasized that they watch for efficiencies from Big Brain, and execute their playbook. Their position in EMEA is improving market share, they see lower cost of customer acquisition. They did acknowledge that there will be headwinds due to FX as they were in Q3.

Sources and Links.

I only use Investor Relations materials most of the time in reading about the company’s earnings.

You can find all here monday.com - Financials & Filings - Quarterly Results

I highly recommend perusing the following:

Disclosure

We own 17% of our portfolio in Monday. Why?

  • The revenue growth is strong, we expect Q4 Full Year 2022 to reach 68% versus last FY21 91%
  • 90% Gross Margins consistent from Q to Q
  • Enterprise customers growth is strong, over 150 new customers per Q, and decelerating possibly but I am watching that metric for signs of weakness
  • Great NDRR numbers
  • Partners growth that helps Monday get new customers
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Nice write up, Baconski. The one key factor you did not mention was the guidance, which was the most concerning to me. Of course, every company is guiding cautiously right now as a result of the macroeconomic backdrop however, Monday’s guidance hints at a bigger slowdown than most.

Guidance

Monday expects total revenue of $141 million next quarter at the midpoint. This represents 3.0% QoQ and 48% YoY growth. It is safe to assume they will beat this guidance as they have every other previous quarter. Let’s predict they beat this guidance by 4.5%, which was the percent they beat by this quarter as you shared. This would result in 7.6% QoQ and 54% YoY growth.

This guidance is extremely concerning to me because it continues the trend of rapid deceleration. Just over a year ago, Monday was growing 18-20% sequentially. The first crack in the growth armor appeared in Q4 last year, when they grew just over 15%. Q1 & Q2 this year saw Monday grow at roughly 14% sequentially, however, this quarter was their lowest on record at 10.6%. Unfortunately, it seems the lowest QoQ record is almost assuredly going to be broken again next quarter.

I sold out of Monday back in May when it became apparent their growth show some weakness. I have kept it on my watch list since then but this guidance, along with the deceleration of enterprise customer growth, removes it from my watch list. The macro is likely impacting them a bit harder than others software providers since they are not as mission critical. I believe Monday is too early in their journey to be seeing this kind of deceleration, even if most of it is driven by the macro.

Best of luck to all shareholders.

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@MajorFool20 While I would have preferred to see stronger growth, the slowdown is likely due to the macro environment.

Just over a year ago, Monday was growing 18-20% sequentially.

A year ago:

  • DataDog was growing 16% to 21% sequentially. Now: 7.6%
  • Cloudflare was growing 10% to 13% sequentially. Now: 8.3%

Should we sell them? I wouldn’t.

Will I add to MDAY? Unlikely, as I see stronger alternatives.

But we should keep the right perspective.

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@mooo I understand both these businesses, along with pretty much every other business we discuss here, is decelerating but these two are not forecasting to continue slowing down like Monday so I don’t think this is a like for like comparison. To compare:

Datadog:

Yes, they just grew 7.5% which is a steep drop from last year however, their guidance indicates there is a strong chance their Q4 growth rate will accelerate QoQ. If we assume they will beat by 6% next quarter like they did in Q3, their sequential growth will be 8.5%. They said on the call this was very conservative guidance.

Last year, Datadog grew 16.5% QoQ on average. With 8.5% growth next quarter, this would result in an average of 9.8% for FY22. So yes, a drop of almost 7% is a steady deceleration however, they have remained rather consistent this year with sequential growth of 7.5% - 11.9% and will be exiting the year at a respectable 8.5% ish growth, which is nearly on par with the yearly average.

Additionally, Datadog would end FY22 with $1.68 billion in sales. This is more than 3x the sales of Monday.

Cloudflare:

Cloudflare grew 8.2% this quarter and their guidance also indicates their Q4 growth rate will accelerate. If they beat by just 1% next quarter like they did this quarter, their sequential growth will be 9%.

This would mean Cloudflare will finish the year with a 9.3% average QoQ growth rate versus the 11.4% growth seen last year. This is not much of a deceleration imo given the macro environment and goes to show the consistency of their business model.

Lastly, Cloudlfare would end FY22 with $977 million in sales, which is nearly 2x the sales of Monday.

So, to compare, Cloudflare and Datadog are both growing off a significantly larger base, are going to be growing faster sequentially next quarter, and expect to accelerate slightly rather than continue decelerating by several basis points. I don’t think these businesses are alike whatsoever. I see Cloudflare and Datadog as much stronger and more resilient businesses. Just my $0.02.

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@MajorFool20 These are good thoughts! And I agree with the higher absolute revenue generated by Cloudflare and DataDog.

I would like to add two facts to consider:

DataDog
DataDog’s Q4 is usually very strong due to seasonality. Looking from that perspective, it’s not a re-acceleration driven purely by business strength.

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Cloudflare
Cloudflare’s subscription model is not usage- or seat-based. This is a strength.
From their last earnings call:

I think that if you are a usage-based, a purely usage-based model, it is a place where people are looking for areas to save money. Similarly, if you are a seat-based model, as you’re seeing some companies do layoffs or, at a minimum, not expand their seats, that is something that is challenging in the current environment. I think we are fortunate that today, most of our revenue is not usage-based and not seat-based.

Monday’s subscription model is seat-based and therefore more fragile in this environment. That doesn’t mean, there is an issue with the business itself. I don’t believe so. But I have to admit, there are better, less fragile, mission-critical companies.

Like Cloudflare and DataDog (although DDOG’s subscription model is consumption-based).

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Guidance and Deceleration

Hi @MajorFool20 , yes, they grew ~10.7% this QoQ, so yes, slower than Q3 last year of 17.6%, and yes, I can see the FX headwind of 3%, and they said that had it not been for the strong USD they would have delivered 68% YoY, so perhaps ~12.8% QoQ, which is still less and I am ok with that for now but I can change my mind.

The updated their FY to $511 from $502 last Q, a bump of $9M.

For Q4 they also warned us of about 3% headwind due to FX, yes, that’s real less $ coming in next Q.

If they beat next Q we’ll end Full Year 2022 at 67% to 69%, yes deceleration from last FY21 in which they did 91%

For now my thesis is that Monday is delivering a platform for companies to build products on top of. Businesses of all sizes are empowered and demonstrating that they can build, configure, and reconfigure custom noCode lowCode software that powers their own businesses. Monday is executing on that vision.

The management team is energized, delighted and often surprised by the innovation their customers come up with for themselves. The Monday team is learning new customer segments like CRM, these are new types of customers that are coming to them.

As long as Enterprise customer growth is strong over 100% with NDRR of 145% I consider my thesis holding and my conjecture has some feet to stand on .

I could be wrong, very wrong but I try to be less wrong every day if that’s possible.

Cheers ! Baconski

FYI, my sheet-brain for Monday revenue so I can refer to numbers, nothing fancy, time runs from right to left

UPDATE: I left in ‘as if number in Q3’ fixed

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I see some positives and negatives.

The first positive is the improvement in net income and positive cash flow.

The second positive is that their new sales CRM module is apparently doing extremely well. The below is from my notes and it may be lightly paraphrased. Bolding is mine.

Our sales CRM, consists of over half of the new Work OS product signups. It is already rated as one of the best CRM’s in the market, according to G2, and we continue to focus on making it even better through advancements such as new layouts and new reporting widget types.

As a reminder, these new Work OS products have only been made available to new customers and we will be excited to roll them out to our existing customer base in the near future.

Interesting that they are rolling it out to new customers and not yet to existing customers. It seems to be an entirely different type of customer which is probably a good thing and widens their TAM.

With CRM we tapped into a new market , we see new customers of a new kind, and we also see them comparing us to other companies that we were not compared to before. So the type of customers that are joining us is completely new. It’s like it’s not existing customers. And so obviously, they start off at a different scale, they want different things, and this is very encouraging for us because it proves for us that Monday is a true platform that has completely different products on it.

And for some worries:

First is that I’m surprised and disappointed that revenue is slowing as fast as it is.

Second is that they are building out all these fancy offices for their employees. It’s nice for employees, but it’s not good for shareholders, and I’m a shareholder. I thought it was worrisome.

We continue to invest in our people with new offices in New York City, Chicago, Miami, and Tokyo. We believe these spaces will invite even more collaboration and community for our teams while providing the flexibility they need to be successful.

And third is that they are planting 265,000 trees to help save the earth. That is something that I might make a donation to, but not something I want the companies I’m investing in to be doing. I want THEM to be laser focussed on making a profit.

We will plant 265,000 trees across four different forests in Southeast Africa over the next 18 months. This effort is a reflection of our ongoing commitment to making the planet sustainable, equitable, and safe.

Again, they are putting stockholders last, and that is why my position is just 2.6% at present.

Saul

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Worries About Fancy Offices

Those are my worries as well. Monday announced NYC location in September, Chicago in October, Miami in November… and there is ONE MORE office, per Mike Lamm’s linked in post

Where will the next office be? Dallas? LA? Austin? We’ll find out soon.

New York City

It looks like Monday subleased this space from BuzzFeed

Monday … will sublease 109,517 square feet through May 30, 2026, BuzzFeed said. Monday will pay a fixed monthly rent of $757,000 in cash, subject to periodic increases

Maybe it was a good deal because BuzzFeed is stuck with the lease. – Sounds like this much space can accommodate 500 to 700 employees? Their Q3 global headcount reported is 1552.

In NYC they are at 225 Park Ave S, prime real estate. This is the same building that Facebook had 200,000 square feet of space, recently they terminated their lease, and are moving into even larger space at Moynihan Train Hall.

monday.com will be housed across floors 13 through 16 … The space includes multiple outdoor terraces, a kitchen, and a large interconnecting staircase allowing for easy travel between the floors… will have a dedicated private entrance at the building

Chicago

6100 Square feet of space at the Old Post Office Building at 433 West Van Buren Street. That should accommodate 40 to 60 employees ?

I don’t see any red flags here even if the original press release did mention “the 3.5-acre urban rooftop oasis” which is accessible as weather permits to all tenants in the building

Miami

2125 Biscayne Blvd with over 3,000 square feet. This location will provide key support for … customers and serve as a critical hub for growing monday.com Partner Ecosystem across Latin America.

Smaller office for up to 20 employees ? Nothing fancy, 4 stories building over 60K square space in Edgewater/Wynwood area.

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Well that comes to $9.1 million per year in rent alone, for one office, without figuring furnishing it and maintenance (electricity, heating and A/C, furniture, telephones, computers, etc), and not counting all the salaries.

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I was asked my opinion elsewhere and thought it was worth posting here as well. Like Saul, I saw some positives and negatives with the difference being I don’t own MNDY at present.

The beat was a little better than I expected with a pleasant surprise in cash flows and net income. Looking deeper though it appears much of that is due to cutting S&M expense from $107M to $87M to $82M the last three quarters. I get the infamous Super Bowl ad and front-loaded hiring but still. Hopefully, MNDY has built enough brand awareness this isn’t robbing from the future to look better today. Regardless, management deserves credit for improving cash flow and losses so sharply.

On the flip side, raw sequential revenue added has gone from $13M to $15M and back to $13M the last three quarters. In fact, MNDY seems to have been stuck in this range the last six quarters or so. Most of our better winners have shown a more consistent upward trend at a similar stage. I also notice NRR declined slightly in a couple areas with $50K+ customer growth slowing as well. Lastly, the Q4 guide implies another revenue slowdown both overall and in sequential add with $20M in losses. A decent beat might help the losses but the revenue slowdowns are a virtual lock. That’s discouraging.

Ultimately, this is a tough environment for every firm. That’s why I’ve been focusing just as much on secondary trends as headline numbers in these reports. While I believe the supporting info for names like BILL, DDOG and TTD held up OK, I’m just not getting the same vibe with MNDY.* Therefore, it stays on the watch list.

*That’s just from the numbers though as I haven’t had a chance to read the call.

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Not to beat the issue into the ground, but I guess that I was also thinking about the seven or eight million dollars that they blew on a Super Bowl ad last fall. Putting together Super Bowl ad, and $9 million per year Park Avenue offices, as well as offices in London, Chicago, Miami, Tokyo, Tel Aviv, and who knows where else, and add on planting 265,000 trees, and I start worrying.

The company obviously has great products that its customers love. That’s not the problem.

The problem seems to be management not knowing how to manage the money after it comes in so as to make a profit instead of a lot of showing off. Complicated by the apparent euphoria they had when they were growing over 100%, and when they probably contracted for all these expenses, and now the financial crisis has hit and revenue growth is tumbling, and they still have all these contracted expenses. Oh well.

Feel free to disagree,

Saul

Saul

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Thank you all for sharing your thoughts on Monday!

I have pretty similar thoughts on their last earnings and a few more observations around positioning of their great product and enterprise focus.

CONS:

  • Growth and enterprise customer addition (>50k) is decelerating, both YoY and sequentially, and Monday is still quite small and should grow faster (but yes, there’s macro)
  • Two-fold headwinds with FX rates impacting 30% or their ARR and generally weak macro environment
  • Building fancy offices is a bit off focus for a company enabling (remote) work operations, I’d rather see it invested into Marketing, for instance (also, since their allocation on Marketing decreased)
  • Their positioning seems very broad, “A platform built for a new way of working”, that statement so broad that it doesn’t really say anything or shows how this benefits customers. They cover infinite use cases for 200+ industries and most business departments. Why can this be bad? If I think of Salesforce, I think of CRM. IF I think of Crowdstrike, I think of Cyber Security. If I think of Monday? Well, I can’t even explain it in one word. I think, more specific positioning might resonate better. This could be one reason why the CRM is seeing such strong traction, it solves one definite problem with a definite product and once onboarded, customers can expand into other use cases and functions from there and explore those other infinite use cases.

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  • This is highly subjective, but usually I find CCs very exciting and love to explore the details. However, this CC was somehow all them same in questions and prepared remarks and didn’t provide a lot of exciting insights to me.

PROS:

  • They are seeing really strong traction with their CRM product that added 50% of new Work OS Suite customers, see my point about positioning above. I think the CRM is really powerful and can be a great customer magnet.
  • I like their focus on enterprise (>50k). Their enterprise strategy can be seen through:
    • Moving product strategy up-market (according to their feature adds and investor presentation)
    • Investments into performance, speed and scalability of the product. Performance is a concern of every developer I’ve met and crucial for handling vast sets of data
    • Training for sales to sell enterprise product better in direct sales
    • Still very high NRR of 145% for large customers (even i it dropped from 150%)
    • If they execute nicely on moving up-market, this can be a very lucrative move
  • As a product nerd, I love their strong, customer-loved product with powerful capabilities (one-source-of-truth data model, non-dev workflow, integration and automation engine, building blocks and templates for pretty much all standard use cases, to name a few) and strong R&D focus. I’ve actually tested the product and find it really good.
  • Non-GAAP profitable for the first time with FCF of 14 million
  • Beautiful gross margin of 89% (Non-GAAP)
  • Their product-led growth fly wheel is still flying

I will stick to my small allocation for now, but will closely watch revenue and customer growth and look for that enterprise customer focus and the Work OS product to materialize into stronger revenue.

Cheers
Lisa

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Lisa, in my opinion, you nailed it. And to me, the fact that they’re having good traction with customers using their “platform” as a CRM says something. Monday seems to be a “platform” searching for a use case.

Your point above made me realize, potential customers are focused on a need. “We need cybersecurity” or “we need a CRM.” No one is saying “we need a platform built for a new way of working.” And when they do say “CRM” (for example) they don’t think of Monday unless they want a project. The ideal Monday customer is able to invest a lot of time, tinker, and customize a tool that, to its credit, is very flexible (broad)…but no one names a need and immediately thinks of Monday. Heck, maybe that’s why they think they need fancy offices to attract attention.

I think Monday’s 1300+ customers spending significant money with them…they are the customizers and tinkerers…they “get it” and that’s why their ranks grew incredibly fast…from a small base. Last year Monday was adding 30% or 40% more of them each quarter! This quarter that was down to 14%, and I think it will continue to fall fast.

I think you and Saul are wise to keep this one small. I feel like chances are slim that they’ll grow past a certain point.

Bear

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Thank you so much for your feedback, Bear!

This is exactly what I experienced working in Product Management and Product Marketing. Companies need a clear positioning and clear vision, which problems they solve, and for whom (doing everything for everyone just doesn’t work).

I like to compare of McDonalds to those restaurants that offer sushi, burger, Kebab and Chinese. Most people prefer the option where they get exactly what they want without choosing from a 200 item menu.

Customers don’t care about fancy features, they have a specific problem, and they want to solve it as fast, cost-efficient, and smooth as possible. And this is where Monday could sharpen their Go-to-Market strategy and overall positioning.

Like you mentioned, once the customers are on the platform, they absolutely love it! But this quarter, it seems the challenge is to get the customers to the point where they can love it.

Not so for the CRM, it has lots of traction and can be a nice opportunity for Monday.

Best
Lisa

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Too broad a focus makes for a difficult selling opportunity, yes. However, I do see it possible.
I would say, “In your attempt to keep relevant solutions at the forefront of everyone throughout your Company, Monday.com is able to do this. The Monday.com Platform, as a low/no code general tool enables everyone in your company to build custom links between solutions (many of them SaaS) with future updates automated.”

The following are reasons for me to believe in this narritive:

Data Orchestration and automation of Saas, Muji

The Modern Dat Stack (and hopefully going public-dbt: Data Built Tool)

Above and beyond ingest pipelines are data orchestration tools, which typically provide a more enterprise-focused platform for tracking & automating over all of an enterprise’s data flows between tools and SaaS services. Some provide a programming environment to harness data flows via code, while others are no-code. Some of these also have wider ambitions beyond the Modern Data Stack, to be a fuller Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) to interconnect data between SaaS platforms (an area that Asana and Monday.com compete in, as well as Workato and Zapier). Data Orchestration or Integration Platform as a Service(IPaaS) between Saas, which is what Monday.com is trying to become.

Tech trends in ‘23, Gartner

“Industry cloud platforms combine software, platform and infrastructure as a service (IaaS) with tailored, industry-specific functionality that can more easily adapt to the relentless stream of disruptions in their industry.

Enterprises can use the packaged business capabilities (PBCs) of industry cloud platforms as building blocks to compose unique and differentiating digital initiatives. That provides agility, innovation and reduced time to market, while avoiding lock-in.”

An example of a Sales Pitch from KPMG:

KPMG International, the audit, tax and advisory firm, announce a strategic alliance to empower enterprises to boost digital transformation, enhance organizational agility and increase operational efficiency and productivity. monday.com will be the first Work OS partner within the alliance, which is composed of a select group of tech leaders that are changing the future of work, including Microsoft, Salesforce, ServiceNow and Workday.

The flexible and configurable solutions built on monday.com infrastructure will simplify every aspect of work for enterprises, and enable KPMG to consistently provide real-time strategic insights and services for companies to digitally innovate their business, helping customers unlock opportunities for growth and constantly stay ahead of industry challenges.

Best

Jason

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Here are my thoughts on Monday’s marketing, which I wrote for my upcoming portfolio summary. But since this is relevant to this topic, I decided to add them here.

Also, this is not a counter-argument to @LisaOnCloud9 thoughts (love them!), but should provide an additional perspective:

I believe, their Marketing is very strong, and they know what they are doing. And I don’t believe, they randomly put a few million dollars into Super Bowl ads and “hope for the best”.

Monday’s marketing strategy in a nutshell:

  1. Usually, you are driving demand by raising awareness on top of the funnel, i.e.: with Superbowl- or Instagram ads. To become top of mind and create trust.

  2. Then, you (re-)target your ideal customers (which already are aware of your brand) with performance ads about specific use-cases to drive them to the bottom of your funnel.
    This is what Monday does:

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  3. Finally, their most powerful component of their demand generation engine is what really drives sales: Product Led Growth (PLG). Basically, the product sells itself:
    a) Its basic version is free to use, which makes people experience a “wow moment” without any friction like hitting a pricing wall or having to talk to someone first
    b) The product is so good and polished which make people fall in love to finally buy and recommend it.

Side note: PLG is what Cloudflare does very well, too!

So, while I agree with their messaging being weak on the surface “The platform built for a new way of working”, as it is not really telling:

  1. what it is
  2. who is it for
  3. why should one buy it

… there are dozens of sub-pages which make the use cases to the potential customers clear. And those pages, plus most likely, hundreds of invisible, specific landing pages
are used to target ideal customers.

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I.e. the use case for Sales: “The CRM software that’s simple to set up and easy to use monday.com lets you handle all your work in one place. What would you like to manage with your CRM platform?”

What: CRM

Who: Sales

Why: One source of truth

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At the same time, Monday is not just a CRM. Any department can create anything they can think of. Eventually the whole organization could end up using one software for which you currently need dozens.

“Why Monday” from their investors presentation sums it up well:

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But wait!

There is their demand creation layer:

Organically (SEO) more than 525k people reach the site through search. That’s a lot of people. One of the major attraction spots on Monday website is their blog. It gets 140k+ visits.

Here’s what they do right:

  • Aligns well with search intent
  • Keywords in the right places
  • It’s a true guide on the topic
  • High density of keywords
  • It’s long-form, quality content
  • They include CTAs throughout the blog post to drive sign-ups for PLG.

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And Monday embraces the 3Es. Content that educates, engages & entertains.

They:

  • Educate you on using their product, being a better project manager and much more
  • Engage you with unique creative, stories and design
  • Entertain you with humor and inspiration

Additionally, the Monday dot com YouTube channel has more than 100 million total views on their video library and 60k+ subscribers and is in the top 10k YouTube accounts for views.

Most SaaS brands still rely JUST on blog posts to educate their customers on how to use their features. Monday leans heavily into YouTube videos and is seeing some great ROI on the back of it.

While I sound like a raving fan of Monday, I am not. My position is the smallest of all, and I was debating selling it. Still, I wanted to highlight, Monday knows what they are doing:

Instead of pumping every ad-dollar into expensive lead generation tactics like Google Ads to let a costly sales team talk to customers,

→ They play the long game as a customer-centric and product-first company.

→ They create demand by a combination of driving awareness and quality content.

→ They let the user experience the polished software for free until the user become advocates to sell it inside their own organization or every other organization they might join in the future.

→ Every happy user becomes a sales person without even knowing.

That’s the power of brand awareness + demand creation + targeted campaigns + PLG.

Also, they mentioned using an internal, customized tool to measure all of that very efficiently. That’s not hoping for the best. That’s a strategy driven by data.

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