Inside Gong: How teams work with design partners, their pod structure, autonomy, trust, and more | Eilon Reshef (co-founder and CPO)

Transcript from https://podmenti.com/t/1ad71eba5b73afa0

I wanna start with talking about your pod model.
Which is a really unique way of building and organizing your product teams. We're trying to figure out how does the uh operating model look like for our
product and engineering. The first bunch of people we had was essentially a pod. It was one product manager, a user experience designer, backend engineers, couple of front end engineers, but at some stage we're starting to scale. We were kind of contemplating do we go like the traditional the old school of front end engineers, backend engineers, and then we said let's try to replicate what we have. Let's talk about how these pods work with design partners.
From what I've heard, it's very unlike how any other company works. We just took the pod concept to an extreme where every pod is working with sometimes a dozen design partners, sometimes two dozen design partners. This feels like a cheat code of how to build
New product lines. What are the like the percentage of success rate you have with new product? I would say very close to a hundred percent of the features we build end up being used by a significant number of people. Does it feel crazy for companies not to operate this way? I I wouldn't go back. I I hate terms such as risk because that's a very ambiguous term, but
Just the risk of building something you're not gonna know if it's gonna get used. So when I ask people like Gong what to ask you, the most often term that came up is autonomy and trust. It's a very selfish thing, it's a very personal thing. I I just think

Today my guest is Ailon Reshef. A Lon is co-founder and chief product officer at Gong.
He was also the longtime chief technology officer of Gong.
As I share at the top of our conversation, it feels like basically every company that has a sales team uses Gong.
And it's really rare to build a product that is so ubiquitous and so loved across the tech ecosystem.
In our conversation, Elon shares some of the secrets of what makes Gong so consistently successful.
including how their product teams work with six to twelve design partners on every new product and feature that they invest in.
How he creates a culture of autonomy and trust.
Why and also how he optimizes for making decisions quickly, even large one-way door decisions, what he and his team have learned about building AI-based products, since they've been building AI-based products longer than most other companies, and so much more.
If you're building a B2B SaaS company or product, you will learn a lot from this conversation.
If you enjoy this podcast, don't forget to subscribe and follow it in your favorite podcasting app or YouTube. It's the best way to avoid missing future episodes, and it helps the podcast tremendously.
With that, I bring you Elon Rushev.
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Hey, it's Lenny.
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Aon thank you so much for being here. Welcome to the podcast.
Thank you for having me.
So it feels like on this podcast every guest that I've had
mentions gong as a product they use. It feels like it's just like an ether
of tech companies these days.
Also, I've heard so many times how unique
It is that you all operate how you all build your product teams and operate.
Which is I especially love hearing on this podcast. They're just different ways of oper operating.
So I'm really excited to dig into this to hear about the journey and things you've learned along the way of building Gong and essentially building something that is so
Ubiquitous and so
Loved, which is very rare.
I wanna start with talking about your
Your pod model.
Which is a really unique way of building in
Organizing your product teams.
And in particular I work with design partners, but let's start with the pod model.
Just talk about what this pod model is and how you organize your product teams.
Sure. And uh when we started the Pod model, that was probably twenty sixteen before it became more m popular. I I think that might have been even before the Marty Kagan uh uh set of books. I don't remember exactly.
But at some stage we're starting to scale. I mean scaling is maybe from fifty people to sixty people or the whole company or whatever.
And we're trying to figure out how does the uh operating model look like for uh product engineering.
And the first bunch of people we had was essentially a pod. It was one product manager
Yours truly.
A user experience designer a couple of maybe back end engineers, a couple of front end engineers.
Not.
And we were kind of contemplating, do we go like in the traditional, the old school of like, you know, front and engineers, backhand engineers, or however it is, and then we said, let's try to replicate what we have.
Um so what we essentially did is is is
really kinda replicated that. So up until now.
We have the spot structure, product manager, UX.
Fractional writing, fractional analyst, and then a team leader from an engineering standpoint, five to I'd say seven in engineers.
They get an agenda.
think like we launched a forecast product. I was a pod working on that.
And then they get to be pretty autonomous.
uh in identifying how to solve the problems and also working with enough customers. So
I can go to sleep knowing that they're not like hallucinating is the term that everybody uses now in different context.
Uh but going in a very reasonable direction.
Okay, so I wanna talk about the autonomy piece. That's a really important point, but before we get there
Let's talk about how these pods work with design partners.
From what I've heard, it's very unlike how any other company
works and I think it's something a lot of people can learn from.
Talk about kind of the scale of how these pods work with design partners.
So I I I think we just took the part concept to an extreme.
Where every pod uh is working with sometimes a dozen design partners, sometimes two dozen design partners, maybe sometimes five if it's a very niche or fringe uh capability.
And uh they work with them hand in hand.
So an interesting story.
The same forecast product I just mentioned.
The product manager comes to me one day and he's like, Hey, I just gonna play with a design partner of the product.
And I kinda know what's going on and I know it's not built yet.
So as the product manager, but we don't have that working.
So he said, No, no, we don't, but I showed him the sort of the the half built stuff.
I asked him to hit save, he hit save and got an error message.
And I told him, let's meet again in a week and that's a button we're gonna work.
Um so it's very extreme in terms of working hand in hand with with a customer. Customers appreciate it. I later get feedback that
They appreciate how kind of the thing was
going making progress according to their feedback.
Not what they said.
Uh but kinda interpreting what they said, digesting it and and building something that makes sense.
Um so every pod has this
set of design partners.
So these pods essentially cross functional product teams, each one
has do you organize it around like an outcome. How do you describe how what each pot is responsible for? Is it like move this metric or build this product or something else?
We tend to be less metric driven maybe than your average, especially B to C, but even like other maybe B to B companies. Usually it's more around some sort of a job to be done. In our case it could be sales engagement. How do you kinda prospect or
Um
Conversation intelligence, how do you
Create a s summaries, how do we make it easier for people to remove drudgery and consume information fast.
Uh once you get this agenda you kinda pretty much have
A lot of
I don't you know, you mentioned economy. A lot of kinda control over how
How you kinda progress. Ideally design partners guide you know.
Me.
Awesome. Okay. So it's like here's the outcome we want this part to achieve.
they have autonomy to work with design partners to design this new product.
So maybe let's stay on this example of this forecasting tool.
Can you just briefly describe what this tool what it does what it gives you, what it does? Yeah, it's a product we launched a couple of years ago.
And it types organization forecast where they land in terms of the sales organization. So every sales organization, B2B sales organization has a
Bottoms up.
Forecast process, people submit numbers, people are gonna override that.
AI helps you kinda in our case, AI helps you protect the right number.
Usually there's an analytics component on top of it. It kinda helps you
Assess it at scale.
Um so that's the product itself.
Awesome. So you created this pod here, build this forecast product, make it successful.
How do they find these design partners? Is it like reach into the existing customer base and figure out who would be most interested in this?
Usually usually it's uh uh existing customers. Very, very rarely it would be uh non existing customers, but customers with at some stage expressed interest.
in in in this capability.
N not to over like
you know, kinda give a plug to go on. But of course we can listen all of our conversations are recorded. So I can kinda always like
look up our kinda conversation database and like which customers express a need for X Y and D you can very easily kinda
I reach out to them.
One of the maybe unique things we've done at some stage it just became as you can we got I think we got like twenty-five pods right now, maybe thirty like it depends what you call it pod, but the um
It's a lot of effort, like this whole um management.
Uh so at some stage I board an idea that comes from uh talent acquisition.
And in in talent acquisition recruiting, there is there is a person called a recruiting coordinator.
If if you do it at scale, which we had done over the years.
And that person all they do is just set up the meetings for the recruiter.
Who then sets up the meaning for the hiring manager.
Um so in our in our product team, there's one person who's basically a research coordinator.
And she's responsible for reaching out.
She basically talks with a PM's like what's your
Target market, ICP, whatever you want to call that.
Gimme some s what do you want to learn from them?
She reaches us. We have a micro CRM for that.
And then sets up the meeting.
And if PM comes in, they have like uh already like a a meeting in in their calendar.
And these are the design people at these companies that are gonna be their design partners.
Exactly. So I might say, Hey, what I wanna speak is with a head of forever opposite, I don't know, mid sized companies or
I don't uh
I C seller at the network company.
And then she can kinda of course sift through our customer base, slice and dice it.
run a micro email campaign and get those kind to come in.
I love that detail'cause as you said, coordinating twelve companies and people at these companies and timing is really stressful and complicated and s gets like
The PM's life up.
So uh that's really helpful.
It's interesting. There are some companies where product teams aren't even allowed to talk to customers.
Salespeople are like, No, don't m mess with these people.
Uh
Customer success like no, we got this.
You were like the complete opposite is each pot is working directly.
would say a dozen.
Customers helping build a new product.
For them.
Exactly. And i in the early days we didn't even like
Um
tightly coordinate with customer success. Nowadays we do it much better because
There's always gonna be this customers like frustrated about something or in the negotiation about something, that's probably not the right time to ask them about to be a design partner.
And so we kinda double check.
Um but it's not like a process where we
Have to get signed off by three customer success managers to uh talk with a customer. That makes sense. Obvious yeah, you you don't want to surprise the people and mess up relationships.
So is there any structure to the design partner process? Or is it just teams have these people
available and they talk with them when they want, or is there more structure to like how to effectively build the product with design partners?
It depends on the context. So when you build a new product there's m it's a more linear path, right? It's uh ideally you want it to be launched on time.
Ideally you want to measure some progress. So usually what we've done in this case is like some sort of a weekly meeting where we kinda s kinda show them progress and you know, sometimes bi weekly depending on our own cadence.
And some other capabilities that we build might be more um
I want to say freeform.
Maybe it's an enhancement, maybe it's a tweak, maybe it's an extension of the
I can give an example, right? One of the things we do right now is
we let customers ask a question about an account. So come into gong like what's new with Cisco if Cisco is a customer and
At some stage you do it w we're doing it in all languages, right?
So you want to recruit a specific design partner set of design partners who are non English speakers. So
That doesn't have like a strict timeline, you wanna get enough of them so you see the thing works, gets you reasonable quality results.
You're not gonna get to all languages in the one hand, but at the same time you don't have like just Spanish.
Um so that might be a less less structures, maybe it's a couple of meetings with each one and then when you move on, you launch the feature and you move to the next kinda
quote unquote project or feature.
So one thing that m people might be thinking as they hear this is how do you
All these customers are telling you, here's what I need to be to use this forecasting tool, for example. And
As a PM it's always this balance of doing what customers ask you to do versus like
Oh, we have this vision and here's how we keep it simple.
You haven't what guidance do you give your teams for
What to do with this feedback, essentially.
Yeah, I think this is kinda core scale and I expect PMs to have around kinda this this is exactly your your your your kinda job, right? Try to try to figure out what request is like must have versus not must have.
Uh we typically they ask the customer, you know, what what do you have right now? How happy are you between zero and ten or?
Whatever. So
If you're at the six, we wanna get you to an eight or a nine, so that's maybe a high level.
Principle.
But at the same time I expect them to say, Hey, this is a unique I didn't hear it from anybody else.
Maybe I'm gonna proactively reach out to more customers, but that might be a one customer thing.
And we still know what customer thinks if if i in a in different context, right? So if
If we have a I don't know a seven or eight figure deal that they have like one customization that they really, really need and and we know that they can't work without it.
Well.
I mean like every enterprise facing company we're gonna do that.
But from a design partner perspective, it's the opposite. It's more like let's try to build something that works across our customer base versus for a specific customer.
Which is why it doesn't as
It's probably smarter than one or two or three.
Yeah, I think at some stage I guess you get like seven or eight or nine at some stage.
Based on my experience, the request starts to converge.
There might be one outlier, but generally you're gonna hear the same things.
I imagine this approach is rooted in how you all started. We worked on a post back in the day on how you all got your first ten customers and I remember the story was you got
I think it
uh twelve design partners when you first design gong.
And then like you told them we're gonna start charging now and eleven out of twelve are like we will buy this now, please charge us and we love it.
Exactly, exactly. So so it's it's in a way it's replicating this, but it was successful at the time. It wasn't
W it was like maybe eighty percent intention at the time, and at some point you take the stuff that works and you make it to a hundred percent intention.
What are the like the uh percentage of success rate you have with new products? Because you would think
This approach is the best way to
consistently build products people will end up buying and using.
Is it like a hundred percent of the time you end up building things that people will buy and use? Is it something below that?
What do you find?
I I think it does increase significantly the um utility of the uh of the of the products. Um I would say very close to a hundred percent of the features we build end up being used by a significant number of people. We don't charge for all of them, for most of them we don't charge.
Which doesn't mean other things couldn't happen. Maybe people use it, but
No, the value is not huge. So it's like yeah, design partner likes it like it, but it's like applicable ends up being applicable to a smaller fragment or section s segment of our customer base than what we had hoped.
Uh it maybe they're not not as willing to pay for it, although that's a little bit of a different process. Like real product launch.
It could be the quality is not good enough,'cause
We're kinda focusing on, you know, is it providing value? Is it understandable and versus like, you know, did you find a bug when you used I don't know, Safari on this kind of computer?'Cause
We're not building the design partner program to kinda solve for this. Maybe we should, but we're not doing it right now.
But generally speaking, uh I would say
Better than that more than ninety five percent of our
the capabilities we build are being you know kinda used in a in a very kind of significant way.
Which I think is probably higher than most companies.
And this feels like a cheat code of how to build ex new product lines, expand.
A product expansion, TAM expansion, like ways to
Add new
Ways to charge your existing customers and
It feels like a cheat code, basically. Just like tell us what you need, we'll work with you and build it and it'll sell it to you. It'll be great.
Yeah, respectfully of you know, yours truly, I I I do believe customers m know much better than that what they need and then
uh myself or my colleagues in the executive team, whoever else it's
you talk to a customer and they kinda describe their pain. They might not know how to build it or what's the right way to implement it, but
The pain the paint should be there.
Coming back to something else you mentioned, this word autonomy.
So when I ask people a gong
Uh what to ask you and what stands out about you.
to them as a product leader, the most often term that came up is autonomy.
And trust.
How much autonomy you give teams, how much you put
How much you trust teams to do the right thing.
Can you talk about that way of working, where that came from, and why you think that is uh the way to operate?
It's a very selfish thing, it's a very personal thing. So I I think even beyond trust is just
For me it's selfish. I'll tell you why. I I just think you get more
From everybody, uh if if you kinda let them be themselves.
And and do things in the way that they believe is the right way, of course, within limits, right? They they're not gonna like develop
Um I don't know what it is. Software indifferent of a different business, but
The story I always like to take to tell is I was w when my son was in in in primary school, which was a while back.
Uh, one of the parents um told me and we had like this picnic where all the parents and the kids were gonna meet.
And usually there's like a list of ingredients that people need to bring in. So you know, to bring on a bottle of water, whatever the thing is.
What's usually happen, there's even like people that are joking about it is
People run to the list'cause it's usually like a physical list and then or make night.
Probably now it's already in Google Sheets always, but and people run to just like mark the item that is as easy to get as possible, like on a bottle of water, and then I'm I'm done.
And then you always get like the lowest common denominator because everybody brings the sort of I don't want to say cheapest, like the easiest thing that you can bring to such a picnic.
And then this lady me lady told me, here's a different method. Just tell everybody bring your own thing.
I'm like, are you crazy? You know, people are just gonna not bring anything or
I mean, whatever you want, right?
Um or people are gonna read the same thing like
Multiple people are gonna I don't know, bake some pie or do something, right?
And she's like, No, that's not gonna happen. So I trusted her that's maybe
Trust forward, but
We tried it out and what happened was really kind of fascinating.
People were going out to the specialty stores and bringing like specialties
We're based I'm based in Israel. So they were going to this homeless place, which is like, you know, an Israeli thing. It's like driving thirty miles to your favorite thing. People were like baking and making stuff. So we had like
Literally a feast.
And a funny thing, two things happen. Everybody was much, much happier, right?
They're happier'cause of course they got better food.
And then you're like and also most people kinda just their personality, they brought it to the table. It's like I really like homo, so I don't like the
Whatever the other thing I would have to bring.
And we did it every year afterwards,'cause we did this thing at least annually.
And it will work every single time. So if you take it to software that you can't
Tell everybody, you know, just
Develop your old thing.
But if you can guide him towards hey, do the thing that in a
Give you more autonomy essentially.
Bring yourself to the game, be yourself, don't try to sort of
Put yourself in a box.
I be I truly believe you're gonna get much better results short and even more importantly long term.
Uh, because it keeps people thinking, it keeps them being motivated and and they're like uh
How do I kinda contribute in the way I think is the right way?
Reminds me I'm looking for uh daycares for a son. He's like seventeen months, almost seventeen months now, and there's this Montessori uh approach to
to teaching kids and it's a very similar approach, which is just let them
If they're ever busy with anything.
Don't even make eye contact. Don't don't interrupt them. Let them keep doing the thing and let them choose what they want to work on.
Yeah, there's many many of these education systems or principals that that
uh are are along those lines. I mean the the person who told me that I don't get I don't
Assume she's invented it, but
Um, uh we all err on the side of like wanting more control.
But I do the same thing with my kids, so uh I would never
I never installed any piece of software to m on on my kids' devices, so not like
Firewall protection, I don't know, antivirus, air attack, nothing.
'Cause I'm like, This is your problem.
And and you know, if you want to
If you if you want to like
Protect yourself, it's you it's your responsibility. So this is autonomy.
And there was one time where I had negotiated with my daughter. She she was like, I I told her I think you're kinda using your computer too much. And we negotiated. She said, Maybe an hour is enough. I told her maybe more.
I think we agreed on the two hour thing.
And then she came to me three days in a row, could you please install this software on my machine so I can
Help me like control my limits.
And I love it when it's the other way around because now she's responsible. I'm helping her versus the other way around. So
Absolutely, I take it in my personal life as well.
So how does this look day to day at Gong on the product team? Like when someone hears, Oh, you give'em a lot of autonomy, what does that actually look like? Help people understand what that
Actually means.
It means that if you're
Um working with design partners and you get like a um an idea from the customer.
Uh it's your responsibility to decide are you gonna do it or are you gonna talk to your manager or to me, you know, now I have course work managers.
Um, but it's your responsibility. So we're not gonna quote unquote punish you if you decided that, you know, you kinda took it
a an opinion from a customer and then went ahead and did it.
Um it's your responsibility to decide, you know.
Do I know enough? Do I need more input?
Uh how how how up do I go?
Um so it's uh that's and that requires them to think, you know, how confident am I in my in my decisions.
So is the way is the culture basically
You give them feedback and advice and
The teams can operate the way they want. They can
build the features they think are important, work with design partners that they think are important. Yes. And of course, you know, you are expected to solicit feedback, right? So if you're gonna build your own thing for six months and it's gonna be well, we're gonna have re we're gonna review it along the way, of course.
But we expect you to initiate the review.
You have like a we have like a weekly um session where you can bring up your reviews.
But it's not us forcing you to do it. It's you have to bring it, you have to solicit it, and you have to sort of drive a process.
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Is there an example of a product or a really important feature that came out of this way of working where a team just like I I you don't think that's a good idea, I'm just gonna do it anyway.
Yeah.
I don't think it goes up to uh to a whole product. It's it's kinda very hard to uh'cause you gotta have resources to build a a whole product.
But I do think there's substantial features that that that came out of it. Even sort of the
Um kind of the AI fine tuning example I gave you before is like something came up in a hackathon and people were like, Let's start to build it, let's incubate it.
And then they can't move forward. Of course, we have to give them resources at some stage.
But it wasn't like a top down let's do this. It was more like hey
We're trying it out.
Hey, we need a couple of more resources, we're trying out more and at some stage we realise it's super important.
And then we kinda quote unquote funded it completely.
So when people listen to this, I'm some product leaders might be thinking, Oh, I wanna work this way, I wanna give my teams more freedom, more trust.
What do you what needs to be true in your
org for this to work well.
Versus it become chaos.
Firstly, uh you as a leader need to sign up to like
sort of let go a little bit, not control everything, uh willing to sort of make some more mistakes than maybe you'd make otherwise.
And so that's the one thing.
I think the harder thing is sort of um at least for me is
You also have to sort of get your peers
In in the same uh on on the same boat, right?'Cause
You know, the the the uh head of sales is gonna ask you, Hey, what's happening? How do I know what's happening if if you don't have the control over every free feature? And the CFO is gonna ask you, Hey, what's the I don't know what is the R I of this or
How do you justify those type of decisions?
Um so there has to be some fundamental trust within y you know, you and your team.
You and your colleagues?
Um to or to at least experiment that way.
And of course if you do it on an ongoing basis, you lose some visibility and I think that's maybe one thing you gotta acknowledge, right?
'Cause if you give people more control by definition, you're gonna have less visibility into what you're doing. So
Give up a little bit of visibility.
hopefully um get the benefit of higher velocity and higher quote unquote morale or
Yeah, sort of like
Engagement from people.
And that should result in better products as well.
I love that. That's a really good example.
With the sales example, which is great. Do you encourage the sales folks to talk directly to the pod?
To ask about these sort of things, or do you
Discouraged that sort of thing.
communication. Oh yeah. I think sales from my perspective are part of the uh virtual part, right?
So the core quad is as I mentioned, you know, product engineering, but
Part of the virtual part is there's product marketing, customer success, sales.
In all fairness, you know, salespeople are usually busy doing their work versus actually sitting with us and helping us kinda is this gonna sell?
Did you hear it from customers the type of questions that
Product managers usually do want to get
Um but if they're
Happy to spend time, they they would be very involved.
Coming back to the design partner way of working.
Does it feel crazy for companies not to operate this way?
to not work this closely with design partners on new products and features they're building.
I I wouldn't go back, right? So I think it's just like
Uh even like I I hate terms such as risk, that's a very like uh I don't know, like a ambiguous term, but
Just the risk of building something you're not gonna know if it's gonna get used. And I I was asked by a sort of a very senior product manager of a very
successful big SaaS companies. Like, why do we even do this? And like what do you mean? Like, hey we launch products and then we see if they've if if p people like them. Well I don't think that's a great idea because in that company's successful bigger than God, but
At the same time.
I I just think it's it's leaving too much in the hands of I would even call it luck, right?'Cause
How do you know?
Yeah, like I was thinking, it just feels like a cheat code and
Just feels like something a lot of companies can learn from how you all operate there.
Something that has come up a bunch so far in our conversation is your focus on speed.
And optimizing for velocity.
something that I've heard about you is that you're really big on just making really quick decisions.
Even like one way door decisions that are really big, you're
uh philosophy is just make it quickly before you have all the information necessarily.
Talk about that approach.
That's maybe a pr a little bit of a personal thing, but I would encourage people to look up in Google there's there's um
Maybe I'll do a spoiler for uh it's Isaac Asimovy's science fiction writer, I think, beginning of last century.
And he has this like a short story that the machine that won the war, so you can look it up. It's a fun story, pretty short.
But it's basically the computer, the big computer at the time supposedly won the war.
But the only reason it won the war is because
Like they they wanted like the
People to trust this.
S superhuman machine.
But what they realized the machine was just giving crap, just like our LMC nations. So the
had the person, president, whatever it is, basically ended up saying, you know, I end up tossing a coin.
But people wonder this like
really believe that this is like a smart machine thing is gonna w help us win the war. So
It's kind of obviously a funny kinda story.
Uh but I think there is truth to it. So many, many decisions when it com when it when it's not a close call, it's like
Should Go should Gong open an office in China right now? Well
Probably not. There's so many reasons why not, we don't really debate it.
But like should should we develop feature A and feature B and you look at them, they're kinda the same
I don't know, call it same value or same cost, whatever, however.
Whatever kind of mental framework you have for deciding.
You end up being like fifty one, forty, forty nine.
No decision's gonna be like super wrong.
So yes, you can try to bring in more data and you can try to sort of like bring more people, but like both decisions are okay. So just go ahead with one.
Hopefully it's not like a huge
Uh yeah huge mistake.
I'll tell you I had this discussion with my co founder, Amit, who's the CO.
Um a few years ago we were considering buying a company.
And you know, just like pretty strategic decisions, right?
And we're like, Oh, we don't know, there's pros and cons, we're like on the fence there and we we end up not buying the company. We can kinda look up gong and we haven't bought like
Big companies.
And
I asked it maybe it was a couple of month ago, it's like, What if we had bought that company? Do you think we're we would have been in it
Radically different position.
He was like
No.
So it's like y I mean, it could have been better, it could have been worse, but it would not have like made a huge difference. And the reason is
It was a fifty one forty nine decision, wasn't a seventy thirty decision. So it's hard for humans to make decisions. You probably know there's like
It's like there's like experiments that show it's it's almost like running or or jogging or doing something that is a physical
Um requires your physical capacity to make decisions. So
Just make the I know it's hard and you wanna postpone it, but just just just do it.
It's such a freeing way of thinking about it.
It's interesting'cause there's been recent conversations on this podcast where
Spotify has this kind of value they call talk is cheap.
And it's meant to be a virtue.
W talk is cheap, so let's just talk a lot before we make a decision.
But it's
specific to Spotify because there's like a lot of regulatory challenges and if they make it a big decision, it's a long term. It's like they put a lot of effort into it.
So it's interesting. There's such different ways of operating. There's like let's just talk for months and make a decision versus
We're just gonna make it and then it'll be fine.
Yeah, of course like big big one one door.
Yeah you sort of uh the yeah, uh I mean this is of course you you're gonna spend more time on, but people tend to s over overthink I think decisions. I also found out personally
The quality of my decisions, if you sort of kinda wake me up in the middle of the night and ask me, you know, what do you think about X? And I'm gonna be like
I have no idea, I'm sleeping.
And then you're like, you know, you gotta force me into decision, I'm gonna make a decision.
Now you gonna give me two weeks to ponder over it?
I I don't think the quality of the decision is gonna be much, much higher, which is maybe person uh could be personal.
Um, but that's at least what I found out over my too many years of existence, so.
I think something that's probably necessary for that to work out well is having a deep experience in that space.
Like you've been at this for a long time, so I imagine your instinct
often is trained based on your past experience of the market and customers.
You feel like that's
A necessary component of
trusting your gut and instinct on these sorts of decisions. Yeah, of course. You got it at some stage note you're doing. Yeah. If I were now to sort of make a decision around, I don't know, entering a different space.
There's no way I would'd be like, Yeah, let's flip a coin like the Asimov story and and go for it. I
Take a I go to a conference, learn it, whatever the thing is, and then make that decision. But most of the decisions all of us make on a day to day basis is our our domain of expertise versus like totally uh news things.
Awesome.
Okay, let's talk about AI for a bit.
You guys were very early on AI, you're working on
Basically, it was like your product was built on machine learning back then is what it was called.
Uh before it was cool and everyone probably thought it was like a waste of time and like no it's never gonna work.
Now everyone's building.
AI building AI into their product.
What have you learned about working with AI over the years that you think people maybe are not yet
aware of or that will likely cause them pain that you can help solve and avoid
For them.
Yeah, uh funny, you know, when we launched Gone we didn't use the term AI because people thought it was a bad thing, it makes the wrong decisions, or or they just thought it's an action item, an acronym.
When when we found it going I was I was in Sabatican and actually went to this uh deep learning course'cause I was
I was
Board?
In all in all fairness and
And after that course I ended up buying NVIDIA stock, which I wish I had kept up until now.
But I did send an email saying hey, this is the next thing. But so we understood it's the next thing. Of course we didn't know it's gonna be LM and GPT and and you know other acronyms that evolve over the years.
And probably in in now that we're talking kind of end of twenty twenty
uh forish.
I I
Think people should
Not
go from one extreme, which is hey, we need a bunch of data scientists for every small project, which was the case five years ago or three years ago.
um to an ex the other extreme, which is hey, L M is gonna solve everything.
'Cause LMs don't solve everything.
They have
Huge utility. We use LMs over the place. Most companies that develop the AI kinda stuff use LMs. It's a great thing.
Uh, but at the same time
Don't don't assume it does it it does everything.
you still need some need some of the core competencies of uh of AI, so
You do want to have expertise.
Um people who actually know what they're doing.
Um and help guide ISPMs around, you know, can is this something that can be built?
Or or no,'cause if you're gonna spend
Many, many hours and asking an NLM to do I don't know what, like um
In the case of Gong, for example, you know, um
Tell me what a good sales cycle look like looks like.
LMs don't do that, you know, it's just like maybe something else does, but it we have a
deal prediction model. L's not predict deals'cause it's like we're very, very specialised. So
I think you need still need to have expertise.
You still want to have some measurements.
So yes, f version one you can just go to an N and say, you know, create something, I don't know, whatever.
But if you don't have measurements like in the old machine learning, whatever metrics use
You're not gonna advance. You're gonna have V one and then you're gonna have V two and you have no way to know if you've made a progress. So
we kinda pay a lot of attention to uh we have people who gonna specialise in uh how you measure
Yes.
El system, which is kinda the one I don't know, using chess as well and
And and and we do have experts who will kinda help us make the right decisions.
You can make a very uh very good progress without these.
Um but I think there's a glass ceiling if you if you don't like
figure out how to kinda
create a more operational rigor around this whole AI thing.
So what I'm hearing is don't assume you can just outsource all your AI magic model building to
the foundational model companies, you need to have your own AI expertise, ML expertise.
Yeah, or even if you end up outsourcing the core work, at least you have to have the expertise to understand what is doable, what is not doable, what's the right way to approach it, what's the input you give to the L M, how
Is it gonna be good quality or bad quality? There's even like if you just take the product management aspect.
If the L M gives you something that is ninety percent accurate.
Or I don't know, people are gonna think is good.
The product's gonna look different than if it's
If it's fifty percent.
Good. So just the way you even think about it, the the uh the way you I I think Figma calls their AI feature like first draft.
Mm. Which is a term I like because
They kinda realise it's not.
Best it's not great, but it's a good first draft.
So if you know what it is, it's easier not just to name, but how to conceptualize, how to build a workflow around it.
And what to train users to assume for it.
And I think there is an expertise there that comes on top of L Ms, even if you just use L Ms and you don't
You can't afford or you
He you don't want to go deeper.
For folks that want to do this at their company.
What are the
s functions that you have that help you do this, slash skills of people you hire that
You think of are important.
I think you still have to have this kinda quote unquote a data scientist.
uh role um and data scientists
Could be
in the company. Could be advisors as well, right? Doesn't not everything has to be a foot type in the company.
And the role of a data scientist is is is help this help guide.
Um
The company, right? Uh deal prediction model. Is this an thing? Do you need to build a model? If you need wha what input do you need? How long it's gonna take?
Also the in our world at least data scientists are the people who know how to measure these things.
Um, is this model better, is this model better, is this prompt better, is this problem not better? And
The jud then are gonna do the judgment, right? So
When gone creates um an account grief.
The data scientist is not gonna know if that brief or this brief is
is the right one, but they can kinda guide us through
What's the right tool set you need to sort of put it in front of customers and you know, how do you measure this and whatnot?
And then I think at the end of the day you also need like this myth, you know, kinda now it's becoming a common, you know, sort of prompt engineer, the person who's actually working with the NLMs and guiding them. That that is like a
It's a bit of a technical skill, but you you gotta have it in it in
Doesn't have to be a full time person?
Um, but needs to be there needs to be that expertise of somebody who's actually optimizing things.
Many many customers and tell us that
you know, gong AI is well it's more accurate than others.
Yes, there's some combination of models we build from scratch, fine tuned,'cause we have AI expertise.
But some of it is also how we kinda
the prompts we give to the LMs, how much rigor we put into optimizing them and kind of finding the edge cases and
And ranking them and improving them over time.
Um if you want to
get really good AI, uh you have to invest in it as well.
As you're talking, I'm thinking about how
The your pod model matches really well with this world of things moving so quickly, AI changing constantly.
Just giving teams autonomy feels like a huge advantage.
In this world where things are just changing weekly.
Yeah, so we have a couple of maybe now it's three different parts, but we have like an embedded AI
specialist team either a s a specialist or a team
Or I don't know, a couple of people.
And then they can uh can iterate very, very quickly on
using L Ms or using non LMs, you know, S L Ms, people now say you know, small language models, but
Whatever the thing is, they can enter it very, very quickly.
Awesome. Okay.

Touch on.
One is the spiral model.
So you mentioned
that you just went to learn deep learning on your own. You like went off to the side, I'm gonna understand
This new thing that everyone's talking about, deep learning and and you got really smart in
Machine learning basically really quickly.
And
You have this thing you call the spiral model.
Or the spiral method.
For how to learn something complex quickly.
You wrote a medium post about this or blog posts. What is the spiral method? How does it work? How do people learn things really quickly that are really complicated?
Yeah, I think it's even uh beyond just the speed, but also like how do you even know that you learn
That you actually learned it. So
It it's it's kind of there is a mathematical kinda or no physical concept called uh annealing, which is how certain kinda material kinda becomes the way it is, and it's sort of the temperature goes slight slightly down and eventually become a crystal or whatnot.
There is an element to this, I think, in learning as well, which is
You wanna know what deep learning is. Like you know nothing. You go find the person next to you.
And you're like, What is deep learning? They tell you something. Of course you don't know anything'cause you just heard it from one person.
And the next question you should ask like who else should be speaking with?
They give you three other names. I think in tech we all tend to be to have like this very, very kind of
Cool ecosystem.
People who are willing to help as long as you don't ask too much of them.
So then you speak with three other people and then they give you like other names and you sort of go around
And ideally at some stage you feel like, you know, first person you have no idea what they're talking about. You probably didn't even understand what they're saying.
The fifth person he might understand fifty percent and fifty percent is like new.
At some stage you're gonna feel like well, new stuff is
Ten percent.
Or
Five percent.
Or zero percent. I call it the spiraler because it's kinda going in circles around the target, and eventually you feel like what I'm hearing the same thing again and again, and you're like
But if I heard it for three people I didn't learn anything new.
I'm sort of at the bullseye, of course at the level I am. So I'm never I'm
I'm never gonna be like a
Keep learning specialists.
In the same way that
you know, true data scientists are.
Uh but as a product manager I know it probably as well as I can given that, you know, everybody I've I've spoken with at the time was
Not giving me anything new at the level that I had desired at the time.
I love that.
Is there anything you've been studying recently that you've either used this method for or something else you're excited about learning that's
Yeah.
New or on the cutting edge.
Usually I kinda do this for um
uh for kinda use cases within uh within our customer base. For example, if I wanted to sort of you wanted to go after a certain persona
or a certain use case for the product.
Um so we had this uh a notion of can we do a better job for a specific persona within sales.
People who are account managers.
So I would use a similar method, like hey, talk to one account manager, talk to an analyst, or whatever the thing is.
And eventually when you start hearing the same things like what do they care about? It's different than the said salespeople like
Selling new business or different than
I don't know. Contact center sellers.
Um, when you start hearing the same thing, you're like, Okay, I kinda got to where I need to be.
Now I can make decisions.
Nah, I can always do another spiral and get one level deeper, which is I don't know, do some user research, go all in.
Uh but at least at the sort of the conversation level.
I've got it. I've got where I need.
I love how simple this is, is you just start talking. Just find somebody to talk to, ask about this.
No pressure, and then just
Okay, who else should I talk to? You just keep having conversations spiring down.
Deeper and deeper into knowledge and wisdom.
Okay, uh one thing I wanted to touch on, which
has always stuck with me about your approach initially when you were starting gong is your how you found your initial
I C P
Who to go after and it's it's really funny.
how narrow you got when you all decided here's who we're focusing on for our first
dozen customers. So I have the list here.
So when you
decided here's who we're targeting.
Here's the list of constraints.
We're gonna target people selling their product.
Yeah.
The US
In English.
Over video conference.
Uh.
Using WebEx, which was the big one at the time.
Selling software that is worth
One thousand to a hundred thousand dollars.
And
And there was only five thousand companies in this bucket.
Can you just talk about like why you
you found it was so important to get so narrow and just the power of getting really narrow, which is very counterintuitive.
to a lot of people where they're like, Oh, or it's just gonna be for everyone. It's a huge market.
I think it's sort of the traditional um
Um sort of I call it the bowling alley or kinda uh force. Crossing the chasm. Yeah, the crossing the chasm kinda uh methodology, which you wanna start narrow, you wanna create a s this kind of small point where people talk about each other.
And and you can kinda light the fire in there.
If in in my previous company I I I by the way, I I did read Crossing the Chasm.
And I told myself, nah, I can do way better than that.
So we had one customer in uh I think it was L'Oreal or I don't know, one of the cosmetics companies in American Express and Cisco, like different industries and there was no way we could scale it'cause
Everybody had their own.
Lingo the way they thought about the technology and whatnot.
So by having a s smaller set of kind of customers or I see kinda definition of of customers
you can develop like much more focus.
And then it's easier to light the fire because people move, right?
At some stage, I think it was year one into the business, we heard from a company that they interviewed a salesperson.
And the salesperson asked, Are you using gong? And they said, We are thinking about using gong.
But we're not. Like well I'm only gonna work for companies that use gone.
And that that's the sort of the power of a small pond with
Like you know, companies that are like each other.
'Cause you get this viral effect that is not commonly B to B, but it's as close as you can
Because of those conversations. That other customer became a don't customer.
Literally because they interviewed a person who told them he's not gonna come unless they bought gone.
You can't do this if you have a wide market where people don't even talk to each other.
And there is an assumption that you're not like burying yourself in this market.
I love'cause because today, like I said at the very top of this conversation, you're just so ubiquitous. Like everybody seems to be using gong.
And I love that you started with something well, those like seven, I don't know, different constraints.
to narrow down who you're going after and
It's such a good example of
The power of starting very focused.
And then expanding from that, which is what you've done.
Okay, last question before we get to our very exciting lightning round. We have a segment on this podcast called Fail Corner.
Where
So many of these podcast conversations, everyone's always sharing all the successes, everything's always going great. We never not nothing ever goes wrong.
When r in reality does.
Things often go wrong.
Can you share a story from your career or just the journey of Gong when things
didn't go well when there's maybe a failure. And if you learn something from that time, what you learned.
Yeah, I always kinda joke that in my previous company we've done so many mistakes.
That if life limited you to a certain number of mistakes, I wouldn't wouldn't have any left, I think. I I still do mistakes, but
Just so many. So every one of them probably done twice or uh and then it's like oh some stage is like
You know.
Third time's a charm.
So um the one I just gave you is like probably the worst is
you know, crossing the chasm, you start a company, you have this like technology
I was thinking let's go horizontal and that technology was whatever, web integration, something.
eventually ended up being an e commerce
content syndication or or management saa software, which is the right way to go because you want to specialize in a certain market, but initially
Just going on in was was like
S.
ridiculously uh uh uh not smart.
And the other thing we did together was like that was
Previous company started year two thousand, so there was like
The bubble one of those very, very nice bubbles.
Um so we're like, you know what? We actually got three customers.
Admittedly in totally three different segments. Now let's go and scale.
Now we only we get like we need like one salesperson, one S E and C, kinda do what's now called product market fit. I don't know that the term even existed there.
And then we're like, nah, you know what? The investors told us you gotta hire more people. So we hired I don't know, twenty salespeople.
All of them failing miserably.
uh because A, we didn't have a true product market feat, but even what's worse
we didn't have a true focused I C P with like a very, very repeatable uh product market fix. So
If you sort of
hear me talk about sort of how we started gong. I meet kinda is the CEO and he kinda drove it out of that business strategy.
But sort of me being sort of a cop pilot there, it definitely bringing the same
I'm not gonna make that mistake again. I might do new and fun ones.
Uh but not that same mistake mistake again.
Awesome. Thank you for sharing that.
With that we reached our very exciting lightning round. Are you ready?
Sure.
Let's do it.
First question, what are two or three books that you find yourself recommending most to other people?
Uh there is a set of books. Um I think one that is sort of the starter one is I think it's called right now the ideal executive.
Um
People don't really know itself in management book, how to run a team and and whatnot.
I think the original version funnily enough, I think it was called Mismanagement.
But nobody wants to buy a book called Mismanagement. You'd much rather buy a book that's called Ideal Executive, because you of course are not mismanaging, you're the ideal executive altogether.
So you're just reinforcing your self.
Uh, but jokes aside, it's basically kinda gives you the
It tried to sort of um
Define people by four characteristics.
I think misname but like are you um an administrator or can you like
uh um how you he calls it a producer basically get the job done
integrated, which kind of brings people together.
And the fourth one a
It's basically gonna change.
Agent.
you know, kinda uh d do a lot of mess and change stuff. Usually entrepreneurs kinda include that part, of course.
And basically his claim is like nobody does the whole four. You can maybe you're good at one, maybe okay at the other and
Personally, I'm horrible in administration.
So I I obviously acknowledge that and I try to sort of compliment myself, but
So I think there's two things in it. Firstly just those

I thought there was like the four
Good ways of looking at people as a manager, as a leader, of course.
Um that's one.
But I think even if you disagree with those four.
Uh just recon
Just like
Understanding that you wanna look at the people in the organization, yourself included, and it's through the prism of
You know, key characteristics and you can you can select a different framework.
Helps you a lot with
creating high velocity discussions with others.
'Cause I can talk with somebody and say, Hey, you're a P
They're like well I don't not the P, I'm an I, whatever the thing is.
And that makes a discussion that is like much, much faster and more comprehensive is than just like trying to explain this from scratch. Like hey, you tend to do this.
And you might want to do this and you might want to strengthen that. So
I'd re I'd recommend starting from this, but I there's probably other methodologies you can pick and maybe kind of
Some of the listeners here have already had one.
And but that's one I like'cause
Kind of found it here so.
And that's yeah, it's called the ideal executive.
I think so, I'm pretty sure, yeah.
Great. Uh any of the other books before we move on?
Yeah.
That one's gonna probably more I I like crucial conversation, that's gonna in the beaten path, it's like how to conduct conversations with people in your organization. I think it's never bad to sort of
Reimerse yourself into how to uh
Speak properly with other people.
We have an episode coming up where we're gonna share uh
Script and phrases to use to have
Uh better hard conversations.
Ah, it's good.
Yeah, I'm excited for that. Slash scared.
Okay, next question. Do you have a recent movie or TV show you've really enjoyed?
Oh, I didn't have T V like broadcast TV for many, many years. So nowadays there's Netflix so you can find stuff, but um
my taste in in sort of uh um T V and movie tend to be pretty esoteric, fringe.
Um so I've recently watched this British T V series
Called Slow Horses.
uh with Gary Aldman and it's it's a really kinda fun, you know, sort of funny spy thing.
Which I found
I'm using and intelligence at the same time, so some kinda comedies tend to be pretty kinda
uh lowest common denominator, that one seems still
Fine.
and and witty at the same time. So that's my latest that I kinda really kinda enjoyed watching, even this third season.
I love slow horses. Uh it's it's like
I don't think it's that dis uh obscure. I think it's like one of the
Once Apple promotes often.
Uh I will say this last season was not not my favorite, but the other two are also. Yeah.
I a hundred percent agree, which I said even the third season was okay, but the first two are really, really good. And yeah, it's super fun.
It took me like three tries to actually get into the show initially'cause people kept telling me it's so good. And I started watching and it's just like who's this old messed up guy just complaining
Endlessly, but you gotta keep watching
Okay. Uh do you have a favorite product you recently discovered that you really like?
I assume you have um
A silverware caddy in your dishwasher, right?
Oh yeah, to put like forks and knives. Yeah. Cutlery
So that's my favorite product as of lately.
And I'll tell you why.
It's a funny story. Um, I lost mine and you can ask, how can you
You know, freaking lose like one of those baskets.
It was in the in in the uh dishwasher of course, and for some reason I couldn't find it. That's like you have to be really kinda out of your mind to not find anyway.
So I go to some Amazon or eBay or if I just buy a new one.
And then of course a day later I find it's like it fell somewhere within the uh dishwasher. Now I have two
So this is my latest invention. If you have two of those baskets, you could put one of them in the sink.
And you can just like continuously load your
Cutlery or silver work.
When the thing is working or you haven't vacated it?
So it's kinda changed how we organize our kitchen with something that probably cost ten bucks.
No product manager has ever thought about offering two of those with your dishwasher. I don't think it even tried to upset anything of any any of that.
And I called it with some people and actually ended up buying a second one and said it was successful.
Which is the most ridiculous thing. It's like you know, spend ten, fifteen bucks, get something organized in a completely obscure and and unintentional way.
I'll give you an even more.
Crazier idea that
Uh a previous guest ha uh suggests, Rory Sutherland has this.
pitch that you should have two dishwashers. Everyone should have two dishwashers because
One could is your clean
And one is dirty. And you just take
your s uh plates and things out of the clean one, use it.
And put it straight into the dirty dishwasher.
And why are we just putting things away constantly? Just like go from one to the other and one to the other.
So there's similar idea. Similar idea. Exactly. How is this in a design for two dishwasher?
Okay.
Two more questions. Uh
Your favorite life motto.
that you often come back to find useful in work or in life.
Why did they use it's gonna sound funny, but it's actually uh it's actually real and I use it and I actually believe in it.
Uh it's I'm not sure if you know for philosophy there's like razors, like Occom's razor, which is basically Oh, there's other razors.
Yeah, there's so many razors and there's one that I think came in in
So Murphy
book or or whatnot.
And it's called Han Num's Razor.
Uh, you can look it up Wikipedia wherever.
And it basically says uh it goes like never attribute to malice.
That is that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
But
Um so
It obviously sounds funny and it's trying to be funny.
Uh but it's so helpful'cause
So often do we attribute
Like people's behavior, you know, thinking a company, customer, I don't know if
Personal like sometimes to malice, like
Oh, this person's not returning my calls because X
Or this person hasn't given me feedback or has given me feedback because of X and
It's sort of like we all uh I think there's a saying's like always assume well or with intent or whatever.
And this is sort of the
more funny way to sort of say that. Yes, the person is
And again, stupidity is obviously a funny way to do it, maybe inappropriate, but it's basically yes, they just didn't know, they didn't care, they didn't think about it, they weren't trained, whatever the thing is.
And if you take this modern your day to day life, at least I find that it's
It's so true and so often true.
Uh that is, you know, funny but inspiring.
I I really love that quote. I think of it often when
Somebody's doing something that's annoying me.
Final question.
You mentioned that you uh are from Israel, you live in Israel.
You mentioned delicious food, hummus is one example. Is there another Israeli food that you think people are sleeping on that you think people should try when they have a chance?
Israeli food has become a little bit in you know kinda gotten a little bit to be in fashion lately. So people coming from the US to visit us in the office are like, Oh, Israeli food is so good and I'm like
What do you mean it's the same food we've had for like twenty or thirty years, I think.
The taste change because you kinda eat more healthy and less oily.
Most of the Israeli food is sort of Arabic in nature or turkey, so there's great falafel, great hummus.
Peter Bread.
Um
the Turkish delight of sorts. So um a lot of a lot of those. And and some very, very obscure. And if you come to Israel and show you around some very less known
Food.
Uh that only kinda special guests get to uh taste. What's uh here because.
There is there's a thing called Sabif, for example. Nobody knows of it.
It's it's
People claim it came from the people who came from Iraq, but my my wife's
Father came from Iraq. He's like we've never seen this before. It's sort of pita bread filled with hummus and eggplant and eggs.
And maybe something else, I have no idea.
Heini maybe, I I don't know.
It tastes good, but it's such a weird combination.
And it's become a little bit of a thing.
Uh, nobody knows what the origin is. I think it's some somebody made a mistake and gave it a name and now it's like ubiquitous. But you are making me hungry.
Elon, this was amazing. Two final questions. Where can folks find you if they want to reach out and learn more? Maybe ask some follow up questions.
And how can listeners be useful to you?
I'm
Read the availability on LinkedIn is probably the best way. I tend to kinda read my inbox and LinkedIn and and respond when I can I when I can.
And then useful to me. I mean, if you wanna come work for Kong, check out our careers page, of course.
Um the product team is mostly based in Tel Aviv and Dublin, Ireland, so
maybe a little bit remote for most people, but there's sometimes folks in the US and sometimes non product.
Of course, Rog, we're hiring quite a few people these days, so we'd love to uh at least uh give us a chance.
Awesome. A Lon, thank you so much for being here.
Thanks for inviting me.
Bye, everyone.
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