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Over the last few years, Israel has been a sizable part of the Insight story. Following our investment in Wix.com in 2011, we’ve focused our attention on ScaleUp companies born and bred in Israel that are changing the way we live and work through cutting-edge software and technology.
One of those investments, monday.com, launched in 2014 in Tel Aviv, is a work operating system (Work OS) where organizations of any size can create the tools and processes they need to manage every aspect of their work. monday.com has over 700 employees across offices in Tel Aviv, New York, San Francisco, Miami, Chicago, London, Kiev, and Sydney. The Work OS platform is fully customizable to suit any business vertical and is currently used by over 120,000 customers across 200 industries in 190 countries.
Insight first partnered with monday.com in April 2017, leading the company’s $25M Series B round as the team was creating a work management software that people loved using. Following their first global office opening in 2018 in New York City, Insight participated in monday.com’s $50M Series C round to continue enhancing the company’s platform and offer new services to meet the needs of their global customers. To date, monday.com has raised $234.1M as they embark on the next phase of their ScaleUp journey – an IPO on the Nasdaq. monday.com’s ScaleUp Milestone is synonymous with the maturation of the Israeli technology landscape transforming from Startup Nation to ScaleUp Nation.
Throughout their journey, Insight is proud to have worked closely with the monday.com team as they’ve scaled to become a global software leader. From marketing to sales, Insight Onsite’s Centers of Excellence have partnered with monday.com to develop a recognized brand, launch a channel partner program, and help build a scalable sales organization. In the following, we will share those actions and key highlights that helped transform monday.com from a startup to a ScaleUp, enabling them to achieve this ScaleUp Milestone.
Rebranding from daPulse to monday.com
Some may be unaware that monday.com was founded as dapulse in 2012. In its early days, monday.com was focused on building the best SaaS solution in the market. In 2017 following Insight’s Series B investment, the company rebranded to monday.com (check out this entertaining video that the team produced to announce the name change here).
Everyone knew a name change was vital in continuing to scale and strengthen the brand, but how did the company go from dapulse to monday.com? Post Series B investment, Insight’s Marketing Center of Excellence partnered with both monday.com’s leadership and marketing teams to workshop a new company name and brand identity. What does your brand stand for? What do we want our brand to communicate? How is our brand differentiated amongst competitors? These were just some of the questions discussed during the workshop.
So why monday.com? For some, Mondays are mundane and serve as a reminder for the workweek. But, for others, it means a fresh start and the opportunity to collaborate to solve tough problems and produce great results. Via an online testing platform, the team tested how each brand message resonated with audiences and as you may have guessed the second brand message performed better. monday.com signifies a “broader commitment to sparking a dialogue on how to improve working together as humans.”
Building a Channel Partner Program
A strong partner program can impact the growth trajectory of a business in the ScaleUp phase. But, growing software companies need to look at the big picture to understand when they are ready to commit to building out a partner program and strategy.
Utilizing Insight’s 6-step approach to channel success, we partnered with the monday.com marketing team to:
- Identify and align strategic goals for channel investment to org-wide business goals
- Conduct market research to identify optimal channel strategy and routes to market
- Prioritize and shape recruitment strategy for SI and ISV partnerships
- Define a leadership hiring profile to build channel foundations and scale the program
Fast forward, and monday.com has partnered with over 85 channel partners operating in over 45 countries across the globe, with their full-scale partner program an important piece of their marketing and business development strategy.
Scaling Sales & Customer Success
Sales and go-to-market maturation are central components for an organization entering the ScaleUp stage of growth. As monday.com was experiencing strong growth post-investment, Insight’s Sales & Customer Success Center of Excellence helped monday.com build out its sales and customer success teams in New York, positioning the team to win more in growth markets. The Sales & CS COE helped to define reporting structures, sales quotas, compensation benchmarks, and provide guidance on scaling a reseller partner program.
Insight has had the privilege to invest in and partner with monday.com since our Series B investment in 2017 and is thrilled to see the company take that next step in their ScaleUp journey with today’s IPO on the Nasdaq. We can’t wait to see what’s next!
*The views expressed above are solely those of Insight Partners.
