Angela Bunner, VP of Solutions at ClickUp, explains how the company grew in five years by obsessing over users instead of sales. Founder Zev Evans built ClickUp to solve his own tool-sprawl problem, and the company stays focused on reducing shelf-ware by listening to feedback and iterating fast. A 1% daily growth mindset and transparent roadmap turned customers into social media advocates.
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Right now I have Angela Bunner with us. Absolutely incredible to have her here today. Angela is the VP of Solutions at ClickUp. She oversees solutions engineering, professional services, customer enablement. Angela's resume includes more than 20 years of experience in the project portfolio management and collaborative work management spaces at companies such as Oracle, NetSuite, and Clarizen. We are so incredibly lucky to have her today. So, Angela, please take it away. I'm looking forward to what you have to say.
All right, great. Thanks for joining me today. I'm super excited to chat with some folks that are here today. And what I want to talk about today is how to think like your customers to win and kind of talking about the story of how we at ClickUp have done, I think, an amazing growth over the last 5 years with a product that really is focused on customers and why that's made a difference. You know, what does it mean to be customer obsessed? How can that customer experience really differentiate you in a crowded market? Because our space is probably the most crowded market out there. How active listening and dialogue can help you build trust, and how you can build a model where the product really sells itself and, and provides an environment that you're continuing to improve and ensuring company's success. So let me just jump in. So I was just, as was just mentioned, I run the solutions team at ClickUp, and that includes both presales as well as post-sales, making sure that our customers are finding the most value after they buy ClickUp. And that includes services as well as enablement. My background for the last 22 years-ish has been all in this project management, collaborative work management space. I'm super passionate about the productivity world. I love helping customers be more productive and have been at several big and smaller software companies, which I'll talk a little bit about that. And really ClickUp is where I'm at now. And, you know, we're really focused on making sure that folks are productive. And the real differentiation from traditional tools is that we really are providing a platform for our customers to do all their work as much as possible, you know, like replacing all the applications sprawl that's out there and being the one place to get your work done and collaborate with your team. So our mission statement is really to provide a single place and hopefully make people more productive and save time. All right, next slide. So as I mentioned, Is it moving? Okay, there we go. Um, the— our space is, is pretty darn competitive, you know. Um, productivity and project management, we think, uh, and as far as what I've seen over the last few years, is one of the most competitive software industries in the world, if not the most competitive, maybe next to CRM. And over the last few years, especially with COVID remote work, hybrid work, it's been even more competitive because a lot of vendors have come out of the woodworks trying to help solve this problem that universally everybody's trying to, to solve, which is increase productivity and solve the problem of collaborating with other teams, whether you're in the same office or, or virtual, being able to collaborate, track work, be more productive. There's a plethora of tools out there. And so ClickUp, you know, 5 years ago had a lot of headwind to go against. It was crowded industry. There's a lot of large established established legacy players, a lot of bootstrap new tools as well. And how did we stand up, stand out against that pack? Our growth is really a testament to listening to our customers and following the product demand in order to do that growth. And, you know, one of the reasons why I personally feel like ClickUp's been one of the, the growth of ClickUp compared to my history of tools is that You know, at Oracle, which we'd think of as more of a large established legacy player, the motion of the sale, the organization was sales-focused, right? Like it was not product-focused. And even when I joined Clarizen, it was very much a motion of product that folks loved. And we were building the sales motion. Over time, when you focus on the sale, the sales aspect of it, and less on listening to the customers and the product, it becomes shelfware. You don't drive— you don't get the adoption that you need because you're selling to the buyers up on top and not necessarily listening to the users. And those are the ones that are going to drive the product and be successful. And I think that's where ClickUp's done tremendously well in a product-led growth motion, is listening to customers, collaborating with them to drive innovation. and differentiation. So let's talk a little bit about the history quickly. ClickUp was originally built by our founders. Zev Evans was trying to be more productive on his own. He had a plethora of tools. I think it was 12 tools that he was trying to manage. And early on, or actually several times, Zev actually had several near-death experiences. And so he realized the value of time. And he got frustrated with the app sprawl of having so many tools out there. And so productivity is really a passion. Built— him and his engineers actually built their own tool to manage work and collaborate with teams, started getting other peers in the industry and other teams using it. And they realized that the value of providing a single platform, an all-in-one platform, was not a problem that other people had solved well. And so all of this to say is that ClickUp has really naturally pursued that product market fit because we started by addressing the needs of ourselves. We were our first customer, and that's basically how ClickUp was founded. And we continue to evangelize our customers' needs when we're building the product. The other key aspect I think that's what's made ClickUp successful is the fact that we believe and we evangelize our core values as a company and we share those with our customers. And the number one core value is about delivering the best customer experience. Zeb, from the top down, everyone in the company, it's one of the key reasons why I joined ClickUp. is that, you know, my focus has always been around how do I help my customers be more productive? Like my, you know, favorite moment is when I'm working with a customer or a prospect and they, they have that light bulb go off where they see the value of the product and they're excited to partner with you, you know, buy obviously the product and use it. And I love seeing the adoption post-sales of like the value and productivity they're getting, you know, watching and seeing those customer success stories. That's what, that's what's exciting to me and to everybody in the company. And that's what drives better product and innovation, right? So our core values really dictate that customer-focused strategy. And it's our product focus and strategy is on how do we deliver that best customer experience? How do we grow 1% every day? Everybody in the company is trying to grow. We're trying to help our customers grow 1% by being more productive, And the other key value about being transparent is really key as well, because we want to make sure that our customers know what our product roadmap is. We want them to be vocal with us in providing that feedback as well, so that we can make sure that we're always building the best product for them. So how do we do that in our development process? I mean, I think one of the key things in the success of ClickUp in building a, you know, customer-focused product that's going to drive your success is being obsessed with your customers and addressing their needs. You know, obsession with the customer goes hand in hand with achieving that product-market fit. I always realize the image doesn't— it's not animated for you, but it is supposed to be animated going around that lifecycle of design and evaluation and an iterative process of design and build. But basically, as I was saying, you know, in the beginning stages of ClickUp, we grew completely organically. We had no paid marketing, no funding, which meant we were even more singularly focused on getting the product right. And when you're bootstrapped, you have to follow your product in order to be profitable and grow. And when you're operating with those core values that I mentioned before and focus on solving the customer's needs, making sure that the customer customer experience is the best. You do it well and product-led growth is going to follow. You're going to find that your customers become your biggest advocates. And finding that natural product fit really lends itself to virality. If you go on LinkedIn or Twitter or any social media, you'll see that our ClickUp community is very active and vocal about ClickUp. And that's really what drives the flywheel of product growth when you have that type of evangelism from your users to help you attract future potential customers.
Whoa, another great episode of Revenue Today. For show notes, links, and mentions, visit revenue today.live. For all my friends in the Rev Genius community, thank you. It's been awesome to spend this time with you. Please DM me any feedback and ideas in our Slack channel or on LinkedIn. If you're not in Rev Genius, join us at revgenius.com. It's free and it only takes like 2 seconds and you'll be joining a group of 27,000 revenue professionals strong. We've got it all. Looking forward to seeing you there. Catch you on the flip side.
