Second in Command: The Chief Behind the Chief with Cameron Herold
00:04:13 · Gaurav Agarwal
[00:04:13] S0: ClickUp score... You you may question, like, there are other products like ClickUp. How is ClickUp unique and differentiated? Not only do we have the best platform vision, but we are also the most flexible platform. So that means now this shovel can be shovels in different sizes and different tools that further adds that layer of complexity that not only do I not know how to use the shovel, but what you're giving me is this Lego block type shovel that I can use and and assimilate whatever I want to. So that further compounds the complexity that you're talking about. Ultimately, it comes down to because the platform is so flexible, I would say there are two groups of users who want to use ClickUp. There are the power users, and these are the operation nerds. They care a lot about process and they care about how does one thing here impacts the other thing somewhere else. And for them, they love the tool because for them, they can build whatever they wanna build out of it. And that's what they appreciate. They they... We we have a lot of resources. We have ClickUp University. We give them all the information that they need, but then we get out of their way and they set up things the way they want to set up. But then for the other people who would rather... Who who who need a hole more than they want to dig a hole themselves. Yeah. Because the platform is so powerful, we package solutions on top of it. So for example, this is... We we we found it so amusing. The number one CRM for small businesses on g two is not HubSpot, it's ClickUp. And we can do it for, like, why? How... Why are people doing it? And it turns out that they are using our our CRM template. So so what we do is on one side, we want to preserve the flexibility of the platform and give it to the power users. On the other side, we are constantly packaging more and more solutions on top of the platform so that any business can go and start using it. And then we have a... I I take a lot of pride in our support team that we have built and in our services team. So all the way from free help to paid help. And then there's a rich community of consultants. These are small business owners that make their living off of consulting for ClickUp or providing ClickUp services. So there's a whole ecosystem that people can also engage to build more stuff on ClickUp.
00:06:18 · Cameron Herold, Gaurav Agarwal
[00:06:18] S2: Are the consultants the ones who are kind of leading into companies that maybe don't even know ClickUp exists? They don't know it's a tool that they could be using for the whole that they know they want. Are the consultants saying, hey. Here's what you... Is that kind of your sales team in a way? [00:06:34] S0: Not as much as I would like. So a lot of what our sales team does is because we have a product that people sign up, we have thousands of people signing up every day. They would play with it. And at some point, they'll raise their hand and then say, I need help. I want to explore a bigger use case. That's when our sales team gets involved. But because, there's almost a parallel ecosystem running that our consultants... Our vetted consultants have created for themselves where you will come across a lot of these promotion materials that they have on their marketing, which is... So I came across this two weeks ago that I'm a realist... I work, and build software for real estate brokers. You double click on it and what she's doing... What that broker... What that consultant is doing is she has set up her old business using ClickUp as the back end. But what she is doing is she's building workflow software for real estate brokers. [00:07:21] S2: Interesting. Is that similar to what Go High Level is doing right now where they're almost creating these, like, apps that you can almost white label and use? Is that a similar model?
00:07:21 · Cameron Herold, Gaurav Agarwal
[00:07:21] S2: Interesting. Is that similar to what Go High Level is doing right now where they're almost creating these, like, apps that you can almost white label and use? Is that a similar model? [00:07:32] S0: No. I would say this is closer to what, say, an Airtable would look like if it was for SMB where Okay. It's still very much a ClickUp tool. So we're not allow... We're not white labeling it, but the consultant is the person who captures majority of the value that is built. Because, ultimately, the client, the customer still pays only the license cost to ClickUp, but a lot of the dollars is generated in the service fees, which is then captured by the consultant. [00:07:59] S2: Have you... I don't know whether HighLevel is any kind of a competitor in any way to ClickUp in in terms of, like, one or two of the little potential parts of the of the software. But what do you like and not like about that GoHighLevel almost multilevel marketing on top of a multilevel marketing model? Do you know much about that, or can you speak to that?
00:07:59 · Cameron Herold, Gaurav Agarwal
[00:07:59] S2: Have you... I don't know whether HighLevel is any kind of a competitor in any way to ClickUp in in terms of, like, one or two of the little potential parts of the of the software. But what do you like and not like about that GoHighLevel almost multilevel marketing on top of a multilevel marketing model? Do you know much about that, or can you speak to that? [00:08:18] S0: I I actually haven't looked at Go High Level. So, unfortunately, I can't speak to their use case. But the way I look at this is I see ClickUp in two ways. One, we will have opinion... So we want to consolidate the modern day work software stack. Right? So if you want to use docs or tasks, etcetera, you should just use ClickUp. But then because the platform is built in a highly structured and configurable manner, we... ClickUp is also a low code, no code workflow building tool. And on that part, I I I would love for every vendor, for every consultant to build some sort of workflow software and then eat up a whole industry. Like, we look at more of this SaaS. A lot of that is just data transformation, and what goes on top of it, and ClickUp can do that. [00:09:06] S2: That sounds like what Go High Level is doing with this kind of white labeling where these consultants are white labeling something, they're selling that solution into an entire marketplace, which is kinda what you're talking about. Yeah. How how... So you said ops nerds. It's interesting that you said that. Is operations the kinda doorway or the entry point into all the organizations for you then?
00:09:06 · Cameron Herold, Gaurav Agarwal
[00:09:06] S2: That sounds like what Go High Level is doing with this kind of white labeling where these consultants are white labeling something, they're selling that solution into an entire marketplace, which is kinda what you're talking about. Yeah. How how... So you said ops nerds. It's interesting that you said that. Is operations the kinda doorway or the entry point into all the organizations for you then? [00:09:27] S0: Yes. And when I say that, I'm just not talking about... So so I come from the world of hardware. I've I've... I did a small stint in hardware. And operations in hardware is different than operations in go to market, is different than operations in sales, is different than operations in design in product. But in all... Almost every function and every department these days, you always have a small ops group that's all about how do I make this whole department run efficiently. And how do I how do I ensure that, we we cut redundant work? We cut the work about work, and we ensure that our resources are deployed effectively. Those are our primary stakeholders. Now those stakeholders use ClickUp for all sorts of use cases from creative and design to event planning to product development to engineering. We are even using shop floors for what it's worth. Like, some of our big customers are actually automobile makers and their big names, they're used by pharma companies. But each one of them is using ClickUp to operationalize, some sort of program or some sort of project that then touches a lot of other departments.
00:09:27 · Gaurav Agarwal, Cameron Herold
[00:09:27] S0: Yes. And when I say that, I'm just not talking about... So so I come from the world of hardware. I've I've... I did a small stint in hardware. And operations in hardware is different than operations in go to market, is different than operations in sales, is different than operations in design in product. But in all... Almost every function and every department these days, you always have a small ops group that's all about how do I make this whole department run efficiently. And how do I how do I ensure that, we we cut redundant work? We cut the work about work, and we ensure that our resources are deployed effectively. Those are our primary stakeholders. Now those stakeholders use ClickUp for all sorts of use cases from creative and design to event planning to product development to engineering. We are even using shop floors for what it's worth. Like, some of our big customers are actually automobile makers and their big names, they're used by pharma companies. But each one of them is using ClickUp to operationalize, some sort of program or some sort of project that then touches a lot of other departments. [00:10:33] S2: Interesting. Okay. I wanna go into a little bit more about ClickUp ClickUp in a second, but I wanna go backwards and let's kinda figure out how you got there. I mean, you're the COO of a great software brand. How many approximately employees do you have currently? [00:10:45] S0: We have about a thousand, give or take. But...