#119 Co-founder & CEO Gong, Amit Bendov: No Royalty
Grit2 Jan 2023

#119 Co-founder & CEO Gong, Amit Bendov: No Royalty

With more than 1,200 employees, it isn’t easy for Gong co-founder and CEO Amit Bendov to stay in touch with everyone. So, his team has established a series of regular programs to communicate the company’s priorities and give workers a chance to ask questions. And despite the revenue intelligence company’s scale, they’ve established a core value called No Royalty: “You’re supposed to be able to communicate with anybody in the company,” Amit says. “You’re no better than anybody.”

In this episode, Amit and Joubin discuss name pronunciation, education and culture, communicating in English, family as pseudo-co-founders, remote work, AI customer management, missing the quarter, “Google for enterprise,” drinking your Kool-Aid, “win as a team,” GPTChat and other AI breakthroughs, and solving problems vs. pursuing opportunities.

In this episode, we cover:

  • The “captain’s table” and spreading company priorities (02:12)
  • Amit’s first jobs and splitting his time between the US and Israel (06:47)
  • The differences in work culture between the two countries, and returning to the office (14:19)
  • Amit’s pre-gong jobs at Click Software, Panaya, and Sisense, and how he got the idea for Gong (18:40)
  • Starting a new company in your 50s and why “nobody wanted to invest in us” (24:58)
  • Gong’s brand, its culture, and the lines before personal and professional (32:15)
  • The art of company-building and enjoying the ride (34:59)
  • Professional struggles and two embarrassing stories about cars (39:57)
  • Being on autopilot, and the pros & cons of letting your mind wander (45:05)
  • Automation vs. personal human relationships, and what AI can do that humans can’t (48:04)
  • If Amit were starting Gong over from scratch, what would he do differently? (55:08)

Links:

Episoder(282)

Founding CRO @HubSpot / Prof @HBS / CoFounder @Stage 2 Capital Mark Roberge: The Science and Psychology of Scaling

Founding CRO @HubSpot / Prof @HBS / CoFounder @Stage 2 Capital Mark Roberge: The Science and Psychology of Scaling

Mark Roberge’s first anxiety attack hit him six months after 9/11, and his second hit him in the middle of a big speech while he was an executive at HubSpot. And Roberge, who now lectures at Harvard B...

1 Aug 20221h 9min

CMO Canva, Zach Kitschke: From Employee Number 5 To $40 Billion Valuation

CMO Canva, Zach Kitschke: From Employee Number 5 To $40 Billion Valuation

Canva CMO Zach Kitschke was the company’s fifth employee, joining right before the product launched to the public — or, that was the plan anyway. Emerging technologies like HTML5 and negative feedback...

25 Jul 20221h 5min

Founder & CEO Freshworks, Girish Mathrubootham: Success Is In the Big Things, Happiness Is In the Small Things

Founder & CEO Freshworks, Girish Mathrubootham: Success Is In the Big Things, Happiness Is In the Small Things

Girish Mathrubootham is the founder and CEO of Freshworks, the first Indian SaaS company to be listed in NASDAQ — and when he’s in his home country, he gets the celebrity treatment. Freshworks’ 2021 I...

18 Jul 20221h 13min

CMO Riot Games, Jason Bunge: Change Is Inevitable, Get Used To It

CMO Riot Games, Jason Bunge: Change Is Inevitable, Get Used To It

Riot Games CMO Jason Bunge knows you might roll your eyes when he says this, but he doesn’t care, because it’s the truth: Marketing doesn’t get enough respect. Although many companies have convinced t...

11 Jul 20221h 2min

Co-Founder & CEO Charm Industrial, Peter Reinhardt: “All That Matters Is What the Customers Are Telling You”

Co-Founder & CEO Charm Industrial, Peter Reinhardt: “All That Matters Is What the Customers Are Telling You”

Before Peter Reinhardt started his current company, Charm Industrial, he was the CEO and co-founder of the customer data platform Segment, which almost died in its first year. Why? He was afraid to as...

4 Jul 20221h 10min

Co-Founder & CEO Clari, Andy Byrne: Machine Learning and Human Feeling

Co-Founder & CEO Clari, Andy Byrne: Machine Learning and Human Feeling

Clari CEO Andy Byrne says he never wants to look back and see that he put more into his work than his family. But that doesn’t mean he can’t learn a thing or two from running a 600-person multi-billio...

27 Jun 20221h 2min

Co-Founder & COO Okta, Frederic Kerrest: Zero to IPO

Co-Founder & COO Okta, Frederic Kerrest: Zero to IPO

In the early days of Okta, co-founder Frederic Kerrest was courting a 3,000-person company in Louisiana, which was considering Okta and one other vendor. When he learned who he was up against, he said...

20 Jun 20221h 19min

Founder & CEO Flock Safety, Garrett Langley: Tech That Makes Everyone Safer

Founder & CEO Flock Safety, Garrett Langley: Tech That Makes Everyone Safer

In April, a young girl was kidnapped and sexually assaulted in Yakima, Wash., and later told police she was picked up by a stranger in a car. The case might have gone cold there, if Yakima hadn’t just...

13 Jun 20221h 9min

Populært innen Business og økonomi

lydartikler-fra-aftenposten
stopp-verden
dine-penger-pengeradet
e24-podden
rss-borsmorgen-okonominyhetene
rss-penger-polser-og-politikk
finansredaksjonen
livet-pa-veien-med-jan-erik-larssen
pengepodden-2
utbytte
rss-sunn-okonomi
tid-er-penger-en-podcast-med-peter-warren
pengesnakk
liberal-halvtime
stormkast-med-valebrokk-stordalen
morgenkaffen-med-finansavisen
lederpodden
okonomiamatorene
rss-politisk-preik
rss-markedspuls-2