AI at Scale: 8 Learnings from monday.com Co-Founder and Co-Ceo Eran Zinman

“We were launching our pricing for AI and we had a debate,” Eran explained. “Should we do it per seat? Should we do it on a consumption basis?

monday.com has been a powerhouse in SaaS, scaling from $10M ARR in 2017 to over $1B — in just eight years (!)

Co-CEO and Co-Founder Eran Zinman recently sat down with SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin to share his insights on their journey, including how they’ve leveraged AI, maintained growth, and expanded into multiple product lines.

Here are five AI learnings and 3 non-obvious business takeaways from the discussion.

5 Key Learnings on AI in SaaS

1. AI’s Biggest Value in SaaS is Automation 3.0
   AI isn’t just about new features—it’s about removing friction and making automation seamless. monday.com has leveraged AI to help customers streamline processes with minimal setup, making complex workflows accessible through natural language prompts.

2. The Most Used AI Feature? Processing Unstructured Data
   The standout AI use case in monday.com is structuring and processing messy data. From CV screening to invoice parsing, AI is turning hours of manual work into seconds, making businesses vastly more efficient.

3. AI Pricing Models Are Still Evolving
   monday.com decided to price AI features based on consumption rather than per seat. With AI potentially reducing the need for additional hires, tying AI pricing to usage instead of users aligns better with customer needs and long-term growth. “We were launching our pricing for AI and we had a debate,” Eran explained. “Should we do it per seat? Should we do it on a consumption basis? And eventually, we decided to charge per consumption and not be tied to the seat model. Because I think that, if this is going to be widely successful, some of our customers will not hire as many people as they plan to. So maybe we should probably be charging on usage and AI, deployment as opposed to add like additional charge per seat.”

4. AI Adoption is High, But Integration is Key
   In six months, monday.com recorded over 17 million AI-driven actions, showing strong adoption. But they credit this success to integrating AI into existing workflows instead of forcing users to learn entirely new processes.

5. AI Will Soon Be Table Stakes
   While companies can currently charge for AI enhancements, the landscape is shifting rapidly. In 18 months, core AI features might become expected—like SSO—rather than premium add-ons. Companies need to prepare for this shift and focus on delivering real value.

3 Non-Obvious Learnings from Monday.com’s Growth

6. SMBs Are the Enterprises of Tomorrow
   Many SaaS companies abandon SMBs as they move upmarket, but monday.com actively invests in SMBs. Why? Because today’s SMBs grow into tomorrow’s large accounts. Salesforce’s move upmarket, for example, left a gap that HubSpot filled—dominating the mid-market CRM space. “ I think a lot of companies’ intuition is we’re going to move upmarket, so abandon the SMB and mid- market segment,” Eran explained. “You do the math and you say, ‘Oh, I’m spending that amount of effort on closing those deals, getting those customers on board, I might as well invest time in the larger customers because its cost efficient.’ But I think that’s a big mistake because eventually, and I’ve seen this in so many kind of veteran SaaS companies, what happens is eventually you abandon the mid-market and SMB segment, and then you have this huge vacuum. You leave a huge vacuum in the market.”

6. Multi-Product Strategy is a Must for Scaling Past $1B
   If you want to grow beyond $1B ARR, you must go multi-product. monday.com expanded from one to four core products (Work Management, CRM, Service Management, and Dev) and is seeing faster adoption than its original product. This diversification creates resilience and long-term scalability.

7. Cross-Product Data Flow is a Game Changer
   One of monday.com’s biggest competitive advantages is that data seamlessly connects across its product suite. Unlike traditional SaaS tools that create silos, their unified platform ensures departments have visibility into multiple workflows, making AI-powered insights even more valuable.

And the full deep dive here:

AI at Scale: 8 Key Learnings from Monday.com Co-Founder and Co-CEO Eran Zinman

1. Finding Product-Market Fit with AI

Monday.com has quietly become one of the industry’s AI success stories, with over 17 million AI actions executed in their product over the past few months. Their approach differs dramatically from other SaaS vendors – rather than creating new AI-specific features that force users to adapt, they’re helping customers automate existing workflows and tasks they already perform.

“When it comes to AI, our philosophy has been to make it accessible by automating tasks customers already do, not requiring them to adopt new technology or change how they use the product,” explains Zinman.

Their most successful AI use case? Processing unstructured information. From CV screening (where some customers process 100,000 CVs monthly) to analyzing invoices, RFPs and PDFs, monday.com’s AI capabilities transform time-consuming manual processes into seconds-long automated workflows.

2. The Durability Advantage of a Diverse Customer Base

At $1.1B in revenue with 32% growth at scale, monday.com’s financial performance is remarkable by any standard. Even more impressive? Their 30% free cash flow margin and 110% net revenue retention.

Monday.com attributes this stability and predictability to their incredibly diverse customer base spanning industries, markets, and geographies. With 250,000+ customers – 70% outside tech – they’ve created natural insulation against sector-specific downturns.

“This diversity creates stability as we’re not overly reliant on any single industry or market,” Zinman notes. “It allows us to represent the broader economy and ride its waves.”

3. The Critical Balance: Serving Both SMB and Enterprise

Unlike many SaaS players who shift entirely upmarket as they scale, monday.com continues investing heavily in both enterprise and SMB segments. Their enterprise business is booming (100K+ customers growing 45%), but they refuse to abandon smaller customers.

“Abandoning the small and mid-market segment is a huge mistake,” Zinman emphasizes. “It leaves a vacuum for competitors and ignores that today’s small businesses become tomorrow’s enterprises.”

This balanced approach requires thoughtful resource allocation. Rather than assigning specific budgets, Zinman communicates priorities through behavior and time allocation, ensuring both segments receive appropriate attention.

4. The AI Pricing Question

After significant internal debate, monday.com decided to price AI capabilities on a consumption basis rather than per seat. This decision acknowledges the transformative potential of AI – if it reduces headcount needs, seat-based pricing could penalize successful adoption.

“If AI is wildly successful, customers may not hire as many people as planned. We should charge based on usage and AI deployment, not seats,” Zinman explains.

Looking ahead, Zinman recognizes the uncertainty around AI pricing models: “The rate of change is so fast that in 18 months, we may not be able to charge for AI at all. It may become a core part of software that comes with a seat.”

5. Multi-Product Strategy as a Growth Accelerator

Monday.com has expanded beyond its core Work Management platform to include CRM, Service Management, and Dev products. This multi-product approach has become essential to their continued growth trajectory.

“Going multi-product is critical for scaling past $1 billion,” Zinman emphasizes. “It’s best to start earlier in your journey to give yourself time to learn and improve.”

The company evaluates new product opportunities based on buyer overlap, sales cycle length, and use case alignment. Their CRM product exemplifies this strategy’s success, with growth rates outpacing their original platform despite entering one of SaaS’s most crowded categories.

6. Platform Integration as Competitive Advantage

As monday.com expands its product suite, the integration between products creates exponential value. Customers increasingly prefer connected tools that allow data to flow seamlessly across the organization.

“People want to connect between different software tools,” Zinman notes. “Our platform enables this connection, creating a unified view of the organization.”

This integrated approach becomes even more powerful with AI, which can leverage cross-product data to deliver insights impossible with siloed solutions.

7. The “Good Enough” Product Threshold

One of the most nuanced challenges in a multi-product strategy is determining how excellent each product must be. Zinman acknowledges that not every product needs to be best-in-class if the integration advantages are substantial enough.

“It’s about finding the right balance and being honest about where the line is between having good enough products and having the best products,” he explains.

This approach requires continual evaluation and transparency about trade-offs, with an understanding that integration can sometimes outweigh feature superiority.

8. Launch, Learn, Iterate

Rather than waiting for perfection before launch, monday.com releases new products with the intention of iterating and improving post-release.

“Releasing the first version doesn’t have to be perfect. You can iterate and improve after release, with the goal of eventually building a robust multi-product organization.”

This philosophy has enabled them to enter multiple categories quickly while continuously enhancing their offerings based on real-world customer feedback.

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As monday.com continues scaling beyond the $1B ARR milestone, their balanced approach to customer segments, pragmatic AI implementation, and multi-product strategy offers a masterclass in sustainable SaaS growth. By maintaining their product-first culture while expanding into enterprise markets, they’ve created a playbook for durable growth that today’s SaaS founders would be wise to study.