On the show today we get to sit down and share a few laughs with Zeb Evans of ClickUp!

Zeb Evans is a serial entrepreneur and libertarian that's started several software companies with over $100 million in revenue. Currently, he's founder and CEO at ClickUp, a productivity platform where people plan their work.

Tell us about what your software does for people?

• ClickUp is an all in one platform for productivity.
• Very customizable features.
• ClickUp works for everyone as compared to competitors who are for a specific market.

How did you decide to found ClickUp?

• Zeb has been a lifelong entrepreneur
• His prior company was a social media company, through that he started his project managing journey.
• They were using a LOT of productivity apps, and that’s where they got the idea to make a single app for all of your productivity ideas.
• He had a near-death experience, moved to Silicon Valley, and kept going with ClickUp.

What did some of the initial meetings look like?

• It was always about flexibility.
• The vision has always been to build something that will work for any size team.
• They make sure that their features are always independent of each other so that if you don’t use the feature you can turn it off without breaking your workflows.

Where did the name ClickUp come from?

• Zeb did a social media platform before ClickUp, so clicks were something they were always thinking about.
• He had trademarked the name ClickUp, and it just stuck with them.
• There’s a fake answer here. 
• The reality is that it was a name they had already trademarked, and it stuck with them.
• Zeb says your company name needs to be easy to Google and spell, and make it memorable.

What were moments that made you realize exactly what your software needed?

• The vision for where they are today was all there right from the start.
• They weren’t perfect at what they wanted to do right from the beginning.
• They learned primarily from user feedback along the way as to what they were doing right and wrong.
• They either ship out a feature and then gather feedback or send out a survey beforehand.

How do you ensure that you are not only listening to what your users say they want but also building what they really need?

• ClickUp has a few platforms and avenues for this
• They use Canny, which is an upvote feature board.
• They use Kendo, a data analytics platform.
• Many times it’s not just about the data gathered, but about whether the feature is marketed or explained.

How did you start ClickUp and keep yourself going financially?

• Zeb had money from his previous company that he invested in ClickUp.
• It never actually occurred to him to get investors.
• Zeb advocates becoming profitable as soon as possible, despite the current general opinion around profitability.
• No one really wanted to fund a product that was everything for everyone initially anyway.
• Eventually, they got investors, but that was very recently.

What is one thing that you initially sacrificed and are now getting around to?

• Relationships. Zeb says when you start a company there is always something that becomes imbalanced while you chase your dream.

What are some of the biggest challenges you overcame?

• There are a lot of little challenges that crop up daily. He describes his current role in the company as a firefighter, constantly putting out all the little fires that start every day.
• They were very close to running out of money at the beginning, so Zeb had to go back to the business mindset instead of worrying so much about product.
• Finding the right people makes the supposedly impossible, possible.
• He learned the lesson from his previous job to hire fewer people and trust them to do their best.
• He also learned that it was better to do manual testing rather than automated testing as automated tests can break and then need to be fixed.

What did you do to get your first users?

• Their initial growth was 100% organic.
• They relied on their users to be advocates.
• They did a lot of content and SEO.

What was the business like in the early days compared to now?

• Zeb says he didn’t really notice how much the business was changing.
• Everyone in the business, while still wearing many hats, has niched down and concentrates more on fewer areas.
• The team has grown to be much larger.

What advice would you give other SaaS entrepreneurs?

• Choose what tool you are building, it won’t work for everything. Choose a space.
• Don’t be dumb about it, listen to feedback, but don’t lose your vision.
• Focus on profitability, focus on the business.

Resources:

Websites: 

ClickUp

Data Automation

Books mentioned: 

The Lean Startup

The E-Myth

Suggest a SaaS founder for the Automate, Delegate, Eliminate show at:

podcast@dataautomation.com