Eliran Glazer, CFO of monday.com, discusses the journey to taking the company public, the data-driven growth strategy that defines its success, and how automation and AI are shaping the future of their platform.
Eliran Glazer stepped into the role of CFO at monday.com during a pivotal moment in the company’s journey—just months before its IPO. Since then, he’s played an instrumental role in guiding the SaaS firm through rapid growth while managing the financial complexities of scaling a global platform.
In this exclusive interview, Glazer shares his insights into monday.com’s unique growth strategy, the importance of data-driven decision-making, and how close collaboration across departments has been essential to supporting monday.com’s evolution as a leader in work management software.
Joining monday.com just four months before its IPO in June 2021, Eliran Glazer took on the unique challenge of helping the company navigate its public debut—an experience he hadn’t tackled before despite years in finance. “When I was offered the role at monday.com, I knew it was a unique chance,” he shares. With a background in both private and public companies, Glazer was drawn to the opportunity to lead a company through this pivotal stage.
“It was about much more than just the IPO experience,” he explains, noting that the leadership team sought someone who not only met technical demands but also aligned with monday.com’s values and mission. “For the team, it was about finding someone they could trust and who shared their vision. That chemistry was key,” Glazer emphasises. This sense of mutual trust has been foundational to his leadership, allowing him to guide monday.com’s growth from a position of strategic and cultural alignment.
Glazer’s approach to leadership reflects the ethos of the company itself: a blend of calculated strategy and genuine collaboration. Under his guidance, monday.com has more than doubled its share price since going public, a testament to the strength of the company’s strategic vision and Glazer’s ability to deliver on it.
At monday.com, data is woven into the fabric of every decision, particularly within Glazer’s finance team. “Data isn’t just part of the process. It drives every decision we make,” he says. His team’s approach to supporting growth goes beyond traditional finance functions, working hand-in-hand with sales and marketing to optimise resource allocation and ensure measurable returns.
Performance marketing is a critical component of this strategy. By closely monitoring lead generation and calculating return on investment, Glazer and his team ensure that every dollar spent is aligned with the company’s broader goals. “We set budgets together, track performance, and adapt as needed to stay on course,” he shares. This collaboration has fostered a strong alignment between the finance and sales teams, resulting in an approach that reinforces strategic objectives at every level.
In supporting the sales organisation, Glazer’s team plays a key role in crafting compensation plans that encourage behaviours aligned with growth targets. “It’s simple: what gets rewarded gets done,” he notes, explaining how carefully structured incentives help drive growth.
For Glazer, budgeting is a blend of top-down and bottom-up planning. Starting mid-year, monday.com employs a rolling forecast that incorporates input from across departments, blending predictable revenue from its annual recurring revenue (ARR) base with adaptable growth targets. “With SaaS, you have a predictable baseline—your ARR—so we can be precise with our projections,” he explains. This approach enables monday.com to set realistic yet ambitious goals; for FY24, the company expects a 30% growth rate, consistent with its three-year strategic plan.
By using a combination of base, low, and best-case scenarios, Glazer’s team crafts a flexible yet disciplined budget that has allowed monday.com to consistently meet its quarterly targets. This data-centric and collaborative approach has been key to the company’s continued success in a competitive market.
As monday.com’s CFO, Glazer places a strong emphasis on customer relationships and responsiveness—a foundational approach that shapes product development and client interactions. The company’s robust customer base, which now includes over 225,000 clients, has been integral to informing and refining monday.com’s product suite.
“We’re constantly evolving based on customer feedback,” Glazer explains. monday.com’s products span a range of functions, including work management, CRM, and software development, with a new service management product set to launch early next year. By keeping customer needs at the core, monday.com creates tools that not only drive efficiency but also respond to the unique demands of its users.
Customer success teams play a pivotal role in this feedback loop, providing a steady stream of insights that influence product decisions. “Our sales organization is structured around building long-term client partnerships,” Glazer says. Account managers work closely with clients, capturing their needs and ensuring they’re not just heard but acted upon. This focus on continuous improvement has allowed monday.com to maintain high levels of customer satisfaction, even as its suite of tools expands.
For Glazer, nurturing these client relationships is not just about building loyalty; it’s about developing solutions that genuinely enhance the user experience. The upcoming service management product, inspired by customer feedback, is a testament to this commitment. “Our goal is to make our platform indispensable for our users, meeting their needs in a way that feels intuitive and seamless,” he adds.
At the heart of monday.com’s evolving technology stack is a commitment to leveraging AI in ways that enhance productivity and user experience without creating additional complexity. “AI for us is about making work easier, not adding another layer of complexity,” Glazer shares. monday.com’s approach to AI is integrated directly into its platform, with a particular focus on automating repetitive tasks within CRM workflows.
By embedding AI capabilities, monday.com enables users to streamline tasks, freeing up time for higher-value work. “Our users saved around 1.5 billion minutes thanks to automation,” Glazer says, underscoring the tangible impact AI has on productivity. The company avoids standalone AI features or add-ons, opting instead for integrated automation tools that align with its ethos of simplicity and efficiency.
This pragmatic approach to AI not only improves the user experience but also bolsters monday.com’s long-term value proposition. By delivering quantifiable benefits, such as time savings and task automation, monday.com continues to communicate a clear return on investment to its clients. “We make sure our clients see the value AI adds—not just in terms of what it can do, but in the time it saves them,” Glazer emphasises. This philosophy keeps AI rooted in practical outcomes, enhancing the platform without overburdening its users.
For a company experiencing rapid growth, challenges and opportunities often go hand in hand. Glazer acknowledges that one of monday.com’s primary challenges is balancing growth with operational efficiency, especially amid global economic uncertainties. “It’s all about staying agile and focused on what truly matters,” he says. By prioritising operational efficiencies while remaining customer-focused, monday.com strives to sustain high growth rates without compromising its standards.
Product strategy is another area where monday.com takes a disciplined approach. Rather than introducing entirely new products each year, the company aims to deepen the capabilities of its existing offerings, making them more comprehensive and valuable for users. “We’re focused on adding depth to our platform, which we believe drives long-term value,” Glazer explains. This focus ensures that each new feature or enhancement aligns with monday.com’s commitment to usability and customer-driven innovation.
Looking ahead, Glazer identifies the upcoming service management product as one of the company’s biggest opportunities. Modelled after the success of monday.com’s CRM tool, the new product is expected to resonate with clients who are increasingly looking for integrated service solutions. “Our primary goal for next year is to bring the same level of impact to our service management product as we’ve seen with CRM,” he says. By applying the same customer-focused approach, monday.com aims to replicate its success and further solidify its standing in the market.
As monday.com grows its presence worldwide, maintaining a cohesive culture across its workforce remains a top priority for Glazer. With 65% of employees based in Israel and 35% located in other regions, fostering a unified, innovative environment requires deliberate effort. “We’re a global company, but we strive to keep our culture close-knit and collaborative,” he shares. This commitment to cohesion allows monday.com to scale its unique company culture along with its business, creating a workplace where every team member feels connected to the broader mission.
Glazer emphasizes the importance of flexibility and adaptability within this framework, ensuring that each team feels empowered to make decisions that drive innovation. By encouraging autonomy while preserving a shared vision, monday.com creates a work environment that attracts top talent—an essential component for sustaining its competitive edge. “We invest in hiring the right people, those who align with our values and have the ambition to grow with us,” Glazer notes.
Through this approach, monday.com remains agile and aligned, even as it navigates the complexities of scaling across multiple continents. Glazer’s leadership reinforces the idea that culture isn’t a static element; it’s something that must evolve in tandem with the company’s growth. By nurturing this culture of innovation and unity, monday.com positions itself as a global player that remains true to its roots.
Looking ahead, Glazer’s goals for monday.com are focused on leveraging its strengths to deepen market impact. The company’s primary objective for the coming year centres on replicating the success of its CRM with the upcoming service management product. “We’re confident in the potential of this new product to meet a growing demand in the market,” he says. By drawing on lessons learned from previous product launches, Glazer and his team aim to bring a highly impactful tool to clients, expanding monday.com’s influence in the work management space.
Glazer envisions a future where monday.com continues to lead by prioritizing innovation that truly serves its customers. “We want to be the go-to platform for organizations looking to streamline their workflows, integrate AI seamlessly, and ultimately, improve productivity,” he shares. This vision aligns with monday.com’s strategy of enhancing existing offerings rather than constantly diversifying, ensuring that each product is both powerful and intuitive.
As the company enters its next phase of growth, Glazer’s focus remains on sustainable, data-driven expansion. He views his role as one that balances monday.com’s ambitious goals with the discipline required to achieve them. By cultivating a strategic roadmap that emphasises customer feedback, operational efficiency, and technological innovation, Glazer is poised to guide monday.com toward a future defined by resilience and impact.