Grit #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:
- Connect with Amit
- Connect with Joubin
- Learn more about Kleiner Perkins
- This episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm