Chris Cunningham, Founding Member of ClickUp, joined us for 1st Mondays presented by TIPA, and he dropped some gems worth sharing.
Here’s what actually moved the needle in the early days of ClickUp:
➡️ Stay scrappy. When they had zero leads, they built a tool that monitored competitor reviews on G2 and Capterra. The moment someone left a 2-star review on a competitor? They were in their LinkedIn DMs.
➡️ Move fast. When a competing tool (Producteev) announced it was shutting down with no data export, their CTO pulled an all-nighter, and built the export in a day and a half. They showed up in Facebook groups and said, “We’ll take you in.” Thousands of displaced customers became ClickUp customers.
➡️ Hire well. Some of their best hires came from Home Depot, not FAANG. Find people who want to hustle.
One more thing Chris said that stuck with us: “This might be the last gold rush.” AI is changing everything, and even ClickUp, at its scale, is having to adapt.
Thanks, Chris and the ClickUp team, for supporting the San Diego startup community!
🚀 Join our next 1st Mondays happening August 3rd: eventbrite.com/e/1979928499440
#1stMondays #StartupSD #ClickUp #tipa
SaaStanak 2026 full agenda is LIVE! We're closing out the Keynote stage by SQ Capital with two fantastic speakers 🧡
Tomislav Car, CEO of Productive, is coming to Šibenik with an honest account about going from SaaS to AI business; Productive just went through one of their biggest product shifts since founding and Tom's here to talk about what that looked like from the inside.
Ketty Slonimsky is a Growth Advisor at Suno, SonderMind, and Fyxer, and former CGO at Palta where she scaled Flo to 77M+ monthly active users. She'll talk about building growth machines that compound drawing on her experience: why small elite teams + agents are pulling ahead, how they run experimentation at industrial scale, and how to turn distribution, retention, and monetization into one compounding system.
Tom and Ketty are joining an all-star lineup with Kyle Poyar, Chris Cunningham, Sara Kathleen Gordon, Wes Bush, Nathan Latka, Jen Igartua, and Nick Velkovski!
Go explore all the sessions & grab your ticket if you haven't – today's the last day at the current price! Link in bio 🌊
The first failure is the one that changes everything.
Because now you know what it feels like to lose. You know what people will say. You know how it hits your confidence. And you realize… you survived it.
That’s when things get dangerous in a good way. You stop fearing the worst case and start chasing what you actually want. That’s where the fire comes from. 🚀
New episode with Chris Cunningham is out now.
Tap in with us on YouTube and all podcast platforms @thegynergyeffect 🎙️
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#resilience #entrepreneurlife #growthmindset #risk #gynergy
We love remote work. But some breakthroughs need a whiteboard and the same timezone.
This week, members of the AI team flew in for a hackathon. Focused builders working shoulder to shoulder on our agents.
Follow along to see what we build.
What questions should I ask them while I’m here?
People don’t connect with logos. They connect with people 👀 @cunningham , co-founder of @clickup and the brain behind all things social media, joined the TechChill stage this year.
His rule of three?
Add value
Teach something
Make people laugh
And one big reminder for brands - please, stop talking only about your product 😅
Creator-led brand pages are winning, and your own team might just be your strongest distribution channel.
Sounds simple? Maybe.
Easy to do well? That’s the real challenge 🔥
Find the full live stream recording on our LinkedIn, Facebook and Youtube -> Founders stage Day 1
📸 Jānis Saliņš
