How do you build one of the fastest-growing integration platforms in tech, while keeping culture, momentum, and innovation in sync?
In this episode, Shensi Ding, Co-Founder and CEO of Merge, shares her journey from investment banking to leading one of the most successful integration infrastructure companies in the market. She opens up about the company’s evolution, from a small startup in San Francisco to a category leader powering technology products and AI agents for companies like Ramp and OpenAI.
Shensi also discusses how she built Merge’s in-person culture during the height of the pandemic, what it takes to recruit top talent, and the lessons she’s learned about decision-making, adaptability, and sustaining momentum as a founder.
Takeaways:
The Importance of Company Culture: Shensi emphasizes the significance of maintaining an in-person culture at Merge, even amidst the challenging conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Maintaining Quality Over Competing on Price: Shensi discusses the challenge of maintaining a premium product in an environment saturated with copycats. She was inspired by the CEO of Gong, who reinforced that a company cannot be both the best and the cheapest.
Navigating Growth and Innovation: An integral part of Merge’s ethos has been to constantly innovate and adapt, which Shensi highlights by discussing the launch of new products and their strategic shifts towards AI-driven solutions.
Integration and Expansion as Key Growth Drivers: Shensi highlights the significance of diversifying Merge’s product offerings and expanding into new markets to drive growth. By strategically adding categories and aiming for enterprise-level clients, Merge has expanded its market reach and increased its potential for acquiring larger clients.
Lessons in Leadership and Adaptability: David and Shensi discuss the value of learning from industry veterans and mentors, which Merge facilitates by inviting successful leaders to speak with their team.
Navigating Fundraising and Investor Relations: In discussing fundraising experiences, Shensi highlights the importance of clear differentiation and conveying the unique value of your product to investors. While the initial seed round was challenging, securing well-known investors early on eased future fundraising efforts.
Quote of the Show:
“You can’t be the best and the cheapest. You need to decide what you want to be.” - Shensi Ding
Links:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shensiding/
Website: https://www.merge.dev/
Ways to Tune In:
Substack:
Spotify:
Apple Podcasts:
Transistor: https://podcast.notanotherceo.com/
#NotAnotherCEO #BusinessSuccess #Merge
Chapters:
00:00 Intro
01:40 Starting Merge During the Pandemic
02:50 Challenges of In-Person Work Culture
03:42 Expanding to New York and International Markets
04:50 Maintaining Work Ethic and Decision Making
06:42 Evolving Leadership and Learning from Mistakes
10:56 Bringing Industry Leaders to Inspire the Team
13:56 Acquiring the First Customers
16:38 Dealing with Copycats and Maintaining Quality
21:08 Product Evolution and Adapting to AI
27:59 The Halo Effect of New Products
29:59 Promoting AI Tools Internally
33:15 Fundraising Challenges and Successes
38:08 Moving Upmarket and Adapting
41:42 Founders’ Background and Journey
47:16 Balancing Work and Personal Life
50:41 Outro
NACP - Shensi Ding
Shensi: [00:00:00] If we’re the one who’s always like pushing it forward and like thinking through like how the industry’s evolving, you do have that gap where you’re the industry leader. And like you are the only one with features that no one else has.
David: Today’s guest is Shensi Ding, co-founder and CEO of Merge. I met Shensi very early on in her journey and have watched what her and her team have built over a pretty short period of time. It’s, it’s amazing.
I believe that a big part of the success that she’s had is because of her crazy work ethic, grit, and true understanding of how to solve her customer’s problems. Before starting Merge, she was the chief of. Of staff at [00:01:00] Expanse where she helped scale the company through its hyper growth phase. The company was ultimately acquired by Palo Alto Networks for $800 million in 2020.
She co-founded Merge to solve one of the biggest pain points for technology companies integrations. Something I know very well. Um, now Merge provides integrations for products and AI agents. Under her leadership Merge has raised more than $75 million from world-class investors like Excel, NEA and addition.
It’s now trusted by thousands of customers from fast-growing startups to category leaders like ramp, OpenAI, perplexity, MasterCard, Uber, and many more. Shensi, welcome to the show.
Shensi: Thanks for having me.
David: here. I’m excited to be doing this. alright, so Shensi, what is the one thing that you’ve done at Merge, big or small that’s had the biggest impact and you do, again, if you’re CEO of another company in the future?
Shensi: We were in person first from 2020. So we started the company June, 2020 and out of Gill’s apartment, my co-founder.
Um, and we were having so much fun that we were like, wow, what if we added a few more people to the [00:02:00] company and also had them in San Francisco and we worked out of like a WeWork and wore masks. Um, and so that’s what we did. And as we. Got bigger, COVID got better and we just kept it going. We weren’t sure how long it would last and if also a lot of other companies would be in person or fully remote.
But yeah, we kept it going and being in person has been a really big part of our culture, um, our company, our team, and how we grow. Um, yeah, so I think that’s had a really big difference in both our recruiting process, but also how we operate as a company.
David: Yeah. I mean, the first time that we met, I remember you telling me there was someone I had known that was interviewing for a job, and they said, Dave, they’re in person every day. They’re like, stuck on that, you know, like, and, and it was, it was at that time really, nobody was really
Shensi: doing
Yeah. it was very controversial.
David: How did you. Maintain that. Like how did you find people to even join you during that
that time?
Shensi: Oh my gosh, it was so hard. And, um, it’s still, it still impacts us when it comes to like senior. Senior employees. Um, but it’s just ton of sourcing. Like I think because it was [00:03:00] so hard for us to find people who would be even open to that, we had to do a ton of sourcing. And sourcing still is a very important part of our business.
We reached out to tons of candidates, uh, just to see if they would be even be even open to it. Uh, but back then, like the passthrough rate for people who’d be open to in person was extremely low. So yeah, it was just a ton of
outreach.
David: And even when you had great people, you like candidates, you would just hold the
line?
Shensi: Yes. I mean, that
candidate,
Yeah. I, he looks amazing. And like I would’ve loved to have him at the company, but he would not be as effective in an in-person company if he was the only remote person. And we’ve had plenty of leaders who are, who are amazing, like, like tier one companies, like amazing track record, clearly very effective.
Uh, but they just won’t be effective at our company because our whole team will be in person.
David: And so you’ve continued that to today, but you went from San Francisco, you came to new York.
York So can you talk about that kind of, and, and you have an office now in both places and I think
other places
well.
Shensi: Uh, well, it was partially driven by recruiting. So back then in San [00:04:00] Francisco, um. It was getting a little bit sad. A lot of people had left. There weren’t a ton of people who were still in the city. Um, it was also a very remote first city, and it was starting to impact a lot of our, like, our recruiting processes.
And we started expanding internationally from day one just because of COVID. So everyone was everywhere. Um, it was, we were just selling to like Europe, to Africa, to like Asia. There were really no boundaries when it came to who we were having conversations with. And California, even though it’s very beautiful and like very central for tech, uh, very hard for international.
Phone conversations and like Zoom calls. And so, um, New York felt like a natural extension for us, especially if we wanted to be able to open up a new talent market. So I moved to New York around three or four years ago, uh, opened our team, opened up our office, and it mostly became a go-to-market hub at first.
But then over time we hired more engineers. And it was really critical for us during that time when no one was coming to the office because people in New
York
were,
David: yeah,
yeah, I think, um, one of the things, again, I, I mean it, when I said in the intro, you know, your work ethic, I, I felt it from.
Day one when we met, [00:05:00] and I remember after the meeting I met you and Gil in my office, you know, during that COVID kind of period, and I said, wow, I wish I could do what they’re doing culturally with better Cloud. But again, at that point, everyone was all over the place and everything. But you, you, I felt it like we are going to grind and we’re gonna do what’s necessary.
We’re now five years later, um, there’s this whole 9, 9, 6 trend that’s going on. Have you been able to maintain that? As the company has scaled, as you’ve
hired
all
these very impressive people, but like, have you been able to maintain that throughout?
Shensi: Yeah, so I’ll admit I was probably a little bit naive back then that we helped for how long you can maintain it, and I think a lot of people won’t talk about this publicly, but after a certain point it becomes more about decision making versus just. Working a lot, um, and making really good decisions and just making sure that you’re moving in the right direction and not just spinning your wheels.
Uh, but I think when you’re starting, you have to work a lot. And so when we would do interviewing in the beginning, uh, there’d be a filter of are you open to in person? Yes or no? And then most people would say [00:06:00] no. And then after like, okay, we eat dinner at the office every night and you have to work until 9:00 PM every night.
And then that would be another filter as well. Um, and it was really important because back then when we were just 10 people and then even up to 50 people, um, we had to do everything we could. It was a complete new market and there were no moats and software, and the only thing to do was just put in hours.
Um, but it started becoming clear around like 75. 80 people, um, that we were missing really good decision making and that we were also going in directions and wasting a lot of time on things that someone who had experienced could have
just.
Corrected it. Um, and that’s when we started bringing in more senior people like parents, uh, people who had a lot more tenure at companies that had done it before, and that really made things more efficient.
I think there are still benefits to working hard. Like our team still works very hard. Um, and even people who are not like physically in the office super late, like they’re always available and they work late at night, but it’s not the same as before where we had to just like. Put in so many hours because we weren’t sure what to do.
We would need to just like shoot our shot in different directions and see what worked and didn’t work. Now [00:07:00] we have a lot more direction and data for what is effective. Um, and it’s mostly about good
decision
making. Mm-hmm.
David: Yeah, it’s, I, I think, uh, in the early days of any business, in my opinion. When it’s, when you’re starting from zero and literally nothing, you have to power through.
You have to build inertia, momentum kind of some way, and I think one of the challenges is that people who do it multiple times, the second time, they forget that part of the journey. That’s what I’ve been noticing as I’ve been through multiple journeys and I see multi-time founders and they start new companies and they
forget.
Shensi: What actually, it’s very hard.
It, it is hard.
It’s It’s
exhausting.
David: It’s a different kind of muscle to be able to do that. Yeah. You know? And to be on the plane all the time and to be going to customers, and that is, it is exhausting, but I think it is what, what’s necessary to get stuff kind of off
the the
ground.
Shensi: a
hundred percent. And with [00:08:00] our new product, um, we did, we didn’t wanna take resources away from our core product. And so the only engineers that we had were me, Gil, and one engineer. And we had to work every weekend. We had to work because we had meetings during the day. So from five to midnight every night Gil and I were coding.
And then on the weekends all day, we just didn’t have any plans and we were coding. Um, and even now, like the team for that product is smaller. Whenever anyone wants to join that team because it’s, you know, it’s sexy. It’s ai, right? Yeah. Um, I say, okay, well, are you willing to work late every night and then you have to work weekends?
It’s a requirement for this team because it’s a completely new thing. You’re building something from nothing and we don’t, if you don’t do this, the product dies. So if a lot of people are like, oh, okay, that’s definitely
a a
little
bit different. different
David: Yeah.
I think some people are scared to say what you said in the beginning when with those first set of people you brought on board and what you just said.
Now I think people, maybe because of that COVID period of time, like people are scared to say, this requires a lot of hours. This requires a lot of work. But when you talk [00:09:00] about that with like this new team. What I find is there’s a lot of people who actually raise their hand for that.
Yeah.
Some people get energy
from
that.
Shensi: Yeah, for sure. And we found, and that team, like they work super hard. They’re always on call. Um, and it’s exciting. It’s really exciting, like the wins that you have, um, it feels like more concentrated. Um, but yeah, like it’s not something
that everyone wants to do.
David: Yeah. So, um, you and Gil have both. I mean, evolved and matured so much since the first time that we we met.
And, um, since you started the company, how have you done that? Like, have you done that purposely or that just happened?
Shensi: That’s a great question. I think it requires a lot of like reflection and mistakes that we’ve made with like our team products customers. Um, and every time we’ve made a really big mistake that’s helped impact the direction of where we end up going and how we end up growing.
Um, and also it’s partially like market forces, like we talked about this previously, but the market has changed so much now compared to
companies that were
started in like
the 2010s. Like every year [00:10:00] there’s like a new challenge and it’s like you’re going through a game that’s just like changing so fast compared to before where, you know.
You had an expectation of what like next year might look like. Um, and so I think because of that, I’ve just learned to be a lot more dynamic and more flexible and just understanding that like, things are going to change and I just have to be okay with it. But we have to be open to learning new things and then adapting our company and our product and our team.
Um, and maybe people, we lose some people along the way, but in the end, like if we really believe in like where we’re going and how we can end up changing the industry and the problem we’re problems we’re solving,
um,
that’s
what
really matters.
David: I, I, I just interviewed a, um, I started interviewing VCs for, for this and uh, and I interviewed someone yesterday and they said that the, what they look for is the slope.
Of
learning
in founders that they invest in. And that’s the number one thing, because the speed that things
are changing
is so fast that if you can’t evolve that fast, you’re just gonna
get
left
behind.
Yeah.
Um, so one of the things that you know, I know you do is you [00:11:00] bring people into the company to speak to the company and, uh, I think it’s a great idea.
Uh, could you maybe share a little bit about how you do that and
who you bring in?
Shensi: Oh my gosh. Yeah. It’s made such a big difference for our team. So we had, obviously you come in and speak. Um, Greg shot the former CEO of MuleSoft. He came in, um, he was amazing. We also had John. Graze the CTO of Plaid. Uh, we had Jack Altman come in, the former CEO of, uh, lattice and Founder.
Um, and all of them had such amazing stories to talk about. It’s, it’s hard, like it’s not always like a straight line and it’s just super easy and you end up getting knocked down a few times and you always have to figure out how to come back up. Um, and I think it gave our team a lot of context for how.
This is very normal. Um, ‘cause a lot of times, like internally, we have people who’ve worked at other startups. And one of my team members, Charlie, he’s always like, merge as a smooth ship. He’s like, this is like the most like well operated. Like, this is so smooth. I’m like loving this. And then meanwhile, some of our other team members where this is their first company, they’re like, oh my God, like this is [00:12:00] chaos.
And then like, they just don’t listen to Charlie. Um, so it’s like nice to have, uh, like people who, who like. Basically like made it and like have like accomplished where we want to go. Um, share stories about like times where like things were hard and how they made it through and like how it’s like totally normal and it’s part of the fun and like now they’re like laughing about it.
Uh, so I think it’s nice to have that perspective and it, it’s just cool. Like there’s like star power. These people
come,
uh,
come
to
our office.
David: It’s interesting ‘cause when you tell your team, when I tell my team, when anyone tells their own team,
Shensi: no one
really
yeah, they think I’m spreading propaganda.
Yeah.
David: But when you bring people in, you can actually.
Tell them that this
is
just,
this is the journey. This is what I’ve been recently, I’ve been talking to a lot of founder groups and I’ve been telling them like when you hear, when you’re a first time founder and you hear about someone else’s journey
online or LinkedIn or some podcast, it feels like it’s just up until the right when in reality there’s many near death experiences, [00:13:00] roadblocks, challenges, You feel like it’s only your team if you’re, you know, you’re a salesperson, like, oh, this product sucks. Everyone, everyone else’s products are the best things in the world when you realize that the other companies, they have it just, just as bad. Yeah. It’s,
um,
yeah. I, I like that you do that. You know, I, I think that that’s.
Uh, that’s really how do you get to these people? I mean, I know we, we’ve met each other, but
like how do, how do you get to
these people? people?
Shensi: Yeah, it’s a combination of them being investors in the company, um, in previous rounds. It’s also just like we network, we just inherently meet a lot
of people. Um, Gil and I were really
into meeting people in person. Um, and that has created like more personal connections to different. People who could like,
inspire our business. So
yeah.
David: Do does anyone say no?
If you ask them to do it? It
Shensi: Um, we’ve been pretty selective about who we ask so far. Um, so not yet,
but I’m sure that’s gonna happen.
David: I don’t know.
I don’t know.
I think most people wanna pay it forward and, and do that. All right. I’m gonna go back all the way to the beginning.
How did you get your first five customers?
Shensi: Oh my gosh. [00:14:00] Uh, yeah, tons of outbound, almost begging, promising people that we would do whatever they wanted. Um, and we did, we really did do everything to like, to make them happy.
But yeah, it was just a lot of outbound.
David: Um,
did you have real design partners or did you, did you give it to them for free? Did you charge, this is a question early on when I started the podcast, everyone said, I want to know what every single one of these CEOs did for that first five
to know.
Did they charge, did they not charge?
Did they have them sign something? Like
can you talk about what those first
first
Shensi: Yeah.
I mean, my hot take is, is that time to 1 million that like a company takes. It’s really annoying, but it’s an artificial metric that a lot of VCs care about. And so you should do it for free until you, until you feel like you have pipeline, uh, where you can have momentum.
Because like the whole company is about momentum. Like you need to have like momentum for like how you get like the first million and then you use like, fundraise and like that like beginning is so critical. Um, and if you like slowly drip, like 10,000 here, 10,000 here, 10,000 here, um,
it’s not.
Um, it’s not like, [00:15:00] it’s not as fast of like a push.
And so, um, even for like our newer product, what we did was like, we did it for free for like a month or two because we really, our product was not that good, right? Like, if your product’s not that good, like why are you asking people to pay you very little for it? Wait until your product is very good, you know, you’re actually adding a lot of value.
Then actually charge them. Um, and then at that point, hopefully you’ll have generated enough pipeline around you, uh, that you can also start getting other customers onboarded. And they already have a
product that’s much
more big.
David: I,
so I took the same approach that you took where I didn’t charge until I felt like the product was at a
place
where I should charge. Like,
have you are you
charging charging people for I couldn’t agree
with that more.
I actually, I feel like nowadays there’s more people saying
you should be charging right away and have these design parties. And I, I, that the, the other thing you said I don’t wanna skip over is the momentum to a million dollars, the speed to a million, unfortunately. It is kind of stupid, but unfortunately it does matter to fundraising.
So what and and when did you start charging? Oh, you [00:16:00] started charging here. Oh. And you got to a million in three weeks.
Oh my god. You’re amazing.
Versus you got your first design partner. It, it’s the same period of actual time. Yeah.
That that’s an important.
That, that’s a really important point.
And so did you, so you kind of built up, how many customers, do you remember how many customers you had before you started to to charge?
Shensi: We had, I think just two or three, like a third. One was already starting to test in the beginning, but two had been like yelling at us for months being like, oh, you guys need to make these improvements.
Um, we worked really closely with them too. Um, but yeah, the third one was like waiting in the wings, um, by the time we were ready to go live.
David: Yeah.
Um, you have had, you really created this category and you know, um, and you have, I don’t know how many copycat I think I took. I saw you at an event one time at some conference, and at that conference you had your big booth
God. and then there was like 42 other.
Shensi: You know? you know? Yeah.
And they all came up to me being like, you’re my hero. And I was like, oh my God. Get outta my face. [00:17:00] But also, thank you.
David: Yeah. That that was I at that conference, I remember being
like, wow, this is crazy. Um, but you have continued to elevate the company above kind of that
fray. How have you done that?
Shensi: So I met the CMO of Gong, um, and he inspired me so much because Gong obviously there’s so many copycats, they’re the premium product. Um, and people love Gong. Um, and I was like, okay, well how do you guys maintain your price point? Like, how do you have all these people love you? And there’s companies literally offering it for free.
And he was like, Hanzi, you can’t be the best and the cheapest. Like, you need to decide what you wanna do. And I was like, that is so true. Like if someone is optimizing for the cheapest, I just cannot win them. that’s not something that I’m going to be optimizing for. I want us to have the best product.
I want us to have the best customer success. I want us to have the best team. I want all around, for us to be able to provide like the most premium experience for our customers, because that’s what I care about. I want quality [00:18:00] and so I think throughout the whole time we’ve always thought through, okay, we need to have like a really high quality product and we also need to be the
ones.
Thinking through new ideas. It’s really unfortunate because it’s much easier to copy than it is to innovate. But if we’re the one who’s always like, pushing it forward and like thinking through like how the industry’s evolving, you do have that gap where you’re the industry leader and like you are the only one with features that no one else has.
And that’s really important for like the company momentum and just having an edge. But yeah, it’s always just thinking through like what are the new edges
for how we end up advancing the company.
David: It’s um, it. This feels like a problem that didn’t exist when
I started my career 20 something years ago.
Because to start a company, like to stand up a software, you had to literally go to a, a colo facility and rack servers.
I I, I literally did it in Iraq. And you’re like, okay, now they’re stood up. Now we’re gonna go write the software, then we’re gonna have to put, then the, the server goes down, [00:19:00] then you gotta, and just the work required. To set up a new company, was a technology company, was a lot, and the money and everything.
And now people literally can go to your website and
just copy and tell some AI tool to copy paste it.
And I mean, I think i’ve seen people with your API docs.
Like
full copied. Yeah. copies.
Yeah.
Yeah. I’ve seen like people literally just copy and paste.
Shensi: But yeah, just
David: FYI,
but
it’s, it’s,
it’s crazy.
I mean, um, and so how do you get your team, I wonder how, ‘cause I haven’t dealt with it in this era, how do you get your team? ‘cause I’m sure they get frustrated, they probably come to you and say, Hey, there’s nine copycats, they’re all
cheaper.
How do you get your team to feel what you just described to me?
Shensi: Yeah, I mean I think it’s just continuing to have wins and also making it a little bit more human like. The reason why people purchase our product isn’t just because of like certain features or like certain functionality that we offer. It’s also because our customer success team is [00:20:00] so good. Like we have the best customer success team, we have the best solutions engineering team, we have the best technical support team, and that’s like human and that’s training and that’s.
them. And, because they’re so good, it has such a big impact on our business. And you can’t can’t copy. That.
David: Hmm.
It’s trust actually.
It’s very, I think it’s trust. It ends up being the customer.
Trust trusts you and trust You can’t, you can’t buy the trust.
Exactly. You can’t make your product so cheap that they trust you.
You gotta, actually, I think that, that I, I’ve been really, um, you and I spent a lot of time talking about this, and, and the more I think about it, the more I think it literally everything can get summarized into trust.
Just you are the, you are the thought leader. You’re the one creating this market. You’re, like you said, you’re the one knowing where it’s going, not just copying where it’s been.
And that is trust for, especially for your customers. I mean,
um,
can you talk maybe a little bit more about just the product [00:21:00] evolution and, you can give a little more detail on the actual product. because the product has, evolved. Quite a bit, especially recently. Can you talk about that?
Shensi: So our vision for merge was always, especially on the unified API product, was to always be cross category. And when we started fundraising for our seed, that was what we pitched. Like we were going to be cross category, we were going to cover everything.
but we had to start with two categories because it’s a hard. Product to build. and I think because we started with HR and ATS a lot of people just perceived us as only being like an HR and ATS company and that we could never expand our tam beyond that. and that it was gonna be really hard for us to be able to land companies in like accounting or, like file storage or ticketing.
And, the past few years was really critical for us to prove them wrong. and so we’ve landed some really big logos, obviously in the AI space that are not HR ATS related. We landed at the largest financial services companies. this morning actually we landed out like our second largest payments processor, in the world, which is really, really exciting.
and we’ve gotten even like very popular ride sharing companies [00:22:00] like you mentioned. And that was all in categories that were not HR and ATS and It was really hard to do, like they were very different. the sales process was very different, but we had to do it because the industry was changing. HR and ATS was really great.
for back then when remote work was really popular and like people were doing a lot of like, remote productivity software and remote payroll companies, or doing a ton of recruiting. But the industry changed a lot and it was just really clear that it just was not enough.
and even if you focus on only file storage or only ticketing, the TAM is just not enough. And this was always what we believed and always what we knew. but it became even more critical for the business to become enterprise ready in those other categories. So, we’ve. Rapidly tried to advance our company.
And obviously like one of the main industries that can pay very heavily is ai. We had to be able to sell into AI use cases. So, yeah, basically just like did a refounding of the company in April where there were three different vectors. We needed to be able to use AI more internally. Like every single team member was required to use ai.
And if you weren’t, that was going to be a part of your performance review. [00:23:00] second, we needed to be able to sell to AI use cases. we were able to sell to some AI use cases, but not all them. but we also needed to make sure we were absolutely best in class, like objectively the best company for AI use cases.
And then lastly, we needed to launch an AI product. so there was a month, and I talked to you about this at the time, but there was a month where we were in process with a really big account and we were unfortunately, just because we were small, we were going to allocate all of our company resources for that account. the deal died. For a month. And it was devastating for our business. We had a bunch of people quit. It was a really big, hit more for morale. and in that time, Gil and I had to reflect like, how do we restart this company because we can’t just pray that people are just gonna come in and buy our product. so we spent those four weeks just really digging deep on how we innovate, how we reorient our company and how we start it again. and the handshake, CEO and the intercom, CEO, they really inspired me because both of them had to do that. Like if you’re a pre-AI company. How you’re doing things does not work now.
And you have to rapidly [00:24:00] adapt to the industry. You have to relearn, you have to understand like how AI works and how your company can fit in that industry. And so that’s what we did. And then the deal came back four weeks later, which was so annoying, but really great for our company, obviously. and we were completely, we came out a completely different business.
And so now where we are compared to where we were back then, night and day, and we actually got an email from someone, a few, days ago that was really. Beautiful for us was that it’s really clear, like we did a deep analysis of the entire industry and you guys are the clear leader, for our AI use case.
And that was like really, really validating for us. because the team has worked so hard. It’s only been six months, but the company’s completely different now.
David: I think there are probably, I, mean I’m probably not exaggerating 10,000 companies, SaaS companies that need to hear this
because refounding is a good way. To put it like you need to really rethink everything. Did you [00:25:00] actually say refound? Like did you
go to the company and say, this is a refound,
Shensi: not in that word, but we were basically, like we are changing the entire company. There are three pillars that we have to orient towards, and if we don’t do this, this is existential for our business.
David: And and that was in april?
Shensi: It was in April.
David: And how long did it take for people to start. Hearing that or, you know, start
making that change? Was that instantaneous or
Shensi: probably a few weeks? I think a big difference, was that Gil and I started using AI coding tools and like different AI tools and we were able to personally see the difference and impact on our own workflows.
and if we were doing it, no one has an excuse for not doing it. and it’s not fun. it’s little bit scary to feel like AI can take your job. It’s a little bit scary to be Learning a new tool and feeling like unsure of how things are working. but we were getting so much productivity when we were building this new product.
We were like, if we force everyone to do this for our current product, we could move so much faster. And if we also added more AI in our product so we could move even faster, like internally, [00:26:00] there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be doing that. So yeah,
it, has really changed our
workflows
David: One, of the things you said that I’ve now heard, with three different CEOs on the show is when having to make this type of shift that you’re making, even though you’ve said it in a better and more explicit way than I think I’ve heard so far, but they said they had to kind of create like a new,
team. To go after this new product because trying to do it inside the old product was never gonna work.
That’s what you did right Yeah. I mean, you owe some responsibility to your existing customers to continue, investing in them and then also making sure you’re providing high quality service. So yeah, it was me, Gil. One engineer. And that one engineer was a big decision.
Shensi: Like we didn’t even wanna do that. Um, but yeah, five to midnight every night after our meetings were done, Gil and I were coding.
And then on weekends, all day we were coding.
And that engineer, like every night, like really late hours, they were coding too. Um, and of course weekends.
David: for how long?
Shensi: Yeah, [00:27:00] six months.
Yeah.
Yeah. It was, it was really tough. Yeah. We just were working nonstop. Um, and then. And then only until we were able to close revenue did we deserve more resources. Wow.
Yeah. Uh. Uh, and Now, how big is that team
now? It is, um, we have three engineers. We have a PM or two PMs, and then we have a tPM, and then gil and myself still it.
David: Yeah. This seems to be the most common thing that I’m
hearing from people is when you want to. Kind of make this change, especially around ai, You, put it over here, this team works on it, this team goes and gets it off the ground.
Shensi: Yeah. It’s, it’s like, um, like objectively, it’s actually not a super expensive investment, but like it has such a halo effect on your existing business, right?
Like we have had so many opportunities now come in because of this new product when they actually need to use our old product. And it’s very like, it’s very odd to be seeing that. But if you force, it’s kinda like gossip girl. You have to put yourself in the story, you know? And then if [00:28:00] you’re in the story, then everyone’s like, oh, like, interesting.
Like, oh, okay. Like even though there’s something that’s old, but they’re like, oh, we actually need that instead. Um, so this new product that added that halo effect for like our old product, even though it’s the same exact product, um, hiring, recruiting, so much easier response rates way higher. Um, and it’s just created and it’s created like a new growth factor for our business, of course.
And then it’s very motivating to see a lot of deals needing both products.
That we never would’ve had access to previously.
David: Can Can you talk me through, pretend I’m a AI company and I want to use this new product. Where, where do I this in my, inside my product? product?
Like Like how, what’s the use case?
case?
Shensi: Yeah. So our unified API is really great for deterministic use cases.
Like, I have a button, I need to press this button, and I always need to post an invoice, or I always need to create a ticket with this button. Um, it’s also really great for syncing use cases, so I need. All the tickets I’ve ever created historically, so I can, uh, query across them, ask questions. Um, I need syc all my files so I can ask questions about like, um, you know, all the data that we have internally or knowledge based sources, like you name it.
[00:29:00] Um, so that’s what our unified API is really great for, like synced, um, synced integrations or deterministic use cases. Um, so our agent handler product or merge agent handler product is really great for on the fly actions. Um, and it’s for agentic use cases. Today, someone might want to like, create a ticket and like the next minute they might want to, uh, pull their latest emails and the next minute they might wanna like, create a new calendar event, um, is very.
It’s very dynamic. Uh, that’s what our new product is better for. And a lot of times we’re noticing people need both. You wanna be able to sync all the data that exists so you can query across and have really flexible access patterns. And then also be able to, um, use semantic search. But then sometimes you might also wanna do actions too.
And so they’re very complimentary. And um, I think the nice thing about this is that it wasn’t like we just were like, we need to build something, so we’re just gonna build it. We kept doing sales conversations. We were noticing the industry was. Moving a little bit, and there was a gap in a use case that we couldn’t fulfill, but we knew
very well, like we were experts at it. And so why not us? Like why can’t we fill gap?
And so that’s what our new product filled. Wow. Yeah.
David: And [00:30:00] then in terms of having people internally using AI tools, coding assistance, the other things that they’re using, how do you promote? I mean, it sounds
like there’s a little carrot and a lot of stick.
Yeah. But uh, you know, how do you promote that? Because I have seen that even people that I would expect to use. Marketing people say like things that are just very obvious, easy use cases. They don’t.
Mm-hmm. And it’s not like they’re, these are young people who like, know
Shensi: technology
well,
David: but
there’s
something about, like
a new behavior or something. I don’t yeah. what
it is that they don’t, they’re scared to adopt it. How do you do, how did you, how did you motivate?
I mean, you said you, you, and Gil did it to start, but there something else that you did?
Shensi: So I think it starts from other things. It starts from keyboard shortcuts. If you don’t force everyone at your company to use keyboard shortcuts.
You can’t really force everyone to use ai. And I view them to be very similar because [00:31:00] shortcuts, one of my team members said is a mentality like, if you are, if you care about optimizing your life and your time and like making sure you aren’t like using a mouse like a fucking loser, like then you’re gonna try to use AI to make your workflows a little bit easier.
Um, and so when day one, I have told everyone. You have to use shortcuts. And in banking, what I learned was that like minutes add up to hours, which add up to days of your life where you could be moving so much faster. Um, and also just like improving yourself. And so we, every year, or like every six months or so, I’ll do a training for my whole company.
You have to use shortcuts. Here’s how you go through taps on Chrome. Here’s how you like, you know, create a new message in Slack. Like, I never wanna see you using your mouse, like for these, for these things because it’s so. Fast if you just use your shortcut. Um, and so it started with that, like I, it just was a requirement for a business.
Like if you are not able to move fast on a laptop. It’s, I, I can’t even really expect you to use ai, but everyone of course is baseline expected to do that. And then now with ai, obviously, like if there’s workflows that you were doing every single day, it is your responsibility to [00:32:00] figure out how to automate that.
Because if you aren’t, someone else will. And also it’s good for you in your career to try to always be thinking about how to use ai. Um, but yeah, it’s, it comes from our managers. Our managers are always like learning and like experimenting with new tools, having
an understanding of the industry. It’s not, it’s interesting because the job now
isn’t just like doing like. Like being good at it. You have to understand the
industry and like what’s coming up, like what tools are there. Like everyone has
to become a, like, have an understanding of. Of things are changing.
David: It’s amazing. Like once you actually start using, I, I, I, guess I would put myself in, now that I’m saying it out loud, I’ve put myself in that bucket.
‘cause in the beginning, I’m not gonna use this note-taking, you know, I’m not gonna use granola, I’m not gonna use this thing. I’m not. And then you start using stuff, you’re like, why would I not? Yeah, almo to your point minutes. It’s, in some cases I’d say it saves probably many, many hours for small functions, you know?
And, uh, I did get deep into nano banana, Google image generator, and it, I was in it for like eight hours actually, and I couldn’t get it to [00:33:00] actually do what I wanted to do. And
I was getting so annoyed. I’m like, have these people going up a mountain, and they were going down
the mountain And I was
like,
like, please have them go up the mountain Mountains. like, sorry,
I made a mistake. Still going down. So sometimes it’s frustrating like that,
but
Shensi: fights too.
David: Exactly.
exactly.
Um,
alright, so you, you have raised money from legit, I mean, the best investors in the world. Um, and you did it early and, um, you know, was that for you, was that really easy for you? I mean, did you just go and first meeting, you know,
you got the, the, the. The the check
Shensi: seed rod was harder.
A series A and B were easier. Um, but the seed round was really hard because it was, there were companies that weren’t.
Actually incumbents, but people just associate that they’re similar. And so, um, it becomes hard to clarify how you are different, especially to a non-technical investor. So that was part of the challenge, but it got us, it forced us to be really good at explaining how we were different and how the problem we were solving
was completely, [00:34:00] um, was just not the same at all. Because it would
come up with customers and it would come up, come up with candidates.
And so you have to get good at explaining that
And
David: why do you think it got easier? Why? Why did it become so much? Was that just the market timing or, um,
Shensi: people use cases became super clear. They started seeing companies that they knew using us, um, there.
Yeah. And that obviously helps a lot, but like when you have nothing and like no one knows like what the problem is, they don’t actually vis really understand it. it’s not. Not.
It’s not the same. And also it becomes even harder when you’re like, at the beginning of an industry that’s growing, which is what we were doing.
Um, so they didn’t really viscerally feel it, but like as the years went on, like every
board meeting people were like, oh my god,
integrations are ruining. And then like, as they kept, it kept getting worse and worse and worse. And I was like, I told you. Um, so yeah, that’s how it got a little bit easier, but it was, it was partially right time, right place, but also just
having like cus real customers that were really lucky. the product.
Yeah. Um, you, you’ve told me some interesting fundraising stories. You comfortable sharing any of [00:35:00] them?
Um, yeah. One of our investors, uh, we love them, but um, they took us to carbon and we got. Got block out and obviously like, they were like, oh, like, you know, we like love you guys. Like, let’s just like sign this term sheet and like agree on terms.
And like we, and we were, we were like not functioning,
so we were like, oh, okay. Like, yeah, maybe we’ll agree on this. And we were basically like, yeah, like, this sounds great. Um, and then I um, heard from one of my friends who would fundraise from the same investor. They were like, oh my gosh. Yeah. We
went, we got blackout, we went to carbon.
Oh. And then like, and then we like signed this like napkin and I was like. Oh my God, you used the same trick. Like it, I feel like you took us on the same exact date. And they were like, we don’t have that many tricks up our sleeve. Like this is
it. And I was like, oh my god. Like it worked. It really worked.
David: It is funny because actually. Two weeks ago, someone i’m work who’s going through a fundraise called me and they, the same thing.
Happened.
Shensi: I feel like I’ve been cheated on.
David: It’s, it’s a, you know, I think especially when it’s like [00:36:00] a competitive deal and, and, uh, there’s,
it’s, I think that a lot of times, um, I, I, say this a lot that especially now when I’m working with a bunch of founders, you don’t understand what’s happening on the other side of the table.
Like as founders, when you’re fundraising, you don’t really know what’s happening in
the VC kind of side of the table. And there’s some in, you know,
there’s, um, the pressure to get deals like this closed
Yeah.
Is just like a sales team. Yeah. With with a big deal that’s been in the pipe.
I, I don’t think fans, Really appreciate that.
Shensi: Yeah. At one time he, he might kill me, but one time there was an investor that called me and he was like. Uh, he was like, oh, like we, we, have this term sheet, like you guys
have to accept it tomorrow. We were like, oh, like, you know, we can’t, like, we’re just busy right now. Like, we’ll, we’ll, like, we’ll spend another day.
He was like, oh, okay. Okay. And then, um, he called us back like 10 minutes later. He clearly had just gotten yelled at. He was like, okay, sorry. Like, we can’t wait like another day. Like, we really need you to like, make a decision. Others people will pull out. I was like, okay. [00:37:00] But like, it was so obvious you’d just gotten yelled
at, me. Yeah. but yeah, like there’s, yeah, there’s process, but you don’t realize,
David: you actually realize that tell founders all the time, you don’t know that in the. Monday morning partner meetings, they’re going through their pipeline
just like you do Sales pipeline. And if some person shows up to that Monday morning meeting says, I’ve been talking to Shei from Merge, they’re crushing it. They love me. You know, I have a great relationship. When they come up to
fundraise, I’m gonna, I’m gonna get them.
And then you come up to fundraise and they don’t get you. They’re going, that’s gonna. They may get fired. They, they definitely are not gonna have the same kind of
brand inside the firm. So I, I think that, um, anyway, those, I’ve been to some of those dinners myself as a founder and, and you know, one
time I told my wife, I said, I know exactly what’s gonna happen, and I got to
the dinner and I just started eating bread
as fast as I could,
Shensi: That’s so smart. oh
my God. Get That’s so smart.
Um, yeah.
I’m a lightweight too.
Too, so it’s not, it’s not
David: Yeah. Very different. Very Different. Uh,
[00:38:00] um, so you, you mentioned, um, you know, all these changes that, that have been, that, that are going on with the, with the company.
Where is merge three years from today?
Shensi: I think I have completely adapted that. Um, we obviously have to be multi-product and we have to just be accepting that as the industry changes, you have to build and also kill things that do not align with the industry.
And so that is the biggest change that I’ve had over the six past six months because previously I was like, we are going to be like an infra company. Integrations are always going to be super important, which I do think they will be important,
but I think the form like. The, the way people connect to third party systems or like the types of problems that arise from that issue will change and we’re fully ready to adapt to that.
Um, and so I think us just becoming accepting that we are going to be multi-product,
flexible in what we build, um, that has important for us.
David: and one of the things that you’ve done seems very well is moved up market.
[00:39:00] I have attempted that multiple times at multiple companies and not been successful with that.
It, some of the customers you have, it’s, it’s literally, I mean, compared to where it was even three years ago, it’s amazing. But you remember. Like, you know, I remember. So how have you been able to do
that? Is, is that a product thing or is that a go-to market?
Shensi: Everything. Um, absolutely everything. When we first started the company, it was basically Lord of the Flies.
We were all children. Um, and we were all super, super young. And so it made sense that we were selling to other startups, but we had to change a lot of things. Like the go-to market motion is completely different for enterprise. Pre-sales and post-sales and like this, and the POCs that you run. Um, also QBR
is like, you have to go on site, you have to have a deck.
Uh, that’s very, very different. But the product has completely changed security requirements, um, efficiency, um, uptime requirements. There’s just so many things that are very, very different. And also deviate from the needs of smaller companies.
So you have to find [00:40:00] resourcing for that, and you also have to make sacrifices on both ends. Hmm. I,
I,
David: so one of the things I think people, again, now seeing this so many times
with so many companies, they feel like we’re gonna go up market by
just adding these features. And what you just said
actually was all not feature. I mean, yes, there’s product changes, but
that was all go to market.
Shensi: Yeah. I think it has to start with go to market because you just don’t know what to build and sometimes it’s not what you think and.
Yeah, we hired our first enterprise sales rep. I think that was two and a half years ago. And back then, like a 300 person company was enterprise for us. Um, and we were so not ready. There were so many features we didn’t have. But it wasn’t just that like, it was like how we communicated about the product, it was more value versus.
Like features, um, how we were different, where the roadmap was going. Um, they were also going to look more like design partnerships because if you’re, they’re paying that much money, it ha
you’re, it’s just different, right? Like it’s not, it’s almost part services. Like, it’s not really going to be the same, um, where it’s like a re like here’s a product,
you you buy it or you know. Right. [00:41:00] And yeah, I think it’s, it has to start with go to market.
David: Yeah. I, I think like something like a qBR, it’s, it seems so, such a small thing, but these big customers that, that is how they’re used to engaging with their vendors. This is not a fly by night, oh, we’re paying you this much money and hope the product work. They, them, they’ve bet their their jobs
Shensi: they’ll they’ll get fired.
Yeah.
And they want to hear directly from, from the vendors, A
hundred percent Yeah. It’s interesting ‘cause like I would never want to spend a QBR with a vendor ever in my life, and I would never pick up a cold call. But it’s, yeah. If you were like selling to Enterprise, you got a
cold call, you gotta get on a flight, you gotta be with people in person, you have to have a deck.
David: Right, Um, okay. I wanna, I wanna transition, uh, to your background okay. a little bit more. So, uh, where are you from originally?
Shensi: Um, i’m from the suburbs outside of Boston.
Okay. And where’d you go to school?
David: Um, i, oh, went to,
Shensi: oh, college
or
undergrad, or sorry,
David: or high college to
college? college. College.
Shensi: I went I went to [00:42:00] Columbia.
David: Okay. And uh, is that, that’s where you met gil?
Shensi: That’s where I Met gil, yeah.
David: Were you in a class together? or you just
Shensi: Uh, yeah, we, I think we met during like, orientation week because everyone’s just partying and like the whole week. Uh, but we, back then the CS department at Columbia was really small. I think it was like 50
or. 50 people or maybe almost. It was really small. Um, and so you knew everyone. Like I, we knew everyone of them ‘cause you were in the same classes every single day. And so I just met him that way.
And then we were on engineering, student council together.
Um, and then senior year I was class president, he was vice president.
But yeah, we’ve known each other for like all four years.
David: Yeah. And did you know you were gonna start a company with him?
Shensi: No, we were just like partying back then. Then Um, I don’t even think
we were thinking that far ahead, other
David: for a long time.
When did you decide to, to to come together? To start merge?
Shensi: Um, a year before we started the company, we were just talking about work. Like it was just work and like seeing whether or not, um. Yeah, just like talk Yeah. Seeing what was going on, like how, like what problems are you running into? Like, what’s like, what’s like hard right now? Um, and I think when both of our companies were running that issue, we started talking a little bit more about [00:43:00] it and our skill sets were so complimentary that I thought it could be interesting.
And we were young and we had like time and we had experienced and we’d both been managers. Um, like I was kind like, why not now? Like, if not now, like it’s gonna get harder. Um, especially if we feel like we’re uniquely able to solve this
problem. We’re uniquely going to be able to be good at this. And that’s how we
David: and, uh,
you, did you have something in
your childhood where you knew you wanted to be an entrepreneur?
Shensi: Not quite. I think I was fully ready to be like in finance.
And, um, started your so I started, I studied cs, but yeah, my first job was, um, at Credit Suisse as like an investment banker.
And I just, ‘cause my mom was a software engineer
and so I was kinda like, oh, like I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna do that. Like, it sounds so boring. Um, and so, and also when you’re in New York, like in the 20. Tens, you’re like,
oh my god, finance. Like, I’m gonna be such a baller. Like I wanna do invest in banking.
I wanna be like hardcore. Um, so yeah, I did invest in banking and I probably, if I hadn’t met my husband, I [00:44:00] probably would’ve like, kept it going. But he was, he was really interested in tech and he was in finance. He was like, I really think like we should move to San Francisco. Like, I think we need to get into tech.
Like, I think this is going to be really interesting and like a, a great career path for like myself. I was like, oh, maybe I should check that out too. And I happened to have an opportunity where I was going to be doing growth investing in tech in San Francisco. So I was, was moving anyway.
And I was like, okay, then come with me.
Um Wow. And yeah. And that got me really interest. ‘cause I was meeting all these founders who knew everything about their company and I was shook at how passionate they were, how much information
they knew, and how yeah, they were just. Experts and so excited about what they were doing, and I didn’t feel like I cared about anything.
I was like, I don’t care about anything. I don’t care about like my, like, I don’t even care about like this, like modeling this thing. Like it just doesn’t matter to me. Um, and I, I was like, and I was talking to the founder of the phone and he was employee 26 at Apple. He was like, you, he was like, I know he was really rich and was like, you should go work at a company.
Like, I think you’ll really like it. And I loved it. [00:45:00] And like, it’s interesting because now I care so much about. Everything, and I care so much about everything
we do and like the quality of everything and like our customers,
but back then I, I just didn’t care
and I think it’s just really hard to care in finance.
David: Did you, did you, where does the work ethic come from?
Come from?
Shensi: probably invest in banking. Um, I was really lazy in high school and my parents were always like yelling, getting mad at me. Um, yeah, they were like really mad at me ‘cause I was inherently lazy. And in college I started, I started having like my own ambition and like my own motivations, but, um, but investment banking was just such like a muscle that like I just got really good at working hard
and nothing is as hard as those hours. So now i’m like
I’m like this. Yeah, it’s just not the same. Like physically being in the office from 10 till 2:00 PM 2:00 AM every night is so different from like being in the office until like nine. To me it’s like that was an early night in banking. So I think it’s such a treat to be able to work in tech, make so much money, like in an industry where I’m so interested in what I’m doing and I don’t have to work as hard as I [00:46:00] did in banking.
And I have friends now in private equity who are in their mid thirties
working till 4, 8, 5 am and i, and compared to
that. Is nothing.
David: You, may be the first person so far who’ve said,
who’ve said to me that they were lazy at some point in their life, and then that a
job changed that so sharply.
Shensi: yeah.
That’s why I like, it’s, I I don’t always think that working investment banking is the right thing if you know you wanna be in tech because it does. It, it, it limits like the type of rules you can get in tech sometimes. Um, but it was so good for just making me have a great work ethic versus if you go outta college, like PE people work so hard in college and if you go to a company where it’s like very chill
and
very lazy, your like default assumption for what work should look like is much
lower. That’s a good and then that’s a very good point. And then everything
after feels so much harder, but for me, this is nothing compared to what I was doing back then.
David: That’s a good point. Um. It, that [00:47:00] first job does kind of set the tone of you think is normal work. Yeah.
Um, but you do work a lot. You do work a lot.
travel, a lot. travel is a lot.
Yeah. You work a
lot. Yeah. You work a lot. You travel yeah. Um,
have
you had to make sacrifices to, to do that? That
Shensi: Yeah, like sometimes there’s like health sacrifices that you make, um, and there’s like time with like your loved ones that you have to make sacrifices for.
But um, this is such an important part of me and like my life and when things are not going well at merge, that makes me also deeply unhappy. And so for me to be happy in my personal life. I, I know this might be toxic, but I need to feel like I’m in control of like my business as well. And a part of that is from what I put in.
If I feel like I haven’t done anything and like I have not like given it my
all, um, and so things because that, things are not going
as well, it makes me deeply unhappy personal life too.
David: I think that is actually every FI, not every, let’s say every good founder. I would say that that’s exactly how [00:48:00] every good founder feels.
And
maybe
toxic. I, i’m not even sure. I don’t think you can disassociate.
It’s like a child, basically.
Yeah. It really is. I mean, you can’t really disassociate the two things.
Yeah. Um, but the sacrifices, you know, um, yeah. It’s, it’s, uh. It’s, It’s, a lot. And, um,
yeah, the travel stuff of all the things. I miss a lot of things about running a company and having a team and everything.
The travel is something that I do not miss. Yeah. I think it’s the most, it’s,
it just kills. It’s so exhausting. It’s a lot. And economy too. Yeah.
Yeah. That’s
Shensi: That’s the, yeah, like we’re like and you go all over
the world, We go all over. Yeah. All over the world for just like a few days too. Um, so that’s really hard. But you know what, I, I don’t really listen to this guy, but I, I have to listen to like a cliff on TikTok with Bov V
about travel. And he was like, and he’s like in his mid forties and he was like, [00:49:00] once I accepted that, you know what, like I love my job, but travel is like a part of it. I hate travel, but like it’s a part of it. I just was like, I get over it, and he got over it and I was like, I need to just get over it. I was
Shensi: like, instead, I need to get, get over it. Like, why? Like I love my job. Sure. I hate to travel, but like I need to just get over it.
David: Yeah. Um, have you had someone, a person, a a a kind of a
mentor or a role model or has there been someone like that in your in your career, in your life?
Shensi: No, because I think everyone’s really busy. There’s been periods where someone’s very ins like inspirational for me, but like the closest was my old CEO because we were working together every day and I was chief of staff. Um, I would ask him any question I wanted and he would answer it like literally anything.
Um, which was very unique exposure.
Like, and yeah, like obviously we’d get like fights and he’d be like, mean to me or like I, you know, whatever. But like, yeah, I could ask him anything I wanted and that was really helpful for me. Just understanding. How hard it is. Like it would, he would have really hard situations and he would always get through it.
And it [00:50:00] was also interesting because back then anytime there was something where I was like, someone quit, like really important quit, or like a deal was about to die. I was like, oh, he can save it. And he would, and then now I’m expected to do that. I’m
like, oh my God. Like, I don’t know how to
do this. Um, but it’s interesting because when Gil has to solve it, I’m like, Gil’s got it.
But then in reverse, he’s like, oh, she’s God. Like I don’t have it. Uh, but yeah, so it was interesting to see that. But he, yeah, he probably was like the closest, but I
just assumed that anyone that I wanna learn from is very busy and I can’t expect them to like, you know, be around me all the time.
Yeah, Yeah,
David: Last time I walked into your office, you were actually saving
a deal. Um, so it’s, you were doing that exact thing. Um, Shei, thank you for doing this. I, it’s been really, it’s been amazing to watch what you’ve built and, and what you
and Gil have done together and, and the team. And, uh, I think it feels like it
may actually just be the beginning in a lot of ways of, of the journey. You may
or may not want to hear that, but you know,
it’s probably the beginning of the [00:51:00] journey more than, uh. You know, you have, you have a long ways ahead of you, so congrats.
Thank you so much.
Awesome. Thank you. And for those of you’ve, uh, listening, hopefully you enjoyed, and if you did, please share with your networks and
we’ll see you for the next episode, not another cEO podcast.
