Zeb Evans is stretching before he goes on stage in a rainy, windswept Dublin. Evans is messing about rather than seriously limbering up for a grilling in front of an audience of hundreds of people on the main stage at the tech conference SaaStock. 

The founder of $4 billion valued productivity start-up ClickUp is famed for his colourful shirts combined with white trousers, and he doesn’t disappoint. I’ve gone with my dull uniform of a dark jumper and navy jeans (best not to clash.) 

Evans is the founder and chief executive of ClickUp. Founded in 2017 in San Diego, ClickUp was one of the fastest-growing bootstrapped companies in the world for a number of years. It was only in June 2020 that it raised its series A, before 16 months later raising a series C of $400 million. The latter transaction valued the business at $4 billion. Its roster of clients includes IBM, Zynga, Samsung, and Booking.com and its slogan is “one app to replace them all” as it pitches itself as a replacement for dozens of other productivity tools like Monday, Jira, Asana, Trello, and Notion.

Backstage, I ask Evans about ClickUp’s presence in Dublin, and he says it has about 120 people based in a WeWork along the Grand Canal. He says it plans to hire 100 more. Evans is in town for the week and the night before had tasted his first pint of Guinness. Today is earmarked for meetings and for a few site visits of potential new headquarters for ClickUp’s expanding workforce. I’m interviewing Evans on the main stage and the following is an edited version of our conversation. 

What is ClickUp

‘Our whole mission is making people more productive and saving people time. ClickUp is a productivity platform where you can put all your work in one place. It works for every team and every size of team. We are a vertical agnostic software. Generally speaking, our customers are replacing multiple tools with our platform to do things like product management, time tracking, collaboration, chat, communication and so on in order to help people be more efficient and productive.” 

Tom Lyons interviewing Zeb Evans at the tech conference SaaStock.

When to raise equity

“We were bootstrapped until two years ago. We started the company with really just four or five people. I always say it is really important to raise as little money as possible at the product stage. It is important to pay attention to every dollar that is spent as it means you will build a better product and you are more in touch with your customers…Raise only a small amount of money in order to build your product I think is the best way to get there. The bonus of this is you have retained much more equity in your company when you raise at the stage when you have hit product market fit which is what we did. After you hit product market fit is an incredible time to raise.”  

How to balance being a CEO and being creative 

“We only do meetings before noon. My afternoon is more about catching up doing the CEO job and then evenings become deep product work where there is less distraction. I am much more mindful. There is less interruption, no Zoom call at the end of the day. I think it is very important to set very dedicated blocks of time for deep work. Most meetings are highly inefficient. We have a rule in ClickUp for maximum 30-minute meetings.”

Creating a brand

“At first, you have to do it organically. The really important thing about branding is differentiation; it is about being really unique…it is all about details how the homepage looks, correct punctuation, consistent design. If you have an exceptional user experience you are going to appear much larger than you actually are.” 

Choosing Dublin in Europe

“We looked at all the options. Innovation is mostly about people. There is a really high concentration of people with experience here and a great diversity of native language speakers here. We also have support and the ecosystem of the city. Our number priority is hiring in Dublin. Downturns always happen (in economies) every 10 or 15 years. But that is always the opportunity to hire good people…We are not hiring for optimism, but we are screening against pessimists. We want people who can disagree at times but commit at the same time.” 

Great companies

“Amazon is a great company which has really scaled but has maintained efficient, hardworking people who are passionate about getting things done. At ClickUp we are really passionate about product, and working hard, and not everyone likes that. We like to think we are growing not just our revenue but also growing in our personal lives, relationships, health, mindfulness. You need that flywheel to be successful. Intercom is another great company we used very early on in my previous start-up. They are a perfect example of a company that can scale and grow from here internationally as well.”