Monday.com and women in tech
I have to admit I don't fully understand how the LinkedIn algorithm works.
But in any case, I'm grateful to it for the success of this week's video with Eran Zinman of monday.com . The version that I uploaded to my LinkedIn timeline has reached more than 240,000 people, clocking up over 20k views. That makes it the most successful one I've done since joining Business Leader .
LinkedIn is doing a push for more of us to publish video, especially in vertical format for mobile, so it may have benefited from that.
Really that video is just the tip of the iceberg. I spoke with Eran for about 25 minutes and the podcast version, which will come out in the next couple of weeks, has lots more fascinating detail about how he and co-founder Roy Mann built a $14bn company from scratch, covering everything from performance marketing to running meetings.
This week I visited two conferences, both to soak up the info and network, but also to record interviews. And both of the interviews were with a type of business leader that regrettably can be hard to find: women leaders in tech.
Early in the week it was a trip to the House of Lords to interview Nicola Hodson , who is UK & Ireland CEO of IBM . She explained how she has built up a diverse support network to help her develop her leadership style. She spent nearly 15 years rising up the ranks at Microsoft before joining IBM.
She was speaking at a panel all about AI at a WORLD WOMAN FOUNDATION event about empowering women in the Commonwealth countries, run by Rupa Dash and Lalita Taylor FRSA , an old friend at the BBC.
I attended the morning sessions and here are my two favourite quotes I wrote down: "If you are not at the table, you are on the menu", and "we're moving from invisible to invincible". I also liked Baroness Scotland's refrain in her keynote, "I was the first, but I won't be the last", talking about all the barriers she had broken as a woman, blazing a trail for others.
Nicola Hodson talked about some of the structural programmes in place to get more women into tech, while also pointing out the opportunities: there are millions of jobs in tech going unfilled each year. Which brings me on nicely to my next conference...
Time to get Creatio
At the no less glamorous location of the Sheraton Grand Hotel on Park Lane I went to the Creatio conference to meet its founder and CEO Katherine Kostereva .
Creatio, like Monday.com, is part of the 'Low code/no code' movement, providing tools for businesses to build their own software applications, without such a heavy reliance on developers.
Creatio focuses on 'no code'. One of the reasons this approach is attractive to businesses is because it solves a recruitment issue: there are not enough trained software developers out there!
I learned something else interesting from Katherine. She strongly identified with the Boston tech scene, which is quite proudly distinct from Silicon Valley. It's less consumer-focused than California. She reeled off a list of tech companies that aim to help enterprise businesses. She was evidently proud to represent the Boston ecosystem. It's something I want to look into further. Does it have the same "fail fast" culture, or is it perhaps more sober?
In the know...
Thanks for reading!
Dougal