Transcript: Gal Benedek | Elementor | How Do You Build a Product for Website Builders?

Eyal David: [00:00] Hi friends, this is Eyal. You've reached Product Builder, where you can listen to the most interesting product conversations. My journey began in 2012, when I learned what product is at my own startup. Since then I've worked in the industry, and since 2017 my company has been advising a range of companies. My drive is to help all of us get better as product people. And before we start, if you enjoy listening to Product Builder, please rate us five stars on Spotify. It gives me great feedback that the podcast brings you value, and it would make me very happy. So let's get started. What's up? Good morning, how's it going? A pleasure, great to have you here. Great to be here, great to be here. Really. With us today is Gal, who came from Elementor on a supposedly rainy day. Right, it's the first rainy day of the year. True. True. The first rains and the last rains. And you came by bike. You see? So I was worried about you. And I didn't slip, which is the... Then I'm not worried anymore.

Gal and Elementor: bringing drag and drop to WordPress

Gal Benedek: [00:55] So give us a word about Elementor. A bit about what you do there? Amazing. So I'm a product person at Elementor, leading a tribe. And a tribe is basically a collection of several teams? A collection of, in this case right now, five or six teams. Depends how you count and whom. Lots of people, and the vast majority are also talented, knock on wood. I've been at Elementor almost, almost two years. We're not going to the rabbinate, day here, day there.

Eyal David: [01:21] Elementor, a website-building platform on top of WordPress, very, very successful, a very, very large user base. A great company to work at, too. So let's also say which aspects of the product your teams touch. But first, let's dive into Elementor for a second and complete the picture. Unlike Wix, we're talking about WordPress, and a huge number of websites on the internet run on WordPress, right?

Gal Benedek: [01:45] So what's the big promise Elementor brings to the world right now? So, in the beginning the founders created Elementor. Until then, to build a website on WordPress you had to write code, God forbid in the dreaded PHP; those who know it, I hope they no longer remember it. And building a website on WordPress was simply a headache, an unreasonable headache. The promise of drag and drop on WordPress, making your users' life easy, was born out of a need: our two founders are web creators, and they really had that pain of "man, we're building a website and it's no fun." And they said, if the pain is ours, it probably exists for other users too. And right now, are most of your users website builders, or is it the end customer who buys and has a developer in the middle, or someone assembling the site in between? What does it look like? So happily we have a bit of everything: freelancers, agencies, people working for companies that have one website but it's huge and needs to be maintained. That's one side of the fence. On the other side there are users who simply want a website, some kind of presence on the World Wide Web, online, on the internet in the broadest sense. And then either they try and build it themselves, or they buy Elementor and hand it to some web creator to build the site for them. So happily we have everyone from the market's top pros down to someone like me, the way I used to be, the average guy who just wants a website, whether he's a business or a private person who wants a site. Or someone who wants to become a website builder and is starting out in that world. So our user base, happily, is broad enough.

Eyal David: [03:29] Interesting, there really is a lot here, a situation that's a bit different in B2C. I think there are basically different buyers and users. OK, so tell us for a second which teams you're responsible for.

Gal's tribe: infrastructure, data engineering and the store

Gal Benedek: [03:41] So my teams at Elementor are split. One team, or one tribe, is more what's called platform. OK, now "platform" is a big word, every company has one. We look at it as non-customer-facing pods. Basically all the pods that don't meet the end customer; they absolutely have a customer, it's just internal. We treat them as if they were an outside customer: we interview them, we talk to them, we make sure they're satisfied, we run NPS, we do all the things to treat our internal customers as if they were paying us money. And what drives you is really NPS and dollar sign, what drives the initiatives there? So when you build a platform you look less at the dollar-sign world, because the dollars come indirectly: work time, efficiency. Right, so you look a lot at developer velocity. Take our infrastructure group, for example. The infrastructure group builds things so your developers have an easier time moving forward. At the end of the day, as a startup or as a company in general, you want one thing: to really run. Let's build fast, right, fine, all those things, but you want to run. And when you build things that are common, when several groups need the same thing, there's no reason for each group to build it on its own.

Eyal David: [04:58] I think that's also the essence of Elementor, right? They basically took the world of many templates and created one product that builds lots of them.

Gal Benedek: [05:07] Tell us, OK, so in addition to that, what else? The infrastructure group is one group. The second group is data engineering, very close to my heart. At the end of the day, how do we as product managers, how do we as website builders, know if our site is healthy and up, how many visits we had, all those things? How do we as product managers make decisions if not with data? The answer is also user ideas, but we'll get to that later; still, data is the heart of the decision-making process for us. OK? And because we generate so, so much data from so, so, so many sources, data engineering is the place that simply puts order in our data and doesn't let everyone do whatever they see fit. OK? And that's a side that's very, very important for us to build right, we have tons and tons of effort there. The third group is the store group, payments, the store. At the end of the day Elementor isn't a nonprofit, and we need to make sure we know how to charge and process payments properly. And if you're now a customer who needs a specific invoice from a specific country with specific tax laws and wants to pay in a specific currency, versus another customer in a country with a completely different tax entity, you need that process to be smooth. The whole world of checkouts, the thank-you page that leads to upsells, that leads to cross-sells, that leads to all of that,

Eyal David: [06:35] all of that is done by the store team. So is that both Elementor's own payment processing for its customers, and also the payment processing inside users' websites?

Gal Benedek: [06:44] So right now, payments on users' websites, because there's a WordPress plugin called WooCommerce, which anyone who knows it knows is a free monster that's super convenient to use, asterisk. For now we're not there; we're more in the world of payment processing for Elementor's own customers. So give us just the asterisk. The asterisk is that in the end, with anything free, as the classic saying goes, if it's free and you're not paying for the product, you are the product. Yes, so it's such a big WordPress plugin, it has lots and lots of, I'll call them, ills, it's not that trivial, not that simple, not that fun, and it takes a not-small percentage from you. And still, right now we're not focusing on that area, with everything that implies, and we're focusing more on how we make this wonderful machine called Elementor charge smoothly. The world of failed payments is a huge world with its own reasons, the whole world of transactions and how we report them and record them in the books and integrate with all kinds of systems like NetSuite and so on. That's more the work of this team. You want new products, you want new SKUs, discounts, promotions, all those things,

Eyal David: [08:02] refunds. You're there, coupons, everything. I think, just as a website owner, wow, that's probably the area I'd pay for most. Actually the checkout, say in Shopify, is what I love, that it's an area where they don't let anyone change it, thankfully, or touch it, because it's managed. I'd love for it to be managed in my stores. Sounds like we're setting a date for a classic user interview. With great pleasure. Come on, tell us a bit about the industry,

COVID, the website-building market and competitors

Gal Benedek: [08:26] who your competitors actually are, what it's looked like since COVID. So since then, let's start first with what it looks like and then talk about competitors, because what it looks like is, in my eyes, much sexier. COVID changed the industry a bit. Before COVID, people commuted to the office five days a week, you know, living their life. Then COVID came and shuffled the cards big time, and lots and lots of people stayed home, some with jobs, some, unfortunately for us and for them, without jobs. And they said, OK, we need a source of income because life has to move on. And the website-building world saw an unreasonable growth peak there, really exponential. You see more and more people turning to this world, because building websites is work you can do relatively easily from home. You can interview people on Zoom, build their site at home, do that communication ping-pong of yay, nay, go, no-go, all from home. And we saw at Elementor too that there was a very, very significant jump in the number of licenses and the number of sites being built, on Elementor, on WordPress and in general, a circle within a circle within a circle, as they say. And then we said, OK, this is our opportunity, two for two, to reach audiences who are no longer only professional website builders, because really anyone today can be a website builder,

Eyal David: [09:44] and that's who we chose to focus on. I have a question, so you're already taking us to the future, but we also said we'd come back to competitors. We'll come back to competitors too. Let's go back a minute to the past. You're not a public company, so I don't know. Say Wix, which I'm comparing you to for a second, I don't know if it's a competitor. Probably yes. So there was a surge during COVID as lots of businesses moved to digital, and then they had that pullback of businesses that went back to physical and gave up on, well, didn't give up, but downshifted from digital. Did you feel that too?

Gal Benedek: [10:17] So happily, less so. I think if you're a business and you took a hit to one wing in one place, cool, you build a new wing somewhere else. A classic case of: people didn't come to my store, cool, I'll open an online store. But if people came back to your store, kudos, how nice, but there's no reason to hurt your income in the digital world, certainly if it's a channel for success, success, sorry, not success, exactly the opposite, you know, make your business grow, you're bringing in money from digital.

Eyal David: [10:49] Why abandon it? There's an interesting question here, why. I think maybe it's also related to the type of users you work with, that maybe on Wix it really is very plug and play and doesn't

Gal Benedek: [10:57] require a developer in the middle, so I don't know, maybe it's a bit related. So Wix does a great job in that area, and I can only compliment them as someone who also has a website on Wix, or several even. Happily we're there today too: even an ordinary person, let's call them a DIYer, an average Joe, can build a website on Elementor. Fully, point taken. There's just something interesting here that sort of distinguishes you from them, and it's interesting why. OK, come on, we talked about competitors, let's talk about competitors. Let's talk about competitors. So first of all, I think if Elementor is in the WordPress world, your main competitors are basically WordPress editors, right, and the simplest search in the WordPress repository can show you: there's Bricks, Gutenberg, which they've now released, and all sorts of editors like that, small and large, OK, that simply want a chunk of this very tasty cake. But it's not only there, right? Because if you look now, or let's go back a step in order to move two forward. When you say competitors, there are two kinds: competitors that are direct editors, and/or competitors that compete for your presence on the World Wide Web. Right, it depends what site I'm building, right? Exactly. For example, today to build a store you'd probably go to Shopify. Are Shopify and Wix competitors? Yes, but not really, right? They're looking at an audience that comes for a different purpose. And today, happily, on Elementor you can build both a store and, let's call it, a site for your digital presence, yes, which isn't necessarily commerce.

Eyal David: [12:32] Right, and you also mentioned bigger websites, where really, if we take Wix for a moment, let's leave Wix aside, but basically, no, no, no. Wix is great, yes, but it's a place. Even as an Elementor employee, Wix is great. Absolutely, but it's a place where they fall short: I can't build a monster website on Wix. You can't build ynet, yes, as a classic example, on Wix, or you could but it would be challenging. So really, if you take the different segments or verticals you operate in, where is your biggest competitor?

Gal Benedek: [13:02] Our biggest competitors are actually in the agency world: anyone who targets agencies, anyone who targets freelancers, anyone who targets web designers, and anyone who targets WordPress people. Because with WordPress, let's talk, what's called one step back, yes: people who choose WordPress choose it for a specific reason. Put aside those who say, oh yeah, I heard WordPress is fine, let's build on it. People who choose WordPress choose it for a reason. A security reason, a traffic reason, an availability reason, which is something very, very important if you're on the internet. You choose WordPress because you know it simply works. OK? No surprises, no nothing, it's a platform that's been running for years.

Eyal David: [13:47] No getting confused with WordPress. So if you've already chosen WordPress, you'll probably choose Elementor. OK, so we talked about the past, we talked about the present in terms of competitors, a bit about them. Let's talk about the future. Where do you think the website-building world will be in five years?

The future of websites in the age of AI and agents

Gal Benedek: [14:01] That's a question we think about on an hourly basis, OK? At that level. Because it's a very weighty question, certainly today with the whole AI revolution that's long been inside the house, no longer knocking on our door. You ask yourself, how will people consume content, yes? And then within that world, will the website today, the way it looks today, from the cookie blog, through the store, to ynet, OK, we'll come back to them because they're really a great example of many things, will it really look like this in five years, or will I just have headphones on and some agent reading me what I need? And then you ask yourself: I need not to keep up with the market, I need to disrupt the market long before it arrives, yes? And then you say to yourself, wait, let's think about it this way: I'm a business now. Even the private person building himself a website can be treated as a business, just one that doesn't make money, only wants awareness. Where will he be? Will he exist on social? Will he exist on the World Wide Web? Will he exist somewhere else? Will he now need to connect to some agent and feed it content so the user consumes it in their own way?

Eyal David: [15:14] Those are the questions of the future. Exactly. So let's take that for a moment. In my view the question is how people will really consume content, and where that hits... Because if I really take it through some messenger-style interface, a bot, then you really don't need websites, as you say. On the other hand, there's an asset built for every website, which is basically its ranking on Google. Again, the question is where Google will be in five years, right? That's the engine for everything. Also, you know, young people already search for restaurants on TikTok. Exactly. By the way. Exactly, but I'm with you. But your customers, anyone who has a website, on the face of it, gets some Google ranking that brings them steady traffic. They won't let go of that traffic or give it up in five years. So the question is really how it will be consumed, and on the other hand, where I'll take the reputation I've built and what I'll do with it.

Gal Benedek: [16:04] OK, there will probably be websites, obviously, and there will also remain a population that still needs to consume websites; in five years people will get older. Yes, so here too you can take it in several directions. I think websites really won't disappear. Also, the number of times that, as Elementor people, you hear "yes, the internet, websites, nobody will need them anymore," and yet the internet, or websites, are alive and kicking, big time. Second, the older people get, the less they like change, so there will still be an audience; even if tomorrow something comes out, just as there are people who still read a newspaper today, there will be website readers. My father, bless him, may he live long, reads a newspaper. Nice, he also has ynet, but he reads a newspaper, he loves the newspaper. Second, I really think websites give you a visual form of content today that no bot will give you. OK, maybe you'll see your site in a VS [sic], maybe you'll see it in a different form, but websites will still exist. In the same breath, you can't rest on your laurels; you always need to think: there's a website, maybe we'll give it an API for an agent, as a classic example; maybe this site will feed a social account built alongside it; maybe something else will happen a year or two from now that the website will need to provide. But we absolutely believe, or I, OK, absolutely believe that websites are here to stay.

Eyal David: [17:26] I'm probably with you, and I think that's certain on a five-year horizon, if we're here. And tell me, in terms of e-commerce stores, say that's a vertical you can,

Gal Benedek: [17:35] a vertical is a huge thing, but on the face of it, it's something that will still be around in five years. What do you foresee there, or you personally? So I think the e-commerce world is also a world that has evolved. Look, online stores today are nice, but where do a lot of kids, Gen Z, Gen Alpha, shop today? On Instagram. Today Instagram shops really bring in more money than the e-commerce store itself, and certainly more than the physical world. And when you build a store today, don't build a store as a website, build a store for the internet. Build a store that anyone, from any device, can reach from several different places. Because if you sell only on the web, that's one thing, but if that same store is also on TikTok, also on Instagram, also on the next app that comes along, if you can also sell all kinds of things on Snapchat, if you pop up in ads, you simply grow your market, and that's where you need to be. A standalone store is nice, but that's like before COVID, by the way, our conversation earlier,

Eyal David: [18:38] having only a physical store. Nice. Not enough. Yes, more channels bring more traffic, no doubt. I think you still can't abandon e-commerce, but I think a lot of users will still want control, businesses will want control over the sales process that happens. So it's interesting: if you have a product portfolio, you won't want to update it now in every sales channel. No, no, absolutely, but I'm saying that if the store is only on Instagram, that's interesting, because then you don't control anything from the panel, whereas this is interesting. Those on Instagram took you into account. Exactly. From past experience. OK, so tell us for a minute what your day-to-day looks like at Elementor.

A day at the office: dashboards and user interviews

Gal Benedek: [19:19] So I arrive in the morning and first say endless hellos, yes, it's great. Actually the office has a great vibe, a great vibe; coming to the office and seeing lots of people on certain days is very, very refreshing. I arrive and first ask a few people, usually the ones I work with a bit more closely, whether there's anything urgent, anything that needs, you know, immediate intervention, all those things. And if not, I make myself a coffee and dive into the dashboards. I want to see that the products under my umbrella are behaving as expected, that nothing happened that now needs, you know, some emergency surgical intervention, some needle that moved out of place, things like that. I don't often join my teams' dailies, because I trust the product managers who work with me. OK, if something happened they'd have come to me long before the daily starts, and if something happens they'll come to me

Eyal David: [20:14] before the daily ends. I like how you manage risk, and your day starts with checking whether there are fires, any anomaly in the dashboards, and then diving forward.

The key product skills: no bullshit, chemistry and leadership

Gal Benedek: [20:25] Absolutely. I also have two hours a day when I interview users, one hour before lunch and one hour after lunch. OK, what time do you eat? Where are your users, aren't most of them in the US? Not at all. I have some in Israel, some in Europe, some in Asia, where it's already evening for them. Happily, Elementor has a user base all around the world, so in the morning I do schedule more users who come, as they say, before the sun. And that's also one of the advantages of working at Elementor, because really, you come in and there aren't many B2C companies in Israel that can offer that kind of user scale. Basically, how do you say, B2C, but it's SMB, that's clear, but you can, yes, but on the face of it, it's not something that common, so it's an advantage. So tell me, are you looking for product people now? You're growing, what does it look like? We're really growing in a way that's great to see. OK, we're always looking for product people, we're looking for developers, we're looking for marketing people, we're looking for QAs, we're looking for designers, everything. If you're good, come. It's fun, really fun, people in the office, a good atmosphere, not cutthroat, wants to make a change, wants to move the needle, and you'll get a good morning from Gal every morning. Not sure, not sure, certainly not every morning. So let's really look at which product people could fit. But tell us in a few words what you think are the most important product skills in a product person. So I think first of all, a product person must not bullshit their colleagues. OK, a lot of people think they're product managers, and then either they've watched endless Exponent, OK, and said, OK, I'll study. Today, you know, you type into Google "how to crack a PM interview," you land straight on Exponent, which is great, but you can already recognize the pattern of someone who just studied Exponent, learned the template, shows up and, you know, recites everything they learned. Or people who think they're product managers and throw all kinds of things into the air and say, come on, engagement, churn, retention, and think that, you know, you'll immediately... no. Don't bullshit me. Bring me a case. Have a conversation with me as if we're working together right now. Let's take a problem, and I really take fresh problems I have that are live, OK, I don't bring some abstract case like, you know, how many parking spots there are in blue-and-white zones in Tel Aviv, or Instagram wants to raise its engagement by 15% because they know every percent is dollars. Not at all. I take an everyday Elementor problem and try to think with that person how they would approach it together with me, as their colleague. I don't expect them to solve the problem for me, that's not where I am. So first, don't bullshit me. Second, be a person who's fun to have coffee with; be a person who's fun to, I don't drink alcohol, but fun to grab a beer with after work, or, heaven forbid, in the evening too; be a person who's fun to be around. Third, be a leader. Get people to come with you, get people to believe that what you're working on, the product you're working on, isn't just yours, it's theirs too. That way you'll get people to simply be committed, and not feel they did you a favor by staying another half hour, hour, two hours, two years, yes, that's not where it's at. And if you're a leader, and if you don't bullshit, and if you're a person who's fun to be around, you probably also have all the other things needed to be a product manager. Again, there are always anomalies in the data, yes, but from what I've interviewed, and I've interviewed close to very many dozens, close to hundreds, if you have those three things, they are the biggest pillars

Eyal David: [24:02] of being a good product manager. Gorgeous. Let's dive in for a second. I'm listening to you and thinking, let's dive for a second into that simulation you do in the interview, where you talk about a real case.

The interview question: a Figma integration, and where candidates fail

Gal Benedek: [24:14] Amazing. Can you, can you share a bit about that, like some case, some question you give? Sure. One of the things we ask people who come to us: we say, take Elementor, get to know the product, if you want a license that's possible too, we also have, you know, a 30-day money-back guarantee, no matter what. And then we ask: should Elementor develop an integration with Figma? OK, the web design world, the web creation world on one side; on the other side Figma, a phenomenal tool for countless users, in my view not only designers. I'm a product manager and I do wireframes in Figma. And today you'd need to build that one-to-one integration, to say: I made a design in Figma. Also, today website templates in Figma are, wow. OK, if you're a web creator and you're hearing me. And if we're already talking about the future of where website building is heading, then yes, that integration. The integration. So you ask yourself: should Elementor build an integration with Figma? If yes, why; if not, why not. And let's just have the conversation, I don't expect an answer. And when someone comes, do you give some data beforehand, or do you work with data as if the user is asking, as it were, these are their questions? So there's lots of data on the internet, there are also lots of pain points, hint hint, on the internet. And we also say we're here for anything, and I also tell them, I can wear whatever hat you like: I can wear an analyst's hat and give you whatever data you want, tell me what you want to ask me, I probably, sorry, I probably already have the answer. So there's no data problem. There's no problem: I'm also a developer now, I told them, you can also ask me as a web creator. And can you share, say, where people, not specifics, but in broad numbers, where do people fall? So people, I think, fall mainly on two things. One is that people fall more on not understanding the target audience. A lot of people who come to Elementor don't understand who Figma's target audience is, and in the end Elementor has something like a Venn diagram, OK: the target audience of Elementor users is like this, the target audience of Figma users is like this, and how big is the overlap at all, is it worth investing an effort that's small, not small, let's see, how well do you want to build the integration so this happens. So you're saying it's probably the advance preparation, at the end of the day? People don't come prepared enough for this idea? I don't expect you to come prepared, because you don't know what I'll ask you, right? Yes, but at a basic level, if I'm going to interview at Elementor, it makes sense that I understand a bit about the company's business, what it does,

Eyal David: [26:54] about the different customers, at that level, even just a chat with the simplest GenAI. Absolutely. Also, you know, me at least, if I'm going to interview somewhere, the minimum I ask is to use their product if possible, certainly, certainly, certainly if it's B2C. Which is also something you mentioned, that employees do this regularly, that you push them to do. I push employees to do it regularly, I also hope it'll be enforced more, but product managers for sure,

Gal Benedek: [27:18] development team leads for sure, yes, but we push everyone, encourage every person who works at Elementor, absolutely, to build a few websites. I'd say even one every quarter. Otherwise you simply can't understand the product, that's really true. I agree. So that's one aspect. The second aspect is that you don't understand how hard it is. In the end, developing an integration isn't a simple thing. As product managers we say, OK, we need an integration, go, dev, do it, here's what we need. That world isn't simple. Anyone who knows the field a bit knows it's not simple to move content that isn't metadata from one platform to another; there are lots of risks in it. That's true in general for any effort you set out to do. Absolutely, certainly from WordPress, which in that respect are less friendly, they're friends but less so, to Figma, who are also great friends but less so here, and combining them creates endless problems. And in the end, when you want an integration, you really want one word: seamless. Right, so I think that's clear. Gorgeous. That was also a very specific example that really applies to any development effort. That's a question we really asked in job interviews, by the way. How great that you shared it. Of course. Anyone who wants to, if I as an interviewer know how to prepare my interviewee in the best possible way for the interview,

Eyal David: [28:35] I've won. Because you want to see how they think. And they also come with confidence, they come, you know, open-chested, come in relaxed. Right, absolutely, absolutely. So let's talk about your challenges, as Gal.

Gal Benedek: [28:49] We want to disrupt the market, what we talked about before: thinking all day, interviewing people all day. And Elementor's customer base is very, very diverse. A freelancer from the US isn't a freelancer from India, isn't a DIYer from Austria, isn't a web designer from the US. And then you need to optimize. In the end you want to optimize for a user, right? You can't make everyone happy. So you need to say, OK, who is my number-one target audience. Number two: the whole WordPress world, users who really don't like having their cheese moved. It works, don't touch it. And still you want to make a better product and give more capabilities. Lots of usability sessions with users, white-glove sessions we run, A/B test on A/B test on A/B test on A/B test, to make sure everything converts for a user who's simply happy as things are. Leave him alone, like my grandfather, give him... Challenge number two, challenge number three: because we're a team that's basically a platform team, connecting outward to the other teams, gathering requirements, seeing what's going on, making sure the whole organization plays in tune, that's one hell of a challenge. A company like Elementor, great as it is, needs lots and lots and lots of connections and lots and lots of requirements gathering that will probably fit quite a few areas, plus in the end they serve customers, so we may also end up having to serve those customers. So that whole integration, inside and outside the organization,

Eyal David: [30:20] is a challenge. It's a challenge. And you, if I stick for a second to the third point, you're basically also serving other product teams,

Gal Benedek: [30:31] right? And you need to support that too. Absolutely. The two probably biggest product teams at Elementor: one is the editor team, OK? The second is the hosting team. Two great teams that we serve both directly and indirectly. I'll give a classic example: a user who wants to buy Elementor today, either picks the product from these, or PLGs, or pricing pages, or, or, or, and reaches the checkout page. I need to build a checkout page that converts them in the most ideal way, that knows how to receive the data fields the way it needs. I paid; I need to make sure the payment goes through smoothly and there's no failed payment on one side, or fraud on the other. I reached the thank-you page, the user bought, they want to start using it. I need to think whether I want to do some upsell here, whether I want to do some bundle, whether I want to give them some "users like you" recommendation, this and that. And on the other hand, not hurt their experience. In the end, you bought a product: you open a can of Coke. What do you do when you buy it? You open it, you don't put it in a malfunction afterward.

Eyal David: [31:40] So don't interrupt me. Exactly. Cool. So I'll move on. Let's get a bit of a sense of who we're talking to. So Gal, take us down memory lane. You actually started in development, right? Actually I started as, no, I didn't really start in development.

Gal's path: Intel, Applied Materials and AnyVision

Gal Benedek: [31:58] Product management pretty much chose me. A fourth-year student at Ben-Gurion University, a bachelor's in engineering. I started working at Intel, super fun, and I was one of those Intel students back then, I was there in 2009, and you know, you're a jack of all trades, you're a student, cheap labor, fun, you're happy, you work at Intel, Intel's happy even if they don't pay you much. And you just, you know, close loose ends, you shadow some engineer, and happily I got attached to a product manager. And I just saw what he does, and you know, what draws me is people, and I saw him just talking to people all the time, all the time, and he, and he, and he, and he, he explained to me the number of people you talk to, and I said, oh my God. How do you even remember their names? And little by little it built me, and I started as what's called a product owner, and suddenly he threw it at me. He says, yeah, just write me this requirement, that requirement. He dictated to me what to do, I was like a Jira technician, but I was a student, what did I care. Over time I simply got more responsibility in a very, very gradual way, one of the things I really love about my career, that it was built slowly and surely. And he gave me more responsibility and more responsibility, and I was a product manager, and suddenly I was talking to customers, shocking. I moved to Applied Materials, I was an application engineer, which is a kind of product manager: you fly all day, meet customers all day, they give you feedback all day, you come back, hand it to development, fix, go, show the customer, come back. It was more the B2B world, OK? Where you have one customer you deal with, or a few small customers, certainly at a company like Applied Materials. You say to yourself, my God, I'm a product manager at a B2B company, you work with Apple, you work with Samsung, all the big ones. Until I said, after ten years in corporate, enough, I want to move a bit to startups, get a taste of that world,

Eyal David: [33:52] a bit of the B2C world, I moved to AnyVision. Lucky you did that in 2019; three years later it would have been harder. OK. Really, like, probably today you'd go the opposite way.

Gal Benedek: [34:01] Not sure. Today I don't know how much corporates are something that attracts me. It has its advantages, it has its disadvantages. I like seeing change happen fast, and in corporates that's a bit harder. I'm saying, did you actually catch the period when everything happened fast and cool? Happily, that path went, as they say, a fox counts too, as we say in Ashdod, yes? Exactly. So how was AnyVision, you got to AnyVision, right? I got to AnyVision, earned the founders' trust, got to be the product manager of a face-recognition product on a tablet, deployed at Israel's border crossings and also in casinos in Vegas. A fantastic world. I'm in touch today with countless people from there. And really, entering that world, from B2B to B2C, suddenly you see masses, masses of users. At first it's a bit shocking, you're like, I got a gust of wind in my face, and you say wow. I tried something and I basically have an answer very, very fast. Suddenly I have dashboards, suddenly I have endless data, suddenly I can

Eyal David: [35:01] talk to endless different people. So that's AnyVision. A great place. Lovely. And then let's run through quickly: you passed through ZoomInfo, you passed through Zoom Recorder, and basically got to Elementor. You said two years ago, we're not going to the rabbinate.

Product processes at Elementor: OKRs written with the team

Gal Benedek: [35:19] What was Elementor like when you joined? I came to Elementor through my mentor, product manager Gilad Ben Nahum, my product father. Shout-out. Total shout-out, I owe a lot of it to him. He told me, Gal, I joined Elementor, we want to build something product-y here, something big, we're bringing in strong people, I want you with me. I told him, Giladush, one of my problems with him is that I can't say no to him. And I told him, OK, I'm coming. And in the end we got to Elementor, and one of the things we brought in really fast was proper product processes. Buzzword, let's dive in: OKRs. OKRs, let's first tell ourselves what we're working for, what we get up in the morning for, and how we make sure that what we do actually serves a business goal, actually moves a needle.

Eyal David: [36:12] Let me ask you a context question for a second: how long had he been at the company before he recruited you? A few months? Four months, half a year, somewhere around there. And somewhere around there, all these things didn't exist. The company was growing very, very fast, right? That's basically the significant story here. Absolutely, but a company, you know, there's growing from 0 to 10,

Gal Benedek: [36:30] to 100, from 100 to 1,000, and so on and so on. And I think if you're moving from a stage where you're a startup saying, OK, I've hit on something, I have a great product, I have product-market fit, but I want to expand, I want to disrupt the market, I want to reach 10x heights, yes, then you understand you need to be product-driven in everything, not just as a slogan. And one of the things, in my view, is instilling very, very orderly, very, very clear OKR processes, so every person gets up in the morning and doesn't look at the little Jira they work in, but at which needle they're there to move.

Eyal David: [37:06] And that's a significant thing that maybe you'd like to expand on a bit, because I see that for you it's really a worldview, and I love it, I'm like that too. So we're talking about constantly stepping out of your own little box that you need to push, and not just making sure you're, constantly, opening your mind to the big picture with everyone. I do that too. Tell us a bit about it. So we'll open a parenthesis and come back. We'll open

Gal Benedek: [37:29] and close a thousand parentheses. I think as a person, if I'm like the horses and I have those blinders on my eyes and I only see straight ahead, that's cool, I have a field of vision, yes, I'm not blind, thank God, but I feel numb. I want to know what for, what's my mission. OK, not because I'm a product person, because I'm a person with a mind of my own. OK, I want to know what I'm serving, what the big goal I'm serving is, what that narrative is, what that ideal is, what that needle is that I want to move. And more than that, I also want to be part of the decision-makers on, wait, why yes, why no. And that's also what I do with my teams: when we receive an objective, or when we write an objective, and certainly when we write a key result, it's written together with the team. I involve the team long, long before. I think with them, with everyone, with everyone, from the most junior to the most senior. There's no I in team, right? A classic case of that. And they share the goals with me, and there are times they tell me, Gal, that's aggressive, or Gal, we can do more. And when that conversation, both of those sentences, happens in the same room, you say, man, I have a team.

Eyal David: [38:41] So that's probably something you look for in a product manager too. Absolutely, but I look for it in my teammates in general. Right. And following on, can you tell us a bit about the mechanics of a meeting like that, or what it looks like? Sure.

Gal Benedek: [38:57] Because there are lots of ideas, how do you deal with that? First of all, having lots of ideas is amazing; having lots of hypotheses is awesome. Maybe I'll form working groups and connect every three, four, five, however many people, and tell them: you have this idea? Go research it. Go interview users, bring evidence that this thing holds water. Again, because we're back to the bullshit thing. Absolutely. But if you bring an idea, and you have an idea and some gut feeling, awesome, I love it, bring me proof. OK, if it's a one-day development thing, let's try developing it, put it up as an A/B test, we'll invest, you know, minimal time. But if it's something big, bring me proof, win me over, rally me the way I rally you, right? But here's another reason to work with Gal, I think, because you'll have room to have your say. Of course, the opposite: I'm, as they say, two Jews, six opinions, right? So come, bring ideas. On one side; on the other side, I interview people, interview customers all the time. Every person on the team is always invited to join, to listen, to see the facial expressions of the person who ultimately uses the product we all built. Hearing people is nice, seeing expressions is nice. Be a bit of a behavioral expert: see how a person tells you yes but is actually super excited, or tells you "I don't use it" but you see in their eyes... There's something in body language and facial expression that can't be translated into data, and I'm a hysterical fan of data, yes, to be clear. But every person on the team, when they see a customer using their product, responding to questions they asked, as they say, something else comes, the empathy grows.

Eyal David: [40:48] Yes, of course, and that also broadens your horizons, and you're able to propose better solutions and have a more interesting conversation. And it probably also ties in strongly with eat your own dog food, which you described, where you have a sample of one if it's only me experiencing it, and suddenly you hear it from customers, so yes, it's reinforced. So basically anyone can join you, which is also cool. I warmly invite him to do it, or her, and we're speaking in the masculine but really meaning both genders, check. And basically let's go back for a second to where we were. So you arrived, and those routines you mentioned didn't really exist, right? And we were a few product people who said, OK, we want to take

Gal Benedek: [41:24] the company really to a place that's product-led. We instilled orderly processes, including user interviews, and then, you know, the whole thing: recording the user interviews, getting transcripts, summarizing them, offering an incentive because people don't come for free, that whole thing. User interviews are a world of their own. Orderly OKR processes, quarterly planning, yearly planning that comes out of that, monthly planning, OKR meetings like: you set the goals, let's see that you're meeting them, are the goals realistic, do we need to change something along the way, which is also fine, all kinds of planned, unplanned, prioritization processes, whether it's ICE, whether it's RICE, whether, you know, each to their own as long as they can justify it, OK? Work however is comfortable for you, justify it, win me over again, it's all about buy-in. Make me part of it, don't force it on me. Like that. And basically get the company to look at data all the time, correct all the time; you see you're off course, correct, change. And all those things, from planning, OKRs, user interviews, proper prioritization, the combination of data and user ideas, all of those make us believe we can build something long-term,

Eyal David: [42:38] loved, and that can still grow. And tell me, now when a new employee joins, I'm on the onboarding for a second. A product manager or not a product manager? A product manager. Actually I'm going with your own entry into the role, which was quite an entry, I mean, you didn't just do onboarding and get to know this world, you really took off and brought in routines and things you still do today, which will probably lift the company a lot, you and the whole team of course. Me and the whole team I was part of, yes. But now the entry of a new product manager: say he went through the whole series of interviews with you, he was lovely, exactly, or she, or she, exactly as you described, exactly, I'm noting it down. So how long does it take, how much grace does a new product manager get until they start running, actually moving things,

Onboarding a new PM: a month, a quarter, six months

Gal Benedek: [43:27] until they learn the industry? So I think when I open a position at Elementor, by the way, that's how much we measure things: I don't open a position at Elementor without saying how I'll measure the person after a quarter, after half a year and after a year. What do I expect? Now, different seniority levels bring different results, yes? But I think in the first month, get to know where you've landed, OK? Get to know where you've landed, which splits into two things. Get to know the industry and the competitors. On one hand, build websites on Elementor, build websites anywhere you can build a website, OK? Not necessarily only on your direct competitors. On the other hand, get to know the people. Do intro meetings. Know your audience: get to know the audience, get to know who works here, who the key people are, who you'll work with more closely, less closely. Initiate, do, just get to know. Don't jump in, don't propose, you're welcome to, or you, of course, yes? Saved myself at the last second. Jump in, propose with love, propose it in private rooms, not in small meetings, in big meetings. I really believe in: come in small, leave big. That's also something you did when you joined. Absolutely. I think for about two months I was a fish, I didn't talk, just understanding dynamics, just understanding what's going on, and just getting to know the market. OK? Building a site on WordPress.com is different from building a site on WordPress.org, yes? And that's mind-blowing too, OK? Certainly with competitors. Where are our weaknesses? Why is it hard to build a WordPress site at first? Why does it pay off in the long run? That's month one. Month three, after three months, I already expect you to be an active, integral part of the day-to-day of the team you work with. So do you basically get a team after three months? What does it look like? You're assigned to a team from day one, day two, that week. Be a fly on the wall. Come in small, yes, I really love that: come in small, give your value later. After three months, be an integral part of the team, be someone I can describe, OK? Don't come now, nobody expects you to move the engagement needle by double-digit percentages. We are not there. OK? But be someone a developer feels comfortable enough with to come and not just receive things from you, but have a discussion with you. Certainly other product managers. After half a year, you're the owner, you're the domain owner of your area. I'm your partner on the journey, your advisor, your son and your father at the same time, or yours. OK? At the same time. But you're the go-to person. If there's a compliment, a problem, a suggestion, people come to you, they no longer come to me. And that's a healthy process of entering a role. If we build a person properly into the role and don't just throw them into the deep end, they'll stay. If not, they may feel overwhelmed, or she, feel overwhelmed and leave. And we don't want that. Because you don't enter any role today and immediately become its master. Like karate. Belts are earned

Eyal David: [46:25] through tests, slowly. Same thing. Yes, I don't know any other way in product management. That's really true. There are lots of times you get thrown into the deep end. People I mentor, people I talk to, say: we arrived, we passed the job interview, and they say, here, I'll help you, be strong. Ugh, that grates on my personality. I can totally understand. Tell me, come on, come on, one more question around this world. Internal mobility, is that something that happens a lot at your place, into product?

Internal mobility into product and how to start

Gal Benedek: [46:55] I think any person, if they want it and they're good, can do what they want. If you're now, I'll answer from both hats, you're a developer, you're a QA person, you're a PMM, you're a designer, and you're passionate about product management? Why not? Why would you... On the contrary, in my view it's an advantage. You already know the product. You've already joined me for all the things I listed earlier. Why not? Of course. That's how we as a company give people healthy, proper paths for advancement. And I really believe that in product management, you don't land a product management job the first time, by the way, product management. In my view, your first product management job, you're supposed to grow into it from within your current workplace: see another product manager and tell yourself, man, this is what I want to do, this interests me, OK? Not necessarily "this is what I want to do," it interests me enough, and from there you grow. And then, after a year, two, three, in a first product management role at a company where you'd already done one tenure before, you have the cornerstone for being a good product manager. That's a really excellent tip, I think, especially in today's climate.

Eyal David: [48:09] What would you recommend to that employee, man or woman, you know, who now decides they want to go into product? Would you go and talk to HR, talk to Gal, I want to take this path, what does it look like? First of all, remember user interviews? I'd interview a few product managers.

Gal Benedek: [48:23] Ask them what their day-to-day is like, because a product manager in one area, their role or day-to-day is very, very different from a product manager's role in another area. So I'd interview a few product managers. Go also to somewhat more senior people so they show me the whole picture, or I'll do it hand in hand, pick someone to be my mini-mentor. See that after a week you're still as excited about it as you were a week ago. And if you're still passionate, let's attach you to a product manager, shadow them, see that their day-to-day actually interests you. And then if that happens, let's build you some advancement path, hopefully at Elementor, and if not, in life in general, because I don't believe that if a person wants to advance, anyone should stop them. Excellent answer, I'm glad you said it, I think that's a great tip,

Eyal David: [49:14] just see several product managers, that's my tip, don't see just one. Right, right, that's absolutely right. OK, so we're already wrapping up the episode, the episode is really interesting, yes, we really flew. We'll see, about 60. So Gal, this was really fun. What do you wish Gal in 10 years?

Gal Benedek: [49:38] First of all, to live in a world where being Jewish is safe, yes. Today it's risky both in Israel and abroad. That our worries will be a bit smaller than they are today, that we can walk down the street in Europe and in the US without someone jumping on you at that level. Professionally, I think in terms of my career, 10 years from now, I don't think I'm there yet, and that's fine by the way, a career built slowly and properly, I'd like to be at some venture capital firm, OK? Take on a few companies. Today I mentor product managers, OK? That's part of what I do alongside my job. I'd like to take that a step further: work at a VC fund, take 2-3 startups and walk with them from the seed round to, hopefully, you know, the sky is the limit. Be there, do it right, make sure they have market fit, see the POC, know how to approach investors, that whole thing. That's what I'd like to be doing in 10 years. I also want to build myself in the most correct way, I'm not in a rush. So I think that's where I'm aiming.

Eyal David: [50:48] Wow, so lots of luck with that. Sounds like a good fit to me. In short, it was really fun having you, and OK, until next time. Thank you very much, for now, bye bye. Bye. Hi friends, thanks for listening. If you found this podcast valuable, you can subscribe and follow us for more episodes on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or any other app. And of course, if you couldn't find us on some app, I'd be happy if you wrote to us. We'd love five stars on every platform, and for you to follow us so more listeners can discover us and find the podcast. You can also find previous episodes on any app or on our YouTube channel; there are links in the description. So until next time, come on, be efficient, and bye bye.