Everyone told monday.com they were too late.

By the time they launched in 2012, the project management category was already crowded. Asana had momentum. Jira owned developers. Trello was everywhere. The conventional wisdom was clear: if you were building another work management tool, you needed a better product and a smarter PLG motion.

Monday ignored both pieces of advice.

They built a product that looked completely different from anything else in the category, bright colors, no technical learning curve, templates for everything. And then they went after buyers that nobody else was chasing.

Developers, technical teams, and the obvious SaaS ICP were already covered. And competitive.

But monday went a different way, getting in front of construction companies, law firms, churches, real estate brokers and banks.

They found a massive market hiding in plain sight by asking a question most B2B marketers never ask: who is NOT in our current ICP and why not?