Monday.com Co-Founder: "We Changed the Vision of the Company Completely" | Roy Mann on the Agent Economy

Monday.com’s Strategic Pivot to AI Agents: Roy Mann on Agent Talent, OpenClaw, and the Future of Work

In this episode, Liam Lawson interviews Roy Mann, co-founder of Monday.com, about the company’s decision to reorient its product vision around AI agents. They unpack the three waves of AI and why the latest wave shifts focus from managing work to enabling agents to perform tasks directly.

Roy explains Agent Talent, a marketplace that treats AI agents like employees with qualifications and job postings, and why Monday elevated agents to first-class platform citizens. The conversation also covers open source models such as OpenClaw, internal AI infrastructure, and why adaptability is critical as technology accelerates.

Key Topics Covered:

• The three waves of AI and why wave three changes everything
• Why Monday changed its core vision from managing work to doing the work
• Agent Talent: hiring AI agents like employees with job postings and qualifications
• Strategies for selling to agents as well as humans, and corresponding marketing shifts
• Debate over the per-seat SaaS model and signs of a potential shift
• OpenClaw, open source AI, and the argument for democratic access to models
• The future of work, abundance vs. scarcity, and adaptability as a core skill

Episode Timestamps:

00:00 Intro
00:45 The three waves of AI
03:42 Customer reception to agents
07:16 The developer who went from terrified to empowered
10:33 What personality traits succeed in the agent economy
12:16 Monday's internal AI infrastructure
19:44 Agent Talent and selling to agents
24:50 How to sell to an agent
27:37 Testing and qualifying agents with Sensei
30:22 Why open source matters
32:22 The future of work
36:44 Is the per seat model dead?
39:51 OpenClaw and local models
44:04 Paperclip and multi-agent orchestration
52:09 Roy's ideal future of work
56:42 Betting everything on agents with Monday stock down 76%
01:00:00 Where Monday's adaptability comes from
01:01:43 Why do you do what you do?

About the Guest:

Roy Mann is the co-founder of Monday.com and a driving voice behind the company's recent strategic shift toward AI agents. In this episode he discusses practical product decisions, marketplace design for agents, and the organizational changes required to adopt agent-first thinking.

About the Company:

Monday.com serves 225,000 customers and has over 60,000 seats at some of its largest accounts. The company has shifted its core vision from managing work to enabling AI agents to perform work on behalf of users.