Monte Carlo

I still remember the ups and downs during my first three, six and nine months, and how my team kept me motivated through it all. While hitting our individual goals matters, everyone here believes we achieve so much more when we succeed together. From day one, I felt a strong connection with my team and have always had steady support from both leadership and the wider organization.

The word I would choose is "impact" or "impactful." We chose "impact" because our company culture revolves around driving tangible outcomes in everything we do. This principle is foundational, shaping our actions, decisions and rewards.

For example, with our clients, we don't stop at ensuring software adoption. Instead, we focus on how our solutions drive measurable improvements in their business outcomes. Internally, we prioritize actions and allocate resources by evaluating the potential impact.

When discussing projects, we ask, "What will this achieve, and who will benefit?" This ensures our energy is directed toward efforts that truly matter. Focusing on impact fosters clarity, purpose and accountability within the team.

It also builds a culture of ownership and pride, as everyone sees the meaningful difference their contributions make for the company, their colleagues and our clients. By putting impact at the center, we ensure our efforts consistently align with the outcomes that matter most.

I've been with the company for over three years, and one of the most impactful areas of growth I've experienced has been my ability to execute quickly. One of our core values at Monte Carlo is speed and prioritizing speed over perfection. When I first joined, I was a new, overachieving and admittedly perfectionist employee who felt compelled to only deliver polished, "perfect" products whether it was presentations, models or insights.

This led me to obsess over minor details, which ultimately delayed the value I could provide. Over time, I've embraced the philosophy of delivering fast, high-quality solutions and iterating based on feedback. This "ship and iterate" mindset has significantly improved my efficiency and effectiveness.

It's taught me to focus on what truly matters and to trust the process of refinement through collaboration. Additionally, I've become much better at giving and receiving feedback. I'm less afraid to make mistakes and more willing to take bold leaps, which has had a positive impact on both my work and personal growth.

Our team thrives because engagement is intentional, from the tools we use to the way we coach. We leverage platforms like Outreach and Nooks, whose live-call analytics and AI insights make coaching sharper and more impactful. Coaching is never one-size-fits-all.

Onboarding builds a strong foundation, followed by real-time feedback, tailored coaching and peer-to-peer enablement. Mentorship is key. SDRs are paired with account executives to learn how to think like full-cycle sellers, fostering ownership and proactivity.

We also create space for reps to share expertise with one another, reinforcing a culture of continuous learning. Just as important, I customize growth paths based on each rep's aspirations, giving them visibility into multiple career trajectories. The results speak for themselves: We've had nine SDR promotions in the last 16 to 18 months.

This investment in engagement builds confidence, accelerates careers and fuels the pipeline that drives business growth.

Start by uncovering each rep's "why." Engagement is personal; what drives one seller may not matter to another. Take time to understand their goals and aspirations, then tailor coaching and development around them.

This creates true buy-in and makes feedback more impactful. From there, make clarity and accountability non-negotiable. Set clear expectations, but pair them with empathy and support so reps know you have their back.

Build a culture of proactive ownership by coaching reps to run their pipeline like AEs and empowering them to diagnose their own success. Foster collaboration through peer learning and cross-functional alignment, because no one wins alone. Finally, lead with intentional energy.

Your tone sets the pace for the team, and positivity, resilience and belief are contagious. When reps feel seen, supported and challenged, they stay engaged, and when engagement is high, performance follows.

I have a very strict morning routine that I do not break. My morning ritual of coffee, pastry and a book for 30 minutes helps me start my day very refreshed and energetic. Sometimes in the middle of the day, I take a break to go to the gym since I can work late into the evening many times.

I highly recommend setting aside focus time and making sure meetings are squeezed together as much as possible to allow you to actually get things done without too much context switching. In order to transition into my evening, I just close the laptop!

I think the main thing to be done in order to mix concentration time and collaboration when working remotely is making sure you have time slots for meetings and focus time. Having the planning and action items for each member of the team as clear and laid out as possible allows each person to concentrate on their part of the system.

Regular syncs help keep everyone together. I use mostly Slack and Zoom to communicate paired with Notion and Linear to organize the tasks and action items across the team. Even with good planning, the main obstacle can be when you need another team member and they are not available.

Carli's impact goes far beyond her immediate team. She has continuously inspired those around her to strive for more, whether that's in their personal career growth or in achieving business goals. One of the most notable ways she has done this is by fostering an environment where professional development is not just encouraged but actively supported.

Several members of her team have been promoted into leadership roles and transitioned into other departments within the company — a testament to her mentorship and investment in their success. Carli is a trusted voice in shaping the future of our team and company culture.

Carli is frequently asked to participate in the hiring process, ensuring we bring in individuals who align with our values and add new perspectives to our culture. Her ability to identify and nurture talent has been instrumental in strengthening our organization.

Additionally, Carli is never afraid to ask hard questions, whether that involves challenging the status quo, pushing for better solutions or advocating for her team. Her courage and willingness to have difficult conversations make her a leader who others look up to and respect.

At Monte Carlo, our product team primarily gathers customer feedback through direct conversations with customers. We regularly engage in calls with them, seeking insights into their experiences with our product — both positive and negative. This real-time feedback loop allows us to understand what's working well and identify areas where customers are encountering friction.

We also proactively follow up with customers to delve deeper into specific feedback points raised in previous interactions.

Additionally, we involve customers in our feature-development process by directly reaching out to them for input on new features or improvements. Once a feature is nearing completion, we often release it under a "beta" label to a select group of customers.

This beta testing phase provides valuable feedback that helps us refine the feature before a full launch. Customer feedback directly influences and benefits our product development process in several ways. It helps us prioritize features.

Feedback helps us understand which features are most important to our customers, allowing us to allocate our resources effectively and focus on high-impact improvements. Customer feedback helps us identify pain points. Through customer conversations, we can pinpoint specific areas where users are struggling, enabling us to address these issues and enhance the user experience.

Customer feedback also validates new concepts. By seeking feedback on new feature ideas, we can gauge customer interest and gather insights before investing significant development effort. It helps us improve existing features.

Feedback often reveals how we can refine existing features to better meet customer needs and expectations. An example is when we got feedback from several of our customers that our experience around incidents in Monte Carlo was difficult to understand and navigate.

This is a core experience to our product and we needed it to be much smoother. We undertook a large redesign of the experience, going all the way back to the basic building blocks. We worked with several of our customers to workshop some different basic concepts around their jobs to be done and got to the foundations.

From there we built the feature back up, testing and getting feedback with a wide variety of customers along the way before releasing it in beta to our champions, tweaking it some more, then rolling it out to our full customer base. The end result was a much simpler experience that was very well received by all users.

We've learned several key lessons regarding prioritizing customer feedback. Not all feedback is created equal. Some feedback is more valuable than others.

It's essential to consider factors like the customer's experience level, the frequency of the feedback, and its alignment with our product vision. We learned to look for patterns. Individual feedback points may not always be actionable.

However, when we identify recurring themes or patterns across multiple customers, we know it's something worth addressing. We learned to balance customer needs with business goals. While customer feedback is crucial, it's equally important to ensure that our decisions align with our overall business objectives and strategic vision.

We also learned to maintain open communication. We strive to be transparent with customers about how their feedback is being considered and acted upon. This helps build trust and fosters a collaborative relationship.