Are they cooked?

How LinkedIn narratives distort reality (and affect your GTM)

👋 Hey, I’m George Chasiotis. Welcome to GrowthWaves, your weekly dose of B2B growth insights—featuring powerful case studies, emerging trends, and unconventional strategies you won’t find anywhere else.

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Everyone’s cooked nowadays.

And if they’re not already cooked, they will be.

And, quite frankly, I’m sick and tired of the whole thing.

Reading all these ‘contrarian’ LinkedIn posts declaring industries or companies ‘dead.’

Or sharing half-assed opinions just for engagement.

I’ll use one of these opinions and try to make a sober analysis of it.

Whether I’m right or wrong isn’t as important.

Objectivity and clarity are.

Let’s go.

The post

As I was looking for the topic of my next note on Monday morning, I came across this LinkedIn post:

To be clear: I don’t like to pick on individuals and companies. I don’t know the person who made the post. We contacted them after publishing this note so they’d have the opportunity to reply. I respect their opinion and way of thinking, but at the same time, I’m entitled to mine.

Now that we’ve got the disclaimers out of the way, let’s get to the meat of this.

This post—like many others—creates a perception that may not be accurate.

As expected, LinkedIn went ballistic, claiming SEO dead (once again) and marching towards an AI utopia where project management software is irrelevant or at least not as necessary as it used to be.

Very few sober voices raised the same (fact-based) concerns I’m addressing here.

Now, before you reach any conclusions about my relationship with Monday and my interest in writing this post, I’ll stop you right there.

• There’s no relationship with Monday (even though we’d love to have them as clients at Restartt), and I’m not incentivized to write this in any way.

• We used to be customers of Monday for one of my companies, but we’re not anymore. (I’m not the biggest fan of the product.)

This post has little to do with Monday and everything to do with how perceptions are formed online based on opinions that, in most cases, serve personal interests and aren’t factually accurate.

So, what are some of the key claims the post makes (high-level)?

• Monday.com’s stock had a ~40% market cap loss in the past month.

• Argues it’s not due to earnings or product challenges (like vibe coding), but due to Google’s AI Overviews and chatbots eroding their SEO-driven growth engine.

• Says Monday.com is one of the first major SaaS firms to “publicly confirm” AI-generated answers are bypassing websites.

• Backs the claim with Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince’s comments at Cannes, sharing stats about AI crawlers vs. Google crawlers.

• Suggests inbound marketing as we know it is breaking, and Monday.com is an early casualty of this shift.

• Mentions that SEO budgets are being reallocated.

So, essentially:

• Traffic is down because of AI overviews

• That affects Monday’s ability to attract customers

• It impacts its forward guidance to the investing community

• And as a result, the stock is down

The post also involves AI chatbot crawlers, Cloudflare, but quite frankly, I find it difficult to find the connection.

So far, so good.

Let’s try to see what truth and what’s not in this post.

Reality check

I’ll pick six key claims made in the post and try to explain (using different sources) what’s wrong with them.

Claim #1: “They beat by 27%.”

What’s true: 27% was revenue growth, not the “beat.” The actual percentage beat was 1.8%.

• “Revenue was $299.0 million, an increase of 27% year-over-year.” — Press release (Business Wire).

• “Shares tumbled 26% … as investors reacted to a Q3 revenue forecast of $311–$313 million, signaling a conservative outlook.” — Barron’s.

• “MNDY stock dropped 27% … despite these strong results.” — Investor’s Business Daily.

• “This was the smallest percentage beat (1.8%) MNDY has reported since going public,” — Investor’s Business Daily.

This might not be the most important claim (for the purposes of this note), but it’s important in the context of what we’re discussing.

Claim #2: “SEO budgets are being reallocated”

What’s true: The earnings call (a call between analysts covering Monday’s stock and the company’s executives) discussed marketing reallocation broadly, not SEO-specific cuts.

“We monitor all the performance stuff… we see areas that we are more efficient in, so we move resources there.” — Roy Mann (Co-CEO), transcript.

“We’re already taking actions to reallocate resources to places that we see greater return.” — Eliran Glazer (CFO), transcript.

There isn’t an explicit mention of SEO budgets allocated elsewhere.

This is important because it’s part of the framing of the post.

Claim #3: “High-intent leads remain, but volume has cratered”

What’s true: Management said high-quality intent remains, and the drop was volume-related, but not significant.

“The better, high-quality customers still click on Google and ads… The drop that we see is just on volume… not that significant for the higher-quality customers.” — Roy Mann (Co-CEO), transcript.

“We are seeing some softness within the down market due to the changes in the Google algorithm. But this is temporary, we believe…” — Eliran Glazer (CFO), transcript.

Claim #4: “AI Overviews and chatbots have started to kill their growth engine.”

What’s true: They acknowledged some down-market softness but stressed enterprise strength and record $100K+ account additions.

“In Q2 we achieved a record number of net new adds of customers paying over $100,000 annually.” — Eran Zinman (Co-CEO), transcript.

“We believe this is temporary… and we are already taking actions proactively to address this.” — Eliran Glazer (CFO), transcript.

Additionally:

“Net dollar retention rate was 111%.” — Press release.

Essentially, Monday said that Google’s changes impact its acquisition ability at the bottom end of the market.

This isn’t the same as their “growth engine has started getting killed.”

Claim #5: “Monday.com is one of the first major SaaS firms to publicly confirm AI answers are bypassing websites; inbound is breaking.”

What’s true: They did not make an industry-wide claim; they reported limited Google-related softness and reiterated up-market strength.

“Demand in general remains very strong… record net adds for the $100,000 customers… very good traction and momentum upmarket.” — Eliran Glazer (CFO), transcript.

“It’s not such a significant impact… and we can mitigate that in many different ways.” — Roy Mann (Co-CEO), transcript.

Other companies, such as NerdWallet, have already started discussing the impact of AI in their acquisition efforts.

So, Monday is certainly not the first company to raise the issue.

But that’s not the same as “inbound is breaking.”

Claim #6: “The drop was about Google; not because of earnings.”

What’s true: Coverage ties the stock plunge primarily to cautious outlook and guidance math, not Google alone.

• “Shares tumbled 26% … as investors reacted to a Q3 revenue forecast of $311–$313 million, signaling a conservative outlook.” — Barron’s.

• “Earnings topped views… But MNDY stock dives.” — Investor’s Business Daily.

In public markets, there’s this thing called ‘forward guidance,’ which basically describes the company’s guidance to the investing community regarding its future performance.

The drop wasn’t about Google as the post claims, it was about its forward guidance and future outlook.

Why is this important?

You may be wondering:

“George, I thought this newsletter was about marketing and growth. What does all that have to do with marketing and growth, and why should I care about Monday’s stock, anyway?”

First of all, I’m not here to offer financial advice.

I’m here to help you better understand B2B marketing and growth by sharing things you won’t find elsewhere.

I’d like to believe I succeed at that most of the time, even if I occasionally miss the mark.

The real problem is this:

If you’re in marketing and growth, a post like this affects you in more ways than you can imagine.

Because here’s the internal dialogue your CMO will have once they read a post like this:

• “Oh man, Monday is in big trouble.”

• “Maybe I should reallocate my {channel} budget as well?”

• “... because I read a similar post for {SaaS company} the other day.”

• “Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m going to do.”

• “First, I’m going to fire the agency.”

• “Then, I’m going to allocate our budget for {channel} to {channel}.”

• “Which means I need to find another agency for that.”

That may sound a bit far-fetched—it’s a hypothetical scenario after all—but I’ve been (to my displeasure) part of conversations such as this one.

You’d be surprised by how many people form their opinions based on something they read online.

Because for a while now, the way it goes on LinkedIn is…

• Paid search = Expensive and not working

• Paid social = Same

• LinkedIn = Pay-to-play and getting worse

• SEO = The last thing companies care about

• Events = Expensive and less effective

• Cold outbound = Hasn’t worked since 2015

• Signal-based outbound = Promising but too complicated

• Creators = Doesn’t work unless you’re Clay

• Webinars = No one joins them

• Blog = No one visits it anymore

• Gated content = Forbidden because people don't like it

• Branded swag = Expensive and bad for the environment

You know what?

Stop doing all these things. Seriously.

Or better, wait for some AI bro to declare them ‘dead’ first.

Seriously, walk away.

So the rest of us can dominate in peace.

Because the more people leave a channel, the less competition there is.

As my friend Vukasin said in a conversation a few months ago:

“Marketing channels don’t die. They evolve. Our job is to evolve faster.”

Or, as my friend Silvio often says:

“It’s not what you do; it’s how you do it.”

TO BE CLEAR

Things do change.

There’s volatility. Some channels mature. Others become less effective.

BUT

It didn’t work for them? Cool. You’re not them.

I know companies and agencies that are killing it.

And they do so by using some of the channels mentioned in this bullet list.

Trust your gut, your numbers, and your customers.

Not a post from someone who’s *never* built anything themselves.

Final thoughts

No, Monday isn’t cooked.

At least not because Google’s AI Overviews “broke” their inbound engine.

But again, this note isn’t about Monday.

It’s about thinking twice about everything you read online.

And never forming your perception solely on others’ opinions (including mine).

Marketing and growth are becoming increasingly complicated.

We need more clarity and factual information.

I hope this piece helped you understand why.

Sources

• Seeking Alpha

• ir.monday.com

• Business Wire

• Barron's

• Investors.com

Disclaimer

The information in this post is provided for educational and informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, or legal advice, nor a solicitation to buy or sell any securities. Opinions are those of the author and may change. Do your own research; past performance is not indicative of future results.

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