Inside Gong: How teams work with design partners, their pod structure, autonomy, trust, and more | Eilon Reshef (co-founder and CPO)

Gong began using cross-functional product pods around 2016, as the company grew from roughly 50 to 60 people and reconsidered how product and engineering should operate. A pod combined a product manager, UX designer, and engineers, with writing and analytics support added later. Each pod received an agenda—such as building a forecasting product—then had room to determine how to solve the problem.

Eilon describes design partners as a core part of the model. A pod may work closely with five to two dozen customers, depending on how broad or niche the capability is. In one example, a product manager showed a partner a partially built forecasting feature, even though its save action still failed; the team committed to making it work within a week. Eilon says customers valued seeing their feedback interpreted and reflected in product progress.

The number of pods made customer coordination its own job. A research coordinator learns each pod’s target market and questions, filters Gong’s existing customer base, and schedules conversations through a lightweight CRM. That support lets product managers spend time learning from customers instead of arranging every meeting. The team also checks with customer success when a customer is frustrated or negotiating, without requiring multiple layers of approval for every conversation.