258: Scaling Pipedrive: Tech Leadership, AI, and Building Great Engineering Teams

ARRtist on AIR - Meaningful conversations with Software & AI leaders

With Agur Jögi, CTO of Pipedrive, on engineering culture, AI-driven development & growth

⏱ Chapter Marks: 00:00 – Intro & Agur’s CTO philosophy: Why great leadership means being unmissable when you're gone 08:30 – Hiring 2 layers smarter: Cultural fit, vision, and execution in leadership hiring 13:00 – AI and engineering: Guardrailing AI agents and shifting team responsibilities 17:00 – Customer-centric dev culture: How engineers stay close to user problems 26:00 – Strategic positioning: Competing with Salesforce & HubSpot by focusing on sales teams 40:50 – Engineering culture & talent: How to attract and grow world-class engineers 51:00 – Sentiment-driven performance reviews: Why "what’s blocking you?" matters most

📚 Book Recommendations by Agur Jögi: The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit by Sloan Wilson (often confused but aligns with Agur’s reference)

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni

Any book by Patrick Lencioni – especially those written in story form with clear takeaways

🔗 LinkedIn Profiles:

Host: Jannis Bandorski

Guest: Agur Jögi

🍽 Restaurant Recommendation by Agur Jögi:

NOA Restaurant, Tallinn – Seaside views and fine dining: https://noaresto.ee/

Teaser: We interview English-speaking guests, when we think it’s really worth to share their experience. In this episode of ARRtist on AIR, I’m joined by Agur Jögi, the CTO of Pipedrive. Agur shares what it means to lead an engineering team of over 200 people, how AI is reshaping developer roles, and why growing your people and increasing their market value is the real legacy of leadership. We talk about building guardrails for AI, personalizing SaaS at scale, and how performance reviews should start with one simple question: “What blocks you from being more productive?” It’s smart, humble, and inspiring. Let’s dive in with Agur Jögi and with me, Jannis Bandorski.