Kothari: Notion Was Profitable For Two Years Prior To $50M Raise
Akshay Kothari · 20VC: Notion's Fundraise with Index: The Most Anticipated Deal in The Valley: How It Came To Be | The Future of Remote Work |How Notion Approach The Balance of Growth and Profitability · Apr 17, 2020 · at 24:39
Akshay Kothari is COO of Notion. He discusses how Notion maintained a lean operational strategy that enabled profitability prior to taking major venture capital funding.
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“It's allowed as a company to be profitable over the last two years.”
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More from Akshay Kothari
Kothari: Founder mode only works if the founder is right a lot
“Founder mode is really good if you have a founder who's right a lot. If they're not, God bless that company.”
Notion avoided hiring product ops and researchers early on via feedback automation
“We didn't have to hire as many support people. We did not have to hire a product ops person, and we also did not have research early days. In fact, all of these were given to the engineer directly to be able to tap into that feedback and actually solve that pr…”
Kothari: Omitting sales quotas hurt Notion's early growth
“Some of the best salespeople They join because there is a quota, because they can hit a number, because they can outperform that number. And so actually not having that and not having, you know, the attribution really hurt us, I think the first year or two.”
Kothari: Reinventing Notion's sales machine cost the company three years
“If I had to do it one function all over again, I would do sales. And the way I would do it is to not try to like overthink it, just do it the way it is run, like a proper sales machine. I think it would have saved three years in that journey.”