Kothari: Notion Reallocated Half Its Team To Build Remote Features
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 18:36
Akshay Kothari is the COO of Notion. He describes how Notion pivoted product development priorities in early 2020 to address remote work needs.
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“Because we're a small team, we actually put almost half of our team working on features that allows people to be more productive in this unique environment.”
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“Founder mode is really good if you have a founder who's right a lot. If they're not, God bless that company.”
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“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.”