The Ledger
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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.”
Notion gave up only 2-3% equity and granted zero board seats
“I think there's essentially two to three percent ownership that we gave out. And so, you know, we were able to essentially not give out board seats.”
Kothari: Notion Was Profitable For Two Years Prior To $50M Raise
“It's allowed as a company to be profitable over the last two years.”
Kothari: Notion holds more cash than its total funds raised
“There's more cash in Notions Bank today than the history of its race. So it's like, in some ways, like, we've produced cash. We haven't spent any of it.”
Kothari: Notion founders personally conducted final interview for first 500 hires
“I think for up to about 500 people, we're about 700 people today, but up to 500 people, the last interview was always with Ivan or myself.”
Kothari: Notion employs under 20 product managers and 12 designers total
“I think even if I think about today, like all of Notion, with all the different surfaces we have under 20 product managers, and we have about 12 designers.”
Kothari: Hiring more people and expanding projects actually slows startups down
“I think you may feel like you're going faster by hiring more people and saying yes to more projects, but in effect it is actually going slower.”
Kothari: 46% of Notion's business stems from personal use
“We actually did this study recently, and we found that you know, something like 46% of our business in in, you know, it can be attributed back to someone using Notion in their personal life.”
Kothari: Expecting a return to 100x revenue valuations is unrealistic
“Hoping that we're gonna be back to a hundred times revenue, a hundred times ARR valuation, I think that's a bit challenging.”
Kothari: Notion reached $100 million in ARR around 2022
“So Notion got to about a hundred million in ARR a couple of years ago”
Kothari: Notion missed its quarterly financial target about 1.5 years ago
“One of the, I remember one quarter where we missed our this was maybe like a year and a half ago or something where we missed a quarter where we sort of like missed our number.”
Former LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner declined offer to join Notion's board
“Jeff Wiener, who was my old boss at LinkedIn. Ivan and I actually tried very hard to get him to be a board member at you know, our first board member at Notion, and he said no, because in deep down, he wanted to be, you know, the CEO's coach.”
Kothari: Notion Has A 10-Year Runway Even At Zero Revenue
“Even if our business were to go to zero tomorrow, we now have about a ten-year runway to kind of continue Building notion.”
Kothari: Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has 40 direct reports and no 1-on-1s
“Jensen has like, 40 direct reports and doesn't do one-on-one.”
Kothari: Notion became cashflow positive around 2019
“So I think I'll just talk a little bit about notions, very nuanced, but we got there pretty early. I think we got there like five years ago.”
Kothari: SaaS companies average 5x to 10x long-term revenue multiples
“Unless you're trying to just, like, get acquired, you will be valued at a multiple of your revenue or a multiple of your cash flows that you're generating, and they tend to be an average of, like, you know, what, five to 10 X on the revenue multiple side”
Kothari: Notion raised $50M at $2B valuation in early 2020
“So we did we raised fifty million at two billion at the start of COVID like pretty much like a couple of weeks into COVID in 20, 20, 20, 20.”
Kothari: Notion raised $270M at a $10B valuation in late 2021
“We raised around two hundred and seventy million at ten billion.”
Kothari: High valuations matter internally for startup employee morale and stock retention
“Well, valuation matters internally, I think, to employees. I think they, it matters that, like, you know, the stock that they did get is able to be valued that much and continue to grow in value over the years.”
Kothari: Few 2021-2022 unicorns can show leaders a path to growing into valuations
“I think it is a challenge for a lot of companies when you can't show them a path. And I think it was a bigger challenge in twenty-twenty-two. I think some companies have been able to sort of like show a path or have gotten there. But I think they're probably m…”
Kothari: Almost all startup advice is genius for some and rubbish for others
“I think in general, I would say like almost all advice is genius for a subset of people and completely rubbish for the rest of them.”
Kothari: Most Of Notion Was Built By Just Three Engineers
“When I joined, I think a lot of Notion that you and I play with today was built by just three engineers on the team.”
Kothari: Notion Signups Tripled In China And South Korea In One Week
“I think signups in China are up three X. Signups in Korea is up two, three X in just in the last week.”
Notion waited until 50 employees to codify four core company values
“After about, I think when we were 50 people, we actually, like, did the exercise of codifying the values. And we have four values. We are owners of a mission, We are pace setters, we are truth seekers, and we are kind and direct.”
Kothari: Notion Did Not Launch Its Product For Four Years
“And for many years, I thought I lost all my money in Notion because it hadn't launched a product for, I think, four years. And then when it did in 2017, it took off.”
Kothari: Notion Pulled Fundraise Forward Five Months Due To COVID
“We were thinking about maybe raising a small round in the summer, and we just pulled it up about four or five months earlier, tried to get ahead of the macro.”
Kothari: A 30-Person Startup Was Using 75 Different Software Tools
“I recently talked to a 30 person startup that was already using 75 different pieces of software to do their work.”
Kothari: API Is The Most Requested Notion Feature Across Users
“Interestingly, the number one thing that individual users ask, the personal users ask, And the number one thing that large enterprise asks right now for notion is our API.”
Kothari: Notion Had 40 Employees And Zero Remote Experience Pre-Pandemic
“Notion as a company, we're only 40 people, so we very much focused on building this small team in our small office in San Francisco, and we had never really worked distributedly before.”
Kothari: Notion Reallocated Half Its Team To Build Remote Features
“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.”