Akshay Kothari
Co-Founder and COO, Notion. On 2 shows, 3 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderexecutiveoperatorinvestor@akothari ↗LinkedIn ↗notion.com ↗
Akshay Kothari co-founded and helped scale Notion into a collaborative workspace platform, overseeing operations, product strategy, and key fundraising rounds. Previously, he co-founded the mobile news app Pulse and served as VP of Product and Head of LinkedIn India.
2shows
3appearances
40statements
8resolved
6supported
1contradicted
75%fully supported
12said about them ↓ Everything Akshay Kothari said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
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…”
The other half of the tape: Akshay Kothari's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 12 times in 5 episodes across the shows. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Olivia Nottebohm 5Harry Stebbings 4Phin Barnes 1Lucy Fonseca 1Dannie Herzberg 1
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
20VC 8
the Official SaaStr Podcast 4
2024 1 mention in 1 episode
2023 1 mention in 1 episode
2022 7 mentions in 2 episodes 4 per episode
- 20 Sales: Notion's CRO Olivia Nottebohm on How To Build Great Operations at Your Company, How To Use The Trust Equation in Hiring, How To Do Referencing Most Effectively and Whether To Fill Seats or Wait for the Perfect Hire?
- 20 Sales: How To Build Sales Teams with a Product-Led-Growth GTM, What is a Sales Hiring Scorecard and How To Construct Yours & How To Structure the Onboarding Process for all New Sales Hires with Dannie Herzberg, Partner @ Sequoia Capital
- every mention in 2022, scene by scene →
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Akshay's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20VCLEDGER | Co-Founder and COO, Notion | 2 | 36 | 75% 6/8 | full record on 20VC → |
| SAASTRLEDGER | Co-Founder and COO, Notion | 1 | 4 | — | full record on the Official SaaStr Podcast → |