Sep 14, 2022 · 45m · saastr
Live from Saastr Annual: Lunch with Notion, Motive, & Incredible Health
Akshay Kothari · 11m spoken Shoaib Makani · 10m spoken Laura Weidman Powers · 10m spoken Iman Abuzaid · 9m spoken
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
Executive leaders from Notion, Incredible Health, and Motive join Base 10 Partners at SaaStr Annual to discuss how hypergrowth startups define, operationalize, and defend their corporate values while scaling.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. How this is scored →
Jason as informed peer 3.1 Guest teaching 2.6 Guest disagreement 0.1 Jason pushing back 0.1
speaking balance: gold is Jason, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 38:33 Shoaib grounds culture talk in raw commercial viability
Shoaib injects pragmatic realism into the discussion, arguing that no amount of ethical leadership or company culture matters if the product fails to solve a commercially viable problem that customers repeatedly pay for.
Hardest push from Jason ▶ 13:48 Laura presses Shoaib on multi-product timing criteriaLaura refuses to move on from Shoaib's essentialist narrative without extracting a clear operational test, directly challenging him to define how a founder knows when it is safe to expand product scope.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 11:15 Shoaib details the discipline of killing a $100M ARR productShoaib educates the audience and panel on extreme strategic focus by recounting Motive's decision to shut down a $100M run-rate marketplace business to refocus resources on high-margin core SaaS.
Jason holds their own ▶ 14:46 Laura crisply synthesizes product expansion criteriaLaura demonstrates operational expertise by synthesizing Shoaib's lengthy explanation into a crisp, three-part framework on product dominance, go-to-market scaling, and R&D leverage.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Jason as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Jason pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Introductions and Company Overviews from Panelists | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Moderator Laura Weidman Powers introduces the session and invites the panel of founders to give brief introductory overviews of Notion, Incredible Health, and Motive. The exchange is purely introductory and cooperative. | |
| Base 10's Purpose-Driven Model and Session Framing | 3 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Laura frames Base10's purpose-driven model and asks Iman Abuzaid to detail Incredible Health's core values. Iman explains their five values and shares how speed and debate helped turn around their underperforming Northeast market. | |
| Motive's 'Less But Better' Philosophy and Strategic Focus | 4 | 3 | 0 | 1 | Shoaib details Motive's 'less but better' philosophy, describing the difficult decision to shut down a $100M ARR freight marketplace to focus on core SaaS. Laura follows up with an active probe on how a founder knows when to add a second product. | |
| Notion's Principles: Asynchronous Communication and Being Kind and Direct | 4 | 3 | 0 | 0 | Akshay breaks down Notion's core principles, highlighting the intentional tension between pace setting and truth seeking, alongside 'kind and direct'. Laura connects this to advice on avoiding vagueness in management communication. | |
| The Founding Process of Values at Incredible Health and Notion | 3 | 3 | 0 | 0 | Iman and Akshay describe the origins of their company values, from seed investor requirements to Notion's iterative 18-month trial-and-error process. Akshay shares lessons on reducing value bloat and keeping tenets authentic. | |
| Motive's Rebrand Refresh and Universal Value Creation Guidelines | 3 | 3 | 0 | 0 | Shoaib discusses Motive's rebranding from Keep Truckin' and how they refreshed values to reward winning behaviors. Laura queries the panel on ideal value counts and when early-stage founders should draft them. | |
| Defending Values and Rewarding Inputs During Hypergrowth | 4 | 4 | 1 | 0 | The panel discusses defending values against executive overreach and rewarding input behaviors over mere outcomes. Shoaib grounds the discussion pragmatically, emphasizing that values mean little if product-market fit is lacking. | |
| Final Takeaways on Operationalizing and Rewarding Company Values | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Panelists deliver closing takeaways on operationalizing values through documentation, recognition, and hiring rubrics before Laura closes the session. |
Statements from this episode (14)
Abuzaid: Incredible Health reduces nurse hiring time from 80 days to 20
“Hospitals and health systems, they use our software to hire nurses in permanent roles in 20 days or less instead of it taking 80 days or longer.”
Powers: Base10 donates half of growth fund returns to HBCU scholarships
“As part of the Advancement Initiative, which is our growth stage fund, where we invest in top tech companies and then we, as a firm, donate half of our returns to create scholarships at historically black colleges and universities”
Abuzaid: Incredible Health's Northeast expansion initially struggled compared to South and West
“We launched in the northeastern part of this country in, last year, towards the end of last year, and, you know, we're building a two-sided marketplace, so there is a geographic component to our business, and honestly, like, the east the, our, the northeastern…”
Makani: Motive shut down a new marketplace business at a $100M run-rate
“We started a new marketplace business. And it was very high potential. It fit our founding narrative. It was the right story. And it actually scaled pretty rapidly to north of a hundred million dollar run rate. In something like 18 months. But we realized actu…”
Makani: Do not launch a second product until the first dominates
“I think the first product has to land and it has to be not just at a stage of product market fit, but like product market dominance and where it's a go to market play to take it to scale rather than continuous product iteration. There's always gonna be iterati…”
Kothari: Withholding direct feedback from underperforming employees is deeply unkind
“Directness is kindness. Like, if someone's not performing inside the company, if you're not direct with them, you are actually doing one of the most unkind things to them.”
Kothari: Asynchronous written collaboration is best for employee inclusion
“Writing docs and asynchronously commenting is one of the best ways you can actually include all your employees.”
Obvious Ventures demanded written core values before wiring a $2M seed check
“He said to me and my co-founder, Rome, you know, before I wire you, this, it was initial, like, two million dollars or whatever it was, right, is I need you to write down your mission, vision, and values, and send it over before we wire.”
Kothari: Company values must directly extend the founders' personal values
“I think the core company's values is the extension of founders' values. I think it has to be true, otherwise I feel like it wouldn't work, so it has to be compatible.”
Makani: Corporate culture is mimetic because actions override words
“I mean, corporate culture is super mimetic. You know, the what you do is what other people will follow. No matter what you say, it's gonna be about what you do.”
Makani: The name KeepTruckin became a constraint on the business
“The company's name used to be Keep Truckin'. It was perfect at the time we started the company. It became a constraint pretty quickly thereafter and we knew we needed to change the name.”
Notion's Kothari: Companies should maintain only three to five values
“I think ideally you can keep it to three to five values. I think anything more feels like hard to remember.”
Abuzaid: Stop new executives from changing or splintering your core values
“Certain situations happen that are sort of like an assault on your values. And you, it's up to you as a leader to protect your values. So for example, some big shot executive joins. They look at the list of values, and they're, you know, within, within a few m…”
Makani: Company culture means absolutely nothing without a winning product
“Are you building, if it's a technology company, are you building technology that solves a very real problem that people are willing to pay for over and over again? If you don't have that, nothing else matters. And so, I mean, you could have the most, most ethi…”