The Exchanges

Q Oh, very good. Interesting. Tell it. Why'd you choose there?

A Um, and, and it's really hard to do if you have a consumer first kind of long view strategy, right? So we was either obviously moved to the Valley or, or stay here. We had moved our company to Ann Arbor when we were acquired by Barracuda because we, we were really attracted to the engineering talent that's available in Michigan, especially from university of Michigan, but Michigan state, Michigan tech as well. And we're able to build up the largest tech employer in downtown Ann Arbor while we were at Barracuda and had a phenomenal engineering presence here. And so when we, we went to go start notion, you know, of course, moving to the values for the most automatic thing, especially if you want to do something in the consumer space. Um, but for us, uh, we really saw that we had a competitive advantage on building a talented team, um, and doing that, you know, efficiently and doing it with people that were going to be really excited about the mission and been really, you know, happy to be able to work in Michigan and do this kind of startup. And so for us, the litmus test was, Hey, can we get a top tier VC in on day one? Um, Uh, that's going to get us the kind of network and visibility and resources that we need to be able to do something that's ambitious from Michigan. If we can, great. We'll do it here because we think that will be better. Uh, if not, I guess we'll have to go t…

AI assessment note: “we were really attracted to the engineering talent that's available in Michigan”

Q And, and so walk me through, when did you launch the company?

A Uh, so we actually just launched about a month ago. Uh, that was our first public announcement ever. Um, we got to the point where, you know, we have really believed that what we've built out sort of the, the backend, uh, intelligence layer of what we've got is very useful at this point. Uh, we've developed some initial products. We have both an iOS app and an Android app that are, you know, email clients on the front end, um, that use a lot of the technology on the backend. We also have a skill with Alexa where you can actually talk to your email. Uh, Um, and so really, I really defined email as sort of our starting point, like, like, you know, this idea that digital communications, regardless of channel is sort of problematic, and we're going to need to make it a lot more efficient. Um, wanted to have a place where we can meet people where they're at today, and we're all in email all the time, and that's where we have sort of the most problems. Um, so we developed this front end app that, that takes advantage of less technology to, to do that better.

AI assessment note: “we actually just launched about a month ago. Uh, that was our first public announcement”

Q off in this space? I mean, you look at companies like conspire, right? Great people backing them in theory sounded great. And quite frankly, I talked to the CEO, the pitch sounded almost identical to what you just articulated, but You all have kind of different skill sets and different things, and you're doing, you know, you're going to execute it differently. Why hasn't anyone really dominated this space yet?

A Yeah. I mean, it's a great question. I mean, I think that there's a huge barrier to entry really to, to do this right. Right. Because you've, you've got to have a team that has some credibility that, you know, can bring some investors and folks that can have a long view horizon. You know, most early stage capital for small startup teams has a pretty short horizon on it. Um, you've got to build a lot of different teams out. You know, we've got an engineering team that has a cloud team, has an AI team, has an Android team, has an iOS team, has a desktop team, you know, it's just like, it's, it's a lot of people. Right. And And I think that's just, and by its very nature, hard. And then you've got to figure out a way to earn the right to exist in people's lives today. Right. And that's sort of where we focused. And that's why we, we, we really identified email as, Hey, this is the thing that we all do. It's mission critical for so many of us. We spend hours a day on it. It's a total pain in the butt. Um, and we all, we all suffer from these sort of same problems and it's insane that we haven't ever figured out a way to do it better. Um, and so, you know, I, I think that You know, you mentioned Conspire, and there's a number of companies that are sort of like trying to create another category. Name a few of those real quick. Yeah, I mean, I, Conspire is the biggest one that comes t…

AI assessment note: “there's a huge barrier to entry really to, to do this right.”

Q Um, you're talking about nutshell and copy or what?

A Yeah, BitLeap and then into building the business at Barracuda, which was very much a B to B kind of enterprise, uh, product in a nutshell, certainly, which is B to B. Um, and so, you know, I, I, I've got a lot of experience in sort of building the business on that end of things. Um, when we, we took a look at Notion, we really believed pretty strongly that, um, the, the opportunity for building this intelligence layer and sitting on top of communications and having a technology that can help people, you know, sort of Transformatively get more out of the communication they're having with everybody, uh, was going to be a very long horizon, and there's lots of revenue opportunities and monetization potential, and we've certainly got, you know, plenty of plans around that, um, but we...

AI assessment note: “Yeah, BitLeap and then into building the business at Barracuda”

Q of go where people are already spending a lot of time, which is email. And it sounds like you mentioned Android and iPhone. So on the other side of this, you're going to be competing with folks, I guess, like polymail, right? Why see back those kinds of guys? How do you, if someone's looking at, do I download notion or do I download polymail? Why would they choose notion?

A Yeah, well, I mean, I, I certainly don't look at it as neither or, I mean, I, I've talked to the folks at Polymail. I think they're great. They're a great team making an awesome product. I think, you know, the folks at Google that put out inbox have done some really interesting things. It's like our goal is not to make the best email app in the world. You know, I think we, we are in an email app platform because we need to meet people where they're at. We need to add value to, to exist and have, have the right to bring users on and learn from them and figure out how to build this thing that we sort of have this long view for. Um, but you know, I think we certainly have, um, Features that are just, you know, differentiated nobody else has, right? That, that offer a set of value that's different than here's my airline tickets or here's my shipping notifications, right? Uh, we're much more people centric. We're much more focused on the relationships and what's important to you based on the meaning of the message and what, you know, getting, making sure the right things stand on your radar, those sorts of things. Um, but you know, it's email. I mean, you can have as many emails, apps as you want, and I don't think it's a. Do people?

AI assessment note: “We're much more people centric. We're much more focused on the relationships”

Q iPhone screens all the time and their desktop. I think people choose one and kind of stick with it. I mean, look, prove me wrong. I could be totally wrong here. I'm going totally off gut. Um, but yeah, maybe look, maybe you're right. It's prove me wrong with numbers. How are you guys doing in terms of downloads? You just launched recently. How many folks have downloaded the apps?

A Yeah. I mean, it's just, it's just a close off on that point. I mean, one of the things that's been interesting to us is, you know, because of sort of this, this perspective that we've got and where we're headed with the company, I think there's a lot of people that download the app, play with it, use it for certain things and not necessarily other things. Um, and even some people kind of keep it around because they're interested to see where it goes. And maybe for some reason or another, they, they don't commit to changing over or whatever. Um, so we're seeing some really interesting behaviors on that front. Um, one of the things that we do is just like help you clean up your inbox really, really, really fast. And so I know for a fact, we have a lot of users that they use notion first thing in the morning and they use some other app throughout the day. Um, and to us, that's a win. That's not, you know, that's not a terrible thing. Uh, in terms of, you know, in terms of traction, you know, we're, We're not quite at the stage where like what our aim is to go get millions and millions of users as fast as possible. We're at the stage where we want to get enough signal from the users that we're bringing in that we're sort of validating the, the, you know, proof points that we've got and that we're building the right stuff and we're learning from them. And since launch, we have lear…

AI assessment note: “We're not quite at the stage where like what our aim is to go get millions”