Imagine if documents worked more like software.
Today, Notion is a multi-billion dollar productivity company with over 100M users. The team is building an all-in-one workspace where you can write, plan and collaborate with your team — with an added boost from AI.
Wind the clock back to 2013, however, and things looked a bit different. We were taken with Ivan’s “imagine if” from the very beginning, writing the biggest check in their 2013 $2M seed round. But like every startup, there were several bumps in the road.
Here’s what we think founders should study from their story:
This Forbes cover story chronicles Notion’s path, focusing on how they got an early start on building AI into the product.
Ivan’s pitch for Notion was unlike anything First Round partner Josh Kopelman had ever experienced. Instead of discussing potential competitors like Microsoft Word or Google Docs, they spent an hour diving into the open form factor of paper — and how software could be similar.
But two years after that seed round, Notion was running on fumes, struggling to build and position a horizontal tool. Ivan and Simon rebuilt the product four times, even laying off all their employees and moving to Japan to rewrite their tech stack. “Figuring out how to hide computing power in productivity software took us three or four years,” says Ivan.
We started in 2013, but it wasn’t until 2018 with Notion 2.0 ProductHunt launch that we saw signs of traction.
After joining as COO, now co-founder Akshay Kothari spent six months answering support tickets. “Ivan made me turn on my push notifications for Intercom to build intuition. My phone was buzzing every three seconds with new customer tickets coming in,” says Akshay.
The company’s servers crashed after “How I use Notion” videos went viral on TikTok. While Notion relied heavily on organic marketing and product-led growth, what seemed like effortless growth was in fact, quite effortful behind the scenes.
Notion was still only a 12-person team in 2019. Now under 700 employees, Ivan’s “How can you try to have the minimal number of building blocks?” philosophy still guides the product, the company, and their fundraising strategy. Here’s Akshay Kothari’s advice for founders: “There’s so much money being sloshed around right now, especially for AI startups. You can take the money (with minimum dilution), but then don’t feel the urgency to spend it all. Don’t chase the next round — chase customers instead.”
“An ode to the computing pioneers: software can augment human intellect. An ode to the craft: software can and should be beautiful.”
The team tested 30 different shades of warm white for their office walls. They custom-designed their own work jackets when they couldn't find merch they loved. Even today, Ivan personally selects all the office furniture. This attention to detail is baked into every aspect of how they build, from endlessly tweaking the typography of the marketing site, to coming up with v10 of the company values.
We dive deep into three distinct channels that have helped power Notion's meteoric rise: community, influencer marketing, and growth and analytics.
Notion's CFO Rama Katkar joins execs from Stripe, Vanta, Linear, and Linktree to share the best annual planning tips, from addressing AI to adjusting org charts so startups at any stage can build effective, realistic plans.
Since joining the company in 2019, Ben Lang had his hand in several high-impact projects at Notion that grew its tight-knit community of passionate Notion evangelists into millions of users today.
Kate Taylor spent 8 years at Dropbox leading their SMB revenue and scaled sales operation) before building out customer experience at Notion.
From Stripe to Notion, Cristina Cordova has worked on some of the biggest products in tech. She shares tactical tidbits on what she’s learned about about scaling companies and shaping your career.
Mengying Li, Growth Data Science Lead at Notion, shares her framework for testing whether you should invest in this key hire and how to find the right data science skillset for your startup.
