00:00 I'm Akshay kothari I'm the co-founder
00:02 and CEO of notion so notion is a
00:04 productivity software company and what
00:06 we're trying to do is essentially
00:07 provide you one simple medium where you
00:09 can essentially do all your work
00:11 everything from note taking to having a
00:13 knowledge base for your company managing
00:15 your projects all in a single medium
00:17 we've done this by giving people
00:18 building blocks or what these apps are
00:21 built from before this I was at LinkedIn
00:23 for many years when they acquired my
00:25 previous startup pulse I'm excited to
00:27 chat with you today
00:33 I was really good at math and physics
00:37 and I studied electrical engineering
00:39 when I came to the US and I actually did
00:40 a lot of engineering internships it
00:43 turns out that I didn't enjoy it that
00:44 much I found the engineering work to be
00:47 a bit too sort of granular I haven't
00:49 really coded in a long time I'm much
00:51 more interested in product and business
00:54 in the intersection of that I wanted to
00:55 sort of take a step back and think about
00:57 maybe more larger higher level sort of
01:00 product business things that I could be
01:01 working on in between my bachelor's
01:04 degree in my Master's Degree I spent a
01:06 year in Venture Capital that's actually
01:07 for me was very important year because I
01:10 got to meet a lot of entrepreneurs after
01:12 hearing the pitches for about a year I
01:14 realized that I wanted to be on the
01:15 other side and not hearing the pitches
01:17 investor but actually wanting to start
01:19 something of my own that took me to
01:21 Stanford so I went to Stanford for two
01:23 years every quarter I tried to start a
01:25 company many of them failed but in my
01:27 last quarter I started pulse which was a
01:30 essentially like a News application
01:32 built for the iPad back in 2010 we built
01:35 this as a class project at Stanford we
01:37 built this pretty fast you know we had
01:38 to and the whole class was 11 weeks so
01:40 we built this sort of hacked up version
01:42 of pulse in about six weeks and we sort
01:45 of put it out in the App Store not sure
01:47 how it would do in a couple of weeks it
01:48 sort of went up to the top of the App
01:50 Store a few weeks later Steve Jobs
01:52 talked about it and the WWDC in 2010.
01:55 and again let me just show you some of
01:57 the you know the latest apps that have
01:58 been out pulse which is a wonderful RSS
02:01 reader if you haven't seen it and
02:02 overnight it went from like a class
02:04 project to being a company I think the
02:06 big learnings one is that when you're
02:08 building something I think you sort of
02:09 my natural inclination was to like not
02:12 release publicly I wanted to make things
02:14 better I think if I had done that I
02:15 think I probably would have never
02:16 released I think the professor in the
02:18 class I remember Michael Deering pushed
02:20 me to like release even the beta version
02:22 of the product we had and by putting it
02:23 out there we got so much feedback we
02:25 improved it we got in the market we
02:27 became a company so I think sort of
02:28 biased towards action of actually
02:30 shipping something quickly it was worked
02:32 out really well for us I think the
02:33 second thing that I learned was that
02:35 many times like we are much more
02:36 interested in becoming an entrepreneur
02:38 or starting a company rather than
02:40 actually solving a problem and if I
02:41 think about pulse versus the previous
02:43 things I had done pulse was actually
02:45 solving a real problem that existed
02:46 which was that it was impossible to read
02:49 news on your phone back in 2010. I think
02:51 if you build something that people want
02:53 the people are struggling with I think
02:55 they will come and actually use the
02:56 product and then probably the last thing
02:58 I would say that I think product is only
03:00 half of the puzzle I think you have to
03:01 think about distribution and how you
03:03 take the product to Market you know
03:05 that's something that we use that I
03:06 think a lot about notion like we could
03:08 be building the best possible product in
03:10 this office but if we don't figure out a
03:12 way to distribute our product like you
03:14 know people will never know what we've
03:17 in college I study cognitive science
03:20 human brain works and a little bit
03:22 Computing a little bit philosophy but I
03:25 really got into fine art as well
03:27 photography at the end of my school
03:29 years most my friends are Harvest I'm
03:32 the only person who know how to code in
03:33 my friend Circle so I start building web
03:35 pages for everyone after making those
03:37 three four or four or five websites
03:39 those people are creative they can build
03:41 their own websites if they know how to
03:43 do that Computing as a medium they don't
03:45 know how to speak that media with
03:47 Spotify as a tool everybody can play
03:50 music at that stage it's still very much
03:52 thinking about how can I help other
03:54 people to create your websites Ivan was
03:57 based in Canada he decided to come to
03:59 the Bay Area in San Francisco in 2011.
04:02 he put out a simple Post in Hacker News
04:04 which basically said like hey I'm a
04:06 designer I'm looking for a job I want to
04:08 work in San Francisco and I essentially
04:10 wanted to hire him as a designer and we
04:12 actually gave him an offer to join pulse
04:14 back in 2011 but he ended up joining
04:16 another company but we kept in touch and
04:18 after I had sold pulse to LinkedIn in
04:20 2013. he was about to start an ocean
04:22 notion ended up being my first
04:24 investment I had no intentions to
04:26 joining full-time I think that happened
04:28 five years later I think even before he
04:29 started notion I think he was thinking
04:31 about this problem for many years he
04:33 sort of deeply believes that everyone
04:36 can be a Creator and that Computing
04:38 devices are built for creation not just
04:40 consumption to me that felt like a
04:42 really compelling Mission because if you
04:45 can actually make it happen then you can
04:47 unleash a lot of creativity in the world
04:49 in many ways when you're investing in
04:50 early stage I think you're sort of like
04:52 betting on the person much more than the
04:54 idea because the idea can actually
04:56 change for that specific thing it was
04:58 very easy to bet on Ivan because you
05:00 could see the passion and sort of deep
05:01 thinking he had done before even before
05:05 at your environment those are the
05:08 documents you have in notion if we try
05:10 to reorder stuff you just drag it where
05:12 you think it should be the very first
05:15 version of notion is a web page builder
05:16 that's the Prototype and from there
05:18 evolve into a web app builder that's
05:22 pretty much the first few years of
05:23 notion it takes me several years to
05:26 realize that people don't want to build
05:28 apps very few people want to do that
05:30 it's kind of collaborative building apps
05:32 and it's kind of like a document editing
05:33 it's kind of like xcode for the web it's
05:36 very confusing on top of that we're
05:37 building on top of some technical
05:39 Foundation that wasn't stable so it was
05:41 very hard to tell whether it's our own
05:43 bug or is the bug come from the platform
05:45 we're using so fundamentally we have to
05:48 rewrite the whole software we're gonna
05:50 run out of time if we don't reset the
05:52 company I think the most important one
05:53 is about yourself it's about are you
05:56 building something for yourself or are
05:58 you building something that the world
06:00 wants the first personal notion very
06:02 much what you think the world was what
06:05 you want solution's first approach was
06:07 essentially to create this platform
06:09 where you can build software so it gave
06:11 you all the building blocks and it could
06:13 basically said okay now you can take
06:14 these balloon blocks and build whatever
06:15 software you can dream about the
06:17 challenge is that people don't wake up
06:19 wanting to build software people just
06:20 wake up to do their job
06:24 at that time team is about four or five
06:25 people me and Simon my co-founders would
06:28 probably most likely going to run out of
06:30 money unfortunately lay off everybody
06:31 and go to somewhere small and
06:34 interesting and quiet and we can just
06:36 focus on coding look at Japan because
06:38 neither of us has been to Japan and we
06:40 always want to go to and the reason for
06:43 Kyoto is if you look at an Airbnb Tokyo
06:46 and those Osaka or other major city the
06:48 rooms are fairly small the apartments
06:50 are fairly small but for Kyoto probably
06:52 because during World War II it wasn't
06:54 called bomb and a lot of older houses
06:56 are still there they're quite a bit
06:58 bigger and the pace of the life in the
07:00 city is slower as well so good for folks
07:03 on working on things and it's a much
07:04 cheaper city than San Francisco so we
07:06 build the notion that everybody's
07:08 working on today is rebuilt from that
07:11 stage so in 2018 uh summer Ivan and I
07:15 got together for uh breakfast just to
07:17 catch up I was at LinkedIn then I was
07:19 itching to get back into the garage and
07:21 build again and I thought I would
07:23 probably leave LinkedIn and start my own
07:25 company but as you were having breakfast
07:26 heat I haven't talked a lot about the
07:28 2.0 release which introduced the
07:30 database The Tipping Point for us was
07:32 when we moved away from asking you to
07:34 build software to providing you simple
07:37 templates that allow you to do your job
07:38 we came in and said hey here's a
07:40 knowledge base so you can collaborate
07:42 with all your friends now underneath
07:43 that product all the capabilities still
07:45 exist like you can still modify it you
07:47 can still build your own software but my
07:50 marketing to you is less about that and
07:52 more about specific things that you need
07:55 to do your job and how notion fills that
07:57 Gap and so as we were talking Ivan was
07:59 at that time looking for a CEO who could
08:01 really help scale the business the
08:03 company was about eight people then and
08:05 he offered me that role which was a
08:07 really interesting role I think
08:08 everything that I had done up until that
08:10 point was more on the product side and
08:12 this role was basically a role that was
08:15 try to do everything inside the company
08:16 except I think his thinking was that if
08:19 he could get a product counterpart to
08:21 really help build out Guru market and
08:23 the foundational teams here you know I
08:25 think it would allow him to stay focused
08:26 on product and for me this felt like a
08:28 really interesting opportunity where I
08:30 joined well before I think most people
08:32 knew about notion and I got to take
08:34 something that had just hit product
08:35 Market fit and take it to the masses
08:37 after a lot of thinking I decided to
08:39 join the fall of 2018. and yeah it's
08:41 been amazing to watch I think we were
08:42 eight people then and we're close to 500
08:44 people now just in the four years
08:46 business has grown over 100 fold in that
08:49 time frame as the first motion
08:51 consultants in Korea I believe the key
08:54 to notion's Global success is notion New
08:56 York Community worldwide I discovered
08:59 notion on proton during the release of
09:01 notion version 2. after using the
09:03 product I fell in love with notion
09:06 database function I then took two social
09:09 media posts to share my knowledge and
09:12 know-how and templates guide and
09:14 contribute to growth of the notion
09:17 community in Korea today the community
09:19 has 43k members it's amazing to see Sim
09:24 Community popping up all over the world
09:27 again it's kind of like our combined
09:30 with technology it's very intuition
09:32 driven so a lot of things it just feels
09:34 right and other things we try to keep
09:37 things very we call keep extremely
09:40 simple the simplest we use the word dumb
09:43 like it's so dumb that you need to pay
09:45 too much attention to start picking up
09:46 and start using because it feels really
09:48 natural right it should just feels like
09:50 your extensioning for your body like you
09:52 know how to use your hands you know how
09:54 to use very simple tools like a pen or a
09:58 cup because they're evolved so long with
10:00 you and fundamental is about solving
10:02 people's problems if we do so then
10:04 people should love us they will love us
10:06 and and there's a lot with a lot more
10:09 room to grow on you can do so many
10:11 different things with notion but it's
10:12 built by you know just over 100
10:13 engineers and I think the reason that is
10:16 possible is because architecturally we
10:18 have built the sort of the notion
10:20 product in a way that is very modular
10:22 and and we sort of want to expose these
10:25 building blocks to other people for
10:27 example we are not building a CRM or we
10:30 are not building a specific project
10:32 management software but we're giving you
10:34 all the building blocks so that you can
10:35 build it and so similar to Lego I think
10:37 the engineers focus on building the
10:39 building blocks and then we have the
10:41 marketing team and the community that
10:43 takes the building blocks and creates
10:44 templates that market specific use cases
10:47 and that makes it a very efficient
10:49 engine right Engineers don't have to
10:50 think about building a very specific use
10:52 case they focus on just building
10:53 capability and then marketing and other
10:55 stakeholders build a packaging that we
10:58 can go out and sell I think that's
10:59 probably one of the reasons why a notion
11:01 has been able to stay so lean as we've
11:03 you know grown to scale so far
11:06 today we're introducing notion AI which
11:09 brings the power of artificial
11:11 intelligence directly into your notion
11:15 let's say we're writing a blog post to
11:17 introduce notion AI it's as simple as
11:19 asking AI assist for help and clicking
11:24 next just sit back and watch as
11:26 artificial intelligence completes your
11:31 AI allows people to essentially just
11:34 tell what you're trying to do and it
11:36 sort of automatically generates a lot of
11:38 content or does a lot of things that you
11:39 wanted to if you have a long dock you
11:41 can ask it to summarize things if you
11:43 are starting from scratch it's like a
11:45 blank page you want some help you can
11:47 ask it to write a few things so that you
11:49 can get started with it I think EI
11:51 itself is changing every week I'm
11:53 excited to see how it evolves it's been
11:55 quite a fun Journey but at the same time
11:57 it still feels like pretty early like I
11:59 think there's still a lot of work to be
12:00 done and we still feel like our best
12:02 days are ahead of us so I'm excited to
12:04 see what the next couple years you know
12:09 we have four values at notion we are
12:12 mission driven owners of our mission so
12:14 essentially our mission is to sort of
12:16 enable ubiquitous software tool making
12:18 and we very much are owners of that but
12:20 the second value is that we are Pace
12:22 Setters obviously a startup so we need
12:24 to move fast I think that's one way we
12:25 can win in the market the third value is
12:28 we are truth Seekers which is that we
12:30 spend a lot of time rigorously thinking
12:32 about a specific decision before we
12:34 actually move forward and the fourth one
12:36 is we are kind and direct we want to be
12:39 kind to our co-workers but at the same
12:41 time we want to be able to be direct and
12:43 be honest with each other so that we're
12:45 pushing each other to do our best work I
12:47 think these four values are very much
12:49 authentically us it's not aspirationally
12:52 us but it's like who we are and we like
12:54 that the second and third value which is
12:55 Pace setting and Truth seeking fight
12:57 with each other because in many cases
12:58 some projects you want to move fast in
13:00 some cases you want to be able to take
13:01 time and really rigorously think so we
13:04 like that they fight with each other so
13:05 that we find like okay which projects
13:06 can we move fast to it which projects
13:08 should we spend more time I'm thinking
13:09 about the fourth value of being kind and
13:11 direct is obviously nice because we're
13:12 not just trying to be nice with each
13:13 other we're trying to really achieve our
13:16 mission and that requires us to be
13:18 direct with each other this is these
13:19 values have really helped us hire the
13:21 right people these values have really
13:23 helped us make being a good decision
13:24 sort of rubric for us like when we're
13:26 making important decisions we think
13:27 about like does this represent the
13:30 values we have and it's memorable I can
13:32 you know say these four values in my
13:33 sleep now which I think is nice because
13:35 I I don't have to think about what the
13:37 values are there was a long-term sort of
13:39 mission of the company is to create
13:41 ubiquitous software tool making which is
13:43 this simple idea that there's a billion
13:45 knowledge workers out there and our hope
13:47 is that all of them feel the power to
13:50 modify or create their own software you
13:53 know in doing that we hope that notion
13:55 becomes the third generation of
13:56 productivity software after Microsoft
13:58 Office and Google Suite way much more
14:01 powerful in that people will be able to
14:02 not just take notes and manage projects
14:05 but we'll be able to create things that
14:07 sort of work the way their brain works
14:09 very excited about that it'll probably
14:10 take us more than a decade to get there
14:12 but we're excited to work on it
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