![]() In the future, Notion hopes to be a hub empowered to push new content and updates out to such apps from within its own software using APIs. Notion’s acquisition of Automate came as the company has recognized that in larger organizations, different teams were connecting Notion to tools specific to their work, such as a marketer connecting Marketo, or a support staffer integrating with Zendesk. “Notion is becoming a product where people are creating amazing things and building businesses on top of that.”īut Notion’s business prospects will hinge as much upon an age-old enterprise software issue: its ability to scale within large organizations without becoming unwieldy or more productivity drain than boon. “There’s this real love and passion for the product that comes from people feeling like they can create things,” he says. ![]() (It also rubs shoulders with a number of other businesses like Airtable, a database-inspired productivity tool also backed by Coatue.) To Kothari, who says he counts the leaders of many of those peers as friends, the biggest difference today is Notion’s community. While its valuation and backers stand out even in a moment of prolific funding and high valuations for buzzy software startups, Notion still competes in a crowded field that includes tech giants and other startups like newly-minted unicorn Coda and challenger Roam Research. The startup was impressed by a commitment by Base10, which is Black-led, to donate half of the carried interest from its most recent fund to support scholarships at historically black colleges. Notion met Base10, the other new institutional investor in the round, through general counsel Hasani Caraway. Vernal also overlapped with Marooney for a number of years at Facebook, where he was a product and engineering leader, and she led global communications. Sequoia held a small piece of Notion through its Scout program, but partner Mike Vernal also knew Notion’s team personally from his days as an angel investor. “We saw that across the board with hiring and identifying important actions, then executing,” she says. Coatue wrote a small check in Notion’s previous funding round led by Index Ventures in subsequent months, its team ingratiated itself with Notion through coaching and introductions like Nottebohm, a former Google executive and Dropbox COO whom the firm connected to Kothari initially as an expert contact.Īccording to Coatue general partner Caryn Marooney, her firm was impressed that Notion not only had what Coatue’s investors believe is a beautiful product, but executed on what its leaders said they would do. Notion still has most of the $50 million it raised last year, says Kothari the company may look to make more acquisitions as well.Īkshay Kothari (right, from 2016), says he's channeling a favorite quote from his former LinkedIn boss Jeff Weiner (left) to move on from Notion's new $10 billion valuation: "Next play." © 2016 Bloomberg Finance LPįor the funding round, Notion turned to Coatue, the hedge fund with a growing startup investment practice that has recently emerged as one of venture capital’s most prolific players, and Sequoia, one of Silicon Valley’s more storied traditional firms. Instead, the funds will help it add more local account support and salespeople, as well as staff to help expand its products to work better in large-sized businesses. While Notion aids a growing number of independent consultants building their business on helping users navigate its tools, the company doesn’t plan to add professional services any time soon. Supporting that is a team of just about 200 people, up from 40 or so last spring. – and 70% of sales – its Korean language Facebook group counts more than 30,000 members, versus 50,000-plus for its Arabic-focused group. ![]() And with 80% of its users based outside the U.S. Its subreddit community on social platform Reddit has 150,000 subscribers, nearly ten times the number of Slack’s, and six times the comparable group for Zoom. The company boasts more than 20 million users today, up from one million in 2019, and four million last April. Notion did not share revenue numbers, but points to user growth that might be the envy of some consumer businesses.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |