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. Based in San Francisco, Notion now maintains offices in Dublin, New York, Tokyo and Hyderabad, where it recently acquired startup Automate.io. In an interview, Kothari and Olivia Nottebohm, who joined Notion as chief revenue officer in June, said the funding would go towards Notion’s "platform" push to offer, and connect to, more applications, as well as staffing up its operations to meet its international and big-business demand. Not counting the new money poured in, the investment values Notion at $10 billion. Notion has raised $275 million in a new funding round led by Coatue Management and Sequoia, with participation from Base10 Partners. After years of raising relatively small amounts, CEO Ivan Zhao, Kothari and team are now looking to pick up the pace. Notion’s popularity, and the online culture forming around it, continues to stoke interest from investors. "But we also found ourselves in a very fortunate position." "It has been an interesting challenge," says Akshay Kothari, Notion’s chief operating officer. The startup spent the next six months overhauling its infrastructure to combat slow loading times and handle the next surge. Notion was caught by surprise.Īnd with business users at customers like Adobe, Headspace and Figma suddenly restless, Notion faced a big problem, too. Each video led to thousands of unexpected signups pouring in. But it wasn’t prepared for Gen Z which, it turns out, loves a minimalist note-taking tool and workspace – to tune of tens of millions of views, and hundreds of thousands of likes. The company reached a $2 billion valuation that April. Notion wasn’t new to growth – the app quintupled its user base of knowledge workers, note takers and personal organizers in 2020 as the pandemic pushed more work online.
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