![]() ![]() So, I think the future of work focuses on connectedness, like we’ve seen over the past 18 months, but also more moldability - giving people the power to shape the tools they use to work for them. ![]() Often, they share these with the world, and we see other people take these templates and customize them further to fit their own needs. And as people spend more time on Notion, we see them create these amazing templates to make work easier for them. Take the example of customizing a specific CRM system - you need to hire a consultant or dedicate an engineer to that task - it’s not easy.Īt Notion, we’re focused on giving companies a central platform to work on. But the tools don’t necessarily exist to make this easy. Our belief is that the pendulum has to swing towards a core group of tools that people use to get work done.Īnother trend we’re seeing is that people want to shape the tools that they’re using to better suit their needs. There’s all this amazing, specialized software, but for people to do basic work, they might have to switch between ten different tools. I saw a study recently that found the average company uses 90 different software tools. One of the challenges, though, is that companies use so many different tools. It wasn’t a big deal to be communicating on Slack, taking calls on Zoom, or planning projects in Notion. But today, the software tools we have meant we could adapt. Last March, our whole team was in the office, and then the next day, we were suddenly all at home - I can’t imagine what that would look like even a decade ago. Companies like Slack, Zoom, Notion, and many others are the reason companies have been able to continue operating without major disruptions over the past eighteen months. You mentioned the vision of democratizing software building - how does that resonate with the idea of the future of work? What do you think the future of work looks like, and what role do you think software will play?Īkshay Kothari: Software is going to play such an important role. My background until then was all in product, but at Notion, I do everything but product, which is a lot of fun. In 2018, I joined full-time as the tenth employee of Notion. Growth was slow at first, but when they launched Notion Templates, the company took off. They had this amazing vision to democratize software building, which I really believed in. I got to know Ivan and Simon Last, Notion’s other founder, really well. It was actually one of the first investment checks that I wrote. Pulse was eventually acquired by LinkedIn, and I started to do some angel investing. And I was heartbroken – I really wanted to work with him! But we stayed in touch. We almost got him, but he decided to go to another company at the last minute. Ivan had just arrived in the Bay Area and was looking for his first job. I was the founder of a company called Pulse, which was in the news space. Jason Spinell: Let’s start with a quick introduction - can you tell us about yourself, your journey to becoming the COO of Notion, and a bit about the company?Īkshay Kothari: My Notion story actually starts with me trying to hire our CEO, Ivan Zhao, about ten years ago. ![]() This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity. ![]() I recently caught up with Akshay to learn more about his journey and explore what the future holds for Notion. The past eighteen months have been an interesting time for Notion, which has experienced rapid growth, quadrupling headcount, and raising a $50m round that values the company at $2 billion. Since then, the popularity of Notion has exploded. Five years later, he took the leap and joined full-time as Notion’s COO. See the first three in this series featuring Hopin CEO Johnny Boufarhat, Daily Co-founder Nina Kuruvilla, and MURAL Co-Founder & CEO Mariano Suarez-Battan.Īs a successful founder with an exit to LinkedIn under his belt, Akshay was one of the first investors in Notion in 2013. In a fourth article in a series of conversations with Slack Fund portfolio companies, which explore their growth stories and the roles they play in creating the future of work, Jason Spinell, head of Slack Fund, sits down with Akshay Kothari to hear about his unconventional journey to becoming COO of Notion, the fast-growing workspace platform. ![]()
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