How Notion Scaled To 1 Million Users

Notion presents itself as the 'all-in-one workspace' designed for anything and everything. It offers users the flexibility to organise information in various ways, whether it's creating to-do lists, spreadsheets, or wikis. Think of Notion as the Lego of collaborative workspace software – it provides the building blocks, and you get to decide how to construct your workspace.

Notion’s mission or their “why’ is to make toolmaking ubiquitous. They want everyone everywhere to feel empowered to customise the software they use every day to their exact needs.

Notion has now achieved a $10 billion valuation, a remarkable 32% revenue compound annual growth rate, and has over 30 million active users in just seven years since its initial product launch [Simple.ink]. These statistics speak volumes about their success. However, it's important to note that Notion faced significant challenges, nearly closing its doors in 2015.

Notion has a secret that helped them scale to this point and we’re going to break down their story and GTM in this article.

How Notion began?

The journey of Notion began in 2013 when its founder, Ivan Zhao, encountered a personal problem. Freshly graduated from university, Ivan found himself spending an excessive amount of time fulfilling uncompensated requests from creative individuals for one-page portfolio websites. Notion emerged as a solution to alleviate Ivan's frustration.

Driven by his passion for the project, Ivan made a bold decision – he quit his job and recruited Toby Schachman, a recent graduate with expertise in visual programming. With the support of a modest seed round, they began on their entrepreneurial journey.

Soon after the concept phase, Toby departed, and Ivan expanded the team by adding two more members.

The subsequent years were marked by a series of challenges. They realised that their initial concept didn't address genuine problems faced by programmers. Ivan candidly admitted:

As they diligently pivoted their product to align with real user needs, another significant obstacle emerged in 2015. Their product was affected by frequent crashes, they were running out of their seed funding, and revenue seemed like a distant prospect. Their solution? A move from costly San Francisco to the more budget-friendly Kyoto, Tokyo. Here, they extended their financial runway and started redeveloping the product from the ground up.

“Neither of us spoke Japanese and nobody there spoke English, so all we did was code in our underwear all day.” — Ivan Zhao, Co-founder of Notion

Then, their resilience began to pay off. They launched the first version of Notion in 2016 and the second version in 2018, which proved to be a turning point. With just their initial seed funding and a team of 18, they achieved a significant milestone: 1 million users.

What was Notion’s GTM strategy?

Now, let's delve into how Notion transitioned from launching their V2 product to achieving the impressive milestone of 1 million users. It began with Notion launching on Product Hunt and becoming the #1 product for the month of March 2018, below you can find their product launch. This spotlight generated significant attention, with venture capitalists persistently knocking on their door. However, Ivan continued declining to engage with investors and wanted to focus on the product.

Initially, Notion targeted a particular market segment of individual consumers (B2C) and small to medium-sized enterprises with fewer than 100 employees (B2B). What sets their strategy apart is the bottom-up, community-centric approach they adopted for customer acquisition.

While many B2B software companies traditionally pursue a top-down approach, targeting key decision-makers to secure customers, Notion opted for a different route. Their strategy involved building from the grassroots, starting with employees and individual consumers, which then led to acquiring organisations through network effects.

However, Notion's most significant secret was community, and it all began with one individual – Ben Huh. Ben stumbled upon Notion on Product Hunt and promoted the platform across various social media channels. This caught the attention of the core Notion team, leading to his recruitment as their head of community, a role he continues to hold.

Upon joining, Ben's initial focus was on identifying other Notion enthusiasts like himself and empowering them to amplify Notion's message. The first step in this direction was the launch of their ambassador programme, which remains a key part of their strategy to this day. This programme provides an unpaid opportunity for Notion to recruit its most loyal fans and enable them to spread the word about Notion, with the backing of the official team. They initially recruited 400 ambassadors which produced exciting results. Some ambassadors launched dedicated YouTube channels, others organised local events, and some established community groups. The key was that Notion allowed them to have full flexibility.

This grassroots community approach played a key role in Notion's early success, generating network effects through a flywheel. Ambassadors' advocacy led to consumers trying out the product, which then led to them becoming advocates themselves and onboarded their teams, creating a self-sustaining cycle.

Another crucial factor in their success was the simplicity they offered to users. Notion operated on a freemium SaaS model, allowing users to start for free. In June 2018, they introduced an affordable subscription priced at just $4 per month, a significantly more budget-friendly option compared to competitors.

As Notion grew an active community of users and creators, they turned to them as the primary source for product updates and launches. This user-centric approach led to innovations like Notion templates, enabling creators to monetise the templates they made in their spare time.

Where is Notion now? 

To this day, Notion maintains its commitment to nurturing its community, a strategy that has scaled them to a user base of over 30 million. Within Notion itself, they've created a dedicated page to showcase their community. Here, they highlight key Notion communities and extend invitations to various community events.

Notion's community-centric approach has had a profound impact, allowing them to keep advertising expenses at a minimum. Even when they do launch campaigns, the spotlight remains on their community members.

Following their initial go-to-market approach, Notion has taken steps toward a top-down strategy too. This includes the recruiting of an enterprise sales team focused on acquiring larger corporate clients. However, it's important to note that this shift remains relatively modest in scale, with Notion's core strategy still firmly grounded in bottom-up and community-driven initiatives.

Key learnings

This article has a lot of key takeaways because learning from past go-to-market strategies can lead to great learnings and inspirations for future scaling strategies for scale-ups/

Even Ivan himself said:

So here are some key learning to apply to your own company:

• Define your personal and company why 
  Clarify your personal and company "why." It acts as your guiding star, providing motivation during challenging times. Notion's story shows that a strong "why" can lead to bold decisions.
  
  If Ivan didn’t believe in his and the companies why, Notion may not be here today.
  
  If it’s strong enough you may move to Kyoto!
  

• Brand communities accelerate your value
  Cultivate organic communities around your brand. Notion's success with community-driven growth highlights the value of engaged brand communities.
  
  Then the key is to listen to what your community is telling you, empowering them.
  

• Build a good product and make it easy to try
  Notion would never have taken off in 2018 if it didn’t have a good product or made it hard for users to try the product. Notion's freemium model alongside other onboarding features lowered entry barriers and spurred growth.