Platform | Notion

1

/

3

Who we are

The Notion Platform team leverages decades of B2B and SaaS operating experience to help our companies solve problems, build capabilities and avoid mistakes.

We work directly with our companies and run a world class programme of events on the most common challenges our companies face at Start, Build, and Scale.

1

/

5

Who we are

The Notion Platform team leverages decades of B2B and SaaS operating experience to help our companies solve problems, build capabilities and avoid mistakes.

We work directly with our companies and run a world class programme of events on the most common challenges our companies face at Start, Build, and Scale.

2

/

5

What we offer

With more than 100 SaaS investments there is an incredible wealth of knowledge and expertise across the portfolio and we bring our founders and leaders together with us and our experts to create a community and a rich collective intelligence.

3

/

5

Notion's Founder Retreat

Our annual founder retreat is the highlight of the year, in which we bring our founders together to share their experiences, learn from each other and create friends for life.

4

/

5

How do our founders feel?

How our founders feel about working with us is the most important outcome of the work we do.

But don’t hear it from us, hear it directly from them…

What we offer

“Notion goes far beyond the engagement model of a typical Venture Capital firm”

Matt Welle

a group of people sitting around a table

The Notion Platform

This is the operational, high impact, empathetic support we are known for, readily available to all our investments. We remain at your side from first investment to exit, connecting you to the expertise you need to fulfil your potential.
New investments receive proactive one to one advice and support, led by Stephen Millard, Operating Partner and Chief Platform Officer, for the first 12-24 months post investment.
Extensive talent, compensation, and team design is led by Michelle Cheng and Claire Walker runs our community programme, including our world class expert events and, of course, our annual retreat.

The Platform Collective

The Platform Collective is a mechanism for portfolio founders to pool contributions so that we can invest in and address common challenges, offering the ability to guide where investments are made and giving ever greater access to world-class retained advisors and dedicated hires.
A growing programme of workshops and training to help build functional expertise and support professional development of leaders and individual contributors.
Securing resources and capabilities necessary to address our portfolio companies most urgent needs as they grow.

Beyond Platform

We go far beyond typical venture platform offerings, building capabilities and driving change across our portfolio.
Executive level engagements, accelerating growth and performance led by Andy Leaver.
Top-line revenue and margin expansion through strategy and monetisation engagements led by Andreas Panayiotou.

From $1m - $100m revenue:

Start, Build, Scale.

Read full report

Email me all resources

People often think of the start-up journey as a continuum. It isn’t. Things change dramatically along the way, affecting every aspect of the business: how you think, what you prioritise, what you build, how you grow, who you hire.

Achieving $100m revenue in less than ten years is hard, and the probability low. Start, Build, Scale encapsulates our thinking on growth as a step function, helping companies buck the odds, improve their probability of success and avoid the mistakes so many make.

Read full report

One stage, two phases:

$0-$1m - building the MVP and establishing a product customers will buy and use
$1-$3m - uncovering a GTM model and moving beyond founder-led sales.

Start

The START stage of the business is best described as a period of creative discovery designed to answer one question: “Are we solving a problem worth solving and by solving this problem can we build a massive company.”

The team is small. Capital is constrained. Burn is low. The people are excellent generalists. The mistakes are common and avoidable. Achieving product market fit is the goal.

One stage, two phases:

From $3-$10m the GTM model emerges, with specialists establishing repeatability across demand creation, sales conversions and revenue realisation.
From $10m to $30m the GTM playbook is developed and hardened, with increasing predictability across the customer lifecycle, backed up by robust processes, systems and data and the business becomes “go to market fit”.

Build

The Build stage is the killing zone for European SaaS companies. We may romanticise the start phase and laud the centaurs, but this is the hard yards. Finding Go to Market Fit is the objective.

We shift gears from chaos to order. From pure discovery to creativity and repeatability. The team is growing, as is organisational complexity. The people move from generalists to specialists.

Investment in growth is becoming repeatable and less and less constrained.

Between $3m and $10m in revenue, there is an interesting combination of creativity and process. Creativity in the GTM motion at this stage is critical, we are still experimenting with the strategies and tactics that work across the entire life cycle, learning what works and what doesn’t. At the same time we are increasingly codifying the processes that underpin repeatability.

As we move past $10m ARR, then every process needs to be defined, building repeatability at an atomic level and hiring people who know how to operate each stage of the life-cycle at that ‘atomic’ level.” Moving upwards from $10m revenue, closer to $20m and $30m, then organisational complexity also increases, necessitating further changes in personnel.

Common mistakes abound, but so too do common principles that underpin success.

Our five pillars of success in the BUILD stage:

Know your customer: a detailed understanding of the ICP, the TAM & Sequenced Segmentation. The best companies are ‘uncomfortably narrow in their approach, making strategic trade offs in customer choices to build momentum.
A defined the customer journey from end to end, from how a customer finds you, chooses you, gets to value and becomes an advocate - Winning By Design call this The Bowtie;
Companies become maniacal about their data and their metrics - lead and lag - at every stage of the customer life cycle;
They operate an organisation that, with standard inputs and standard processes, is achieving predictable outcomes. As they develop that understanding they are investing in enablement, empowering their people and incrementally unlocking investment to grow faster;
They plan bottom up, with rev ops led planning and forecasting and understand their unique levers of growth. They know what resources are required, what changes are needed and how they will achieve their goals. Too many companies let finance build the plan, based upon what the leadership (and the VCs!) want to happen (triple, triple, double, double, double!).

The five most common mistakes we see:

The wrong people in the wrong roles: assuming the people (and leaders) who made you successful in the START stage will make you successful at BUILD is by far the biggest mistake;
The playbook reflex - assuming a GTM model that works in another company will work in yours. And executives who think that way. Definitely a close second.
Assuming PMF in one segment implies PMF in another. Burn baby burn.
Diluted go to market, spread thin & unfocused. A recipe for disaster. Narrow your focus, align your resources, dominate your chosen markets.!
Investing for growth before they are ready; not investing when they are. Incremental investment for growth built on simple maxims (80% of reps at 80% of quota for example), combined with incremental improvements in speed and conversion combine to drive non-linear growth.

From $30m to $100m:

Complexity increases massively as the company masters “multi-market fit.”

Scale

The startup becomes a machine, balancing the desire for growth with the need for productivity.

Complexity is increasing massively. So too are the numbers. Companies are obsessed with the pipeline and their TAM to maintain growth, making big strategic decisions on organic and inorganic growth.

People again are critical. Now the specialists give way to leaders and managers of managers.

What our portfolio has to say...

“The Notion Platform team is helpful and authentically engaged. They put in real effort and want to help brainstorm ideas, without being prescriptive or overbearing.”

Seth Phillips, Bound

“The Notion Platform team is helpful and authentically engaged. They put in real effort and want to help brainstorm ideas, without being prescriptive or overbearing.”

Seth Phillips, Bound

“Working with Notion's platform team offers a chance to step back and talk about what’s working and what’s not- just a big resource that is there when you need it without it being OTT."

Rich Counsell, Stable

“Working with Notion's platform team offers a chance to step back and talk about what’s working and what’s not- just a big resource that is there when you need it without it being OTT."

Rich Counsell, Stable

"The Notion Retreat is such a meaningful and inspiring event. I'm still buzzing from all the learnings, it is a best-in-class experience."

Lauren Berkemeyer, YuLife

"The Notion Retreat is such a meaningful and inspiring event. I'm still buzzing from all the learnings, it is a best-in-class experience."

Lauren Berkemeyer, YuLife

"The Notion platform team spends time with founders and their team to spot the mistakes they are making and the opportunities they are missing. Then to encourage them to think differently."

Nick Cheetham, Currencycloud

"The Notion platform team spends time with founders and their team to spot the mistakes they are making and the opportunities they are missing. Then to encourage them to think differently."

Nick Cheetham, Currencycloud

Hands on. Fast start.
Lasting impact.

Who we are

Who we are

What we offer

Notion's Founder Retreat

How do our founders feel?