For the best part of last year, we gave a lot of thought as to how our brand reflects our team and the VC we want to be, and subsequently worked through an evolution of the Notion brand. We were comfortable that our brand was strong but felt that, as the team and the portfolio have been through some quite significant changes since our previous rebrand in late 2017, it was important to refresh our brand to really reflect those changes. Before we began to delve too deeply into what we wanted this evolution to look like, we knew exactly what needed to be front and centre: our founders. 

We invest in, and work closely with, exceptional founders and their teams across the SaaS and Cloud ecosystem. We see this work as a real privilege and are constantly in awe of the challenges founders are taking on and the journeys they embark upon to achieve their ambition. The relationships we have with our founders have shaped the way we work and the way we invest - for example we are increasingly offering full life cycle investment and value add - and we wanted our brand to reflect this. Previously we always talked about “extraordinary journeys” and it seemed a logical step to extend that message and our purpose into “supporting exceptional founders on their extraordinary journeys.” It’s a small change I know, but an important one we believe. 

Whilst we’re always very conscious it’s the founders company and that they are in control of the company’s destiny, we’ve always sought to create the conditions for success from the day we invest, to the point of exit and it became increasingly apparent over the last couple of years that we needed our Platform team and value-add model to reflect that. As such we added several new roles (including our Operating Partner model, with the addition of Andy Leaver) and offered increasing support and activities, not just for founders, but to their C-Suite and leadership teams. Fostering a community and a space for collective learning and knowledge sharing has become pivotal to our identity, and it was important to us to encapsulate this within our brand evolution. You can find out more about what we do as a Platform, and how we do it, on our newly launched Platform page!

There were also still many things that rang true from our previous brand update, which is why we decided to evolve the brand, as opposed to rebranding altogether. For starters, we are continuing to invest in what we know and love: European SaaS and Cloud. We have, however, distilled this into for key areas: 

1. Cloud Computing
2. Modern Enterprise
3. Industry OS
4. Future Finance

You’ll be able to find out more about each of these topics here.

We’ve also always felt that how we do things is as important as what we do - that’s definitely not changed and, as such, we felt strongly about sticking to our four guiding principles:

1. Have fun, make money
2. Challenge everything
3. Play the long game
4. Don’t be a dick

These are the values that our team has lived and breathed, and that are being embraced by an ever-growing team. 

The evolution of the Notion brand has allowed us to express our values and investment proposition, alongside the changes we’ve seen within the team and industry, through refreshed visual assets and new messaging. We hope this provides an overview as to the brand we want to be whilst investing in and working with some of Europe's most exceptional founders, on their extraordinary journeys.