Notion — An all-in-one workspace for notes, docs, wikis, projects, and team collaboration

The COVID-19 pandemic has fundamentally changed the way we work. The online work environment has highlighted the practicality of remote and collaborative work. Although we have many great collaborative software solutions for teamwork, sometimes, companies need a customized software solution for work. Building new software from scratch can be impractical for many small businesses or individuals. Here custom software solutions come to the rescue as they fulfill the specific demands of the team or organization by tweaking the software as per their needs.

Many software vendors are already ahead of the curve, offering flexible user interfaces, software integrations, and custom solutions that make their products easy to use for any team. One such company is Notion that offers an all-in-one workspace for notes, docs, wikis, projects, and collaboration. You can use it on your own, with your team, or as an entire company. We interviewed Akshay Kothari, the Chief Operating Officer at Notion, to understand more about the company and its products. Here are a few excerpts of the interview:

Q. Why was Notion born? Where does the company stand today?

Notion was born to make it possible for everyone on the planet to be able to modify software to meet their needs. We believe that if every business & person can tailor software to solve their problems, we'll all be better at solving the world's challenges. Customizable software is the future, poised to unleash unprecedented human potential, innovation, economic opportunity, and creativity. We're excited to be at the forefront.

Q. How does Notion bring a change in today's scenario?

A recent study from Okta declared that a company typically uses around 88 tools in the course of their daily work. We've seen how that leads to burnout, silos, duplicating work, and context switching. This is a big theme in our conversations with Gartner, who has published a number of reports on it. Here's one example: https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/hr-should-watch-out-for-3-challenges-driving-remote-work-fatigue. Notion combines many of these daily workflows into a space designed to be delightful, beautiful, and malleable. We're excited to see how this reduces context switching, over-spending on subscriptions, and frustrating silos of information.

Q. What are your innovations, and how did they excel?

In this new era of hybrid work, users are looking for simplicity and cohesion, better design, and better experiences. Notion's building blocks break down the barriers to software building and open it up to non-developers. Its simple, clear interface allows for users to build the tools they actually need the way they want, instead of having to conform to tools—without ever having to write a line of code.

Q. Brief us about your solutions and their benefits.

Notion is the all-in-one workspace that combines notes, docs, project management, and wikis — and makes them all customizable. Tens of thousands of teams and companies around the world use it to collaborate, stay informed, and get more done together. If every person and business can tailor software to their problems, the world will be better at solving its problems. Our mission as a company is to make that a ubiquitous reality.

Q. How do you empower every team?

Notion is a values-oriented organization. We value transparency and feedback – we want every employee to feel empowered to do their best work, and that means active collaboration, discussion, and feedback.

Q. Do you have any expansion plans?

Earlier this year, Notion announced a new EMEA HQ in Dublin, Ireland. With most of our user base outside of the US, it's important for us to maintain a global company. We have teams in San Francisco (our HQ), New York, and Tokyo. We also recently acquired Automate.io, a company focused on integrations based in Hyderabad, India. Hyderabad will become our fifth office and our first engineering hub outside of the US.

Q. Where do you envision your company in a couple of years?

There are over a billion knowledge workers around the globe. In a couple of years, we hope to see more people being able to build the tools they need for their work as well as their personal life. We're also excited to continue growing our active and passionate community of users and supporting them as they grow with Notion.

Meet the COO

Akshay Kothari is Chief Operating Officer at Notion, where he oversees the company's product and partnership efforts. At the start of his career, he Co-Founded Pulse News, which he led as CEO, redefining the way people access news. Pulse was acquired by LinkedIn in 2013, becoming the foundation of the company's content product line. At LinkedIn, he oversaw these initiatives as a product leader and eventually became VP Product and Head of LinkedIn India. He joined Notion in 2018 after investing in the company early on. He has his BS from Purdue and MS from Stanford, both in electrical engineering.

"Notion continues to be the easiest way to get information centralized somewhere and shout it out to someone else. For us, that's extremely important because half our team is remote," Vinay Hiremath, Co-founder and Head of Engineering, Loom.

"Notion's ease of use is one of its hallmarks. It helps you visually navigate content and remember where something is," Marie Szuts, Head of People Ops, Figma.