How Notion is Taking on Google and Microsoft

Good morning, and Happy Halloween. Regarding my five-year-old's future strategy plans, she is fully focused on amassing a mountain of candy at this year's trick-or-treat. Silicon Valley trick-or-treat is no joke. Driveways are equipped with AR-enhanced dragons as big as Redwood trees, AI-generated spooky ambiance in driveways, and competitions for best haunted smart homes. Some kids are caught threatening: treat or I'll hack your crypto wallet… okay, enough. Let’s talk about Notion.

Notion is a fantastic tool. I can drop a quick note on the go, or I can build out a full-fledged, searchable database with, for example, behavioral interview questions that I can then also host as a public site like this one: 130+ Behavioral Interview Questions (personal plug).

I am a Notion fanboy. I use Notion daily to manage personal projects, including this newsletter. If I were to start a company, this would be my tool of choice. Especially now that Notion is growing into a full set of workplace apps comparable to Google and Microsoft.

Last week, Notion hosted its first “Make with Notion” event. You can find the recap here: https://makewithnotion.com/

During this event, Notion announced a set of features showing an exciting direction for the company.

Notion enters one of the most overcrowded markets they could find… Mail. How is this a sensible strategy? Does the world need another Mail client? Let’s examine why that might be a genius move for them.

6-minute-read

Before we dive into the new products, here is a quick recap of their initial growth strategy. When Notion launched, the world did not think it needed another note-taking app either. But they pulled it off using their “community-led growth strategy.”

Notion’s Community-led Growth Formula

Notion kicked off its community efforts with the best hire possible. They looked through Reddit, Twitter, and fan websites to find people enthusiastic about Notion in its most organic form. One of them, a die-hard Notion fan, even ran his own template website. Notion straight-up offered him a job as Head of Community.

Step two, which the Head of Community knew he would have loved, was an ambassador program—a volunteer program that only people who truly loved their product would take on.

Ambassadors get perks like early access, connections with Notion’s product team, and unique swag. Establishing a full network of localized communities with 200k+ members didn't cost Notion much.

As if that were not enough, Notion created the Champions program and the Campus Leaders program. These programs help spread the word, organize events, and offer helpful advice to other community members.

This strategy worked well for Notion.

For a deep dive, find the full interview with Camille on Lenny’s podcast:

One Stop Productivity

Today, we’ll look at how and why they position a set of new features in a crowded market.

If you are a Notion user, you are probably getting excited to test these new workflows and hope they will streamline your productivity.

From its beginnings as a note-taking app, Notion has become a core productivity platform. It is included in any “Best Productivity Tools” article.

If you have followed this blog for some time, you recognize a recurring theme: companies like to broaden their tech product portfolio once they are established in a field. Notion is a great example.

Notion’s Newest Features

Notion Mail (launch soon): Emails and tasks coexist. Most emails we get carry some kind of to-do. Combining tasks and emails is as old as… emails, I guess. Gmail has it, and Outlook has it. I am sure Notion power users will give it a try, and I am looking forward to how deeply they are integrating mail into their platform.

Notion has not committed to a launch date yet. Early version screenshots look a bit like a Gmail client. I'm not surprised; this is nothing to reinvent. I think showing how the integration improves workflows will be key.

Notion Forms: Wouldn’t it be nice to get survey form data directly into an organized document that is nicely sorted and categorized and has key findings highlighted for you? This is the luxury I had back when I worked at Yahoo. But for that, we had a whole UX research team. With Forms, this flow can be replicated with AI at minimal cost—your feedback loop on AI steroids. I should try one for the newsletter.

Notion Calendar: Launched earlier this year. This standalone calendar app integrates with Notion notebooks but can also be used on its own. It takes in data from other calendars, for example, combining work and personal calendars to give you a complete view of your time. This is nothing new, but connecting it with Notion lets users link to relevant data and documents. You can also create a searchable record that has meeting notes.

Notion’s Strategy - Why These Features Make Sense

Does the world need another Calendar or Mail app? If you are not already a die-hard Notion user, this must be the first question that comes to mind.

However, since launch earlier this year, the Notion Calendar App has gathered 1.1k ratings at 4.8 stars. It’s well received and seems to have replaced Google Calendar for many reviewers.

For users who have their whole lives organized in Notion, it is exactly the extension they need. They are already locked into the ecosystem, so expanding it for them is only natural.

Notion’s team is doing its homework. They observe and learn from users, and when they see workflows disrupted (for example, by needing to switch between notes, calendar, and email), they come to fix them.

Other raving reviews from fans love the deep connection with Notion databases. These let them link calendar events directly to their project management within Notion and all needed documentation. The experience is seamless and users don’t have to leave the app.

When does entering a crowded market like Mail and Calendar apps make sense?

Google and Microsoft dominate the enterprise workplace productivity apps market. According to Gartner (Sales 2022), the two tech giants capture 99% of the $52 billion market.

Notion seems to be able to be successful with this bold move to take Google and Microsoft head-on. What’s the trick?

Entering a crowded market makes sense in Notion’s case. Because they have a few benefits that can make them successful:

1. Platform Gravity: Their platform is established and has a loyal user base. The gravity pulls users into new, adjacent tools. Active users are familiar with Notion’s UI and features. This develops trust in the brand which makes them explore other tools they come out with.

2. Differentiation: What? Where is differentiation by launching yet another mail or calendar app? And it’s a great question to ask! For Notion it is in the ecosystem. This platform offers a unique integration into the Notion ecosystem that no other mail or calendar provider can have. So Notion can replicate what Gmail or Calendar are doing and then add a deep integration with Notion as a clear differentiator. It becomes the go-to calendar app for active Notion users.

3. Product Stickiness: User engagement is lost every time a user leaves the platform to complete a task elsewhere. By expanding into these common workflows, Notion grows engagement and likely reduces user churn. Imagine if Google came out with a replica of Notion. It would create churn, and users might migrate away from Notion.

4. New business: Offering a full platform of productivity tools might be interesting for enterprise customers to pick up. Enterprises are looking for full product suites. They don’t want to purchase two or three different tools for business essentials. I am sure Notion is seeing many customers migrate into Google Workspaces because tools are being consolidated as the startup grows and seeks optimizations. This is where Notion would currently lose out.

So, a launch right into the middle of a crowded market makes sense if you have a product users trust. You can offer adjacent services and maybe open up new markets with it. A good brand helps, but a clear differentiator won’t hurt either.

The Ultimate Power-Up: Marketplace and Automation

Gumroad has been an external marketplace where Notion template creators could sell their work.

The need for a Marketplace was confirmed externally. Users found ways to sell and buy templates on Gumroad. Bringing it in-house is a move to control the platform, control payments, feature creators, and own the experience around selling, buying, and refunding products.

They can own the user experience for their buyers and sellers and analyze user data, which helps Notion improve the marketplace. It will all be an integrated workflow.

Marketplace is a classic step in expanding your platform ecosystem, as we have seen from Apple’s leading example, the App Store.

Notion is also expanding its offering around Automations. While the initial demo suggestions didn’t blow me away, I am sure the active community will come up with very cool automation flows that raise the bar for productivity tools. I’ll keep my eye on the marketplace for these.

Future Moves: What could be next?

This Forbes cover about Notion cofounder and CEO Ivan Zhao outlines his vision:

Adding Mail and Calendar could better position Notion in this market and help it gain real market share. The differentiator is a very customizable experience.

Zhao sees AI as another big opportunity. In 2022, Notion was one of the first apps to get early access to OpenAI’s GPT model. Further integrating AI features into workflows can be another massive growth booster.

AI levels the playing field for Notion.

Because of AI, Notion is not only competing with “old tools” like mail and calendar. There are new territories to explore. Enterprise AI is one of them, and that market is estimated to hit $270+ billion over the next decade. (Source: Precedence Research)

Conclusion - What we take away from their move

A Good Strategy to Enter an Overcrowded Market

In his bestseller “Good Strategy, Bad Strategy,” Richard Rumelt argues that a great strategy uses leverage and capitalizes on favorable conditions.

At first glance, entering an overcrowded market like calendar and mail doesn’t seem smart. However, we learned that Notion indeed has favorable conditions for entering this market. Notion brings unique value through integration with its ecosystem. It already has the trust and an engaged and loyal fanbase. Their users will be happy to stay in the ecosystem. The direct integration could make this a sticky product for existing users.

Then, AI can be used to boost new product experiences. We are currently seeing little widget features coming out but not a fully integrated AI enterprise software suite. It’s a new battleground for all competitors; any company can position itself in the race.

Make the Platform Even More Customizable

The general concept of Notion has always been to enable the user to customize it to their needs. All existing functionality already allows this. Adding automation and AI adds another layer to customization. More specialized solutions can be built, enabling completely new use cases—no coding is needed. Some will replace other purpose-built apps, and I am sure the community will develop more magic to make the Notion ecosystem the place to be. Notion offers unlimited potential but also a marketplace to share and get inspired on what would work best for users.

More Enterprise Focussed

This seems to be Notion's desired path. It will be interesting to see if Notion can establish itself in the enterprise space. This is a slow process and will need many other advancements under the hood that are not as fun. From security and compliance to user support and training and specific enterprise-level integrations. Notion has a real chance to enter this race as a highly customizable, versatile productivity tool that gets stronger with the help of its engaged community.

I hope you liked this analysis. Please let me know your thoughts in a reply.

Have a great rest of the week,