Akshay Kothari's Journey to Scale Notion to $10B+

Just wanting to be an entrepreneur or wanting to be CEO is like such a dumb reason to start a company.

Oh my God. Yeah.

The time we did Pulse, I was like, I really don't care what happens to this company. What I care about is I am using this product every day to read news and other people are doing it. And that's all I really sort of cared about.

You know, Pulse eventually ends up getting acquired by LinkedIn. What was kind of going through your head?

3 years after building original Pulse, the original pain, which was like, how do you read news on your phone? All that stuff like actually was not that useful. What was useful is knowing who the reader is and who they're connected to. And interestingly, like LinkedIn was that. Notion was actually my first investment. Ivan's view was like, hey, why don't we just give people these building blocks and then people can build like their own customized software the way that their brain works? I think a lot of people still think of Notion as a note-taking tool, which is like sometimes frustrating because it's like, oh my God, but we're so much more. Like our dream is not to build the best note-taking tool, but we felt that was the right place to start.

Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Minus One podcast, where we welcome some of the most interesting people in the world and we ask them about the times in their life where they've had to make a decision about what they were going to work on, something that was fundamental to their long-term arc. Tell us about, you know, the part of their lives that we call the Minus One. So today I am incredibly excited to welcome a dear, dear friend and also someone who I deeply respect, Akshay Kothari. Akshay is obviously, you know, a fantastic kind of like builder at Notion who's had kind of an incredible career in Silicon Valley. We'll get into it over the course of the conversation, but welcome Akshay to the podcast.

Thank you, Aditya. Glad to be here.

Akshay, why don't we start with this? You know, you You've had such an interesting history in Silicon Valley, like obviously kind of, you know, everything from Pulse, uh, to LinkedIn to Notion. But maybe one thing I'll ask you is that in— when you were deciding to work on Pulse, how did you kind of like figure out, like, you know, how did you navigate the early days of what was a worthwhile, what was a big enough idea to kind of work on? Like, what were the -1 days for that startup?

Pulse was built in a Stanford class. And, you know, I went to Stanford to do my master's there. And pretty much every quarter at Stanford, I tried to start a new company. I think that was like my goal. My goal was to not get a degree, but to like live the American dream or the Silicon Valley dream of starting a company. And every quarter, like there was 5 quarters before Pulse, every quarter I tried something and a couple of them actually even got like some funding, but sort of fizzled out. And so in my last, literally my last quarter, Pulse was like my final shot at being an entrepreneur and not joining a corporate job. I say that because in some ways I feel like it was such a— the class I took was called Launchpad. It was the first year it was offered at the design school. And each quarter is 11 weeks, right? And one of the things the professors made us sign was that you essentially would fail the class if you don't publicly launch your product. And so the constraints was a little bit like, okay, what can we actually build and get it out as at least like the version 0.1? And sometimes I reflect back as like, if I didn't have that constraint, I sometimes wonder if I may have overthought something or may have not gotten to where I am today. But anyways, that was the concept. And then Ankit, who's my co-founder, you know, He was sort of the technical, you know, technical half. And then I think I was more like product design side of it. And we explored a bunch of different ideas. I think a lot of it were things that we were interested in, passionate about, but also I think a bunch of them were sort of like pains that we had experienced over the 2 years we were at Stanford. And so I think like every other, like every entrepreneur thinks of travel as one of the ideas. And I think, I feel like travel was one of them for us too, but we felt like the iteration speed was quite slow. And so one of the things we thought about with picking the idea to work on was like, hey, it's 12 weeks. Like, and what can we do that gives us a couple iteration cycles? And so anyways, we picked building the news app because I think we were both sort of quite active news readers ourselves. And iPad was launched the first week of class, right? And so all of that sort of combined us to thinking like, oh, we can actually probably launch something on the iPad in like middle of the class. And then we'll have— a couple iterations to go. So that was like, you know, I wish I had like a longer story thinking about it. It was actually very, I think almost like constraints drove the decision to build that.

So one observation that I think I find really interesting in kind of what you said, and then I'll come back to something I want to dig into, is that, you know, when we started SPC, Akshay, you know, obviously we kind of started as a learning club, right? We basically had a bunch of really smart engineers and we would invite them to SPC. with the goal of essentially like learning, exploration, you know, kind of like finding out what's happening at the frontier. But one of our big kind of fears when we started this was that, my God, are we just going to create like a highfalutin intellectual salon where smart people will come and talk about great ideas but not build anything? Right. So we had it as like a, almost like as a very strong rule from the beginning that every week If you are a part of SPC, no matter like, you know, how ten, you know, how experienced you are, you've had a billion-dollar outcome. If you're part of SPC, you have to demo something. Bring a prototype, demo it in front of people because, you know, at least from Facebook, one of the big things that Mark taught us was that like don't come into a Zuck review. God forbid you come into a Zuck review with slide decks or kind of like he's just like show me the prototype. Let me play with it, right? So I am a big believer that no matter how good your ideas. it doesn't matter until you start translating them into bytes and pixels, right? It's a big part of like at least my DNA. But I'll come back to something you said that I'm very curious about. Where was this root desire to be an entrepreneur? Where did that come from? Like, is that something that was a part of you that you had always known existed that you kind of allowed to in some ways fully embrace when you came to Stanford? Like, or is that just something that almost the, you know, kind of the water in Silicon Valley kind of convinced you? I'm curious.

It was definitely the water in the Valley. So I actually, you know, my parents were, and grandparents also were entrepreneurs. And in some ways, like, there is that DNA being like, you know, Marwadi from like Gen. I feel like there's There's probably something that is native to, but I don't know if I had that bug when I graduated from undergrad. By chance, there was an alum from Purdue who took a chance on me to bring me to California. I was in the Midwest doing my undergrad in Purdue. And then one of the Purdue alums, Don Cyphrus, was running a family office here in Los Altos. And I literally packed with my 2 suitcases, moved out here.

I didn't know this. This is amazing. Okay.

And I spent a year working with him. He was investing in startups here because he had his previous startup go public. And so he was basically investing his own money. And so I spent a year in Los Altos with him. And I don't know, I think it wasn't like the most active venture, like fund, but, you know, every day you'd meet 3 entrepreneurs. And here I was like 20-year-old, 21-year-old, like trying to give these people like advice, like a young McKinsey analyst or something. And very quickly you realize like, A, like you don't really know that much because, you know, you haven't really like worked like operationally. And then B, like they're not taking you very seriously because they're like, who's this, you know, 20-year-old kid? And so I think more and more I found myself wanting to be on the other side of the table. Like I felt like a bit odd to be on the investor side of the table while I haven't really proved anything or I haven't really like, you know, built anything myself. And I didn't really know what to build or who to build with. And so the reason I applied to Stanford was not because I was really chasing that master's degree, but I thought it would be a structured way of meeting other builders. And starting new, you know, starting new ventures. That was literally my goal. And so it sort of worked out really well. But I do think, I don't know, you've been here so much and it does feel like you walk around here and I think even more so at Stanford. And I feel like working at some large corporate is like always like plan C.

Yeah.

Right. It's like, I think everyone's dream is to start something and if not start something, to join an early stage startup, right. That's always, and I feel like, yeah, I feel like some of that rubbed off of me too. I think you're doing a startup because you want to just do a startup and you just want to—

You need to get that out of it. Yeah, exactly.

And I feel like it's actually kind of the wrong reason to do a startup. Like, it's like just wanting to be an entrepreneur or wanting to be CEO is like such a dumb reason to start a company, right? And so I feel like I got that out of the system in the first couple of ones. And so by the time we did Pulse, I was like, you know what, I really don't care what happens to this company. What I care about is like, I am using this product every day to read news and other people are doing it. And that's, that's all I really sort of cared about.

You know, it's interesting that you bring out that, uh, that what is in the air in Silicon Valley, because the way I tend to think of it is that This is the you know we've both kind of traveled a bunch around the world. We've kind of you know had the the luxury of traveling all around the world, and the one of the things that I think is so unique about Silicon Valley is that no matter how crazy your idea or how outlandish, nobody ever kind of calls you crazy. Everyone's like hmm okay what if that were true? What if you actually pulled it off? And then there's kind of like the the default is not skepticism or cynicism. The default is kind of curiosity. and almost like letting in the possibility of what if it works, right? And I think that the downstream effect of that is that if you, you end up feeling more ambitious because then you're like, actually, right. Like, you know, if I can build X, why can't I build X squared? Right. And kind of like the ambition snowballs. And I really think it is very unique about Silicon Valley. You go to a lot of the other places in the world that I admire, whether that be obviously India, or like, you know, I don't know, take the major cities, New York, London, whatever, there is a little bit of a default cynicism. Like the default is like, oh, that's too hard. Oh, like, you know, somebody else might have done it. Or like, oh, how will you get the money to do it? Right. And in Silicon Valley, you are never generally met with default kind of skepticism. And I think that is a beautiful thing about this place. Um, so it's, it's hard to not get more ambitious here.

Yeah, I think it's like, it's really unique. Also just the fact how much this area embraces failure, right? I actually feel like even if you have, I don't know, raised $50 million and the company went bankrupt, I think there's investors here who are willing to like meet with you because you've gone through that. Which I think enables you to take more ambitious shots.

I tell people nobody in Silicon Valley cares. If you did good shit 20 years ago, right? Like if you basically did something awesome and then you built a big company, but then you basically decided to not do anything for 20 years, people will respect you, but they kind of don't care about like if, because you're in some ways you're not being ambitious and relevant today. Right. And I think that this embrace, this is what allows us to look at a 20-year-old founder and treat them with respect because it really is about like, hey, you're in the arena, you're doing things. Right? Um, and it doesn't matter if you end up doing things and failing, because ultimately it's about the act of actual building that matters. So I, yeah, I love it about this place. The more time— when you're younger and you come to Silicon Valley, I think you don't always understand some of these larger forces and dynamics. But after having been here for a while, I now kind of— I, I'm very much appreciative of the underlying DNA.

I also think one other thing that I'm sure you've experienced, this is like, um, I feel like from the outside, before I came to the Valley, I feel like I looked up to certain founders and CEOs and I sort of almost felt they were God. And like, oh my God, they must be sort of superhuman to be able to do all those things. And then I think one of the things that I found fascinating in Stanford and actually just in the area, like I remember in Palo Alto, I used to live there for like 2 years. And this one time I was crossing the road this way and then Mark Zuckerberg was crossing the road this way. And I sort of walked with him for a block as he was going to get a haircut in the— and I don't even remember what I talked to him about, but the fact that you feel like these people who are incredible CEOs are just so like, they're like, there's, yeah, they're not like gods. They're sort of like, you know, what's that quote where it's like, you know, all the people, all the things you see around you are made by people no smarter than—

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. No smarter than you or something, right?

So I feel like that also makes it— makes people feel like, oh, maybe I can do it too.

This is perhaps a good jumping off point, right? You did Pulse, kind of an incredible early, I would say, amount of exposure and kind of maybe virality exposure. Obviously Steve Jobs, you know, kind of like, you know, famously kind of highlighted you, I think, on, uh, was it WWDC? Um, and what an incredible kind of thing, right? You know, just to, as a life experience, how, like, did you get to meet him, by the way?

I did get to meet him once.

That is, that is awesome. Like, I, I have, okay, that's a lot of FOMO. I mean, I think he is such a Talk about gods, talk about people that you deeply respect. You know, obviously he was taken from us too early, but okay, that's cool. Actually, you know what, okay, tell us a little bit about that experience. I kind of want to know, what was it like?

No, actually it's kind of a fun story. I mean, I think he mentioned it at WWDC and we had no idea. I was still in college. I mean, it was like 3 weeks before graduation because I was still in that class when he mentioned it. And like overnight it sort of like became a company thanks to his blessing. And, but I didn't get to meet him then. But a few months later, this is, I, it's like dating myself, but in the middle of 2010, this is like maybe like 3, 4 months after iPad had launched. There was a lot of interest in journalism and media and is journalism dying and what is the big publishers doing? And everybody was trying to figure out like what the hell is going on. Whereas these 2 Stanford kids, like with no other people, with no backend system were like, Pulse was like on the top of the App Store. And so I got an email from, I think it was Jason Hershon who was like, hey, there's this 2-day conference that Rupert Murdoch hosts at his ranch where he gets all the editors together. Would you be open to doing like a fireside chat? And so Jason interviewed us that afternoon, the first day afternoon. And that was amazing. It was like 75 editors and Rupert sat in the middle of the first row the entire day listening to everything. And after the session, Rupert asked like, what are you doing this evening? Come by for dinner with the others, with the other attendees. And we were at the dinner And like, I feel like, I don't know, 30 minutes later, a chopper comes by and Steve comes out. And so he was like the dinner guest that day. And I think the person who was interviewing him asked him what— I think he was ripping into Wall Street Journal because it took 10 seconds to launch or something. And then I think he was like, is there any news app that you do like? And then he mentioned Pulse again. And so that was the introduction. And then at that time, at that event, I got to spend a couple of minutes with him.

That's very cool. What a great story. What a one of a kind legend. And he's done a lot for our industry, obviously. Maybe fast forward. So obviously Pulse, you know, Pulse eventually ends up getting acquired by LinkedIn, right? What was kind of going through your head as kind of like that acquisition took place? What were kind of like, what were you weighing? Um, I'm sure, you know, there are founders out there who'll think about— who'll be in similar positions. How should one think about— you know, we went through an acquisition by Dropbox as well, like, you know, Cove did, uh, and it was— it's emotional, it's heavy, you know, it's kind of— so, but I'm curious, what was your experience like? What advice would you give people who might be in a similar position?

Well, there's also— I mean, there's, there's a— there's probably like the story that is, uh, that people have read and probably people have heard, and a lot of it is true, which is I think we got to 30 million users. We had partnerships with about 750 publishers. We had strong engagement in the product. And I think we got to a point where I feel like in some ways we had a lot of people reading news, but we didn't know anything about them. And I think 3 years after building original Pulse, maybe the original pain, which was like, how do you read news on your phone or a tablet, had gone away. And I think the new pain was that there's so much content and I want to just figure out which piece of content I should read. Like, I think personalization and sort of that became the big thing. And I feel like a lot of the things we tried, like collaborative, you know, like Like, if you read this thing, maybe you can read the other thing. All that stuff like actually was not that useful. What was useful is knowing who the reader is and who they're connected to and who they know and what they care about. And interestingly, like LinkedIn was that, right? LinkedIn had deep identity data, network data, had, you know, knows about your job and your company and, but had no content back then. Like this was 12 years ago. So in some ways it was like this perfectly complementary product. And the whole, the initial term sheet was from first phone call to signing the term sheet was 4 days. So it was actually really fast. But I think that maybe the more human story, if I can share, is like after 3 years of Pulse as like a first-time founder where this thing took off, I feel like Ankit and I were both really tired. Like, I think we forgot to hire like managers. So I feel like I had effectively become like an HR person and like, you know, it's like I was like not building products, like, which is what gives me joy. And so I think we were at the fork of the road and I think Ankit and I actually had a heart-to-heart conversation about what should we do. And actually, like, both of us Before we go and raise another round and sign up for another few years, we both on our own independently wrote a piece on a piece of paper. We said, okay, if we could get an offer for this much, we would prefer to sell. And I don't know, I think might've been like some, something 40 on my end, maybe 50 on Ankit's end. So it was like, you know, this would be fine. And so I think we decided, okay, before we go raise money, we'll just talk to a couple of firms. And I think this thing moved so fast and just felt so right at the time. And actually 12 years later, I feel like there's a lot of Pulse people still at LinkedIn who run the homepage relevance. I think LinkedIn will make more money on homepage content, sort of media solutions, marketing solutions than it will from recruiting. So it sort of worked out incredibly well for Pulse. For both sides.

Having worked on, you know, many feeds over the years, obviously at Facebook and so on, the LinkedIn newsfeed is actually very good. Like, it's actually surprisingly good. Like, you go there, there's a lot of relevant content about people in your professional network, but also like the kind of content that they're interested in. Um, obviously at South Park Commons, we have to, you know, get our own message out about what we are building, and we find LinkedIn to be an incredible channel. Actually, surprisingly good channel.

I really like, I feel like it, and of course, like we, that journey was not like straight line, lots of ups and downs there, as it is true for any acquisition. But looking back, I feel extremely proud of the amount of value we added. And yeah, I think like there's people who've been there for over 10 years now, which to me is like, it's incredible that That out of the 25 people who joined LinkedIn, that so many people, uh, found, uh, found a really great home, right? And, uh, have done so well for themselves.

Yeah. One of the things that I find always a little hard to grok about Silicon Valley is that, you know, both of these things are true. Things take off quickly, but then true seismic change always takes longer than you think. Like, you know, it takes 8, 9, 10 years to build a great— to start to build a great company, right? But then it also takes 8, 9 years to build a great product in a company, right? You look at something like news within LinkedIn, it just takes a long time. And so I often struggle with this, like Silicon Valley is well served by the kind of like hunger and some amount of impatience, but it has to be married with some amount of patience as well, right? And it's a tricky balance. I don't know if I have exact kind of guidance for anyone, but We talk a lot about this at SPC, which is like, how can you get there, you know, kind of like, you know, be impatient but take your time? I think it's—

yeah, when I look back at it, I feel like it's— I think that project or sort of like overall acquisition really took shape because of Jeff, who was the previous CEO, was really deep into content, and then Ryan was my my boss and my sponsor, who's the current CEO. And I think the two of them really had, to your point, long-term patience and short-term impatience, right? It's kind of like you want to have a sense of urgency, like for what we can do this week, but you want to have long-term conviction that this is the right path.

You know, I read this on X the other day. I think it was by Guillermo of Vercel. He said something really interesting. It's like, You need to have the 10-year plan, you know, because every startup, you need to have the long-term kind of like vision and patience. But then you also, man, you also need to make sure you get your 3-month dopamine, right? Because like you're kind of driven by this combination of dopamine and serotonin. And like when the balance is off of the two is when you start getting erratic behavior, right? Even in like a biological system. But if you kind of think about an organizational design system, right? Like you need both, right? Like it's very rare for an organization to be like, We'll wait five years for kind of like in some ways the payoff of feeling like we did something good. So even as an organization, you need to feel like you're making progress, but it has to be towards the long-term thing. It's hard. It's easy to say. It's hard to get right.

Hard to get right. He's such a good Twitter.

He's got he's got good Twitter game. He's got good Twitter game. It's like not everybody has good Twitter game. I am slowly getting better, but some people just have it. Like their hot takes are fantastic. Yeah, it's a natural. So this is actually perhaps this idea of like being impatient and patient, having long-term. I think this is a, it's a good segue to Notion, right? One of the things that I deeply, deeply admire about, about you and Ivan and Notion is you have a very specific view for what you want to achieve in the world, right? Um, and you've, You've not been shy about telling people about what that view is, right? Like you've actually done a very articulate job of like what your vision is. And at the same time, I get the sense and you know I feel as though like your urgency to move has just kept on get like you're shipping faster and faster. I can tell. I'm a huge user of Notion. Fantastic product. I've been used it as my kind of like own personal operating system for the last seven years. I live in it. So thank you for. just building great software that has profoundly affected me. But maybe to rewind, Akshay, a little bit to your early days at Notion, or perhaps like, you know, Ivan's early days at Notion, you had like a very interesting minus one story, right? If you will, of like finding— so can you talk us a little bit through what some of the early days at Notion were like?

Yeah. So Notion was actually my first investment. So after LinkedIn acquired Pulse in 2013, Ivan was a designer I tried to hire at Pulse and he ended up going to Inkling. So, when he left Inkling to start Notion in 2013, he came to me for like seed. I saw his pitch and I instantly sort of invested. And I think Ivan, I think to your point, I think he had a very specific point of view in the world, which is that that software that we use, applications that we use around the world today, as it exists, is very rigid. I think he, remember one of the things he had in his deck was like, he sort of called it like, everything is like an appliance. It's like a toaster. Like you do this one thing. The only thing you can do with this software is like toast your bread and then that's it. So like now you're surrounded with like 100 appliances and all you do is like, oh, I like write notes here and then I do like to-do lists here and I project manage here and I do this. And I think if you like look underneath, it's like, oh, like all of the software is built off of the same building blocks, right? So if you look at Jira, which is a project management software with Greenhouse, which is an application tracking system with Salesforce, that's a CRM. They're all roughly the same piece of software. It's like databases, and relational relations and, you know, you want to visualize it. You want to automate some things, you know, all of it. And so Ivan's view was like, hey, why don't we just give people these building blocks? Like, why don't we just give people the primitives and then people can build like their own customized software the way that their brain works. And like, you don't have to change anything about it. And it's like the inspiration came from Lego. Like if I give you a bucket of Lego blocks. You know, we could have the same thing and we could build different things with it. And painfully, we lived in that world for 4 years without launching a product. And I think the big learning for Ivan, you know, Ivan actually took the company to like 12 employees and it went back to 2 with just him and Simon. I think the big learning was that, well, the biggest one was that I think people just don't wake up to want to build software. And this is like pre-AI, like, you know, like right now I feel like people are back to building software with speaking English, but I think back then there was no way to do it. Like the only way to build software was to like learn coding. And, but I think the learning was that I think people just wake up to do their job and like, I think we needed to Yeah. And I think like essentially we learned that people don't wake up to build software. They just wake up to do their job. And so I think we had to pivot into a wedge that could at least get us in the door. Right. And I think the wedge we picked was productivity, like notes, docs, wiki. It felt like That hadn't changed in a while. I think a lot of people still think of Notion as a note-taking tool, which is like sometimes frustrating 'cause it's like, oh my God, we're so much more. But I think it's actually fine as a starting point. Like it's an easy thing that I can get started with. And that's how we got started. Like it's not like our dream is not to build the best note-taking tool, but we felt that was the right place to start and get in people's lives and people's computers. Computers and phones and start using us. And so that happened in late 2016, early 2017. And after we got— after we launched that, I think we didn't realize sort of the latent demand that existed for people wanting more modern tools for that. And the company really took off, right? And I joined in 2018 when we introduced databases. And that was another big inflection point because now you could put the unstructured content and the structured content in one place.

It's not a common path to invest in a company to probably— I'm assuming you were kind of like a close confidant of Ivan as he was kind of going through the up and down journey of the early days. And then to join the company, you know, kind of like in a— so that's— I'm curious, like, what was that decision process like? Because that is— it happens, but it is rare in Silicon Valley. It's not a common path, right? So was it kind of a first principles decision? And, you know, and in 2018— and perhaps I'm wrong, Akshay— Notion was a well-known company, but it wasn't like a universally agreed upon rocket ship. Right. So you were taking a bet, right? Like, so what was your own thought process of kind of like, okay, this is the one, right? Like, hey, I feel confident. Like, this is something I want to spend the next whatever, 5, 10 years of my life in. Like, what was that decision-making process?

It was a very serendipitous decision in 2018, but I was a bit sort of always enamored by the Notion mission. And I think what ended up happening in 2018 is because I was sort of a close confidant of Ivan, I got to meet with him like every 6, 12 months. And I think the summer of 2018, we met for lunch or something. And then I think the company was 8 people and And you could see the numbers, like it's like every week it's growing. And there was like this pull in the market, right? When you feel like maybe like that's what you feel when you have like product market fit. It's like, just like you're not even trying, but you're growing. And Ivan asked, he's like, hey, why don't you just consider joining me full-time? I want to focus on product and you can take everything else. And it was actually kind of like, it was so out of the, like, it was so random because I was based in India. And so the fact that I would move from India to the US, then I would do something that is everything but product, because my background is product. And the fact that I would not start a company but join a company, like all 3 would not be something I would have done at that time, but something about it just felt right. And I think it was, I think the biggest barrier was to just convince my wife that we're going to move back to the US. And so, yeah, I think like I didn't really interview anywhere else. I didn't have any other option. Like my default plan was, you know, we were happy in India and maybe I'll, I think what actually, what you guys are doing with SPC India was my idea back then. Like that was my, default plan was like maybe do like a $50 million fund and build something compelling in India because that still didn't exist back then.

Well, now we have SPC in Bangalore, you know, there we go.

It's fantastic that you guys are doing that. That was— I still think that was— yeah, I think until you all did it, like, I don't know if there was like a place where you can really—

It's incredible. I mean, we— the response we have gotten from the ecosystem has been fantastic. But Akshay, dude, That is, and I really respect kind of the the clarity and conviction that you had, which is like to your point, I'm in India. I'm a product guy, but I'm gonna move back to America. And I think you've mentioned before you are building a house for the family, right? You're like, okay, you know what? I'm gonna move back, and I'm gonna do everything but product for these eight.

You know, actually, there's a funny story in there. It's like I think it's like the butterfly effect. I don't know if Manya has ever shared. That story. Yeah. So I think when Ivan said it, I was like, I don't know, man. Like, I think I just have an 18-month-old, like, you know, life is so set in India. Like, I don't know if I can like change that setup. Right. So I told him no that day. And then, and then the next day, actually 2 days later, we were still in the US. And I think Manya got a call from our nanny who was really like an amazing person for our daughter, right? And she called and she said, actually, something's happened in my, you know, with my family in my village and I'm gonna move back and I'm not gonna come. And I was like, this is a sign. Like, you know, it's like, This is a sign because I feel like, okay, like everything is—

We have to make new roots or whatever, right?

Yeah, like everything is, you know, you can't take anything for granted. And, and I think, uh, and then I, I told Manya, it's like, oh, like let's consider this. And it took— actually took 2 months to convince. Part of it was like we'd spent so much time, we were so settled, and we're just building a new home. Um, it was actually like, it was a— yeah, it was a And to your point, like, I don't think anybody in India knew Notion and like, even in the US, people were like, where are you going? So it was a bet and I'm so grateful that it sort of played out the way it has. But yeah, I think part of it, maybe like, I think maybe you've sort of felt this way too. I feel like after you've built something and worked in a large company, I feel like you come to a place where it feels like Sort of more, you just naturally get pulled into the mission more than anything else. And like, I was just drawn to like, man, I just can't wait to be in that garage and start building again.

I know. I just want to build good stuff with interesting people. I just want to build good stuff with interesting people. And obviously I want it to be successful, but being successful is actually not the primary driver. The primary driver is to build good stuff with interesting people, right? And I realize, you know, when I say that, it's somewhat easy for me to say I've been lucky enough to have a bunch of success and lucky and good, whatever. But I don't like really like the thing I'm motivated by that gets me up every day is that I want to build interesting products at, you know, along with great founders and our team at SPC. Um, it's very motivating because I think that, you know, I, this is the part about, even success in like our industry that I think is hard is that, dude, you can do all the right things and the chips may not fall your way. Right. So in some way, ultimate success is actually somewhat out of your control. So I think the thing you can control is every day you come in, you do great work and it's interesting. And you're trying to push hard with people that you care about. Um, but you know, I'll add one more thing about your point about the butterfly effect. You know, it's, I often think that, If you put your ear to what the universe is telling you, and this sounds a little like crazy for like a scientific, you know, logical person like me, I think the universe can kind of like send you like ripples of information through space-time. You know, like today we, you know, we were planning this event right in New York, and we'd been planning it for a while, but then our event venue fell through. But the crazy thing is that Ruchi and I had been talking like, actually, we kind of What if we just actually cancelled the venue and did it at like another place? And today we are like, actually the gods are just telling us that like, listen, your plan was the right one. Just like listen to what you want to do, you know. Um, so I, I am a big believer that while you, you cannot— like your desire to be successful cannot almost like overtake your desire to build good things because it, it's otherwise you can get too you know, wrought up in kind of the idea of being successful. You have to let that flow a little bit, right? And you have to be light about it.

I think it's the same thing as like, you know, we were talking about like sort of like being an entrepreneur versus like building the thing you want to build. And I actually feel like it's kind of the latter that makes you the former, right? It's like the former never makes you like actually that. It's like more like you gotta build something and then that's That's the pathway to it.

And it's one of the great paradoxes of being an entrepreneur is that the harder you try to be a founder, the harder it is going to be. Right. Like, and in some ways, when you let go of like, I must be a founder, but you just embrace that, like, that's the output of building an interesting product. Then I think you, you often end up being more successful, but it involves admitting a little bit your own powerlessness in the immediate kind of like desire to be a founder. Right.

I do feel like as I grow older, I feel like I feel more and more stoic. And I think it's like a little bit like you look back and you're like, oh man, like I really, really wanted to get into investment banking when I was graduating in 2007. And oh my God, I'm so glad I didn't. Because I think I would've had a completely different career path than like, you know, so there's so many of the things that can look back and be like, oh my God, I wish that had happened and I was holding onto it. But the thing that alternative thing that happened actually was probably the better thing. And so—

Is a better one. Yeah, I know I've gone super deep into obviously Stoic philosophy, but then also I find a lot of parallels between that and what is ultimately like Buddhist and also just like Eastern mindfulness. They're all, all quite similar. A lot of it is like controlling the plane of what you can control, not kind of like trying to find the rhythm of the universe, not trying to fight it. Right. Um, actually I could discuss philosophy with you for a long time. This is why it's always so fun to talk to you, but I think we'll take a pause there. Um, thank you for, uh, probably sharing parts of your story and going deeper a little bit into different parts. And I think what you maybe perhaps generally discuss kind of when you're talking about your story, but I think the world really benefits when people kind of talk about some of their moments of, um, When they had to struggle with something that they were not, you know, it's easy to project confidence and strength. It's much harder to kind of talk about like the moments where you were truly unsure. Like when you're building Pulse, you had to kind of get it acquired or even in the early days of Notion. So thank you for kind of sharing all of that. Um, thank you for building a great product. You know, it's kind of like, you know, fundamentally changing our lives. One day Ruchi will be a daily active user. Uh, working on it. Uh, listen, one user at a time, one day at a time. But again, thank you so much for everything that you do for, for the ecosystem.

Thank you, Aditya. Thank you for having me here. Fun chat.

That was another episode of Minus One from the team at South Park Commons. Make sure to subscribe to our show wherever you listen to podcasts and find us on social @SouthParkCommons. And thanks to our friends at Atomic Growth for their support in bringing this episode to life.