The Future of Notion – with Notion COO Akshay Kothari

Welcome to Mind and Machine, where we explore the science and technology of enhancing human capability. I'm August Bradley. My guest today is Akshay Kothari, the Chief Operating Officer at Notion. As COO, Akshay is one of the top people driving the ship at this next-generation software platform that's enabling everyday users to create their own software tools Instead of settling for what's provided on the market. Prior to joining Notion, first as an angel investor, then as COO, Akshay founded Pulse, a news aggregator that was acquired by LinkedIn. At LinkedIn, Akshay became Vice President of Product and Head of International. Despite Notion being a young and small company of around 50 people, it has received a valuation of $2 billion in its latest venture capital funding round, making it one of the fastest-moving ventures in Silicon Valley. Longtime viewers of this show may not be aware that I started another YouTube channel about 5 months ago, entirely about building a personal life operating system on the Notion platform. It's a system designed within Notion to align your life aspirations with your daily and hourly actions. It also enables the efficient capture, distillation, and application of ideas, media sources, and all your best thinking into a powerful knowledge management system. Prior to Notion's existence, building a system this capable would have required hiring a lot of expensive developers. With Notion, I did it all myself without any software development skills. My other channel has exploded in popularity, becoming the largest Notion-focused channel on YouTube. My Notion system and those developed by several other innovative Notion creators have become extremely popular. As a result of that overwhelming interest, I'm now launching an online course to teach how to use Notion for life enhancement at the very highest level. You can access my Notion YouTube channel at notionproductivity.com. In today's discussion with Akshay, we explore the future of Notion and this new movement of democratizing software development, enabling anyone to create their own software tools. If you want to learn more about the science and technology of life enhancement and knowledge management, consider subscribing to the free Mind and Machine newsletter at mindandmachine.io or at the link in the show notes. The newsletter has grown by over 13,000 new subscribers since our last podcast episode, and we'll soon have a community platform to share and explore ideas together. Now let's dive in.

Akshay, thank you so much for joining us. I'm excited to explore all kinds of ideas with you today. Thanks for having me.

Thank you, August, for having me. I'm really glad to be here.

So Notion feels like a paradigm shift in software. How do you see Notion facilitating and reflecting a transformation in the software space?

It's a great question. I think a lot of what we're trying to do is to kind of get to a point where people feel like they could build their own software, or they can build their own tools to do their work. I think one of the things that you've seen probably in the last few decades that's happened Is, you know, we went from maybe like using pen and paper for everything to then maybe like moving into the software where software was in floppy disks and you had to like put a floppy disk and use that software, put it out. It kind of became very fragmented. And then from there, we saw like the '90s when Microsoft really put a lot of the software together into a— into the Office package that consolidated a lot of the work. that everybody does in the office. And then internet again fragmented it, right? So internet became this like huge distribution model for all sorts of software to be created really easily and really easily distributed. And so now if you think about where we are today, and any small startup or large companies— I used to work at a large company myself— like, you know, even for the basic amount of work you want to do, you would have to use 15, 20 different pieces of software. And if you really look at what these— each software does, they're built off of the same things. And so what Notion is doing is actually giving people these building blocks. And so instead of you having to use 20 different software for very specialized things, you can actually like make something that flows really well into your own workflow, whether it's on a personal level or on a company level. And it's been really fun to watch the last 2, 3 years, just all the things people are building with Notion. just see the incredible templates that people have built together in all these different ways that people are working together remotely now in this kind of weird time in the world. It's really fun. And Notion is really kind of having that impact on people's kind of productivity every day.

For those who are new to Notion, some of our viewers may not have seen it yet. It's really this collection of building blocks where you can put together your own app, your own software, basically. It's often referred to as a productivity app or tool, but it strikes me as more of a development platform. And that's how I've been using it. Ivan, the CEO, has said one of the inspirations for creating it was, let's create a meta-tool that lets everyone create their own software, which is just incredible because software for most people is just almost an insurmountable barrier. To create a software app is an undertaking not even worth trying for most people. So in many ways, as I've heard you say elsewhere, it's democratizing software. How far do you think this can be taken? How democratized can software truly become?

Well, our hope is to kind of make it really easy in the long term to build any piece of software with Notion. But the challenge with that is that I think you can't actually put the platform before you have real usage and before you solve real problems, right? And actually, like, if you look at the history of the company, we actually painfully spent the first 4 years in the platform view of the world, hoping that people will wake up one day and just start building new software. It turns out that, you know, people wake up to just solve their problems. And so people just wake up to look at like problems they have and then they focus on that. And even though theoretically like building software sounds amazing, that's not something people do. And so when the company shifted the focus to notes, wikis, and tasks, that's when we started to see a lot of usage happening, right? Because this is like the simplest unit of work. It doesn't matter whether you're in marketing, it doesn't matter if you're in sales, it doesn't matter if you're in recruiting. Everybody has to take notes. Everybody needs a common knowledge base. Everybody needs a database to track tasks and projects that they're working on. And when we kind of focused our efforts on that, that's when we started to see more people using the product. And now that we have like a lot of people using it, we can slowly kind of introduce the platform aspects of things, right? So I think that one of the— I've been here for 2 years and I think the biggest request people have had in the last 2 years has been the API. Everybody really wants the API because now that they're using the tool, they see all this amazing potential to connect things inside Notion with things outside Notion. And that's really exciting for us. But we've been slowly watching the adoption of Notion globally and slowly getting to a point where we can actually release the API and get people to build like end-to-end software with Notion. But that is really the dream. That's always been the dream ever since Ivan started this company. One of the things we've realized along the path is that sequencing is important here. We need to figure out what we stay focused on. If you try to just build something that's like everything for everyone, we'll probably end up with nothing for no one. And so I think right now we're very much focused on like the notes, wikis, and tasks because it actually solves a real problem. Like, you know, people are really Kind of feel the pain that the content that they're working on is just everywhere in like 10 different pieces of software. That's a real problem we can solve right now and bringing it together. And then now that people are on Notion and actually doing all these things, you know, it's like the opportunities are endless. You've used Notion quite a bit and you feel like, oh, like I can connect this with like my, you know, video software and I can connect this with like the other things I use.

They're a constant stream of aha moments. Yes, always. Wow, I can do that too. There's a moment that clicks that there's one more thing you can do.

Exactly. And so I think there's actually been a lot that people have been able to do just inside the Notion ecosystem, right? I think people have been able to connect your notes to a meeting note or a database you have, or, you know, you can create project management kind of full Kanban boards on it. And I think you can like— I think if you look at the template gallery that Notion has, like It's just wonderful to watch all the amazing things that people have built. I think if you fast forward 5, 10 years from now, you can imagine people building end-to-end software on Notion where, you know, there could be a marketplace where something that you build, something maybe other video producers or podcast producers could just click a button and make that their software. That's the world we kind of dream of. And I think there's actually like, it's related to kind of Our mission in some ways. Our mission is to kind of shape the— give people the ability to shape the tools that shape their lives. And that's very important for us. We're not trying to build the perfect tool. We're actually trying to build the best way for people to shape their own tools. And that actually creates more people in the world to create their own tools, which I think will lead to more creativity in the world. So there won't be like This only way to use a CRM tool is Salesforce. There might be 100 different ways of building a CRM tool, and we want that creativity to unleash, to kind of be out there.

Right. There's so much specialty knowledge in the world, but in the vast majority of cases, that specialty knowledge is not combined in the same person or in a small team with programming knowledge. So that specialty knowledge is never unleashed fully in software. You have programmers who go around looking to solve problems. And they'll research them, but they're not inherently the experts in that field. This lets experts in various fields create the tool that other experts in that field and more and more enthusiasts and people of interest can more easily gravitate toward. You said something really fascinating that I didn't even realize. And I was kind of wrestling with, because it seems like Notion right now, and it leans towards these productivity and project and task management functions. And I was wondering, one of the questions I was going to ask is, is this inherent in the design? Or is this a lack of creativity among users? Because all the initial commentary from Ivan and the founders and you guys was that this is a platform to build endlessly. And that's largely how I see it. But it does seem to be overwhelmingly going in this productivity wiki task management direction. But what I'm hearing you say is there's an initial grand vision. But as you went, started implementing that, you realized the jump was too far for most people, and it was hard to sort of get on board. But when you gave them an on-ramp, a more specific use case, or even if it was a broadly defined use case, you saw people taking to it much more quickly. But the hope is eventually to broaden it back out again to give the unlimited blank canvas to people to create again. Is that a fair summary?

Yeah, I think that's really kind of well summarized, which is I think our end goal is to kind of really unleash like all sorts of like software being built on Notion. The current focus is kind of step in that direction. And I think part of the focus on like notes, wikis, and tasks is again goes back to like everybody needs to do that. You know, whether you're a single individual or whether you're a small team, no matter what function, we all need to do some version of that. And so it at least introduces the tool to them. And then we try to keep the surface level fairly simple so that it becomes like a wide enough platform for everybody to like, you know, even my mom can come in and start taking notes on it. And then, you know, after she uses it just as a note-taking tool, like there's an aha moment, which is like, oh, I just realized that I could even make my to-do list on it. And then she spends some more time and she's like, oh, I just realized I can now actually like, you know, put my tasks on here and my team can also put their tasks on here. And now I have like a transparent view of how this team works. And so I think that's kind of like our approach has been like get people in to at least solve their problems first. And then as they play around with the tool, they realize that underneath there's all these beautiful building blocks ready for them to use. And as they use more of it, They are able to build more interesting, complex things with Notion. And I think we're gonna continue to be on that journey.

Yeah, that's absolutely my experience. And I think really the— what's sparked this incredible enthusiasm is that you can dive into Notion with one very specific small app use case or application. And then once you have that, then you can add one little thing on next to it, then you can add something next to that. And you can just expand literally like Lego building blocks. Around that, or you can keep it small if that's all your needs are. But usually you get tempted as you get more familiar with the initial use, and you just pack on more functionality around it as needed. So I mean, I come from a systems thinking background. And typically the way you build complex systems is you start with a simple system, it was almost never effective to just design a complex system from scratch, the most effective way is to create a small system that works, and then gradually expand upon it. And Notion just seems inherently designed for that. Was that an intention? Or is that just sort of the nature of a building block platform?

So that was intentionally built into the idea even when back in 2012 when the company was founded. I think the one change that happened along the way is I think this idea that if you just give people building blocks and expect people to suddenly start putting together things is pretty hard. So you kind of have to kind of shift our focus to like, all right, what do people need today? And I think there was pretty clear view that I think the current note-taking tools were pretty subpar. There hadn't been much innovation there. I think people generally dislike the wiki tools that companies have. Like, it doesn't feel like it's creator-focused. It's all— most people are just reading it. They're not really contributing to it. And then the other problem was that because there's all these different tools for note-taking, for wiki, and then for project management, and there was no talking between all of those, right? And so now you have a single medium where you can do a lot of this stuff. then it starts to kind of introduce people to all the things that they could be building. And so the building blocks has been very foundational for the company. In fact, I remember when Ivan pitched me this idea, 'cause I invested in the company 7 years ago. I remember when he pitched me, he talked about it as Lego for software. Like, you know, kind of, can you put these Lego bricks together and build a castle? You know, for many years we stayed in this like, hey, here's a bucket of Legos, Go build your castle, and many people found it pretty hard. It's like, okay, but I need a manual. Like, can you give me a manual and step-by-step instructions of how I can, you know, use make a castle? And that's when the templates came in, right? The templates is like one click and I get this system. One click I get a project management system. One click and I can get Augustus system. That's pretty powerful because it gets them from. It's kind of like, I know I have a 3-year-old daughter and I can't give her like the Lego blocks right now, but I can give her Duplos because Duplos are simple enough for her to like put things together and build her thing. And so I think we're kind of in that Duplo world right now where it's like the building blocks are there underneath, but we give you like a faster aha moment. But then if you dig deeper, you can pull out those building blocks and realize that, oh, this is built with like the foundational elements here. And I can rewire this thing the way I want it to.

I want to dive deeper into that template structure, because that's so powerful. We'll get a little more into that shortly. But while we're still talking about sort of the basic foundation, how will— how do you expect Notion to expand such that it moves from this sort of wiki project task management emphasis to a truly open platform? What are the design changes? Or the— are there additional blocks that need to be added? Are there restrictions that need to be removed? How do you transition from this current approach to the broader ultimate vision?

I think one thing that's interesting about Notion is that a lot of these ideas that we're building on is like actually not new. I think a lot of them have been talked about back in the '70s and '80s by, you know, computing pioneers like Douglas Engelbart. And so it's actually a lot of these ideas like we're pulling in from past, and there's so much yet to be done. It's kind of amazing that they haven't been explored fully. A recent one we launched was backlinks, where you can link a page and then the page will tell you how many pages that these have been linked. There's a ton of different views we want to build. So I think there's a big one that people want is a timeline view of our databases. So you can actually see projects in a timeline.

That was teased about a year ago, wasn't it?

It was teased a year ago. And then we could rebuild it in a kind of better way. And so we're still working on that and we're hoping to push that out. And then obviously the big, big meta block is obviously the API because that allows you to connect Notion, things inside Notion with things outside Notion. And that's when you can maybe build automation. Large companies can build automated workflows. Single users can build like an automated, like design your whole life. on all the software you use. So there's still a lot to be built on that front. It's actually important for Notion as a company is that we've stayed focused on the engineering side, on the fundamental blocks piece. We're not trying to build, let's say, the best project management software. We are actually more interested in building the building blocks behind the project management software so that you can then use it to kind of build the one that works for you. There's still a lot of blocks to be built. But actually it's been quite fun to watch the community push the edges on kind of what already is possible. Folks like yourself, and there's like folks like Marie Poulin, you know, even employees at Notion were just shocked to see what folks have accomplished with the building blocks we've given them. I think that part probably makes my job really fun.

To expand though beyond this sort of core of productivity and wiki, it seems you need some automation capability internally. Or is that entirely an API issue?

I think a little bit of both. I think even on the API front, I think there's an open question. Can we build an API in a way that someone who doesn't know how to code can also connect things easily and can build these automations? So I think that's, that's an area that we're definitely working towards. I guess like, how do we go beyond the wiki and project management software is actually going to be a lot driven by the community in terms of how they take these building blocks and build whatever they're interested in. You know, if someone's interested in building a new employee onboarding automated platform, so that every time you put a new person on Workday, it triggers all these things that happen for them, including like having coffee with someone.

Would you see those triggers being inherent to Notion? Because if you look at like, say, Trello, it'll have internal automations, as well as external ones with other software. Is that a direction you see Notion going?

To be decided, to be honest. I think like, you know, a lot of this will uncover when the API is out. But I think at a high level, we're hoping we can launch an API that each person can build the things they want to build. But we'll probably build some basic kind of automations ourselves, right? I think something as simple as maybe, let's say, what's a good example? Maybe like a calendar integration. Like that might make sense for us to just give it to People.

Everybody needs that.

Yeah, because that's maybe a basic need that everybody has.

You mentioned the enterprise versus individual. Is there ultimately a direction you see Notion leaning toward? Obviously, it seems like it's going to have an option for both. But do you see it ultimately emphasizing enterprise versus individual or vice versa?

Not really. I think we're trying to build something that works really well for an individual user all the way to you know, tens of thousands of people in a company. If you actually look at the world where people work, I think like half the people work in like small-medium businesses, the other half work in larger companies. And I think a lot of the needs are similar, although like for us to get distribution inside enterprise companies, we have to like, you know, make some investments there in terms of really being able to like go through security audits and like put an agreement in place. onboard really large companies in one go. I think those kind of things are— it's just a muscle we're trying to build. But at the end of the day, I think our dream is to build a single platform that works for one person and also works for a 100,000-person company.

The whole software empowerment movement that's underway, that's sometimes referred to by some as no-code, but is really broader than just no-code, and Notion in particular, seem to liberate and democratize software creation, but architecture and systems understanding is not an inherent skill for most people. And suddenly we have all these new superpowers, but with that comes the need for new skills in systems and architecture design and understanding. How do you view this challenge? Is this an inherent limitation in terms of the everyday user, or is this likely to create broader layer of visual programmers that's, you know, more accessible than— traditional coding, but it's still not quite an everyday user kind of thing.

Yeah, our hope is that we can— I think this is an area where I think education will play a big role. Like, can we really explain maybe some of these more complex building blocks better to our users? Like, a good example that exists right now is that actually, like, the relational databases exist in Notion today. You can, you know, connect one database with another one. You can even do rollups. Now, those are actually, like, not, like, the easiest things to understand. In fact, like, there's, like, multi-billion-dollar companies that are built with just, like, That as like, you know, scaled for very large companies. But today, like, an individual user can sign up with Notion and connect to databases and do a lot of interesting things with it. We have to do a better job just like educating these things, like how are these useful, like what, what are the different use cases you can connect it to, what is exactly happening in these cases. And that might lead to them realizing all these amazing other use cases that they may have on relational databases. And so I think a lot of it, we're investing a lot in your Whether it relates to our own videos we're producing, our own guides we're writing, but also working with folks like yourself and other people in this space, because there's a lot of education we won't be able to do ourselves. And so it's really important for us to actually work with folks like yourself who do a wonderful job just introducing these concepts to a very large kind of user base. And then the one example that I feel like is super interesting for us is Microsoft Excel is an interesting tool that everybody knows how to use at the very basic level, but there's actually a lot of people who are Excel pros, people who geek out about macros and things that they've been able to build. They may not know how to write a piece of code, but they figure out some really cool things to do with Microsoft Excel. And that's actually like—

Yeah.

Inspiration for us because I think we want to get to a point where Notion can be used by everyone, but then a few people can like go deep and like learn all these amazing things you can do with it.

Yeah, that's sort of the perfect example. Ultimately, I see my question sort of being both in the way that you can dive in as deep or as shallowly as you want to. You can do a little corner with a few blocks, or you can build a whole comprehensive system, which is what I've been developing. And Or anything in between. And it really is accessible at the small individual block level, but then has an unprecedented level of scaling beyond that to the degree you want to push it and explore possibilities. So Excel is actually a great example. There are people like financial modelers on Wall Street that will do things in Excel that's like basically programming software as well. So the ability for people who want to take it to a very expansive an intricate level that solves bigger problems. And in a sense, building software on top of Notion, which is largely what I'm doing with this sort of life operating system I've been designing, and many others have been doing in other regards. But ultimately, to be successful at that, there needs to be certain infrastructure available. And I'm curious, to what degree are you going to support creators who want to do that? So right now we have the templates, which you talked about, which is what makes the whole thing possible in the first place. We— it wouldn't even be a game without that. So that's just a wonderful innovation to come out with out of the gate. So I'm wondering how far that is potentially going to be taken. The big things we really need are the ability to do upgrades. So if I build a comprehensive template, that's really a whole system and functions like software operating on top of Notion. But then, you know, 6 months later, I have all these improvements to it, all the people who implemented the template previously, I can give them the new template, but they have to download it and either migrate all of their data over to the new template, or they have to look at all the changes and port those changes over. So there's no— in order to really build comprehensive platforms on top of Notion, you'd have to have some upgradability of the templates with the data already in it. Is that a conceivable thing with the direction and the infrastructure in place?

Yeah, I think in many ways you're actually like helping us push the boundaries on that. So as we start to think about like the platform piece, The thing that's really important for us is to really help creators like yourselves to be able to help other people use the tools that you create. And everything that we need to do, all the infrastructure around that in terms of really making that possible is going to be top of mind for us, right? Because our ecosystem, again, like this is less about like kind of Notion trying to be cool with these templates it has. Like our job is to make like the creators cool. with the templates they build and give them a platform for them to even possibly like build businesses on top of Notion, right? This is very much the future we see because that gets to the point of democratizing software. It's not like your regular programmer building a tool and, you know, kind of selling it. It's actually like people, anybody can come on Notion, start with something simple and build things that they can eventually get to a point where there's a demand for people to want to buy that or to upgrade to that. That's like really kind of inspiring for us as well. And our job in all of this is to just build the underlying pipes, like build the underlying building blocks, build the underlying infrastructure on the marketplace front, make sure like creators like yourself are well supported in this journey because that's the best way for us to really see the potential being kind of achieved of Notion. If we try to build every piece of software in Notion ourselves as the best place, A, it would be very hard, but B, it would be impossible because it turns out that every person has a very unique way of working. Like the way I take notes might be different from the way you take notes. The way I manage projects might be different from the way you manage projects. And the, the current world actually is inefficient because everybody has to use one project management system. with very little moldability around it. And I think what the future we see is that instead of you having to mold to the software, the software molds to you. And so more people like yourself build interesting things that may connect to a few people who really, like, resonate with that. We want to really enable that.

And what's really powerful even beyond, for those of us creating systems for people to use, that's different from you know, just buying a software system that exists, is I can give them the system I've designed and then they can modify it to their needs beyond my core designs. So you can buy a proven approach and then modify it in a way you never could before. So that's sort of the best of both worlds. But yeah, in order to be able to really implement this at the highest level though, we'd need the upgradability. And the other is some kind of sales model, ideally something— I don't know if you guys have thought about this, the models that The game engines use. So you've got Unreal Engine and Unity, and for those who aren't familiar, they provide a layer of abstraction that makes it easier to create, and in those cases, games or virtual reality experiences. And there's— it's more of a visual programming, so you're not coding in the true sense, and it's easier for more people. It becomes more of an artistic expression, and then you build it on one of these 2 platforms, either Unreal or Unity. And You may pay a small fee or maybe free to build on the platform. But then if you want to sell it, you then pay a percentage of your sales to the platform because it continues to run on that platform. It was built on it. And then it needs the underlying code of that platform to run on it. I could see Notion doing the same thing and really inspire and empower a level, a new generation of programmers that never would have been programmers without it. Is that something you've conceived of that model?

We're very much kind of aligned there. It's still like early stages of how we think about the platform piece. But I think the examples you mentioned around how Unity and kind of the games have done this is actually like kind of something that we can study and learn from. But I would say probably like still in the first innings of like the platform piece. The first piece is going to be just like making sure like you guys have enough building blocks to kind of build what you dream.

Yes.

And then the next path then becomes like how do we build the underlying programs and infrastructure to support maybe the commerce behind it as well. That's definitely something we want to do because I think we talked about this in the past, but I think we think of ourselves as enabling more toolmakers in the world. And I think the world will be better off with more toolmakers. And so it doesn't— kind of feels like it also kind of makes the world more equitable in some ways. It's not like programmers get to do it and non-programmers don't get to do it. It's like, no, no, no, we're kind of blurring the lines here a little bit and everybody gets to kind of really build things that they can dream of. And so I think, you know, we're gonna look to your guidance here in terms of like how we really support that. But we win if you guys win because at the end of the day, we're gonna build the underlying platform and we would like more and more people in the world to use Notion. The best way for us to do that is to make sure that we support the creators along the way.

I would absolutely encourage that ability. It's essential that individuals can build to the extent they want to learn and dive in. But I'm finding an immense demand for people who want to start with either a proven system or a system that comes from someone with that system design background. And so the foundational infrastructure is provided, and then they can modify and customize on top of it rather than reinvent the wheel, Or have to relearn how to build a whole integrated system from scratch. So there's, it seems like there are gradients from, from each end to the other. But to the extent that creators can build software tools and then upgrade them, because that becomes a real problem for subsequent versions, and then monetize them ideally with a subscription-based or some kind of internal built into the Notion store platform, that would be a huge incentive for more and more people to create more sophisticated designs on top of the Notion platform. So just a thought. Software itself has different layers of abstraction that make it more accessible to higher level, broader levels of programmers, right? So you've got machine language and you've got C++ and you've got Ruby on Rails and you've got different levels. And some of those are probably dated. I don't know. I'm not an engineer. But the idea is each level broadens accessibility to more people. And I see Notion as sort of the ultimate top level. Of that abstraction pyramid, opening it up to the most people.

I really like that. I really resonate with that. I also, I feel like this is also what we're hearing from companies, like larger companies when we talk to them. You know, they're looking for someone to really help them like build their operating system for what Notion will be because they have a very specific point of view on how they want to kind of build it. And they're looking for experts and consultants who can really kind of shape this the way they want, and they're willing to pay for that also. So I think we're starting to see that more and more in the field. But I also resonate with the point you made, I think a few minutes ago, which is around like, if the starting point is like one of these templates, one of these systems built, and that actually gives them that aha moment soon enough so that they can start building. But then as they use, they realize the small tweaks they can make here and there to make it even more useful for them. That's, that's going to be the power of Notion and the community.

Yep. And you learn faster by looking at a built-out template. Things that would take you longer to figure out, you see them when you see it built, like, oh, okay, that is how you do that. And then you can modify and tweak. You start with just modifying aesthetics and then you start tweaking interrelations and all that stuff. So it definitely is, it has an inherent learning process built into that on-ramping. So that's, I think, one of the strengths of this whole platform. One of the big questions though, is as you know, I'm building this whole life operating system. I run my life and my small business all on the platform. Can a platform that, that houses all of our life data, and much of our business data that lives in the cloud, can it truly be secure? To what degree can Notion protect the data from privacy violations, hacks, what have you, while it's clearly a cloud-based platform? What's the give and take on that between convenience and security and privacy?

Well, I think our business, our company is built on trust. So I think the day we lose some of that is the day, like, you know, it will become harder for us to really kind of get people to trust us with their data. I think kind of currently individuals trust us with kind of very personal information, and then companies are trusting us with sensitive data that they have around their businesses. So I think like security and privacy is like P0 for us. It's like something really we prioritize over everything else. And the way we do that is obviously kind of use the state-of-the-art technology in terms of like making sure these things are pretty tight, tightly wrapped internally. But then we also have, you know, we actually do quarterly audits. We work with a security company which is focused on just like hacking us and telling us all the flaws that we may have.

So you hire them to find the vulnerabilities?

Yeah, they're basically like a security team hired by us, working with us. Like they're just employees of ours in some ways, but, you know, work on just kind of continuing to make it better. Then we also introduced a bug bounty program. So any researcher finds any kind of loophole can actually tell us that and we'll kind of reward them for it. And so with all of these things that we're doing, we feel generally good about the security of the platform today. But it's an area that will never be done. It's an area that we'll just continue to invest in and we'll continue to make it better. But we also know that our business is all built on trust here. And so as it relates to just kind of being extra cautious, this is an area that we We try to be, we lean on the side of like just like being very conservative with these things. And so I think the other thing I would say is like even on our own processes, we've tried to make significant improvements here. Like we've really cleaned up our terms and conditions so that people know what our business model is and we're never going to sell people's data, never going to do ads, for example. We've also updated a lot of our internal systems so that essentially like Only if you ask us to do certain things in your workspace is when a company employee will help you with. Otherwise, they don't have any access to any of the data.

So they're incapable of accessing it without some kind of authorization? It's not just an audit system?

No. So essentially right now there is an audit log for people using, like people tapping the data, and that only kind of is available for employees to do if there is a written communication for from the user to be able to do that. And we're actually going to make that into a feature, right? So essentially, we're going to— essentially, you can imagine a future where within settings, you can give us— you can press a button and that will unlock the data on our side. Otherwise, it remains locked. So I think we're kind of actually like pushing the boundaries on this one. I think most companies don't do that. But we realize this is, for us, this is— thankfully, our model is not— business model is not dependent on using any content or any data that people put in. It's just providing the platform. So I think we want to continue to build a fairly boring company in terms of like, as it relates to security, and just like keep it very stable and just make our creators the more fun and exciting part of the platform.

That's a big contrast versus say Google Docs and Google Sheets, for example, where Google's very much about tapping into the data. Interesting. So, but to some degree, it ultimately comes down to convenience versus security. There's always a trade-off because as I understand it, you can't have end-to-end encryption, end-to-end, and still have all the functionality because you have to have some access to the numbers inside of it in order to make it accessible from different devices and to do some of the applications that Notion does. So does the data sit on the Notion servers? Is it encrypted? Or does that not enable the functionality?

It is encrypted. And actually it is our dream to get to end-to-end at some point. It's actually pretty hard to do, but it is our dream to do it at some point. Part of the reason that, I guess the biggest challenge that you see with end-to-end right now, if we were to do it, is things like search and other things will really deteriorate because won't be able to kind of really tap into the data that exists. But in general, we don't think convenience and security has to have a necessary trade-off.

Mm-hmm.

We want to get to a point where it's extremely usable and extremely convenient while still continuing to push on security. And in many ways, I think cloud stuff will get to a point where it feels as secure as, let's say, having a server in your apartment or something. Like, we want to get to a point where I think we realize there's a lot of upside in being on the cloud because of the ability to just have these constant updates go out. So every time we can find new things, it's getting pushed to you and the platform continues to be more secure than yesterday. Right. And I think that's an area that as we move into like more of a cloud-first world, people will realize that actually there's so many benefits of having this system being updated every day. But in general, I would push back on the trade-off. Like, I actually think that we can be convenient and easy to use while still being extra secure.

Okay, that's great to hear. And perhaps you could put those option switches, whether you want to sacrifice searchability for security, make those trade-offs in your settings panel would be definitely appealing, I think, to a lot of users.

Exactly. Exactly. Some of this optionality will help customers just make a call what they want versus what the trade-offs are.

A couple of questions just as we wrap up here that are more far-looking, future-looking, and even just sort of futurism speculation, completely acknowledging there are much higher priorities on the, on the immediate horizon, but just thinking about computing and cloud computing further down the road. I come from a background where I've worked a lot in augmented reality and virtual reality. And in those environments, you're always thinking about how can you apply spatial computing to different contexts. And Notion being an all-in-one home for either your life, your business, or both, have you as a team thought about how spatial computing and AR/VR interfaces might work with the Notion platform and the data within?

Not Too much. I think right now we're actually very much focused on the basics.

Sure. You definitely have higher priorities.

But it would be nice to think about just these new interfaces as they become more of the norm in certain fields, for example. It's kind of interesting. It's like working at Notion is actually Very easy to get super excited about like 5, 10 years from now. Then you kind of have to be like, all right, what are we shipping this quarter? Because our users are watching for that. I think another area similar to VR/AR is also like, I think there's actually like, we could be a lot smarter about your content. Like we could, if you start typing, we could tell you like, hey, last time you did this, these things were what you did.

That's the next question.

And I think that's an area that we will get to at some point, but right now we're kind of keeping it simple on stuff.

Well, especially with the AR— I think the AR/VR interfaces at any scale, we're looking at 10+ years down the road. But I have seen implementations where you're working with data and it reveals insights in the data that you never would have seen otherwise. And that's really powerful and exciting. But I think you're right that that's— there's more immediate opportunity with that on the AI machine learning side, which I think is what you were hinting at. And, you know, as we compile life operating systems or business operation systems in a more all-in-one inclusive place like Notion, it unleashes unprecedented opportunities to use machine learning to look for patterns and give you recommendation engines and forecasting. It seems inevitable at some point that will happen. Is that something that's even foreseeable in terms of the timeframe? Is that like a 5-year thing, a 2-year thing, or a beyond-the-horizon thing?

Yeah, I think some of the smarter algorithms or just kind of being smarter as a tool, I think it's probably more near-term. But actually, to tie back to your previous question, you can imagine a doctor having a good note-taking habit and good to-do lists. And let's say maybe they're wearing their AR headset to do a surgery. And at the same time, you can expect them to have their Notion checklist right there that they can just quickly go through. So it's possible that these things will be more a reality in the near future. But I would say right now we're trying to continue to build the building blocks. At some point we'll get to like, okay, how do we become— how do we like become an intelligent assistant as you're working on these things? Because now we have all this data, like years of data of like how August uses Notion. Like, can we just like just assist him with like certain things? And then the really future, we may think about like maybe interfaces that may become more of— more normal in the future than they are today.

I mean, obviously it has its It's dangerous. So it becomes— the security issue becomes even more extreme. But it opens up so many possibilities. If you just think of the health possibilities, you know, you've got Apple looking at all the health data it's collecting in the Health app on the iPhone, where Oura Rings and Fitbits and Apple Watches are feeding data into it. It creates an incredible hub for that. I see Notion as potentially having the same kind of data aggregation potential. As the health app in an iPhone. And to the extent people are tracking health patterns, which could come feed it once the API is available, it'll feed in automatically from devices.

Right.

And to have all that information aggregated is such an opportunity to improve one's health and to forecast issues ahead of time to get them diagnosed earlier. And that's just on the health front, of course. The business front, endless possibilities. So it just seems like it's such a powerful opportunity once you have this sort of all-in-one design. It just seems inevitable to me that that's where this migrates.

I think so. I think you've picked up on something really interesting in the long term for us, because I think especially as you relate to like a team or a company, like looking at what people are writing and, you know, we're all distributed right now. And I think just getting a sense of like, oh, Yesterday, somebody wrote this document about this thing and then just pushing it to people as and when it's necessary or whenever it's timely. There's endless possibilities in just making each person more productive in an organization that we can go once we have some of the more basics figured out. And so it's definitely, for me, I studied machine learning in my graduate school. So I kind of think of all these possibilities, but then try to also pull it back and be like, all right, let's just stay focused on shipping the timeline view and shipping the API first. And then we'll get to machines taking some decisions for us.

Right.

Make sure there is a 10 years before you plan the 10-year mark.

That's right.

Do I understand correctly? You have a Stanford engineering background, is that correct?

Yeah, I did my electrical engineering master's from Stanford, but spent most of my time in the CS side of things. So I was fortunate to take a lot of the AI/ML courses when Andrew Ng was there. Right.

A legend in artificial intelligence for sure. Akshay, thank you so much. This has been fascinating. I know you keep a fairly low profile personally. Are there any outlets where people can keep an eye on what you're up to? Or is notion.so the best place?

I think, yeah, I think Twitter is probably the place I spend most time on publicly. At least you'll see me popping in here and there to reply to our customers. So I think if you just, uh, you can reach me at @akothari, uh, that's my first initial and my last name, that'd be great. Uh, but yeah, thank you for having me. This has been fun. Actually, I'm actually going away with a ton of really interesting ideas, and thank you for inspiring me to think about the future also. So this has been really fun.

Well, I'd be happy to brainstorm anytime you want to toss ideas around because I am deep into this stuff and I love it, and it's— there's nothing more exciting about Empowering creativity, especially in a technical— in the technological front, because that's been such a barrier to so many creatives. And to remove that technological barrier and let ideas dictate and let innovation be more free, lower that hurdle that these ideas have to climb over, the technical hurdle that ideas have to climb over in order to become reality, is just a groundbreaking premise. And so that's what initially turned the light bulb on for me with Notion. But having gone deeper into it, I mean, just working in Notion spurs additional ideas as well. So it's not like you just come in with an idea and you want to implement it. As you start implementing it, it enables you to think in new directions. So excited about all the work you guys are doing and all the new stuff that you guys are going to be releasing soon that you've been hinting at throughout this discussion. So thanks again, Akshay.

Thank you.

It's been wonderful to talk to you about this.

Thank you, August.

And thank you for tuning in. If you're watching on YouTube, leave thoughts or comments below. If you found value in the show, please like the video so it gets promoted in the algorithm. Subscribe to the YouTube channel and hit the bell so you don't miss the remarkable guest lineup we have in the pipeline. If you're listening to the podcast, ratings and reviews on iTunes or wherever you listen are massively helpful. They help us get promoted on those platforms. Be sure to subscribe to the newsletter to receive show updates. Plus my newsletter essay and curated articles on transformational technologies. It comes out every other Sunday. Everything is accessible at mindandmachine.io. And you can find out a lot more about Notion on my fast-growing Notion channel at notionproductivity.com. Thanks. Until next time.