How to Scale to $1 Billion with COO of Notion, CEO Motive, and CEO Incredible Health

Please welcome Notion COO Akshay Kataria, Motive CEO and founder Shoaib Makani, Incredible Health CEO and co-founder Iman Abuzaid, and Base10 Partners operating partner Laura Wiedemann Powers.

Hi everybody. We are so excited to be here. And also I have to say your lunch smells really good. I can smell it from the stage. Um, I could not be more excited to be here sharing the stage with these three incredible founders. Um, and I know we're actually really all here to hear them talk, not me. So I'm actually gonna start out by letting them introduce themselves briefly. Um, so I would love Akshay, if you can start us off and just share, um, the company you're with, the mission, what you're building and what your role is at it.

Well, first of all, thank you, Laura, for having us. I deeply admire Shoaib and Iman and very glad to be a portfolio company of Base10. Um, I'm Akshay. I'm the COO at Notion and our mission, Notion's mission is to democratize software toolmaking. Uh, we think a lot of the SaaS tools that you are probably using and people represented here, a lot of them are built off very few fundamental building blocks. And what Notion is trying to do is really offer these building blocks to the people so that they can actually build their own tools, build tools the way their brain works as opposed to the other way around. Um, so that's our mission. Of course, that itself is not enough. We also need a market. And one of the trends that we're noticing is that there's just been an explosion of tools. Um, I think there's an Okta study that talks about number of tools each company is using and it just keeps going up. I think it's nearing to about 100 now. And what we're seeing from customers is that people are really wanting for the pendulum to swing back a little bit. They want fewer tools where they can actually do a lot of the work, fewer tools that talk to each other. Uh, and that's really what is helping Notion really grow, uh, in today's market. Um, and finally, I'm, I'm the COO, which is a nice fuzzy title. Uh, uh, it means that I've over the course of 4 years have played many different roles. Um, I would say the core thing that I've probably done at Notion is helped recruit, uh, the leaders that are now driving a lot of our business.

Amazing. Thank you. Okay. Uh, I'm gonna kick it over now to Iman. Sure.

Hey everyone. Um, my name's Iman Abusaid. I'm the CEO of Incredible Health. Uh, Incredible Health is a career marketplace for healthcare workers. We're the fastest growing career marketplace for healthcare workers in the US today. Uh, what that means is hospitals and health systems, they use our software to hire nurses in permanent roles in 20 days or less instead of it taking 80 days or longer. Um, our vision is to help healthcare professionals live better lives, and the mission is to help them find and do their best work. We've been around for 5 years now. We work with over 600 hospitals across the country in 25 states. And, uh, and yeah, it's great to be here.

Great. All right, shall we finish this out?

Uh, great to be here. Thanks for having me. Uh, I'm co-founder and CEO of a company called Motive. Uh, we build— our mission is to unlock the potential of the physical economy. And, and very specifically what we do is we build technology that improves the safety and productivity of industries like construction, transportation, field service, agriculture, manufacturing. Really any business that has physical operations needs what we got. Our IoT hardware connects their physical operations, brings their vehicles, equipment, physical assets online. And digitize what otherwise is an offline workflow. And then we build AI-powered applications that solve a key, a number of the key operational problems that these businesses face. Where is my stuff? How is it being operated? Are my drivers operating safely and efficiently? You know, being able to actually digitize the core workflows and the communication with customers that allows these businesses to drive productivity. To get more out of their workforce and to be able to better serve their customers and communities. We've been at it for about 9 years. Today we have north of 130,000 customers across a really wide range of industries and geographies and have a big opportunity ahead of us.

Thank you. And I'm Laura Wideman Powers. I am operating partner at Base Tech. M. Lemkin. We are a venture firm that invests in automation for the real economy. Our two pillars that drive us are research and purpose. I am thrilled to get to work with these three as part of the Advancement Initiative, which is our growth stage fund where we invest in top tech companies. And then we as a firm donate half of our returns to create scholarships at historically Black colleges and universities. And we work across our portfolio on ESG and DEI as our portfolio service. And so even though we are returns-focused investors, we're not impact investors, you can imagine that we attract very purpose-driven founders. Case in point. And increasingly we're finding that is that being really self-aware about the power that you have as a founder, especially of a unicorn, of a hypergrowth company, and the impact that you can have is becoming table stakes for running a company in the 21st century. Your employees care, the market cares. And so that's the conversation that we wanted to have today is really about how you live and honor your values when you are building and running a unicorn. So each of you is doing this. And I think the hope and dream for many in the audience is probably to do the same, to build a unicorn and to do it while living your values. So we're going to spin through each of you to hear what your values are as a company. And then a super brief example of what that actually looks like in action. So I have your values up behind. So we'll start with Iman. So the values are there, so you can spin through those real quick. But what I really love for folks to understand is maybe one quick example of what that looks like in action for you. Sure.

Yeah. So this is a set of our values and we, we created our values at the very beginning when we were, when we started the company in 2017, when we were only two co-founders. So a few of them are, you know, customer obsession. Do whatever you can to delight users.

Speed.

Move as quickly as humanly possible. Deliver results. So this is a pretty data-driven company. Stuff needs to get— things need to get measured. So look at inputs, outputs, deliver results. Disagree and commit is probably one of our— one of my favorite values, where we really want everybody to have the obligation to dissent and to be able to disagree in a the environment is safe for debate and discussion in order to make the best decisions for the customers or for the business instead of making decisions based on egos and titles and other things like that. And then ownership. You really need to own your work and everybody needs to act like a CEO. When you're a CEO, the buck does stop with you. And so if everybody's operating in that way, that tends to help. As far as a specific example, You know, we launched in the northeastern part of this country in last year, towards the end of last year. And, you know, we're building a two-sided marketplace, so there is a geographic component to our business. And honestly, like, the east— the northeastern part of this marketplace was not functioning anywhere near as well as the west or the south. And, you know, and we didn't know why. So, like, a lot of these values were implemented right away, where we had to, you know, we had to do whatever we can to delight those users, including, you know, things that were manual that we had to get done. We had to very rapidly scale up our operations teams, for example, which, you know, meant moving with speed. Things did— we discovered that a lot of our analytics weren't as robust as they should have been. And then certainly there was a lot of ambiguity going on, which is where disagree and commit comes in. So that's where you have the discussions, the debates, and so on about what to do. And then ultimately we have to commit, make a decision, and move on. And then it really did take every leader, including, you know, the middle managers and other, you know, leaders lower down in the organization too, to operate like owners in order to get us out of that. So thankfully we got out of it, but you know, it's the framework that these values provide enabled us to really turn around some of the employer and nurse experiences that were not as good as we than we were hoping in the Northeast.

I love that example because it's how you use the values to understand what to focus on and where to lean in, and then also how you go about executing against that priority. So it really pulls through sort of the decision and the aftermath.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you probably will comment on the same. I mean, the values get really tested when things are going wrong. Yep.

Yes. Yeah, it is. It's easy to say you're living your values when everything is roses, but yeah. Okay, great. So let's go to you, Shoaib. Tell us about Modus values and an example of when one of those values has been used in action.

Yeah, we have 4 values: own it, less but better, build trust, and unlock potential. And some of these are obvious. Uh, perhaps one of them is less obvious, uh, or two. Uh, and so I'm gonna focus on "less but better." Uh, I think this one really stands out because my general take on company building is, uh, you have to do a few things incredibly well, um, before you ever have an opportunity to do more. If you can't solve that very meaningful problem for that customer, you won't ever have the potential to expand and build a platform to solve multiple products, or build multiple products, solve multiple problems. And so the idea of less but better, which is fundamentally rooted in essentialism, that there's few things that really matter, holds incredibly true for company building. And it's one thing that, you know, you're constantly challenged on, right? 'Cause as you are more successful, you get more resources, you get more capital, And there's always distractions and shiny objects. And actually in 2018, I think we actually fell victim to this. We started a whole new business line. We have a hardware and software-enabled SaaS business that's very good, growing very fast. We started a new marketplace business. And it was very high potential. It fit our founding narrative. It was the right story. And it— actually scaled pretty rapidly to north of a $100 million run rate in something like 18 months. But we realized, actually, that it was consuming an incredible amount of organizational energy and capital to continue to scale it, and that was coming at, you know, the expense of our core business, which actually, you know, is very high margin, compounds at a very high rate, incredibly high a very durable revenue stream, and had lots of potential still to be realized. And so we made the very hard decision, actually, of shutting that business down completely. You know, going from a $100 million run rate to zero on that product line, on that business line. And it was really tied back to that concept of less but better. And doing so allowed us to channel all of our energy and operational resources and actually R&D resources toward that core hardware and software business, and that reaccelerated growth dramatically and has been incredibly value generative for the company. And so, yeah, less but better rings true for me. I think about it constantly, 'cause every single day as a CEO, you're gonna be confronted with new opportunities and new shiny objects.

That— you're giving me flashbacks to when I was a CEO as well. Um, because one of the things that you realize is you see the problem so closely and you see all the various solutions and it can be so tempting to want to go out and build those additional solutions to the problem. So I love that you have actually enshrined in a value this notion of focus, um, which I think can be incredibly challenging when you're really close to the problem and when you have the resources to solve it.

Yeah. It's particularly tempting when you have the capability, you know you can solve that problem. But I think the lesson is, you know, approach things in series rather than in parallel. You know, choose it as the next opportunity rather than the one you're going to run alongside.

Let me stay on that for just one second. How do you know when it's time to add that next solution or product?

Yeah, it's funny. We have since launched a new product line and the timing was right. I think the first product has to land, and it has to be not just at a stage of product-market fit, but like product-market dominance, and where it's a go-to-market play to take it to scale rather than continuous product iteration. There's always gonna be iteration, but like, it should be generally a conquered terrain before you go and say, "I'm going to move on to the next." And— we felt like the, the, that moment was right for this next product line. And ideally, and almost certainly, they should be, uh, they, they, they should be integrated. They should create integrated value for the customer. Um, there should be leverage in the product. Uh, and, and, and that's when you know it's both the right thing to build and the right time to build it.

So let me see if I can sum that up. You have hit product market fit with the first, and you're really looking at a go-to-market scale challenge, you can use that R&D capability for the next. And there's got to be synergies and leverage across the two.

I think that's right.

Taking notes. All right, let's go over to you, Akshay, and Notion. Tell us about your values and a time when one of them has been put into practice.

First of all, I love this topic because I feel like it took us about 18 months to come up with the 4 values at Notion. And it was a really interesting process where you're studying other companies' values. And so even listening to Motive and Incredible Health's values is super fun, 'cause you're always learning. So the 4 values that Notion has, and text on this is too small, but be the owner of the mission, be a pace setter, be a truth seeker, and be kind and direct. There's— I'll give you two interesting things here. One is that we have the two values in between, the pace setter and the truth seeker, that always fight with each other. And we actually like that. For many things that are probably reversible, we want people to move fast and actually do things. And as a startup, that's one of the ways you can really sort of win in the market. But a lot of other things that are irreversible, we want to be truth seeking. We want to take the time and rigorously think about that decision. And so I think those two values are interesting to watch in a day-to-day life and figure out which one you want to lean in more. The one I'll probably— my favorite is being kind and direct. This is one that I sort of saw a version of this in a lot of different companies. And I think the mistake or sort of at least talking to employees, what happens is when you say be kind or be nice or be empathetic, it actually gets misinterpreted a lot inside the company. People take that as a way of just being nice to each other without asking the tough questions. And so we added the "and direct" part of Notion, which was very authentically us. We want to be kind to each other, but we also want to push each other to do our best work. And that means that you are going to— I think similar to what Iman said, we are going to dissent. When you feel like it's not correct or when you have a different point of view. You know, at Notion, unsurprisingly, we actually write a lot of docs and we actually are able to comment on each other's work asynchronously. And that allows us to be kind and direct. Like I can read a doc from the product team about a feature we're potentially launching and I can weigh in on them and I can speak my mind. Uh, and, and as I've done this over the course of last year, I guess one of the things I've realized is directness is kindness. Like if, if, if someone's not performing inside the company, if you aren't direct with them, you are actually doing one of the most unkind things to them. Uh, and so, so I, I, I really like this value and, and that's, it's nice to see as we've scaled, it's a value that a new employee actually picks it up really fast and inside Notion as well.

I once had a professor that said, do not mistake vagueness for compassion, which is another, I think, version of that, that so often when there's something hard to say, we sort of pull back or use a lot of flowery language. And actually that's not being kind. So I love that. And I also love the example of leaving comments in a doc because especially these days as we are increasingly remote, distributed, hybrid, everybody's doing that. And it's often a primary way that we're communicating with one another is asynchronously and in writing. So any tips that you have from seeing that value in action in Notion where you all are probably experts at asynchronous communication that the audience can take away?

This, this has been an interesting learning over the last 2, 3 years in the pandemic is actually like, Writing docs and asynchronously commenting is one of the best ways you can actually include all your employees. It doesn't matter, like only 8 people are in a room talking and only those 8 people can talk. Like today I can write a doc and 350 people at Notion can all see it in Slack that it was written and everybody can weigh in on it. I think another way founders, specifically executives can do and actually push this value is when you see someone actually disagreeing, going out there and sort of appreciating that and sort of going deeper with them and not trying to sort of just brush off and move forward. So I think I actively seek out when people are disagreeing and I sort of pull that thread more because that's my way of letting them feel like that, that, that is valuable at Notion.

Yeah. Awesome. Thank you. Okay, I'm gonna bring it back to Iman. We're gonna talk now about how these values were actually created because that's an entire process in and of itself. Some of you listening have probably been through it in varying degrees of excitement and pain depending on the process. And actually when we were talking before this, each of you had very different processes and timelines in how your values were created or recreated. So Iman, let's start with you. Talk us through how, when, who created Incredible Health's values.

Yeah, so in 2017, I was raising our first round of financing and Obvious Ventures had led our seed round, James Walken there. And you know, they have an investment thesis around investing in world-positive companies. And so one of the things that happened was he said to me and my co-founder Rome, you know, before I wire you this— it was initial, like, $2 million or whatever it was, right— is I need you to write down your mission, vision, and values and send it over before we wire. And at the time, I'm like, what the heck is this? You know, like, this is, like, ridiculous. But in hindsight, I'm really glad that he insisted on that. And so the values were written by the two co-founders. They are a reflection of our personalities and what we dreamed of building a company around and building a— what, what, how we define company culture, too. They're heavily influenced by companies that we used to work at. In my case, McKinsey. In Rome's case, Amazon. So a lot of the values at Incredible Health are very much borrowed from those cultures, too. And so they were written very early on. And so since then, we've really like implemented the values through hiring. You know, we're assessing them while we're hiring. They're part of employee onboarding and they're certainly part of performance as well. 5 years on, it's probably now time to like, you know, take another look at them and update them. But, but that's how it was initially created.

I appreciate the call out to how you borrowed from the places that you'd been before, because I think a lot of times when it comes to values, we feel like we have to create something totally unique that sums up, that only our company can be described by. And actually, it's not the worst thing to build off what has come before and what's worked for you in other places. Any advice for folks on where to look for inspiration? You two seem to have worked at places where you felt the values represented you, but that might not be true for everyone.

I mean, certainly picking companies that are very successful tends to help. Also, if there's a company that you admire and the way they're run or the accomplishments they've had are particularly inspiring to you, so those are great places to borrow values from. But then also just like make sure to customize it for what it is that you want. At the end of the day, these are, these are a reflection of the personal values of the leaders. Or the founders. So, so definitely customization is still needed.

Yeah. And the hope is that everyone will be using them in their decision-making and all of that. So I love that of sort of taking from what works but customizing it to be, to be right for you. So I'm going to go back to Akshay for you to talk about your process of creating Notion's values.

Yeah, I'm jealous of Iman's process because I think for us it was a pretty long process. I think we finally landed on this probably like 18 months into it. So the process initially started with the two co-founders, Ivan and Simon, myself, and a few others. We were probably like 20 people when we started the process. And we started the process because in every interview we were doing, people would ask what the Notion values were. And we were all saying different things. They were sort of all sort of connected, but we were all saying different things. And we felt like we needed to codify them into something that we— that everybody could use. We also felt like we could tell the 20 people then on lunch tables, and we could share what our values were. And we realized as we're scaling, there will come a time when we won't get that opportunity to do that to the next employee. So we started this 18 months ago. I would say looking back, we studied a lot of companies, and there's some really good ones that didn't make it to the list. I would say there's probably 2, 3 things, 2, 3 mistakes we made along those 18 months. I would say the first one was that we had too many. I think the original draft I think had maybe 8 or something, and nobody could remember all 8. Uh, so, so that was one. I think the second one was, I think it was very aspirational, but it wasn't authentically Notion. So you could put those aspirational values down, but if you're not really seeing them around you being used, or you can't really point to that, it felt like just something on a slide deck or something on your walls, but not living through them. Um, and then I would say the last thing is, um, I think as we scaled, we, we, We got a lot of employee feedback. So we did actually launch first version and we got a lot of feedback about some that people were more connected with, some others that weren't. And it's a tough process because I think everybody has a very specific point of view on this. And so finally we landed on these four because not only are they authentically Notion, but they're also easy to remember. I once tweeted like when we're looking for Notion, like the next, Notino is what we call the next employee. You know, we're looking for people who are owners of the mission, pace setters, truth seekers, kind and direct, which is like, you know, it's within 140 characters. I can sort of look for this person. And then finally, I think we not only stopped at the values, but we also thought of rituals that reinforce these values. So we thought a lot about like, how do we use these values in recruiting? How do we use these values in our all hands? How do we use these values in the day-to-day decision-making? And so today I feel pretty good about these four. It feels timeless, it feels authentically Notion, but it was a long process for us and sometimes painful 'cause you know, you could be staring at these for a while and it's a little bit like sort of figuring out your life's purpose, like problem is like, okay, like what are the values of a company? We took it very seriously, and we sort of feel happy about where we are, but it was— it took a long time for us.

So Iman and her co-founder created the values, the two of them, and they're a very strong reflection of them. And you created the values with this whole group of folks. How much would you say your personal values and Notion's values overlap? What's the relationship between them? Between those two?

[FOREIGN LANGUAGE] I think at the core, company's values is an extension of founders' values. I think it has to be true, otherwise I feel like it wouldn't work. So it has to be compatible. But one of the things that happens is when you are 50, 100 people, you are also trying to involve them in the process and make sure that this is extending beyond the founders. My personal values very much align with these values. Otherwise I wouldn't be working at Notion. And in many ways also values is a filtering mechanism, right? For the next employee, they're looking at this and feel like they can live with these values. And if they do so, they sort of self-select into working at Notion.

Yeah. Okay, I have several follow-up questions for the three of you, but I'm gonna first go to Shwabe. I have to go backwards. There we go. Because you just redrafted your values. So talk to us about that process and the difference between the original and the redrafted values and who was involved in the original drafting and the redrafting.

Yeah. So we, the first time we, we really were intentional and documented our values was in like 2015. And this is when the company was going from a few people in a room to, people in many different rooms, and where you couldn't turn around and, you know, just talk about what mattered, and where you had to be really intentional about two things. What beliefs— what behaviors do we believe allow us to accomplish our mission and win? And then what actions are we actually exhibiting every day that allow us to win? Um, and, and beliefs and actions, uh, are really important. I mean, corporate culture is super mimetic. Uh, you know, the, the, uh, what, what you do is what other people will follow. No matter what you say, it's gonna be about what you do. Um, and hopefully those align. Uh, and so you have to make sure that the, uh, beliefs align with, uh, those, those actions that you're continuously exhibiting and constantly, uh, engaging with your team around. Um, and so we, we took the first, uh, attempt at drafting values. This was 2015. And then we had a pretty major, I would say, next act in the company. And that was renaming and rebranding and kind of evolving the corporate and the company narrative. The company's name used to be Keep Truckin'. It was perfect at the time we started the company. It became a constraint pretty quickly thereafter. And we knew we needed to change the name. And so we used that as an opportunity to really think, what are the beliefs and behaviors and actions that we think will enable the next sort of chapter of success for the company? What's gonna allow us to win in the future? And this is where it wasn't a "Let's go and start from scratch, tear it down, rebuild it." It was, "Let's update these and evolve these for the company we are today and the company we want to become in the future." And so there is an element of aspiration. What are the behaviors that will get us to the next stage? But also, you have to intersect that with the reality of, you know, what you do today. And so we, number one, wanted to simplify and make sure they were memorable, actionable, and still tied back to where we came from. And so we went through this process of, you know, a number of people, the exec team plus a number of kind of champions of our culture culture, very long-time team members. We all got in a room and we simply put on paper what are the behaviors that we believe allow us to win and what are the actions that we reward at the company. And we clustered those. Themes emerged. And then we tried to make them memorable and make the naming and the actual, you know, the verbiage both memorable, simple, but inclusive of those key behaviors and actions.

So what do we need to win? And then what do we reward? Or how do you thought about it?

What actions do we reward?

What actions do we reward? I love that. Okay, Iman, I'm curious, listening to Shoaib talk about their refresh, as you just mentioned, maybe it's time for us to refresh our values. Like what's your reaction listening to him?

Yeah, I mean, so we do need to refresh them. We just haven't started the work yet. But I'm just basically gonna borrow the same process, the same ideas, yeah.

[Speaker] Okay, so I wanna survey the three of you. When do you think, for our audience, is the right time to create your values, and how many is the optimal number of values, and who should be in the room when they're created?

Yeah, so I, I think values should be created as early as possible. They are the operating system of the company. They're how we work together. They're how we make decisions. So the earlier that's set up, the better. It, as a, as a CEO or any company leader, it does help drive alignment, right? And that's one of the most challenging things that you're doing while you're, while you're scaling or while you're working is just making sure everybody's aligned and And it's important that, you know, people are making decisions and acting with these values, even if you're not in the room.

[Speaker:BEN COLLINS-SUSSMAN] Yeah. Going back to the idea of documentation for, let's call it, product reviews or your strategy, which allows for better alignment, better asynchronous communication, better editing and input, I think similarly you want to be really intentional and actually document your operating system for the company, which really is your values. What are the things, what are the behaviors and actions that we all agree we're gonna do together. And, yeah, I mean, the earlier the better, I think, is right. Documenting is almost always good. It clarifies your own thought, really. And then who's in the room? If it's a small company, I think everybody. I mean, those— if it's 7, 10 people, you can actually include everyone in that process. Obviously, that doesn't scale infinitely, but— Getting the people that have the most context, um, are obviously the leaders of the company, because they are going to— what they do will be followed. So making sure that they're aligned, or if they're misaligned, that's pretty revealing. Um, I think getting the right people is important, um, and— but doing it earlier is better.

I think, like, if you are starting a company and the founders can put down their own personal values, I think that's actually a great starting point for the company values. And then I think if you can put that down, maybe you can, maybe when you're a little bit larger, just check if that is actually the culture that's emerged inside the company, I think would be great. I think ideally you can keep it to 3 to 5 values. I think anything more feels like hard to remember. And then I think something that Shoaib said that really resonated with me is that actually picking the right words, like even looking at Motive's one, like it's something that's very easy to remember, easy to act on. This is something that people feel like they got to the right value, but then they don't spend enough time to actually figure out the right words inside the company. And so that last part is super valuable.

[Speaker] Great. So, One of the things that I had asked you all to reflect on leading up to today is not just the backwards-looking pieces of how you created your values and sort of how they showed up in your work, but also to look ahead. The three of you are building some of the most influential companies that are out there today. You're crossed into unicorn status. You've got hundreds of people working for you. You're creating products that thousands of people use. And you're doing this while using your values, living your values, finding partners aligned with your values like Base10 to help embed purpose on the cap table. And we're actually seeing this at Base10. At Space 10 more and more, both with other advancement initiative companies that are incredibly mission-driven, but also even with some of our early-stage companies. We have a company, Chili Piper, that created a foundation really early in their existence to start to weave impact into their growth. So I'm curious what advice you all have for folks in the audience who have ambitions to build influential SaaS companies. How have you been able to live your values while building in hypergrowth, which is no small feat? So in any order, I can go first.

There's, you know, when you're growing very rapidly, the values do get tested, right? And I have two specific examples just to highlight and to share. First is just when attracting the right talent, right? So employees today, there's so many studies that show this, but the knowledge workers we're trying to hire today, particularly millennials, Gen Z, they really care about company missions and values. They, they care about the purpose of what they're doing and, and where they're working. And so ensuring that the values are in place and also are enforced, they're not just words on a page, but like people are actually acting with it, does actually help attract talent and, and get the right talent. And that is honestly one of the number one things you do as a leader is try to get the right people on the team.

right?

The second thing that happens as you're, that we notice as we are rapidly scaling is that certain situations happen that are sort of like an assault on your values. And it's up to you as a leader to protect your values. So for example, some big shot executive joins. They look at the list of values and they're, you know, within a few months they start talking about wanting to change the values. It's like, no, no, no, no, no. I know you came from a different culture and a different set of values, But we need, we need you to conform to what our values and what our culture is. Another thing that can happen is a team within the company is like, you know, we're gonna, we're also gonna draft our own set of values that's specific to our team. Again, you just, you have to say, you know, no. I mean, your team has to align with the rest of the company's values. You can't go off on your own creating your own set of values. So these are like some of the things that can happen unexpectedly or insidiously that you have to really, really protect. And, you know, sometimes it does lead to difficult conversations in order to maintain your values.

I love that. Draft your values, use your values, protect your values.

I'll maybe double down on that. I mean, the values have to be in service of the business and they have to be engineered so that they go back to the principles that will let you win, the operating principles that will allow your company to thrive. And the foundation of that really is, are you building— if it's a technology company, are you building technology that solves a very real problem that people are willing to pay for over and over again? If you don't have that, nothing else matters. And so, I mean, you could have the most ethical leadership, you could feel really good about the way you're running the company and the people you're interacting with and how people work together, But if you don't have that foundation of a product that is winning in the market, a lot of that other stuff just doesn't matter. And so that's where the principal energy of every leader should be focused on, is are we solving a meaningful problem for our customers who will pay us over and over?

[Speaker:JASON M. LEMKIN] I think building on what was said, I think over the course of a few years at Notion, I think one of the things I've realized is values is less about what you say and more about what you do. And I think what Iman mentioned earlier around just like, you know, it really gets tested in tough times really rings true. I think what you do in those times and how you act probably has more impact in your organizational value than anything else. You can also take the flip side, like when you are, when things are going really well, what you reward, like how you connect those back to the behavior you want inside of the company. Is really important. I think like one of the things I've realized is like, as an example, you know, we could be chasing a specific customer and it could be a really smooth journey and we could probably win that customer and you could sort of celebrate that. But you could also take another path where you're chasing a customer, you sort of put in blood, sweat, and tears into a specific process, took a long time, you ended up not winning that. I think you still need to celebrate that because someone really went that extra mile, set the pace, like put in a lot of time to win that deal. It didn't pan out, but I think being able to celebrate that inside the company means that we are celebrating the behavior, not just the end result.

Yeah, celebrating the behavior, not the results, and knowing that you're celebrating the behavior that when repeated will lead you to those results you're seeking. As opposed to celebrating the result, and then you can get all sorts of behavior on the way to it, which can get pretty funky.

There's a phenomenal book that really captures that concept. The Score Takes Care of Itself, Bill Walsh's kind of like, Bible. It was— the idea of inputs are really, really important. It's not just about the outcome. If you do the right things, eventually the right outcome happens. And so making sure that you recognize and celebrate the people that are doing— that are giving the input.

Yeah.

One other thing I wanted to mention is, you know, 'cause your question was like, you know, values while building these unicorn companies, right? I'm not sure if everyone noticed, but there are one or two values that we all have, all three of us have. And I would probably go as far to say like it's almost a requirement to have these one or two values if you're trying to rapidly scale and, you know, become a market leader or define a new category. Uh, I think all of us had elements of speed, something to do with pace setting. I think we had speed, you know, just around, um— it is one of the main competitive advantages that you have as a high-growth startup is you can move faster than anybody else in the market. And that does create an enormous amount of value for your customers, for your team members. It's very motivating for your team members too. And then the second, I think, where there was a lot of overlap was, um, just the focus on the users. Addressing your users' most pressing needs or obsessing over your users' needs. Those two values, the user obsession one as well as the speed one, I mean, it's almost, I would argue it's a requirement to have those two if you're building a high-growth technology company.

I feel like you need to come sit in the moderator. Yeah. That was a very, thank you for that. Okay, we have just a couple minutes left. I would love for each of you to just share one parting thought, um, and it could either be something you learned from someone else, uh, on the stage today, or, um, or maybe something you're, you're taking away that you're excited about, um, with your own business.

I can start. Um, I guess like one of the learnings, uh, at least from this panel, also, you know, the, this time I've spent at notion is to really sort of not just get to the values part, but also like make another doc for the values part even though you're tired around how you will actually use it inside the company. And figure out like what are the right ways you can incorporate it in your day-to-day life, whether it's the all hands, whether it's, you know, whether it's the way you interview people. Even thinking about the list of values you have, like how are you gonna actually find the next employee that actually has those values is something you can really codify. And that helps a ton as you're scaling.

[Speaker:JASON M. LEMKIN] Yeah. I think one thing I'm reminded of is the power of recognition and reward when people exemplify the behaviors that you think are important in your company. And, I mean, it's so easy. It has literally zero marginal cost. Recognition is free. And the return is just incredible in the form of, you know, giving people confidence that they're doing great work, driving retention, um, and, yeah, inspiring the team. And that is— it's viral. It, like, it spreads. And so a culture of recognition is so important in concert with strong values.

Yeah.

Yeah, similarly, I mean, I think— probably 20% of the work is determining what the values are, but 80% of the work is actually implementing them. And in the implementation, you know, there are additional, you know, documents that can be created or processes that can be created to support the values, right? So what are your meeting norms? Like how do you handle meetings or how is decision-making handled? And all of these things can be documented and reflect your values as well, as well as your performance reviews, your interview guides. Honestly, all the core documents around how your business is run internally should be a reflection and are really doubling down on the values.

Amazing. Thank you three so much. This was an awesome conversation. I learned a lot. I hope you learned a lot. And we're all excited to see what comes next. Thanks, everybody.

Thank you, Nora.

Thank you. That was awesome.