Notion Capital

Pricing and monetisation is a critical topic for any company at any stage but particularly for SaaS, because as recurring revenue businesses the decisions they make on pricing strategy have far reaching consequences. When companies really think about how to maximise growth and net revenue retention, pricing and monetisation is one of the strongest levers they can pull, but very few companies exercise that muscle.Highlights:- The genius of Zoom’s freemium strategy- Three simple rules to find your pricing value drivers- Notion has made a bold move, making their lowest product tier entirely free, playing a long game for market share- Making referrals part of your monetisation strategy.- Skin in the game pricing is on the riseProfitWell are one of the world’s leading SaaS pricing specialists and we have heard from them on this podcast over the years - in fact this is their 4th episode. Stephen Millard and Paul Papadimitriou's guest for this episode is Rob Litterst, Pricing Strategist at ProfitWell. Rob has worked

Lean customer development is a topic that people may think relevant only to early stage startups, but in our opinion the imperative of customer development - building products your customers will actually buy - never stops, whether this is at the startup, grow up or scale up stage. Cindy Alvarez discusses this with Stephen Millard and Paul Papadimitriou.Highlights:- Think of customer development as building your buying audience as you are building your product.- Find the problems your customers are impassioned about solving.- Use silence to draw out the answers you really need to hear.Cindy Alvarez is one of the world’s leading thinkers and practitioners on this topic. She is the Director of Customer Research at GitHub and was previously a Principal Group Product Manager at Microsoft, where she embedded customer development practices across the organisation. She is also the bestselling author of Lean Customer: Building Products Your Customers Will Buy.

Martina Lauchengco is a Partner at venture capital firm Costanoa Ventures, and also a Partner at Silicon Valley Product Group, where she leads on product marketing — a critical function for any high growth SaaS business which she discusses here with Stephen Millard and Paul Papadimitriou.Highlights:- Product marketing is all about strategy, delivering what the company needs to connect their product with their market.- 2021 is the year to double down on positioning.- Listen to your customers and how they talk about you. Learn from what they say and keep your messaging simple using plain languageProduct marketing is a critical function for any high growth SaaS business and not only is this one of the hardest jobs to recruit for, it's also one of the hardest jobs to do really well. Product marketing is central to translating customer insight into messaging that resonates with customers, accelerates the sales cycle and lays the foundation for evangelism. Martina Lauchengco is a Partner at venture capital firm Cos

Andy Leaver, Operating Partner at Notion Capital, on how do we build on the people, processes and tech to get to the next revenue boundary — the 1s and 3s. Interviewed by Paul Papadimitriou and Stephen Millard.Highlights:- Why, as enterprise tech startups grow, they follow the rule of 1s and 3s- An effective rev ops function is essential- The “people, process and tech” that enable a startup achieve a particular revenue boundary are unlikely to deliver on the next- Why pricing is an art and founders need to become masters- Why your customers are your best salespeople  For any enterprise cloud startup the journey to scale is one that is built around inflection points, which are critical to success. You need to find product market fit, moving beyond founder-led sales to go-to-market fit and then onwards; each layer builds on the previous, with new capabilities and often new people, processes and tech. Few people in Europe have as much pedigree in this than Andy Leaver, Operating Partner at Notion Capital. Andy o

Renn Vara, Co-Founder, SNP Communications, interviewed by Paul Papadimitriou and Stephen Millard.Communication is critical in startups, especially as an organisation grows. Ensuring everyone across the business is aligned with the company's vision and values, the behaviors, what matters most, the path to success. The importance of communication is heightened in 2020 as we've all moved to an offline world and now an increasingly on-off world.Highlights:- Communication is now much more personal. We are talking to employees from our homes and in their homes and leaders must embrace that.- We are all now “living our work” and that will have a profound impact on company survival and success.- Embrace Aristotle: “forgive yourself, forgive others and seek understanding.” This underpins great communication. Aristotle again: “speak your truth with clarity.”Renn Vara, Co-Founder of SNP Communications is one of the world’s leading experts and practitioners on communication in startups, working with Founders across the N

For any CEO, one of their most important challenges is to hire extraordinary people - Game Changers - to join their senior leadership team. Notion research has shown that one of the most fundamental differences between the most successful tech companies and the rest is largely to do with the quality of the hiring into the senior leadership team. Paul Papadimitriou and Stephen Millard discuss this with Hiroki Takeuchi, Founder and CEO, GoCardlessHighlights:- That one thing that has enabled us to get to where we are today has been thanks to hiring some really fantastically talented people along the way.- If you plan to hire Game Changers onto your leadership team, then you had better get comfortable feeling uncomfortable because they are so much better than you.- I look for five things when hiring a game changer. Of all of these an insatiable hunger to build a massive business is the most important.- Always raise the bar in terms of the quality of people you hire, if not it’s a slippery slope.- In the early day

Alan Millard explains to Paul Papadimitriou and Stephen Millard the principles of smart and healthy leadership and why smart and healthy companies have more fun and grow faster. Highlights:- Most companies have smarts, but “healthy” is the game changer and is a massive multiplier.- Why be healthy? Have more fun; be more productive; keep your best people.- Vulnerable trust is the foundation for high performing teams, leaders need to be comfortable showing that while they may be 80% brilliant, they are probably 20% rubbish. As we all are.Alan Millard is a Principal Consultant at The Table Group, one of the world's leading authorities on high performance leadership. He works with executives from all over the world (including the Notion Portfolio) applying those very same principles. He's also the chairman of DueDil, a UK based FinTech and one of Notion’s portfolio companies. Prior to The Table Group, he was the COO of Hiscox and Chairman of the UK subsidiary. He also has a constant desire to challenge himself, p

Join Paul Papadimitriou and Stephen Millard for an in-depth interview with Hector Garcia, million bestselling author of Ikigai, the Japanese secret to a long and happy life.Highlights:- Ikigai is a clash of ideas from existentialism, to meditation, to flow, to healthy aging.  All these come together to create a powerful meaning for a life well lived and a company that endures.- As a company “tinker and try” until you find your Ikigai. You will know it when you find it.- I would remove the word “perfection” from the dictionary!Hector Garcia is the best selling author of "Ikigai, the Japanese secret to a long and happy life."The book was published in 2016 and has sold more than 1 million copies around the world. Hector also recently launched "The Ikigai Journey, a practical guide to finding meaning".Read more: https://notion.vc/resources/ikigai-the-path-to-purpose-in-life-and-startups/

In the final episode of our “Reimagining” podcast series, Sam Fromson, Co-Founder and COO at yulife, shares his COVID experiences, rescuing, recovering and ultimately reimagining his business and industry.Highlights:- We had planned to 10X our revenue in 2020, but by the end of March, we were at about a 10th of where we'd hoped we would be, but we’ve bounced back fast.- Employers have been so receptive to our offering, based on the importance of both employee and financial well being.- The emphasis on wellbeing and preventative health care by employers is here to stay.- We are experiencing some ‘survivor’s guilt’ as the business is doing so well, but we just have to be thankful.Sam Fromson is the COO of yulife, a lifestyle insurance company that unifies life insurance, wellbeing and rewards, into one simple app. Yulife’s mission is to enable people to live their best lives, by encouraging healthy daily behaviours. With the pandemic casting a spotlight onto company health and insurance policies, employers have

Nik Whitfield, Founder and CEO at Panaseer, shares his COVID experiences, rescuing, recovering and ultimately reimagining his business and industry.Highlights:-We adopted a three 3 phase process: 1) Get lean; 2) Hibernate & Hustle; 3) Rebound- Our “winning from home” team has been very effective as adapting to the new working practices are not trivial- We are learning to make decisions for the best of the business with far less certainty than before, but it's working well.Nik Whitfield is a serial entrepreneur who founded Panaseer to provide a platform to unify IT and data security data, establishing total visibility and automating reporting processes. Panaseer’s goal is to give enterprise security teams and their stakeholders the insights they need to make risk-informed decisions that will keep their organisation and its data secure. Monitoring security controls during the current crisis has been a huge priority of Panaseer’s customers, putting Panaseer at the forefront. 

Charlie Osmond, Co-Founder and Chief Tease at Triptease, shares his COVID experiences, rescuing, recovering and ultimately reimagining his business and industry, the most heavily impacted by the crisis.Highlights:- Battling uncertainty on two fronts: operating in the industry most heavily impacted by the current crisis - travel and hospitality -  and trying to raise a Series C in a recession.- Enabling hotels to continue marketing themselves in this downturn, without beefing up their third party competitors, for whom they compete with each individual booking online.- Pick yourself up, dust yourself down, and start all over againCharlie Osmond is a serial entrepreneur who founded Triptease to help hotels take back control of their distribution and increase their direct revenue. Triptease’s goal is to identify hotels’ most valuable guests then work across the entire customer journey - from acquisition to conversion - to make sure they book directly at the hotel. Triptease operates at the intersection of travel

Marius discusses his vision for transforming the hiring and recruitment industry.Highlights:-‘Auf Sicht fahren’ - driving the company as fast as you can see ahead- Changing tactics and becoming more digitalised, but keeping the overall company strategy in tact- The ambition to become the leading talent platform by 2025Marius Luther is a serial entreprepreneur and the Founder and CEO of HeyJobs, the predictable hiring platform, matching people and employers with their best job at scale. Marius founded the business together with his co-founder, also called Marius, in 2016 and Notion Capital led the Series A in 2018. HeyJobs is at the intersection of employers and employees so it was fascinating to learn from his experience. 

Andreas Brenner, the founder and CEO of Avrios, shares his COVID experiences of making the tough calls to build a better future for the business: this experience entailed a massive mind-shift from "growth at all costs" to "cash runway and certainty is King.” We are now far more focused and as a result we've become tremendously more efficient.Highlights:- I took the philosophical decision early on to act like a more conservative CEO, to protect the long term survival of the business.- We had to build a plan that had sufficient room for mistakes and uncertainty.-Now it’s all about focus and now I recognise that being more focused isn’t just a factor to survive, but potentially a factor for us to win even bigger as we come out of this.-What has definitely happened is that the whole market has aligned in the short term around priorities of cost reduction or efficiency.-But long term there are some very important trends that will be accelerated.Andreas Brenner is the founder of Avrios, the fleet management and aut

Hannah Dawson, Founder and CEO of Futrli, shares her COVID experiences, rescuing her business and furthering her company’s mission to give small businesses the capability and tools to survive the recession and transform their businesses for the better.Highlights:Identifying key trigger points, to preserve as much cash in the bank as possible for our small business community. Emphasising a customers first, product second approach. Making decisions vs having choices: Empowering our small businesses with the information to understand the choices available to them.Hannah is a serial entrepreneur who founded Futrli to address the endemic lack of advanced financial forecasting software for small businesses. Futrli’s goal is to ultimately reduce the systemic failure rates in small companies and empower them with more and better choices regarding their cash flows and their businesses as a whole. Futrli serves thousands of small businesses, all of whom have been affected by the current crisis, putting Futrli on the fr

Mads is the CEO of Dixa, and as a customer services platform it was only natural for them to double down on helping customers work through these challenging times.Highlights:- Finding the right balance of investment in innovation to delight our customers and capital efficient growth is our priority.- We are still growing very fast, but the business is healthier in many ways.- It is no longer acceptable - if it ever was - to grow fast despite the costs and the consequences.Mads Fosselius is the CEO of Dixa, a customer service platform which helps brands build stronger relationships with their customers to deliver a better experience, by unifying all the customer communication channels and data into one platform. Many of their customers have seen a massive increase in customer traffic and, at the same time, all of their customer’s customer services people are working remotely. This combination puts Dixa’s customers under a lot of stress.

COVID is leading to a rapidly accelerated change in our business, our customers and our industry as a whole.Highlights:- The idea of a return to normal is a false and damaging reality.- Adopting a survivor’s winning mentality.- Create psychological safety for your teams and your customers.- Some fitness businesses have seen the digital light and will never go back, some can’t wait to cancel their zoom account and get back in the studio and many more will be a blend of the two.- The biggest change is the shift towards fitness on the customers terms.Conor O’Loughlin, founder and CEO of Glofox, shares his COVID experiences, rescuing, recovering and ultimately reimagining his business and industry. Conor is a professional rugby player, turned tech entrepreneur.

Richard discusses his internal struggles with the changes he had to make, but also why Mews and the Hotel Industry will withstand and indeed benefit from the COVID shock to the system.Highlights:- The importance of acting fast and acting radically, but with decency- Why tech founders can no longer have the luxury of just raising money and growing fast. They must pay attention to the inefficiencies in the business.- Moving to a simpler organisation that could withstand the shock.- Moving from sales led growth to customer-focused product led growth.- The importance of constantly making decisions and moving fast.Richard Valtr is the founder of Mews, now one of the world’s leading hotel property management systems providers, and is a hotelier turned tech founder.

Jennifer describes why category design is so important in our crowded technology markets and why category design goes hand in hand with company strategy.Highlights:- The art of category design is executive alignment.- Category designers are driving change, and their number one job is to get everyone on the same page.- Why Salesforce is probably the greatest example of category design in enterprise software.Jennifer Johnson is a three times CMO and enterprise software category builder. Now CMO of Tenable, JJ is also Category Design Evangelist at Play Bigger. Read more: https://notion.vc/resources/carve-out-your-place-in-the-world-with-category-design/

Pavla explains the importance of investing time in data quality, systems and reporting to give everyone in the business the information they need to make better decisions.Highlights:- Invest in data, finance systems and automation as early as possible.- Managing cash in hypergrowth is tough - gather all your incoming and outgoing cash flows in one place and get as near real-time as possible.- Empower your business with insights on the metrics and measures that matter most to them.Pavla Munzarova is VP Finance, at Mews.  Mews is a Prague based Hotel Property Management System with customers in more than 50 countries.Read more: https://notion.vc/resources/nailing-saas-metrics-in-hyper-growth/

Exploring the profound importance of pricing and monetisation strategies for SaaS success.Highlights:- Why failing to invest time and effort in pricing is a wasted opportunity.- Getting the fundamentals right: pricing, packaging, positioning, understanding who your buyers are, and the unit of measurement that grows with your buyer.- Understanding willingness to pay and perceived value.- International pricing localisation is one of the quickest and most powerful pricing strategies.Peter Zotto is General Manager and Co Founder of ProfitWell.Read more: https://notion.vc/resources/pricing-the-trickiest-of-subjects-with-peter-zotto/