Notion Capital

The best tech companies invest in real product leaders and empower their teams to solve strategic problems.Highlights:- Don’t give product teams a list of features to build, give them a set of problems to solve and business results to be measured against.- The best product companies invest in real leaders for product, design and engineering; proactive people leaders and coaches.- The best product companies empower their product teams.Marty Cagan has held executive positions at eBay, Netscape and HP, and a number of fortune 500 companies. He's the author of the often quoted and much recommended, Inspired, how to create tech products customers love. Marty is a partner at Silicon Valley Product Group.Read more: https://notion.vc/resources/what-makes-a-good-product-company-with-marty-cagan/

Melissa shares her thoughts on the importance of professionalism, setting expectations and beating them and why you should never win quietly. Because the sum of every single small success will be huge successes long term.Highlights:- As a startup grows the path to success starts with professionalism.- Success = setting expectations + delivering on them- Introducing the role of the Chief Customer OfficerAs startups grow, we see an interesting layering of capability building from each stage to the next. As they move from founder led sales to team sales, as they find repeatability, as they test and validate different models and sales motions.  Melissa Di Donato is the CEO of SUSE, and Executive in Residence at Notion Capital.Read more: https://notion.vc/resources/winning-loudly-with-melissa-di-donato/

Yvonne describes her experience in building high performing teams, hiring at scale and for culture and managing remote teams.Highlights:- When scaling teams, you have to have a detailed plan, how to interview, how to make hiring decisions, how to onboard, but you have to accept that you will sacrifice some short term productivity as these processes can be time consuming.- You must hire for culture and behaviours, not just for your benefit but also for the candidate- With global and remote teams you must appreciate the different communication styles that predominate around the world.Yvonne Agyei is the Chief People Officer at Gocardless. She was formerly the Chief People Officer of booking .com. Prior to that she spent 12 years at Google, latterly as the VP of global people operations. Yvonne has a Bachelor's in Psychology from Stanford, and a Master's in Clinical Psychology from Northwestern.  Read more: https://notion.vc/resources/building-high-performing-teams-with-yvonne-agyei/

Founders must be prepared to take themselves outside their comfort zone if they want to continue to lead a fast growth business.Highlights:-Build emotional intelligence to get the best from your people.-Find a balance between operational excellence and innovation. You must have both.-Stay uncomfortable. If you want to grow you need to embrace change.Matt Welle is the co-founder of Mews, the Hotel Property Management System company based in Prague. In this interview, recorded shortly before the COVID-19 Crisis, Matt discusses his personal leadership journey. Read the blog post: https://notion.vc/resources/staying-uncomfortable-with-matt-welle-ceo-mews/

Tae Hea describes how startups can unlock growth (find "Go-To-Market Fit") and why that requires executives and founders to unlearn.Highlights:- Why surfing? Unlocking growth feels like the transition from paddling to surfing.- Surfing to growth is a 3 step process: Catching the wave, Riding the wave and Having the right surfboard- Unlearning is critical to executive growth.Tae Hea Nahm is the Managing Director and co-founder of Storm Ventures, investing in B2B SaaS companies in the US and Europe. Tae Hea is also the co author of Survival to Thrival, breaking down the B2B SaaS company building journey. This article is based on an interview that took place in 2019.Read an in-depth report on this episode: https://notion.vc/resources/surfing-to-growth-with-tae-hea-nahm-of-storm-ventures/

Glofox mission is even bigger, Improving health and wellbeing on a global basis. That is something really worth doing.Highlights:- Building exceptional teams and an exceptional company in three different timezones is the big challenge.- The big question is “how do avoid getting so obsessed on the here and now that we miss where our industry is going?”- A business built on impact, purpose and pride.

Despite massive tech advances, 50% of small businesses fail, says Hannah Dawson. We want to play our part in helping those companies fulfill their potential.Highlights:- As a former small business owner, I know hard it can be when you are all alone.- We want to create a network effect of small businesses helping each other to succeed through our platform and community.- The one thing Europe desperately needs is a new generation of tech growth experts, if not we will all cannibilise ourselves. 

Michael Grupp, Founder and CEO of Byter, the no-code automation platform shares his hopes, fears and desires for this new decadeHighlights:- As a lawyer I was scared of the future and sold the status quo. Now as a tech entrepreneur I’m living in status quo and selling the future- We want Bryter to become the de facto file standard for lawyers around the world- My greatest wish is for Europe to realise that the future can happen here. But to do that we need more tech in our blood.

David Williams, founder of Arqit - the quantum encryption companyHighlights:- Creating global scale, making a tonne of money and having a lot of fun doing it.- My biggest challenge? Hiring the very best and smartest people.- Building sovereign capabilities to solve strategic issues for the UK

Chris Tottman discusses his hopes and fears for the next ten yearsHighlights:- A new category of venture capital. It’s got to be so much more than just a fund.- For me, calmness is success and it’s changing the way I operate.- Spinning the flywheel of success ever faster.

Build a business to be proud of, with Catherine Birkett, CFO, Gocardless. The path to achieving a successful exit is to build a business to be proud of, while keeping an eye on the end game. Highlights: Achieving an exit starts with building a business to be proud of Think about how the business will endure and scale past the exit or IPO Get your house in order and use failed sales attempts to prepare yourselves

VC money should be raised when a company is ready to accelerate: At seed stage sell the dream, at Series A sell the growth, at Series B show the spreadsheet. Cristina Fonseca, co-founder of Portugal’s Talkdesk, angel investor and Venture Partner at Indico Capital shares her fundraising experiences with Stephen Millard at Notion Capital, as part of Notion’s Pain of Scale podcast programme. Highlights: Securing the “right type of investors” is critical to startup success. At Seed you are selling the dream, at Series A selling the growth and at Series B showing the spreadsheet! Don’t go chasing unicorns. More: https://notion.vc/resources/how-to-raise-venture-capital-with-cristina-fonseca/

There is no better place in the world than Europe in general and London in particular to start a tech company, no better place to scale it and exit it than the US. Dan Glazer, London Office Managing Partner at Wilson Sonsini, shares his thoughts on US expansion for European tech and the exciting future that awaits Europe, UK and London as the startup flywheel really starts to spin. Highlight: When and why European tech companies should raise capital in the US Nine steps to take to de-disk US expansion Some “hiring hacks” to win the war for talent in the US Read more: https://notion.vc/resources/starting-in-europe-scaling-up-in-the-us/

Hannah Dawson, Founder and CEO of Futrli, discusses her ambition to solve company failure rates through AI-driven, actionable insights to help secure the financial future for thousands of small businesses around the world and why she is leading the way with a freemium business model and product-led growth. Highlights: Freemium focuses the mind on delivering impact again and again All the A’s - aligning organisational design and strategy with customer acquisition, activation and advocacy Why building a community could be the game-changer Read more: https://notion.vc/resources/product-led-growth-and-freemium-business-models-at-futrli-with-hannah-dawson/

When we think of the very best tech companies on the planet – Amazon, Facebook, Google and Netflix – what sets them apart is that innate ability to innovate. Gib was previously VP Product at Netflix and Chief Product Officer at Chegg and is now one of the most highly valued - and well-travelled – speakers and thinkers in product strategy on the planet today. Highlights: ·Why culture is so much more powerful than a bunch of rules ·Building great products is messy, that’s why strategy and customer science are so important ·Why you should never lose your punk startup risk-taking muscles Interviewed by Paul Papadimitriou and Stephen Millard. Read more: https://notion.vc/resources/talking-product-strategy-consumer-science-and-culture-with-gibson-biddle/

Highlights: The three phases of startup growth Why customer retention and revenue expansion are the most important measures of product-market fit How you know if you have go-to-market fit And why “pacing” is critical for “growth and mo” Read more: https://notion.vc/resources/learning-how-to-deliver-predictable-scalable-revenue-growth-with-mark-roberge/ Mark Roberge is the founder of Stage2Capital investing in SaaS companies and helping them grow, he’s a Professor in Entrepreneurship at Harvard Business School, the former CRO of Hubspot and the author of the best-selling book, The Sales Acceleration Formula. All proceeds from the book go to https://build.org/ - BUILD is dedicated to proving the power of experiential learning through entrepreneurship and igniting the potential of youth in under-resourced communities.

Sarika Garg shares her experiences with Notion on building a dominant industry player, disrupting the procure to pay category. Highlights: Why tech companies must connect their vision with immediate impact The role of value ladders The importance of selling and delivering on outcomes A big fan of Geffrey Moore, Sarika shares her experience of shaping their strategy with his thinking and The Chasm Group

Why, when and how to hire extraordinary people. Highlights: Unicorns hire for a far wider range of experience and perspectives, creating a magic soup of thinking The best founders hire way more senior people much faster in the first 12-24 months post Series A And the tenures are shorter as they bring in new people for the next stage of the journey

You're building a remarkable company that will change an industry - so stop hiring like an HR manager, with Chris Tottman, Notion Partner. Why the best teams are built on chemistry first and repeat pedigree second. Founders are founders not because they want to manage things, but because they want to imagine things. A bastardised version of three horizon thinking to help create long term strategy in parallel to world class execution.

Jonathan Gale has taken two of Europe’s biggest SaaS success stories from early product/ market fit to global scale. Highlights: Capital efficiency is a critical output of product market fit Choose a market in which less than 1% market share means hundreds in millions in revenue Don’t confuse constraints for objectives Emotional alignment with strategy is critical Read more: https://notion.vc/resources/why-great-product-is-the-foundation-of-every-saas-success-with-jonathan-gale/