Notion was an early pioneer in BOTH Product & Community Led Growth, scaling to a reported 30m-35m users as of November 2023.
Their success to that point was the prototypical PLG playbook with an advantage that Notion's product applies to both professional and personal use cases, providing a distinct advantage to PLG tools like Airtable, useful only in the B2B context.
At a certain stage, every SaaS company will need to move upmarket, embracing Enterprise Sales along the way.
This is the exact trajectory of Notion, making serious moves in both Product, Sales, and GTM Enablement over the past year.
Product Evolution
Fueled through a combination of internal Product innovation and acquisitions, Notion has clearly pointed the Product roadmap in an Enterprise B2B direction.
Sept 2021: Acquired Automateio, an integration & connectivity platform.
June 2022: Acquired Cron, “next-gen calendar” and relaunched as Notion Calendar in Jan 2024.
July 2022: Acquired Flowdash, an internal tools & workflow development platform.
May 2023: Launched Notion Projects, a project management tool.
October 2023: Notion introduced a number of Admin and security features targeting Enterprise buyers.
Feb 2024: Acquired Skiff, an end-to-end encrypted document management platform.
GTM Enablement Evolution
As outlined above, both the Revenue Operations / GTM Strategy and GTM Systems functions have emerged in a matter of 1 year. Total headcount at the company grew over 100% btwn Q1'23 to Q1'24, including an 80% increase in Sales & Business Development hires specifically - a team that currently sits at ~270 Reps.
It's clear they have been plotting the expansion of this Product roadmap for years and just as they see it come to fruition, they immediately switch on the GTM Engine to drive growth, adding both Sellers, the strategic data layer needed to devise GTM Strategy, and the core systems infrastructure team to bring it all together.
Time will tell how Notion's path into the Enterprise goes since they have a range of competitors across different domains they now compete, including productivity players like Coda, ClickUp, and Airtable as well as more established players like Microsoft (launched "Loop" in 2021, Confluence (wiki-based project management), and Atlassian with their suite of products that includes dominance in project management.
