Also did the Evernote to Notion migration last month. It was my 2nd attempt, the 1st being over a year ago and quickly rejected- I couldn’t make the paradigm shift from notebook stacks to databases... I’m mainly in Notion now but this is another reminder about Roam...!
Loved reading your first piece and looking forward to more NBT!
re: Notion and the switch from notebook stacks to databases - I'm honestly not sure I'm there yet, but I know that I'm more excited by the Notion product than by Evernote, and I think the more I use Notion the more power I'm discovering to its paradigm.
I've heard from a bunch of Roam users in the past couple days that it's taken them 2 or 3 attempts, and then 2-3 days of forcing themselves to use the product to make it habitual.
Hi Nikhil, Love this as well as your Consumer and Enterprise write-up! As an APM at Salesforce (specifically shipping products for Quip) everything you’ve mentioned in both are top of mind. Something I didn’t see you address here (and I’d love to hear your take on) is the role of deep enterprise entrenchment in product lines like G Suite & Office that are fueled by personal business relationships and sluggish change management! We’re seeing this in the case of Slack which has a superior product but hasn’t been able to capture the up-market as well as MSFT (Teams). Do you think Notion will be able to capture the billions of G Suite & Office users that you dub as up-for-grabs (if so, what strategies do you recommend it applies)? Or is/should Notion not try after this market and specialize in personal consumer & SMB enterprise segments? Love what you’re doing & stoked to read more of your stuff :)
Thanks Sohom for reading and for the kind words! Exciting that you are working on the Quip product :).
Re: enterprise entrenchment - my feeling is eventually (in several decades) it will become a thing of the past, as products become more and more integrated, and as employees demand that the best products win.
Microsoft is stepping up its product innovation and knows its entrenchment is a serious competitive advantage right now. Microsoft could end up out-competing others with the integrated approach, but more because the suite does end up being a superior experience than because of its entrenchment.
Fair point! Reminds me of Ben Thompson’s iPhone v. Android, i.e. integrated v. modularized products argument. Along that line of thinking, I can see products like Notion, Zoom, Slack, etc. carve out niches that, individually, are superior to Microsoft’s products (e.g. Skype repurposed in Teams < Zoom). Would agree with you further since companies like Zapier are nailing the integrations space (I focus on integrations & process automation at Quip, so I’m all for letting the best products win, haha).
Also agree that entrenchment will play less of a role in the future, given that (1) integrations get better and (2) companies learn to innovate AND sell. Especially curious to hear your thoughts on the latter point — I believe that product companies (e.g. Atlassian) don’t invest significantly in sales armies which are necessary to combatting entrenchment (Slack case in point). If Notion and other such product companies can learn to nail both the product and the sales game, I think they’ll beat entrenchment.
Till then, I’m slightly skeptical. What do you think? :)
yes, it definitely takes both product (and continued innovation on product) and sales (and innovation here too - look at subscriptions vs. licenses as the canonical example) to beat entrenchment!
As I shared Hiten's post there, Evernote faded away because of poor timing of certain things. However I do not see that happens to Notion any soon because it absorbs such a variety of userbase - structured and unstructured, collaborative teams and individuals, and they have a great community on their Slack workspace. Roam sounds super interesting but more likely for a small audience who prefer to keep things more structured.
thanks Vinish for the feedback! Roam is actually I think for people who are less structured, and who don't like organizing their thoughts by the traditional file system. Excited to see where both Roam and Notion go, as well as the many other companies in this new paradigm in software that enables you to get work done.
Hey Nikhil! My name is Yash, and I am a medical student in Houston. I have followed your journey for the past 3+ year - ever since I caught the VC/startup bug. As someone who has looked up to you and the work you are doing, I loved getting a glimpse of a product that you use everyday and seeing how you use it. I also really enjoyed witnessing how you think about this product, its competitors, and the industry at large. Looking forward to learning more from you through this writing and hope to connect soon. Keep up the great work!
Thanks for the write up Nikhil. We have not met in person, but I know of you from Jess at Sequoia. My name is Deepti and I work on a product Azure Sphere from Microsoft Research.
I do want to admit that I am sharing this opinion of mine coming from a Non-VC background. I found your article knowledgeable in the sense, I liked how it introduced me to a new product, touched on the features and UI experience of it. I was also wanting to grab a glimpse on how notion is serving its customers in terms of data privacy, storage, user authentication, but could not find this info.
You are very right that companies like Microsoft might have left some features on the table, but I must admit their story for security is trusting/ strong and they are picking up the market as these features are being made available with products like Azure DevOps.
I could also relate that may be as a VC, the talks about security and privacy, might come later in the game as user retention/ acquisition are 2 big things important for the early stages of a startup and hence these discussion tend to take a back seat. May be?
I think users realize the importance of security/ privacy when the data breaches happen. I have friends/ colleagues who are way more particular about security because they happened to be a part of one of the breaches. But we are seeing an increased awareness about security/ privacy among users.
Having said that, I enjoyed reading your post and I look forward to reading more.
You're right that I did not touch on security or privacy in this post, and that it is an important issue for some individuals, and especially for many companies, when using a new product.
There's also a growing set of products like Telegram Messenger and DuckDuckGo that are gaining user adoption with a privacy/security-first message, and perhaps I will write about that in a future post here.
But most breakthrough products don't lead with security/privacy messaging and core feature set, and certainly Notion, Roam, and others mentioned here don't lead with this.
Perhaps, given what's happened with Zoom over the past few months, we'll see this change in the future.
Great write up Nikhil! I absolutely love using Notion as well and use it for pretty much everything at this point. After using it with our team, it's deeply integrated into each of our personal lives as well.
The shift in the industry was expected. Google and Microsoft were leaving many things on the table in terms of features. It appears that Notion and Roam hit different work styles. I am seeing that Notion is more a company or personal "dashboard" where databases are connected and you are linking daily journals with your quarter plan that then connect with your goals of the year. Notion appears to allow more "Design Systems". Definitely check out Marie Poulin's Notion work and guidance. https://mariepoulin.com/notion-mastery/
I am a big Notion user, using the "The Para Method" by Tiago Forte [https://fortelabs.co/blog/para/] for my note-taking. Definitely check it out if you are using your note tool daily across the different areas of your life.
Thanks Oliver. Right now I'm using Notion daily. I like the UI, find myself enjoying creating within the product, and am discovering new use cases with templates. I think Roam is very interesting for someone who struggles with organizing their thoughts within a "traditional" file system, which is interestingly the most cumbersome part of using Notion for me (and I believe for others too).
Yes that's fair - I think an onboarding call/tutorial for Roam would be good. I have spent 5+ hours writing notes, but think they might be all tangled and muddled already.
Excellent start, NBT! Now I need to go check out Roam immediately...
Also did the Evernote to Notion migration last month. It was my 2nd attempt, the 1st being over a year ago and quickly rejected- I couldn’t make the paradigm shift from notebook stacks to databases... I’m mainly in Notion now but this is another reminder about Roam...!
Loved reading your first piece and looking forward to more NBT!
it definitely takes time, Laura!
re: Notion and the switch from notebook stacks to databases - I'm honestly not sure I'm there yet, but I know that I'm more excited by the Notion product than by Evernote, and I think the more I use Notion the more power I'm discovering to its paradigm.
I've heard from a bunch of Roam users in the past couple days that it's taken them 2 or 3 attempts, and then 2-3 days of forcing themselves to use the product to make it habitual.
thanks for reading and for the feedback!!
😂 worth checking out and playing around with!
Hi Nikhil, Love this as well as your Consumer and Enterprise write-up! As an APM at Salesforce (specifically shipping products for Quip) everything you’ve mentioned in both are top of mind. Something I didn’t see you address here (and I’d love to hear your take on) is the role of deep enterprise entrenchment in product lines like G Suite & Office that are fueled by personal business relationships and sluggish change management! We’re seeing this in the case of Slack which has a superior product but hasn’t been able to capture the up-market as well as MSFT (Teams). Do you think Notion will be able to capture the billions of G Suite & Office users that you dub as up-for-grabs (if so, what strategies do you recommend it applies)? Or is/should Notion not try after this market and specialize in personal consumer & SMB enterprise segments? Love what you’re doing & stoked to read more of your stuff :)
Thanks Sohom for reading and for the kind words! Exciting that you are working on the Quip product :).
Re: enterprise entrenchment - my feeling is eventually (in several decades) it will become a thing of the past, as products become more and more integrated, and as employees demand that the best products win.
Microsoft is stepping up its product innovation and knows its entrenchment is a serious competitive advantage right now. Microsoft could end up out-competing others with the integrated approach, but more because the suite does end up being a superior experience than because of its entrenchment.
What do you think?
Fair point! Reminds me of Ben Thompson’s iPhone v. Android, i.e. integrated v. modularized products argument. Along that line of thinking, I can see products like Notion, Zoom, Slack, etc. carve out niches that, individually, are superior to Microsoft’s products (e.g. Skype repurposed in Teams < Zoom). Would agree with you further since companies like Zapier are nailing the integrations space (I focus on integrations & process automation at Quip, so I’m all for letting the best products win, haha).
Also agree that entrenchment will play less of a role in the future, given that (1) integrations get better and (2) companies learn to innovate AND sell. Especially curious to hear your thoughts on the latter point — I believe that product companies (e.g. Atlassian) don’t invest significantly in sales armies which are necessary to combatting entrenchment (Slack case in point). If Notion and other such product companies can learn to nail both the product and the sales game, I think they’ll beat entrenchment.
Till then, I’m slightly skeptical. What do you think? :)
yes, it definitely takes both product (and continued innovation on product) and sales (and innovation here too - look at subscriptions vs. licenses as the canonical example) to beat entrenchment!
I saw it coming when I saw your LinkedIn post: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6663799488592908288/
As I shared Hiten's post there, Evernote faded away because of poor timing of certain things. However I do not see that happens to Notion any soon because it absorbs such a variety of userbase - structured and unstructured, collaborative teams and individuals, and they have a great community on their Slack workspace. Roam sounds super interesting but more likely for a small audience who prefer to keep things more structured.
thanks Vinish for the feedback! Roam is actually I think for people who are less structured, and who don't like organizing their thoughts by the traditional file system. Excited to see where both Roam and Notion go, as well as the many other companies in this new paradigm in software that enables you to get work done.
Hey Nikhil! My name is Yash, and I am a medical student in Houston. I have followed your journey for the past 3+ year - ever since I caught the VC/startup bug. As someone who has looked up to you and the work you are doing, I loved getting a glimpse of a product that you use everyday and seeing how you use it. I also really enjoyed witnessing how you think about this product, its competitors, and the industry at large. Looking forward to learning more from you through this writing and hope to connect soon. Keep up the great work!
Thanks Yash! Appreciate the kind words.
Thanks for the write up Nikhil. We have not met in person, but I know of you from Jess at Sequoia. My name is Deepti and I work on a product Azure Sphere from Microsoft Research.
I do want to admit that I am sharing this opinion of mine coming from a Non-VC background. I found your article knowledgeable in the sense, I liked how it introduced me to a new product, touched on the features and UI experience of it. I was also wanting to grab a glimpse on how notion is serving its customers in terms of data privacy, storage, user authentication, but could not find this info.
You are very right that companies like Microsoft might have left some features on the table, but I must admit their story for security is trusting/ strong and they are picking up the market as these features are being made available with products like Azure DevOps.
I could also relate that may be as a VC, the talks about security and privacy, might come later in the game as user retention/ acquisition are 2 big things important for the early stages of a startup and hence these discussion tend to take a back seat. May be?
I think users realize the importance of security/ privacy when the data breaches happen. I have friends/ colleagues who are way more particular about security because they happened to be a part of one of the breaches. But we are seeing an increased awareness about security/ privacy among users.
Having said that, I enjoyed reading your post and I look forward to reading more.
Thanks for reading, Deepti, and for the feedback!
You're right that I did not touch on security or privacy in this post, and that it is an important issue for some individuals, and especially for many companies, when using a new product.
There's also a growing set of products like Telegram Messenger and DuckDuckGo that are gaining user adoption with a privacy/security-first message, and perhaps I will write about that in a future post here.
But most breakthrough products don't lead with security/privacy messaging and core feature set, and certainly Notion, Roam, and others mentioned here don't lead with this.
Perhaps, given what's happened with Zoom over the past few months, we'll see this change in the future.
Does that resonate?
Yes. Thanks for the clarification!
Great write up Nikhil! I absolutely love using Notion as well and use it for pretty much everything at this point. After using it with our team, it's deeply integrated into each of our personal lives as well.
thanks for sharing, Alexi, and hope you are well!
Awesome write-up.
The shift in the industry was expected. Google and Microsoft were leaving many things on the table in terms of features. It appears that Notion and Roam hit different work styles. I am seeing that Notion is more a company or personal "dashboard" where databases are connected and you are linking daily journals with your quarter plan that then connect with your goals of the year. Notion appears to allow more "Design Systems". Definitely check out Marie Poulin's Notion work and guidance. https://mariepoulin.com/notion-mastery/
I am a big Notion user, using the "The Para Method" by Tiago Forte [https://fortelabs.co/blog/para/] for my note-taking. Definitely check it out if you are using your note tool daily across the different areas of your life.
Cheers Ruben, really appreciate these links and will read!
Nice writeup. So which have you ended up sticking with? I am getting going on Roam, and enjoying it a lot so far
Thanks Oliver. Right now I'm using Notion daily. I like the UI, find myself enjoying creating within the product, and am discovering new use cases with templates. I think Roam is very interesting for someone who struggles with organizing their thoughts within a "traditional" file system, which is interestingly the most cumbersome part of using Notion for me (and I believe for others too).
Yes that's fair - I think an onboarding call/tutorial for Roam would be good. I have spent 5+ hours writing notes, but think they might be all tangled and muddled already.
I think Roam used to do onboarding calls like Superhuman, and perhaps still does for some subset of users? Could be worth looking into.