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Camille Ricketts

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77
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2022-12-11
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2022-12-11
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  1. “They're people who are really just passionate about the product. So it's not transactional There are people who love building with Notion. They love sharing what they've built in order to help others. And they really just want it to be a bigger part of their lives. And I think that one of the points about community is that it's not just a one-to-one conversation with us. Like the big draw over time, maybe people joyed because they would get early access to features. We would get their feedback. That became really important for our product team or because we would offer AMAs with some of our folks internally. But over time, it was really because they were forming these bonds with each other and learning so much from each other that most of the time someone would come in and say, I'm struggling with this or I don't quite know how to use this. And it would be another member of the community that would help them more immediately. So it really allowed them to form these dense networks of friendships that I think became just like a positive part of people's lives.”

    2022-12-11 · Lenny's Podcast · How Notion leveraged community to build a $10B business | Camille Ricketts (Notion, First Round Capital) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “Avid users of Notion inside of our customer companies, which has become just a wonderful channel for customer success to be more communicative with those companies. Make sure that things are sticking or obstacles are being overcome. And that's been designed very specifically that way. And it has been really, really valuable over time.”

    2022-12-11 · Lenny's Podcast · How Notion leveraged community to build a $10B business | Camille Ricketts (Notion, First Round Capital) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “They're actually quite blended because the folks who are excited about Notion takes a lot of forms. Sometimes they want to host events. Sometimes they want to build templates. So we would actually have channels inside of our Slack instance for the ambassadors that had these areas of focus based on what people really were passionate about or wanted to do. And they were like a force multiplying flywheel for each other because a lot of folks would enter the ambassadors program. And then I'm happy to talk about champions as well, which is a little bit different. and then discover what it would mean for them to build templates. And it became motivating for that reason. So on the champions side of things, and this is maybe speaking a little bit more to the enterprise as well, we wondered if sort of the same DNA that existed among consumers for the most part in the ambassadors could work for folks who were inside of our customer companies. And so we launched another community, another Slack instance, for folks who were the most passionate or the most”

    2022-12-11 · Lenny's Podcast · How Notion leveraged community to build a $10B business | Camille Ricketts (Notion, First Round Capital) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “It's also just inspiring for us, honestly. Like, there's so many people who. Not very many followers, and now they are celebrities within this ecosystem.”

    2022-12-11 · Lenny's Podcast · How Notion leveraged community to build a $10B business | Camille Ricketts (Notion, First Round Capital) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “Enterprise motion for notion, like so many companies now of many sizes are relying on the consultants that first came up through our community. And some of those consultants are now employing dozens of other people.”

    2022-12-11 · Lenny's Podcast · How Notion leveraged community to build a $10B business | Camille Ricketts (Notion, First Round Capital) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “Yeah, so this is one of the reasons that I would advise any of the companies that feel like they fall into this category to start early because you need to nurture all of these different routes that people in your community can take. Certainly early on, I think that the people that we initially recruited into the ambassadors didn't see themselves doing maybe even close to a million dollars in business around helping other teams succeed with the product or selling templates. I remember really early on, probably like mid-2021 we heard of one creator who had made like $35,000 in four months selling one template. And that was a very common story then from that point forward and helping them do that. Actually creating the guide material and the networks and also the connections between the people who are running similar businesses who could help each other. That all became really fundamental. But to your point about, oh, is this actually related to the”

    2022-12-11 · Lenny's Podcast · How Notion leveraged community to build a $10B business | Camille Ricketts (Notion, First Round Capital) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “People what it is that you've created is an aspirational thing to do because you are showing that you are really well versed in how to use the product, extremely organized. Like you're self-expressing in some way. So if your product does have that element to it, I think that community is a great investment.”

    2022-12-11 · Lenny's Podcast · How Notion leveraged community to build a $10B business | Camille Ricketts (Notion, First Round Capital) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “Definitely, I think if you have a long sales cycle or a high price point where there has to be many, many, many touch points in order to get somebody to decide to buy, I'm not sure that community should be the number one thing that you invest in. Certainly for freemium products, I think for a lot of them, especially if they have what I'm going to call the atomic unit of sharing, which I will define out, it becomes kind of a no-brainer. Like I think that community lends itself particularly well if you have something that your product creates that people want to share because it exhibits something about themselves. So at Notion, it was templates or even people just creating their own workspaces and being really excited to show them off. So Notion really benefited from being a creative product. But the same is true of Figma or Canva or any of these where showing.”

    2022-12-11 · Lenny's Podcast · How Notion leveraged community to build a $10B business | Camille Ricketts (Notion, First Round Capital) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “That's a great question. I think that we were really fortunate that Ivan saw the inherent value in community from the very beginning and was deeply supportive. And actually one of my number one recommendations for anybody who suspects the community could be a big growth driver is to not make metrics the be-all end-all at the very beginning. So we didn't necessarily start measuring things very concretely until last year with community, mostly because we had already seen so much organic scale that we saw being like tied to our community efforts in some way in terms of where we were geographically expanding, how people were reporting that they had discovered us whenever we surveyed them. So that type of motion. And I think for any company that is seeing this type of just organic fervor, one of the worst things you can do is say, let's cut this off at the knees if it's not generating ROI.”

    2022-12-11 · Lenny's Podcast · How Notion leveraged community to build a $10B business | Camille Ricketts (Notion, First Round Capital) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “Or influencers. Some of them just wanted to build their own platforms online. So all of our efforts there are like around building guides or counseling people one-on-one or making it easier for them to actually achieve those goals for themselves was also a big part of this growth. And then like I said, influencers, this was something that Ben started exploring in 2019. And we were so pleasantly overwhelmed with the amount of traction and traffic that was driven by working with some of these influencers. And now that program has exploded into sort of a multi-channel effort that's huge for Notion.”

    2022-12-11 · Lenny's Podcast · How Notion leveraged community to build a $10B business | Camille Ricketts (Notion, First Round Capital) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “So I'd say that the community efforts that were very big for us were the ambassadors, also making sure that people were hosting in-person events. This really took off in 2019. Obviously, we paused for 2020, 2021, but now I just spent time with Notions Head of Community, Ben Lang, who truly is the mastermind and genius behind so much of this. And he says that they're back up to 30 in-person events a month around the world. So that really helped on the international scale of spreading ubiquity and ended up lending itself to like relationships with Station F in France, which is the biggest startup campus in Paris, so really helping us work our way into those types of networks. And then supporting those people to also start their own businesses and derive whatever reward they were looking for themselves. So we really wanted to align our goals with theirs. A lot of those folks actually started revenue generating businesses as consultants or coursemakers.”

    2022-12-11 · Lenny's Podcast · How Notion leveraged community to build a $10B business | Camille Ricketts (Notion, First Round Capital) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “Particular, I'll call out the influencer marketing efforts that were really being run by this incredible woman Lexi Barnhorn, where they were incredibly measurable, where we were like, okay, well, we're sponsoring people for this amount, these creators across these platforms. And we know that people came from that content directly to the Notion website. So we were able to draw really tight connections. So I think that some types of content lend themselves to that. And then also with community, there's certain things you can do around helping your community members report on how many people are attending, et cetera, to give you that sense.”

    2022-12-11 · Lenny's Podcast · How Notion leveraged community to build a $10B business | Camille Ricketts (Notion, First Round Capital) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “Yeah, and maybe this is a tactical or helpful tactical point. I think that when people think about acquisition or discovery or brand awareness or brand in general They're like, what collection of metrics are actually going to give us insight into this? And the one that I found to be the most instructive was net new visitors to the Notion website. So month over month, how many new people who had never been there before were motivated enough to come and actually learn about the product? And that was really the responsibility of the brand team and the folks that worked with me on community and content and all of the awareness campaigns that we were putting out into the field was about getting more new people interested.”

    2022-12-11 · Lenny's Podcast · How Notion leveraged community to build a $10B business | Camille Ricketts (Notion, First Round Capital) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “And love using the word discovery. I think that that is even a little bit like a step further than awareness where true discovery is when you have intent to find out more, right? Like you've heard about it so many times or you've been intrigued by something that someone has told you to the extent that you're actually going to take the step of now learning about it. And that's where we really wanted to play and to emphasize our work.”

    2022-12-11 · Lenny's Podcast · How Notion leveraged community to build a $10B business | Camille Ricketts (Notion, First Round Capital) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “They've heard about it on a podcast. Their friend told them about it. They saw a billboard, like all of that lended itself to larger and larger companies and teams buying more and more seats. So I think that's the power that the community had for us. And I see that also being analogous to what companies like Figma have been able to achieve.”

    2022-12-11 · Lenny's Podcast · How Notion leveraged community to build a $10B business | Camille Ricketts (Notion, First Round Capital) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “Yeah, I think it has become quite buzzy, and it's certainly aspirational for a lot of product-led growth companies and even those that are maybe a little bit outside of the product-led growth orbit. And we're seeing all of these startups, I think, also come out that are about community and how to enhance that effect. In terms of how I think about what it actually is, it's when your community helps you achieve such ubiquity and such name recognition that it actually allows you to start moving up market into the enterprise. And I know that might be very specific to enterprise-oriented companies, but that's how we defined it at Notion, was the fact that so many people were talking about this, sharing what they had built about it, honestly starting businesses of their own around it to kind of formalize the relationship with teams, that I think it de-risked notion as a choice for a lot of companies just because they had heard about it through so many channels. They had seen it on social media.”

    2022-12-11 · Lenny's Podcast · How Notion leveraged community to build a $10B business | Camille Ricketts (Notion, First Round Capital) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “I think that's a good tactical learning, and hopefully a takeaway for folks who maybe will experience that moment is that truly there's more resilience built into the system than you might think.”

    2022-12-11 · Lenny's Podcast · How Notion leveraged community to build a $10B business | Camille Ricketts (Notion, First Round Capital) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “The notion team, we know you've got this, and we really appreciated that, and that was just like a very heartwarming aspect of it, but that day was definitely a scramble. And we wanted to be as communicative as possible. So my team was really central to making sure that everybody knew what was going on, what the efforts were being made to fix it, time horizon, all of that. They've long since hired the best infrastructure people, I think, in the industry and refactored the database and everything. So it's not an issue anymore, but certainly that was a moment of stress at the time.”

    2022-12-11 · Lenny's Podcast · How Notion leveraged community to build a $10B business | Camille Ricketts (Notion, First Round Capital) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “This is something that has long since been rectified, but the first day that we came back from break in 2021. So we had all been sort of away for the holidays. We reassemble. I think it's like January 3rd, 2021, perhaps had a massive outage that day. And so it was literally like all hands on deck. We're suddenly seeing all of these people on Twitter pop up on the Reddit pop up. being like, oh my gosh, what am I going to do? And it really reinforced for us how central notion had become to so many people. So on one hand, it was kind of this amazing moment of realization of how vital this thing we were building was all the time, which I mean, adds to the stress in the moment, but also kind of like your motivation overall. And then we also saw on Twitter, and this is part of why community is such a core focus of mine, but people being like, they're trying really hard to get it back up, give them a break, or like sending hugs.”

    2022-12-11 · Lenny's Podcast · How Notion leveraged community to build a $10B business | Camille Ricketts (Notion, First Round Capital) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “It truly is. And like the moments that we were there late at night, like really trying to get something done before a big launch the next day, that's where our hearts lie, I think, to a large extent, that crew that was there.”

    2022-12-11 · Lenny's Podcast · How Notion leveraged community to build a $10B business | Camille Ricketts (Notion, First Round Capital) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “Memories to talk about, or for a while we didn't have overhead lighting, so me and my colleagues who were there working really late at night, it would just get darker and darker and darker. And one of my favorite folks there actually had a headlamp that she would switch on at a certain point. So that's the stuff that really comes up for me. Like, we were all working really hard and in this thing together, but it's like that team sort of familial quality that stands out to me.”

    2022-12-11 · Lenny's Podcast · How Notion leveraged community to build a $10B business | Camille Ricketts (Notion, First Round Capital) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “You know, I think a lot about just what the environment felt like. This was the first very small startup that I had worked for when I left first round. I really wanted that experience. And the first office that I worked in was really just like a home. Like it literally had an apartment on top of this kind of loft space. And it just felt like we were a group of people who kind of lived there together during the day. But it had that kind of homespun, really warm quality. So we all took our shoes off. There was like beautiful furnishings and rugs and we would all just sit around and drink tea and work together on these couches. So it really had that feeling to it. And then there were like little quirks. Like I like to reminisce with my colleagues who were there at the time that we didn't have like a great HVAC system. So during the summer, it was really hot. And then in the winter, it was really cold. And we would have these big industrial fans. And it was just at the time, we were like, oh, this is really bizarre. But now it's like one of our favorite.”

    2022-12-11 · Lenny's Podcast · How Notion leveraged community to build a $10B business | Camille Ricketts (Notion, First Round Capital) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “I think that that was the place where you just needed to be so on your game, like game face every single day, which is a wonderful skill to learn. And then I think there were other moments in my career where just the stakes might have been a little bit higher, certainly at Notion, every day felt like we're building this thing together and we're in this very special moment. So yeah, I think there was a mix there.”

    2022-12-11 · Lenny's Podcast · How Notion leveraged community to build a $10B business | Camille Ricketts (Notion, First Round Capital) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “Mission to the people he talked to. So definitely at the time about the electric vehicle revolution and then space travel, I think he just knew how to make people feel about it that really enlisted a lot of hearts and minds. And it's something that I've taken with me for sure.”

    2022-12-11 · Lenny's Podcast · How Notion leveraged community to build a $10B business | Camille Ricketts (Notion, First Round Capital) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “I mean, it was a long time ago, so I'll caveat that. This was before Model S came out even. So, a lot of my work was, and this is a great opportunity, but driving around in the roadster and talking to journalists and letting reporters write in the car, which was very seductive and I think maybe just a little unfair. From a PR standpoints, but in terms of what I learned, I mean, that was really the first job that I had that was necessitating just being incredibly on point with all the information. So making sure that I knew everything that could possibly come up in a conversation, being incredibly well versed in just the topics at hand. I think that served me really well, just like I just have to be like really, really, really quick and on it. And then the other thing that Elon, I think, is very talented at or definitely at the time really made an impression on me was painting an emotional picture of the vision that he was really going after and being able to convey the emotional quality of.”

    2022-12-11 · Lenny's Podcast · How Notion leveraged community to build a $10B business | Camille Ricketts (Notion, First Round Capital) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “Yeah, well, thank you for characterizing them as wonderful. I feel like it's been a quite circuitous path, but definitely has taken me to some interesting places. I started off as a journalist at the Wall Street Journal and then found my way into communications and marketing at Tesla Motors, where part of my responsibility there was to sit to Elon's right and make sure he had all the data he needed at his fingertips when talking to the press, which was, you know, deep end of the pool on the PR learning. And then after that, found my way to first round capital, where I was really fortunate to be at the ground floor of first round review if anyone out there watching this is familiar with those pieces was there for about five years, loved that team. Really incredible folks. And then they had invested in Notion really early on. And so I was able to meet Ivan Zhao as a result of that and him and Simon, and they gave me the opportunity to join as the first marketing hire at Notion. And that's what I was doing up until recently.”

    2022-12-11 · Lenny's Podcast · How Notion leveraged community to build a $10B business | Camille Ricketts (Notion, First Round Capital) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  27. “Way that you think about product market fit, you have to think about content market fit. So even though content feels like it's running adjacent to the actual product that you're putting out there, you still have to think about who is my audience, who is the audience that I really want to have, who is the audience that is going to be drawn to this most, who are they, what is it that they really need in their lives, like even abstracting content from it at all. What is it that they need to get promoted? Was it that they need to avoid failure? What is it that causes them a great deal of anxiety in the day-to-day of their lives or their work? And can you create some type of content product that is going to address this for them?”

    2022-12-11 · Lenny's Podcast · How Notion leveraged community to build a $10B business | Camille Ricketts (Notion, First Round Capital) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source