Notion Portfolio Satisfaction Survey · Net Promoter Score: Year on year trends Average Score /10 Net Promoter Score An NPS of 80+ for ... • B2B SaaS experts that have been there

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Notion Portfolio Satisfaction SurveyMarch 2018

Creating the conditions for extraordinary success

Notion Satisfaction Survey 2017 2


Overview & Response Rate

• In order to measure our portfolio’s satisfaction, engagement and experience with Notion, we

invited founders to participate in our annual end of year feedback survey

• The online survey (which can be viewed here) asked founders to rate and comment on their

experiences with Notion and the Notion Platform in 2017

• The initial survey was distributed in mid-Dec, with individual follow-ups through Jan

• We received responses from 82% of founders (28/34 replies)

• This is an increase on 2016 when we received 22/29 responses (75%)


Q: How likely is it that you would recommend Notion to a fellow entrepreneur?

Prom

oters

Neu

trals

Average score:

9.4 / 10

Net Promoter Score: 82


Q: Can you explain why you chose that score?

The network

The supportTrust

The platform

The fit

Strong name

The teamThe experience


Net Promoter Score: Year on year trends

Average Score /10 Net Promoter Score

An NPS of 80+ for three years running


Q: Have you recommended Notion to a fellow entrepreneur in the past year?

Yes No

Q: If yes, how many times have you recommended Notion in the past year?

13%

87%

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Number of recommendations made

Num

ber

of r

esp

onse

s

Average 4+Recommendations

per founder


Q: How do you describe Notion to fellow entrepreneurs?

• Smart, supportive and knows how to make a company succeed.

• B2B SaaS experts that have been there and done that.

• No egos (although some characters!) who are value add.

• An outstanding platform team that understands "moonshot thinking”.

• Smart money.

• Founder led, good platform that actually adds value.

• Invests heavily in resources to help the portfolio companies grow.

• Strong operating experience that is useful for SaaS businesses.

• Founder friendly, want to do the right thing, supportive, think long term.


Q: How do you describe Notion to fellow entrepreneurs?

• Former operators who know how to build big companies and support you to do it.

• Honest, quick to feedback, not like another VC, full of operators not MBAs.

• The best Seed / A-round tech investor in London

• Great team to work with; truly understand the challenges.

• A VC team willing to provide more than capital.

• Straightforward, open

• Very easy to work with, the Platform add a lot of value.

• Know SaaS inside out.

• Sharp, relevant, pleasant to deal with & value-adding rather than time-draining.


Q: What is Notion doing well?

Responses fell into four distinct categories:

1) Connections

• Making introductions, leveraging the Notion network

2) Platform

• An increasingly mature, valuable and accessible Platform

3) Support

• Support though early stage & scale – board level and via Platform

4) Retreat

• A highlight of the year and referenced by many founders



• Connecting the portfolio.

• Supporting introductions.

• The platform. Lots of food for thought and useful connections.

• Entrepreneurial approach, community, platform team.

• Platform team, intros.

• Financial support to the company, CEO meetings.

• Lots from what I see in the newsletter.

• Brand, support, retreats, retweeting, some research items.

• Being attentive, asking how can we help, providing good input at my board meetings and helping me network well.

• Leveraging your network (e.g., for key hires, consultants).

• Supporting.

• Supporting business getting through product/market fit and initial scale.



• Platform, Founder Retreat.

• Help in scaling.

• Creating a platform that adds value on top of the investment.

• Bringing founders together.

• Helping it's founders connect with each other, creating a platform of support. Being proactive.

• Building out events / meetings / networking for founders.

• Portfolio services build out. Love the new brand.

• Access to learning information / sessions / support.

• Educating me and my team about later phases of growth.

• Pacing the level of support well; not too intrusive or demanding while being thoughtful.

• Strategic support & network.



• Annual retreat (even though I keep missing it I feel the reverberations).

• Platform events, helping founders pursue their vision.

• Positive and constructive engagement. Being there to help, but not being intrusive.

• Having a deep network and increasingly mature platform offering.

• Helping with funding beyond their own participation.

• Networking (external and -facilitating intra-portfolio).

• Encouraging bigger thinking

• Remaining committed and trying to do the right thing


Q: What can Notion do better?

Responses fell into four distinct categories:

1) Learning• Help us to as quickly

as possible, from each other and other best-in-class companies

2) Access• Improve support for

founders / CEOs / companies based outside of London / UK

3) Peer-to-Peer

• Enable founders / CEOs to connect and support and mentor each other

4) Introductions

• Further improve the Notion network and connections with world-class talent and experts



• Loop back things that you feel has actually been done in the wrong way so we learn quicker.

• More frequent get-togethers.

• Chaotic fund raising process experience; sometimes overall chaotic in communication

• The test is always when you're doing badly. Life is always wonderful when you're doing well…

• You’re based in the wrong continent

• Not enough 1-1 time and or challenge from Notion on our direction. I haven't been pushed back - it's lonely at the top....!

• Government links, auto industry links

• More information on the successful operations of other portfolio companies. What others do that are best in class. Creating a medium to share ideas.



• Can sometimes be a little slow to respond when we are looking for feedback.

• Global platform support.

• Keep pushing the platform.

• More opportunities to meet the other founders in a value-add way.

• Introductions to potential customers.

• Providing founders with examples of best in class: Board Packs and pitch decks.

• Benchmarking companies performance based upon financial quarterly updates the portfolio fill in.

• More transparency around decision making and stack ranking processes, so we understand what the underlying drivers are.

• Figure out how we share the painful lessons learned by our peers so that we can avoid them ourselves!

• More valley links



• Client engagement is still non-existent. I know steps are being taken, but nothing to show as yet.

• Would love to get a better sense of a positive sense towards early-stage start-up. I rarely get a response to any I highlight via email.

• I do enjoy talking strategy with the team but sometimes neglect to solve day to day issues.

• Direct founder support.

• Deep Technology growth advise for early stage startup.

• Could be more aware of non UK companies for some events.

• I would like to see more focus on proactively encouraging partnering between portfolio companies, perhaps to the extent of establishing a ‘standard’ partnership framework.

• Perhaps more sales-focused activity.

• Thought leadership that cuts deeper.


Q: Which Notion services have you and your team used in 2017?


Q: Please rate how much you value the following Notion services


Q: What other services would benefit you and your team?

• Stage-specific benchmarking for the team, the company.

• Support in building a world class employee development program.

• An online community for quick questions.

• Perhaps more on the talent side (but that's hard with our team in the US)

• Asynchronous sharing / communication (best practices)

• Help to get gvmt funding, PR, really good law firms in some dedicated areas (eg property leasing, IP)

• More Founder-to-Founder events (Chatham House rules style).

• Mentor scheme - especially for first time entrepreneurs.

• Market research data to help in identifying total addressable markets in local / international geographies. The ability to 'borrow' a data analyst/intern for specific pieces of work.



• I think it would be helpful if you had more links to Valley so as your companies scale to the US they can benefit outside of the UK.

• Client introductions.

• Input and evaluation of strategy and direction.

• Technology growth stories from portfolio companies and more external partners

• Service frameworks for things like employee stocks, plans, etc.

• I want to learn about the strategic moves other SaaS firms have made. Win or lose. Like a set of 20 Harvard case studies on SaaS firms over the last 10 years and what impact different strategies resulted in. Perhaps it could even be a weekend of HBS case discussions that you facilitate.



• Making it easy for non UK people to attend events. (For example day long events instead of several small events can justify a trip, or make a way to people to attend remotely).

• Proactive partnering within the portfolio.

• More active investor support and corporate introductions.

• Deeper dives on GTM and CSM topics with similar companies.

23

Q: How likely is it that you would recommend the Notion Platform to a fellow entrepreneur?

Prom

oter

sN

eutr

als

Average score:8.7 / 10


Det

ract

or

2017 scores:

Average score:8.3 / 10


2016 scores:

Notion Satisfaction Survey 2017


Q: can you explain why you chose that score?

• Like the concept as a 10, but not used enough to prove results so still need to see that connection.

• It is almost everything I was hoping an investor would provide.

• Very helpful intros.

• It's genuinely valuable content for our company at our stage. Provides more tangible value than other VCs we know.

• Very helpful, just in the wrong continent.

• It's just not that relevant to us.

• The specific actionable insights and advice given by notion platform team have been spot. some of the third parties we have dealt with through Notion have not been of the same high standard that is why 9 instead of 10 but not significantly worse just not at the same level.



• Great Founders event, really impressed with the quality of the content and the dedicated strategy sessions have been very insightful.

• Its great - would like to find a way of using it more.

• Network, experts, Stephen Millard.

• Really useful for myself and the team. I would benefit from a bit more personal mentorship and examples of best in class to set the bar for me.

• It's been immensely valuable to us already, and it's only been a few months.

• Valuable support that has been getting better over the last few years.

• I would give a 10 for a UK company and less for a US company.

• It's the most valuable service we receive from any of our investors.

• A great team that understands.



• I think the Notion platform is quite unique for an EU VC and very helpful.

• I believe that the platform services are extremely valuable, useful and insightful.

• I love working with notion, I believe notion's vision.

• High value add.

• It increases your likelihood of success, however you define it, and improves the ride.

• It's good. it's a valuable resource. I guess I did not put 10 as other VCs tout similar support and I am under the impression (perhaps falsely) that it's free - but maybe that's because a16z are huge etc. I appreciate that it is often better to pay for a service as the provider is then forced to deliver something back of real value. We do not receive any support of this kind from our other two VCs.



• It's a great service, but for me it's of secondary importance to having a good partner that works well with you at the board. Notion is a great partner at the board and strategic level - and that's why we like working with you. The other services are nice to have, but not a big differentiator in my mind. In other words, I would still be happy to work with Notion and would still recommend the firm, even if none of the other stuff was on offer. I should note that I'm not based in London, so perhaps the experience of founders who benefit from a local network more easily is different.

• Building amazing companies is hard. The support of a platform like Notion where genuine empathy is combined with industry expertise and experience can have a meaningful impact.

• We've tried to find tangible value - but the breadth of the Notion portfolio is quite broad and some of the experts have not turned out to be that helpful.


Q: Is there anything else you would like to share with us?

• More of the same please. Really excited about this year.

• Lets bring back clay pigeon shooting this year. I need a new trophy.

• I am tremendously grateful to have chosen Notion as an investor. There are too many superficial and mediocre investors out there. The notion team really cares and it shows. Please never forget how it felt to be on the other side.

• The Notion Island retreat was one of the highlights of the year for me personally, keep it up!

• Keep it up, and thanks for being so accessible and helpful.

• Great job, particularly with the platform this year - really come into it's own.

• Thank you! I can really see you put a lot of time into striving to be better. Sorry for taking so long to reply.


Q: Is there anything else you would like to share with us?

• Jos is amazing, and such a great Board member.

• Notion is a very 'laddy' investment house. I feel like this is going to lead to problems somewhere down the line, and that there are missed opportunities not having senior women at Partner level.

• I love the notion retreat :)


Summary of areas for focus in 2018

1) Connections

• More, higher quality, timely introductions to:• Talent• Later stage investors• Saas experts• Advisors• Mentors• Customers• Acquirers

2) Peer Networks

• Enable our founders, CEOs and their leadership teams to build valuable connections with their peers from within the portfolio and with world-class leaders from across the wider eco system.

3) Shared Learning

• Enable our portfolio to accelerate learning as efficiently and effectively as possible, from each other and from best-in-class entrepreneurs that have been through it already.

• Become increasingly data-driven in our learning.

4) Access

• Improve year-round support for founders, CEOs and their senior leadership teams companies based outside of London / UK

Notion Portfolio Satisfaction Survey 2017

Documents

Notion Portfolio Satisfaction Survey · Net Promoter Score: Year on year trends Average Score /10 Net Promoter Score An NPS of 80+ for ... • B2B SaaS experts that have been there