4 ms·

congrats stew! (good to see you back with a new idea) sooooo. this is a classic business strategy sort of thing. you, an AI startup, have to build Notion, fast

by swyx 4y ago

congrats stew! (good to see you back with a new idea) sooooo. this is a classic business strategy sort of thing. you, an AI startup, have to build Notion, faster than Notion can build AI features. your work is cut out for you. i dont have any suggestions but would love to hear your thoughts on how to outcompete massive incumbents.

autoconfig 4y ago
Hey swyx. Stefan, co-founder and CTO chiming in here. I think our strategy here is pretty simple (although not easy). We have our opinion and our vision on what this product ultimately should look like, we trust that that opinion coupled with our capability to execute and listen to our customers will at the end of the day deliver a product that has enough differentiated value that is carves out it’s own segment. This probably sounds a bit hand-wavy but I really think that is how you need to operate. If you’re too focused on what the competition does the product loses its soul. At the end of the day though that thinking obviously needs to translate into a set of features that sets us apart. When comparing to Notion specifically we already have a few of those that make us stick out and that our customers appreciate such as offline first support, instant search, writing suggestions, and most recently our chat integration. Btw huge fan of your new podcast! :)
- stewfortier 4y ago
  Stefan pretty much captured my perspective! I might just add a couple of related things: We have a subtle but important difference in focus compared to a product like Notion. We're not aiming to build the best knowledge or workplace management product. We're really focused on building something that helps you author high-quality content (usually, that will be shared publicly). Secondly, IMO the end-state of many of these products won't look like Microsoft Word/Notion + AI. I think entirely new interfaces and workflows will be discovered over the next 2-3 years that wouldn't have been possible without today's LLMs. The one advantage we have is no priors – we can take big swings on "risky" ideas. Like Stefan said, I know both of those probably still sound a little hand-wavey but it's part of what keeps us motivated to keep building.
- howon92 4y ago
  I like this. Keep it up guys!
- swyx 4y ago
  thanks for very thoughtful response and for listening! still trying to figure it out and let me know if theres any topic or guest request you have!
chatmasta 4y ago
Are people happy with Notion? We didn't renew our (extremely expensive) subscription. The product is clunky and slow. As a team, we never needed the collaboration features. In the rare case where we do need some real-time shared writing space (mostly just for taking notes during Zoom meetings), we make an O365 document. As individuals, a lot of us have moved to Obsidian, but we aren't using it collaboratively. Personally I just use it as a simple note taking space; I keep a note for everything I've googled multiple times, and I can pull it up quickly with a simple cmd+p or cmd+shift+f. Notion provides basicallly the opposite experience (open a website, wait for it to load, use their shoddy search, wait for that to load, then maybe find what you're looking for). As a team, we don't feel like we're missing anything without Notion. We collaborate in markdown using GitLab pull requests and Mattermost chat messages. Some of us write that content in Obsidian and then paste it into the GitLab text input (have you ever tried pasting markdown into Notion? Good luck with that!) I think some non-devs might prefer Notion, but as a dev, the idea of using some proprietary React frontend as a note taking tool is the opposite of what I want. Obsidian is great. IMO Notion got distracted with this "database" idea, where everything is a "block," because the reality of it is that the experience of everyday text editing becomes infuriating. Nothing will make me resent a product like unintuitive shortcuts that hijack my return key and closing backticks (also see: ClickUp).
- dfinninger 4y ago
  I find that it's great for keeping track of my D&D campaigns. It has a lot of features that make it great for managing that small group of people. I also co-manage a WoW guild with it. Roster, todo's etc. Great for a small number of collaborators. I don't really produce documents with it. That does seem annoying with all of the blocks. I just use Google Docs for that use case. I find Notion to be something like Evernote with Airtable dropped right in. I don't think I would use it to replace Confluence or whatever. But as a way to share my Org-mode oriented brain with other folks, it works nicely.

by swyx 4y ago

autoconfig 4y ago

Hey swyx. Stefan, co-founder and CTO chiming in here. I think our strategy here is pretty simple (although not easy). We have our opinion and our vision on what this product ultimately should look like, we trust that that opinion coupled with our capability to execute and listen to our customers will at the end of the day deliver a product that has enough differentiated value that is carves out it’s own segment. This probably sounds a bit hand-wavy but I really think that is how you need to operate. If you’re too focused on what the competition does the product loses its soul. At the end of the day though that thinking obviously needs to translate into a set of features that sets us apart. When comparing to Notion specifically we already have a few of those that make us stick out and that our customers appreciate such as offline first support, instant search, writing suggestions, and most recently our chat integration. Btw huge fan of your new podcast! :)

stewfortier 4y ago
Stefan pretty much captured my perspective! I might just add a couple of related things: We have a subtle but important difference in focus compared to a product like Notion. We're not aiming to build the best knowledge or workplace management product. We're really focused on building something that helps you author high-quality content (usually, that will be shared publicly). Secondly, IMO the end-state of many of these products won't look like Microsoft Word/Notion + AI. I think entirely new interfaces and workflows will be discovered over the next 2-3 years that wouldn't have been possible without today's LLMs. The one advantage we have is no priors – we can take big swings on "risky" ideas. Like Stefan said, I know both of those probably still sound a little hand-wavey but it's part of what keeps us motivated to keep building.
howon92 4y ago
I like this. Keep it up guys!
swyx 4y ago
thanks for very thoughtful response and for listening! still trying to figure it out and let me know if theres any topic or guest request you have!

chatmasta 4y ago

Are people happy with Notion? We didn't renew our (extremely expensive) subscription. The product is clunky and slow. As a team, we never needed the collaboration features. In the rare case where we do need some real-time shared writing space (mostly just for taking notes during Zoom meetings), we make an O365 document. As individuals, a lot of us have moved to Obsidian, but we aren't using it collaboratively. Personally I just use it as a simple note taking space; I keep a note for everything I've googled multiple times, and I can pull it up quickly with a simple cmd+p or cmd+shift+f. Notion provides basicallly the opposite experience (open a website, wait for it to load, use their shoddy search, wait for that to load, then maybe find what you're looking for). As a team, we don't feel like we're missing anything without Notion. We collaborate in markdown using GitLab pull requests and Mattermost chat messages. Some of us write that content in Obsidian and then paste it into the GitLab text input (have you ever tried pasting markdown into Notion? Good luck with that!) I think some non-devs might prefer Notion, but as a dev, the idea of using some proprietary React frontend as a note taking tool is the opposite of what I want. Obsidian is great. IMO Notion got distracted with this "database" idea, where everything is a "block," because the reality of it is that the experience of everyday text editing becomes infuriating. Nothing will make me resent a product like unintuitive shortcuts that hijack my return key and closing backticks (also see: ClickUp).

dfinninger 4y ago
I find that it's great for keeping track of my D&D campaigns. It has a lot of features that make it great for managing that small group of people. I also co-manage a WoW guild with it. Roster, todo's etc. Great for a small number of collaborators. I don't really produce documents with it. That does seem annoying with all of the blocks. I just use Google Docs for that use case. I find Notion to be something like Evernote with Airtable dropped right in. I don't think I would use it to replace Confluence or whatever. But as a way to share my Org-mode oriented brain with other folks, it works nicely.