Lenny's PodcastHow Notion leveraged community to build a $10B business | Camille Ricketts
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135 min read · 27,442 words- 0:00 – 5:43
Camille’s background
- CRCamille Ricketts
... 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's 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 all, what is it that they need to get promoted? What is it that they need to avoid failure? What is it that causes them a great deal of (laughs) 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?
- LRLenny Rachitsky
(Instrumental music.) Welcome to Lenny's Podcast. I'm Lenny, and my goal here is to help you get better at the craft of building and growing products. I interview world-class product leaders and growth experts to learn from their hard-won experiences building and growing today's most successful companies. Today, my guest is Camille Ricketts. Camille was the first marketing hire at Notion, and longtime head of marketing at Notion. Prior to that, she was head of content and marketing at First Round Capital, where, amongst many other things, she launched the First Round Review, which holds a very special place in my heart because a guest post in the First Round Review essentially helped me launch my now career of newsletter and now podcast. Camille also did content marketing at Kiva, and also comms and PR at early Tesla, where she sat right next to Elon Musk for about a year, and she shares some really fun stories about that. In this episode, we focus on two areas that Camille was very early in, and has tremendous insights around. One, community-led growth: what it actually is, when it's something you should invest in, how to do it well, all based on her experience building Notion's early community, which was a huge part of Notion's early success. We also talk about content marketing: when it's worth investing in, how to do it well, and all kinds of tips for building a content marketing machine. It was a total blast chatting with Camille, and I'm really excited for you to learn from her. With that, I bring you Camille Ricketts right after we hear a word from our wonderful sponsors. This episode is brought to you by Eppo. Eppo is a next generation A/B testing platform built by Airbnb alums for modern growth teams. Companies like Netlify, Contentful, and Cameo rely on Eppo to power their experiments. Wherever you work, running experiments is increasingly essential, but there are no commercial tools that integrate with a modern growth team stack. This leads to wasted time building internal tools, or trying to run your experiments through a clunky marketing tool. When I was at Airbnb, one of the things that I loved about our experimentation platform was being able to easily slice results by device, by country, and by user stage. Eppo does all that and more, delivering results quickly, avoiding annoying prolonged analytic cycles, and helping you easily get to the root cause of any issue you discover. Eppo lets you go beyond basic click-through metrics, and instead use your North Star metrics like activation, retention, subscriptions, and payments. And Eppo supports tests on the front end, the back end, email marketing, and even machine learning clients. Check out Eppo at GetEppo.com. Get, E-P-P-O.com, and 10X your experiment velocity. Hey, Ashley, head of marketing at Flatfile. How many B2B SaaS companies would you estimate need to import CSV files from their customers?
- NANarrator
At least 40%.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
And how many of them screw that up, and what happens when they do?
- NANarrator
Well, based on our data, about a third of people will consider switching to another company after just one bad experience during onboarding. So if your CSV importer doesn't work right, which is super common considering customer files are chock full of unexpected data and formatting, they'll leave.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
I am zero percent surprised to hear that. I've consistently seen that improving onboarding is one of the highest leverage opportunities for both sign-up conversion and increasing long-term retention. Getting people to their aha moment more quickly and reliably is so incredibly important.
- NANarrator
Totally. It's incredible to see how our customers like Square, Spotify, and Zuora are able to grow their businesses on top of Flatfile. It's because flawless data onboarding acts like a catalyst to get them and their customers where they need to go, faster.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
If you'd like to learn more or get started, check out Flatfile at Flatfile.com/Lenny. Camille, welcome to the podcast.
- CRCamille Ricketts
Hello there. Thank you so much for having me.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Absolutely. My pleasure. You have such a fascinating background working at so many world-class companies, with so many fascinating people. Could you just take a minute to talk about some of the wonderful things you've done in your career, just to set a little context for folks?
- CRCamille Ricketts
Yeah. Um, well, thank you for characterizing them as wonderful. (laughs)
- LRLenny Rachitsky
It's true.
- CRCamille Ricketts
I feel like it's been a quite circuitous path, um, 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 is, 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
- 5:43 – 7:38
What it was like working with Elon Musk
- CRCamille Ricketts
recently.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
I love that Elon tidbit. I like that it was on his right, like his right-hand person.
- CRCamille Ricketts
(laughs)
- LRLenny Rachitsky
What was that like, and is there something that you learned working alongside Elon, sitting next to Elon, about operating, working, that maybe you've taken to other places you worked at?
- CRCamille Ricketts
I mean, it was a long time ago, so I'll caveat that. Um, 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 ride in the car, which was very seductive, and I think maybe just a little unfair from a PR standpoint. 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 the 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.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Would you say that was the most stressful place you worked, or have you found more stress post-Elon?
- CRCamille Ricketts
I think that that was the place where you just needed to be s- 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, you know, we're in this very special moment. So yeah, I
- 7:38 – 12:16
Working at Notion in the early days
- CRCamille Ricketts
think there was a mix there.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
So speaking of Notion, I think you mentioned this, and if not, you were the first marketing hire at Notion, is that right?
- CRCamille Ricketts
Yes.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
What employee number was that?
- CRCamille Ricketts
I was number 11.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Wow.
- CRCamille Ricketts
Yeah.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
And how-
- CRCamille Ricketts
So it was really a small squad of folks at the time.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
And how big are they now, roughly, would you say?
- CRCamille Ricketts
So last I heard, I think that they were around 400, maybe a little over 400.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Amazing. And I think they're worth, I don't know, last valuation was like $10 billion, so there's been a- quite the journey. Must have been quite the adventure being at Notion during this time.
- CRCamille Ricketts
Yeah.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
What's maybe the most, I don't know, tangible memory of working at Notion in the early days? What was it like early day Notion?
- CRCamille Ricketts
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. Um, 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 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.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
(laughs)
- CRCamille Ricketts
And one of my favorite folks there actually had a headlamp that she would switch on at us like 3:00 in the evening.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Oh my God. (laughs)
- CRCamille Ricketts
So that's the stuff that really comes up for me. Like, we were all working really hard and, like, in this thing together, but it's like that team sort of familial quality that stands out to me.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
I love how some of these earliest moments where it feels like, "What the hell are we doing? We have- we have to wear headlamps."
- CRCamille Ricketts
(laughs) Where like- it's like super hot. Like, when you're in it, you're like, "This- this isn't maybe how st- our startup should be going," and it feels, like, really painful and hard. But looking back, it's always, like, the best memories, those hardships. It's the best. It truly is. And like the moments that we were there, like, late at night, like, really trying to get something done before a big launch the next day, that's where, like, our hearts lie, I think, to a large extent, that crew that was there.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
On that note, and we were talking about stress working with Elon, and he talked about Notion had a different kind of stress, what's maybe the most stressful memory you have of working at Notion? Whatever you can share.
- CRCamille Ricketts
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, you know, 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 gonna do?" You know? 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 to 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 s- ma- making sure that everybody knew what was going on, what w- the efforts were being made to fix it, time horizon, all of that. So, they've long since hired like 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- a moment of- of stress at the time.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
It- it's interesting looking at those times like when you're in it, you're like, "We are gonna die. We're down. People will stop using Notion. We're in big trouble," when really people always come back if it's an awesome product. If it's not, like I think Atlassian was down for like a week, Jira or Confluent, and people come back if it's an awesome product.
- CRCamille Ricketts
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.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
So speaking of community, you talked about just how important that was during
- 12:16 – 15:48
What is community-led growth?
- LRLenny Rachitsky
this time and then just in general. I was doing research on, on you and things that you've done over your career to prep for this podcast, and I found there's two areas that you've kind of led the charge on and were ahead of the curve on and in part helped innovate. One is community-led growth, and two is content marketing in, in a big way. And so, I wanted to focus a lot of our chat on these two areas. So, community-led growth, it feels like a very buzzy topic on Twitter. Everyone's always talking about how the future of growth is community, you gotta build a community, you gotta be community-led and all these things.
- CRCamille Ricketts
Yep.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
And so I want to try to make this concept concrete and help people understand, should they invest in community? How can community help you? When does it make sense to? When does it not make sense to invest? And so maybe just as a first question, just what, what is community-led growth? What does that actually mean as a concept?
- CRCamille Ricketts
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 you, we're seeing, like, 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. Um, and I know that 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'd seen it on social media, 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.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
It sounds like a lot of the way you're describing it is basically awareness, aware- brand awareness is what you found to be maybe the most useful element of this community that you built around Notion.
- CRCamille Ricketts
I love using the word discovery, because I think that that is even a little bit, like, a step further than awareness, where, like, 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 gonna take the step of, of now learning about it, and that's where we really wanted to, to play and to emphasize our work.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Got it. So, it sounded like the KPI/OKR of your team was get more people aware and kind of excited to un- explore Notion.
- CRCamille Ricketts
Yeah, and maybe this is a tactical or helpful tactical point.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Yeah.
- CRCamille Ricketts
I think that when people think about, like, acquisition or discovery or brand awareness or brand in general, they're like, "What collection of metrics are actually gonna 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.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
So, that begs the question, did you have any clever ways of, uh, attributing
- 15:48 – 16:35
How Notion measured the impact of marketing efforts
- LRLenny Rachitsky
that new traffic to stuff your team did versus, I don't know, the SEO team or other teams?
- CRCamille Ricketts
In 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, 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.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
So, you may be already answering this question, but I'm curious what
- 16:35 – 18:24
The most successful community efforts at Notion
- LRLenny Rachitsky
efforts had the most impact to achieve these goals that you had of creating more awareness and discovery, motivation, and things like that. Like, what, what actually worked?
- CRCamille Ricketts
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 Notion's 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. Um, 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, uh, 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 course makers or influencers. Some of them just wanted to build their own platforms online. So, all of our efforts there, like around building guides or counseling people one-on-one or making it easier for them to, 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, a multi-channel...... uh, effort. That's, that's huge for Notion.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Awesome. The influencers makes a lot of sense. I want to learn more about this ambassador program
- 18:24 – 19:52
Why metrics aren’t always necessary for community growth
- LRLenny Rachitsky
and what that was about, but with events and maybe just broadly, I imagine a lot of founders might be listening and they're like, "Yeah, this all sounds awesome, but, like, how do you know if it's doing anything?" Like, the sound of, like, events, that would be great, but, like, how much is it worth investing? How much time and attention does it take? How do we know if this is actually ROI positive? Is there anything you learned there about just like, like is it a founder must believe in this as a thing that is probably gonna work sort of thing? Or is there something you found to convince people like, "Yes, this is how you can know it's working"?
- CRCamille Ricketts
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, uh, 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."
- LRLenny Rachitsky
I imagine internally, there's just like, obviously this is good. We may not be able to
- 19:52 – 21:34
When it makes sense to invest in community-led growth
- LRLenny Rachitsky
measure it, but it feels like this is very good for Notion. It feels like especially for a prosumer product like Notion, it makes a lot of sense because it's driven by people using it and then they bring it into the company, like you said. Maybe it's less ROI positive for just like full-on enterprise products. Do you have any thoughts there and just is this like a great strategy for prosumery enterprise products more so than, I don't know, more enterprise-y?
- CRCamille Ricketts
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 f- for a lot of them, especially if they have what I'm gonna call the atomic unit of sharing, which I will define out, (laughs) uh, it becomes kind of a no- 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 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 products, extremely organized. Like, you're, 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.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
You touch on this point, and I don't think people realize this, but you can make a- a lot
- 21:34 – 23:12
How creators make money using Notion
- LRLenny Rachitsky
of money creating templates on Notion, right? That's like a whole ecosystem.
- CRCamille Ricketts
Exactly.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
C- can you talk about that?
- CRCamille Ricketts
Yes.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
'Cause I don't think a lot of people know this.
- CRCamille Ricketts
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, you know, 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, like actually creating the, 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 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.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
That's incredible. There's no better way to motivate someone to evangelize Notion than have their income rely on Notion.
- CRCamille Ricketts
And it's also just inspiring for us, honestly. Like, there's so many people who started off with not very many followers and now they are celebrities within this, this ecosystem.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
So maybe coming back to the ambassador program, that's separate from this selling Notion
- 23:12 – 27:20
The Ambassador Program and Champions Program at Notion
- LRLenny Rachitsky
templates ecosystem, right? What is the ambassador program?
- CRCamille Ricketts
They're actually, like, quite blended, um, because the folks who are excited about Notion, it takes a lot of forms. Sometimes they wanna host events. Sometimes they wanna build templates. Uh, 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, um, and they were like a force multiplying flywheel for each other, 'cause 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, 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 and the ambassadors could work for folks who were inside of our customer companies. And so we launched a- another community, another Slack instance, for folks who were the most passionate or the, the most 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.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Okay, so let me try to understand this. So, champions are basically the most active users of Notion. You put them in a Slack and help them become even more excited and make sure they're happy. Ambassador, I still don't totally understand. What, what is an ambassador? That's, like is that someone you're paying to help promote Notion? What does, what does that actually mean when you're an ambassador?
- CRCamille Ricketts
So, they're people who are really just passionate about the product.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
I see.
- CRCamille Ricketts
So, it's not transactional. They're 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, uh, one of the points about community is that it's not just a one-to-one conversation with us. Like, the, the big draw over time, maybe people joined because they would get early access to features, um, 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.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
What I'm taking away from this partly is there's, you kind of identify a group of people that are interested in Notion, excited about Notion, and then just le- lean in to support them. There's, like, people that are buying Notion just and that are power users, help them be better power users. Influencers that are kind of excited about Notion, like, pay them to promote Notion. Then the ambassadors that are people just, like, passionate about Notion, help them be more passionate. And then the people making templates, like, help them be successful. Is that kind of roughly how you think about it? Just, like, identify something that's working and make it more effective?
- CRCamille Ricketts
I think if- if it doesn't sound too reductive, yes.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
(laughs)
- CRCamille Ricketts
(laughs) I would also say, uh, that one of the things that I think Ben was best at is not putting a one-size-fits-all experience on any of this. I think that some communities get built where people are like, "Okay, well, we have this community and it's gonna be this and this and this," or, "These are the types of programs we're gonna offer," or, "These are the types of interactions we're gonna have," as opposed to, I think, a lot of listening of the people who are actually participating. Um, really early on, one of the things that Ben did that I thought was really amazing was he'd spend a ton of time just on Zoom, having conversations, one-on-one conversations, like semi-small group conversations just saying, "Why are you here? Why do you like participating in this? What is it that would make it better?" And really helping our entire team follow their lead. So, that, that I would recommend highly, not necessarily coming in with preconceived notions about what a community needs to look like.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
I kind of touched on this, that, like, if the founder believes in the power of community, this
- 27:20 – 31:03
Why founders should consider investing in community and delay monetizing some features
- LRLenny Rachitsky
becomes so much easier. A lot of founders are like, "Nah, it's just a, it's a- that's a waste of time." Do you think founders are convincible that building community and investing in community is worth it? Have you seen that effective where a founder just, like, comes into it being like, "No, I don't think this is worth our time," and then they kind of get convinced later? Or is it just like, "Nah, forget it. Don't even try"?
- CRCamille Ricketts
I mean, I've talked to a lot of different people who come at this with different impressions, and everybody, you know, knows more about their company than I do. But I do think that if ubiquity or just the sheer sort of word of mouth engine is something that is gonna be valuable for your company over time, I would really urge people to sit down and really think carefully, like, what is gonna be more conducive to our long-term success? Is it gonna be that ubiquity or is it gonna be revenue now? And I think if we look at a lot of the companies that have been just wildly successful from the start, they're people who have pushed off maybe monetizing every little thing if it's going to really put a damper on that type of enthusiasm and momentum that people have to share what it is they're doing. Because there's always opportunity, I think, later once you have that big tide of people who are not just excited but also legitimizing what it is that you do every single day. That gets mobilized in a lot of different directions, and you have a lot more options then.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
What's interesting about Notion is it's, you have high LTVs when you sell to larger companies, but the initial users are often just regular folks. And so, I think it's, like, in a unique place where you can, you have cash to spend on making it ubiquitous and getting the word out through all these community efforts because it'll pay off. And a lot of companies probably don't have that advantage. So, would it feel right to say that this is really effective for kind of, like, product-led growthy freemium products, uh, most? Is that, is that a good way to think about it?
- CRCamille Ricketts
Yeah, or I think if organic growth is something that you see being really beneficial, or if organic growth happens to be something you really have to crack because you don't always have everything you need for paid growth from, you know, either a resourcing standpoint, team standpoint. Really figuring out how to get that organic flywheel going can serve you well. It becomes this buttress for any paid growth you explore in the future.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
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- 31:03 – 32:54
Companies that have done well in building community
- LRLenny Rachitsky
effectively did community-led growth, did community well, and, and grew in large part because of community?
- CRCamille Ricketts
I've mentioned Figma a couple times here, so I don't wanna-
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mm-hmm.
- CRCamille Ricketts
... beleaguer the point, but-
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mm-hmm.
- CRCamille Ricketts
... they're certainly a team that I've looked up to, uh, through my entire experience at Notion. We were kind of sibling companies in a way. Huge kudos to Claire Butler over there, who I know led all of those efforts, and we would trade a lot of knowledge back and forth, which was so lovely to have that relationship. But they did an amazing job. I think, in a similar vein to Notion of saying, "Okay, people are really excited to create these things, and then put them out there on the internet. So, how can we just fuel that particular motion out there?" The other example I'll give, which is a little bit of a different tack is, is Stripe. And when Stripe launched Stripe Atlas, uh, not necessarily core to the initial product line that, you know, Stripe was known for and what had been foundational for them, but allowed them to build this community among probably their core demographic at the time, which was founders and startups that were growing sort of through the stages to mid-market. They were able to cultivate this huge audience of founders around giving advice and providing them with resources to actually get started and do that zero to one journey. So, while it was adjacent to maybe what the company's core mission was, it allowed them to actually create community among their customer base, because they were like, "We're knowledgeable. We can share these things with you that we know are core to your journey." So, I would encourage anyone who's thinking about community that way to be like, "Oh, maybe it doesn't have to be around our product so specifically. What other knowledge or resourcing can we offer to the people who we do want using our product that's going to be really instrumental for them, and can we convene them around that idea?"
- LRLenny Rachitsky
I'm noticing a strong correlation between, um, legendary generational companies, Figma,
- 32:54 – 34:00
How to determine the level of community engagement appropriate for your company to invest in
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Stripe, Notion, and community efforts and building community. That's interesting. (laughs)
- CRCamille Ricketts
Yes. (laughs) I'm a big proponent. At the same time, I don't think the community is right for every company. I think that there's definitely an analysis to run on that. But hopefully this is helpful for those who can identify that those are attributes they have.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
To pull on a thread there, what are maybe thoughts for when it probably doesn't make sense to invest a lot of effort into building a community around your product? We talked a little bit about just, like, you know, high-end enterprise products. Is there anything else that just like, "Nah, it's probably not worth your time"?
- CRCamille Ricketts
Like I said, if it's more of a sales-led culture that, that you have, which is definitely true of, of products that are a little bit pricier or that require longer contracts, so understanding that. But I do think the community takes on different forms. And I, I think when you hear the word community, you think of a big forum of some type, whether it's a Slack instance or something else where people are chatting away all day long. And I don't think it has to be that. That's not the only representation of it.
- 34:00 – 36:42
Using Camille’s 2x2 grid to implement community
- CRCamille Ricketts
So, if you think about what is gonna be right for you at any given time, I actually created this two-by-two matrix, which maybe I'll share with you after this. And on the axes, you have whether you have hit product market fit or if you're still exploring product market fit, and then whether you're strongly enterprise or strongly consumer. And based on where you land sort of in that two-by-two matrix, there's a form of community or, like, a community-related initiative that could be right for you. So, just to give you an example of sort of, like, maybe an extremely different form factor from Notion, let's say that you're still on your way to product market fit and you're a strongly enterprise-oriented product. I think that you have the opportunity to do customer advisory boards, which is really convening, like, even smaller circles of ideal fit users and making sure that they are connected to each other as well as you, and then incentivized to provide you with feedback, uh, understanding that they're really on the ground floor of this journey with you and that they're going to be able to have influence over whatever you do in the future. Those folks can end up growing into your biggest evangelists, and I've seen that happen a number of times. And I would still consider that community, even though maybe that is not what comes to mind for folks.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Well, I imagine, I imagine that becomes the seat of a community that you eventually build. Um, let's definitely link to this in the show notes. Can you give maybe a couple more examples of this grid? So, that was pre-product market fit, and then what was the other?
- CRCamille Ricketts
Strongly enterprise.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Enterprise, okay, cool. Yeah, what are a couple other of the elements of this grid?
- CRCamille Ricketts
So, if you're strongly enterprise and you have product market l- fit, let's say, this is something that Notion has really benefited from, but really emphasizing the, uh, champions and the consultants communities. So, the folks who, like I said, may be inside of your customers who really get it, like, really get your value, really are excited to help you expand, land and expand perhaps inside of their companies, making sure that they have a place to gather and a place to feel like they are more connected with your team than the average person gets to be, that they are special, uh, and that they have access. And then on the consultant side, uh, like I said, just making it really easy, removing friction, helping promote the folks who want to be out there, helping you succeed with more customers. Like Salesforce, I know that this is, like, a golden oldie of an example, but if you talk to anybody who was really early at Salesforce, they really went into this, where they saw people emerging who wanted to help other companies, this layer of people who didn't work at Salesforce, but saw the opportunity to help other companies.... uh, actually succeed with it, implement it, grow with it,
- 36:42 – 41:22
How to launch an ambassador program
- CRCamille Ricketts
and that's become a massive part of Salesforce's model. So, if you're in that quadrant, figuring out how to start moving people in your customer base into those categories.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
This is awesome. Maybe let's do one more of this grid, and then we'll leave one for, (laughs) for people to click into and check it out.
- CRCamille Ricketts
So, I'll talk about Notion's quadrant, which is the one that I would put, like, sort of up and to the right. Which is, you have product market fit and you're maybe a little bit closer to the consumer side of the spectrum. Obviously, Notion runs the full gamut, but I would say, especially early on, I think that that's where we saw things really take root. And that's where I think ambassadors and influencers really take off. Individuals who are gonna be extremely vocal, extremely excited, um, and where you're going to see, sort of more of this, like, wildfire spread of at least trying the product, using the product, understanding what the product is. So, if you can try to fuel that type of motion, if you're in that quadrant, that's helpful.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
I wanna, uh, come back to this ambassador program real quick, 'cause it feels like something that a lot of people talk about and, and can do, and especially in this quadrant of product market fit and, and consumery. How does this work? Is it you select, like, here's like 100 ambassadors we're gonna pick because we think they're awesome and they're great examples of people using, say, Notion, and then we're just gonna provide them with all the help they need to be successful in Notion? Is that... Like, how do you think about, what is, how do you think about creating an ambassador program?
- CRCamille Ricketts
I actually think it's pretty analogous to when you're thinking about positioning your company.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Hmm.
- CRCamille Ricketts
'Cause I think the best first step for any positioning exercise is to think, who are our best fit customers? Where it's like, these are the people that seem to be really getting it. They're paying us more. They're talking about it just organically. So, really figuring out everything about who they are, and making sure that those are the, the people that you're actually inviting in early. So, uh, the initial base of the ambassadors program, which started back in 2019 was just 20 people, and they were the 20 people who we happened to see be the most vocal already across Twitter and a couple of other social media platforms, because they had that sort of shared quality of wanting to be really vocal and expressive about their experience with the product. So, that would be my advice for how to get one of these rolling.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
And then what do you do for them?
- CRCamille Ricketts
Definitely making sure that there's enough incentive built in, right? 'Cause like we said, it's not meant to be a transactional relationship, but we want them to feel like they are having a special experience and that they are connected with the company in a unique way. And it was so interesting to us how giving them the preview of features was so motivating to them, and being able to use them and then give us feedback and feel really heard by the product team. So, that was like a, a big area of focus, and I know that that still is, and it's become even more of a robust conversation, uh, between the community and the team at Notion itself. And then also we would do these very special experiences where, you know, Ivan or Akshay or Simon or, uh, MLM, who's the head of engineering there, would be available for these conversations where they would answer questions and it would feel like a very sort of proprietary space. Um, I think that that was really interesting to people. And then, of course, like the things that you would suspect around subsidizing events. Making sure that people felt that they were actually supported by us to throw these events, and then also promoting their work. So, if you look back at the social media channels, so much of the focus is on putting the creations of the people we were working with front and center, as opposed to talking about just what the company was up to.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Have y- you ever written about just, like, how to design an ambassador program? Or has anyone written about how Notion did this? 'Cause this is really interesting.
- CRCamille Ricketts
I don't know if anything has been, like, written that went into all of this detail, but it was truly, truly one of the more magical, and I think still (laughs) is one of the more magical parts of this entire endeavor. Uh, and I now, now that team is three people. So, Ben, who's still there doing amazing things. Francisco, who joined us in 2021, uh, or sorry, at the end of 2020, and then, uh, Emma, and they are just all day every day talking to people around the whole world. Like, the international component of this is also just completely wild to see.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
This could be a future, uh, First Round Review post, which we'll talk a bit about.
- CRCamille Ricketts
Yes. Perhaps.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Last question about this segment. Say someone is convinced they wanna start investing in community, and we talked about this two-by-two, but maybe just broadly, if you had to boil it down to two or three pieces of
- 41:22 – 47:17
Advice for founders who want to build community
- LRLenny Rachitsky
advice for founders, for teams thinking about investing in community-led growth and community in general, what would be some of those pieces of advice?
- CRCamille Ricketts
I don't know if you want to link to this in the show notes as well, but I actually put together some, like, commandments for community builders.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Ooh. Absolutely.
- CRCamille Ricketts
(laughs) Some alliteration.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Good.
- CRCamille Ricketts
So, things that I, I think were very, uh, defining for us early on. I already mentioned something about this, but, like, not trying to hit a number early on. So, don't dilute the impact of what it is that you're trying to do in order to show growth. I think that that's very important to sort of protect yourself early on. So, making sure that you are learning what individuals really want out of this, uh, and making them feel like they're very seen and very heard. Um, that was a big area of focus, and I think it's what kept people really engaged and, like, coming back and feeling like this was kind of a secondary family for them. And then, one of the things that was most interesting to us that once we started sharing what was going on in the community with folks at Notion, so we would do this during all hands meetings or, like, on Slack. Ben would post these really incredible updates of just, like, all of the activities of people in the community and what they were up to every month, and it was just so inspiring for everybody inside the company that I think it all rallied us to, to do even more, I guess, day to day, and really understand who it was we were building for.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Is there any other commandments you would add for if you already have a community going, if you have something bubbling for things you should do to keep it healthy and consistently good and growing?
- CRCamille Ricketts
Yeah. I mean, this is gonna be a little contrarian perhaps, and I, I mean, this is just one data point for me, but not growing it so big so fast. Uh, like one thing that we actually thought about pretty carefully was what a rate of healthy growth would be. So, there actually is an application process for joining the ambassadors. It's a very light application process, and it really is just so that we know how many people are interested in this. And then they're inducted around... I think it wa- at the time, it was 20 people at a time every month, so that it wouldn't feel like all of a sudden this had changed, uh, in terms of how the interactions were feeling, but rather like gave everybody time to welcome the new people in and get to know them. And, uh, one of Ben and I's favorite things ever about working at Notion, I think, was when we would induct new people into the ambassadors and they would introduce themselves-
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Hmm.
- CRCamille Ricketts
... and say like, "Hey, I'm from Venezuela, and here's the ways in which Notion has changed my life."
- LRLenny Rachitsky
That's awesome.
- CRCamille Ricketts
"I'm from Hong Kong and here's how it's changed my life." And all of that was just, like, so fulfilling.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mm-hmm.
- CRCamille Ricketts
Um, that would be the number one thing I would say is, is give your community time to actually grow in what feels like an organic fashion as well. Because I think ironically, and then I'll stop rambling about this, but if you grow to something like, you know, "Oh, we have 5,000 ambassadors," which feels like really good to say, like, on a website, the conversation is actually very muted. I think because people feel like they're speaking to an auditorium whenever they say anything. I think it's because you don't really have a sense of who else is there with you. So, helping to defray those concerns, I think, is, is a good course of action.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
I've seen the same thing with the growth rate being really important with my, uh, newsletter Slack community. I don't know if... I think most listeners probably know this, but if you're a paid newsletter subscriber, you get access to the Slack community. There's about 10,000 people in there. And I find the filter of people that are willing to pay for content, like a newsletter, is a really good filter for awesome people.
- CRCamille Ricketts
Yeah.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
And so it ends up slowing growth in a really healthy way, and then just creating this filter of, like, the right, the people that really want to self-improve and value this sort of thing join, and it becomes a really amazing group of people.
- CRCamille Ricketts
Yeah. It just, it feels like such a... I don't know. There's some- there's an emotional quality to it, I think, when that's the case.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Right.
- CRCamille Ricketts
Yeah. And all of those people end up being so incredibly impactful. The last point I'll make about community at Notion is that a lot of those people, and we actually ended up launching I think a channel for folks who wanted to do this in particular, but run communities external to Notion's actual owned communities. So, you end up with Facebook groups that have... Like, Notion in Vietnam has, like, 250,000 members.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Wow.
- CRCamille Ricketts
(laughs) Or the subreddit, which I now know has, like, 210,000 people in the Notion subreddit. And those are all run and moderated by community members who just love running their own communities.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
I feel like you've achieved your OKRs of ubiquity of Notion.
- CRCamille Ricketts
Yes. Yes. It was always a goal of always a value at Notion to make sure that we were reaching as many people as possible.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
It's working. One tactical question. Where does the community, the own community of Notion live? Is it like a Slack? Is it an online thing you built yourself?
- CRCamille Ricketts
It is in Slack. Yeah.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Okay.
- CRCamille Ricketts
And the thinking there, and it still is, was that we really just wanted to be in the course of people's everyday lives. We didn't wanna be this other destination that you would have to make a point to going to every day.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
That's exactly how I thought about it with my newsletter, Slack community. Like, PMs and founders, they're already in Slack all day. And just that badge being on the app, telling them there's something to check is such a powerful feature, versus, like, download a whole new app or go to a whole new website. You're never gonna go there, you know? It has to be, like, 10 times better if, to pull you to a whole new site and change your habits.
- CRCamille Ricketts
I absolutely agree.
- 47:17 – 48:58
How Lenny got his first 500 newsletter subscribers
- LRLenny Rachitsky
my early trajectory with this newsletter life. I did a guest post in the First Round Review and that was like-
- CRCamille Ricketts
I remember this.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
That was a huge deal for me. That was my first, like, 500 subscribers to my newsletter.
- CRCamille Ricketts
Wow.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
And, and then I did another guest post down the road, but that was not as important. Yeah, it was like a big part of my early path down this life. And so, thank you for creating that platform. I was, I was very honored to be a, to be involved.
- CRCamille Ricketts
That's fantastic to hear, and exactly what we wanted to have happen. Um, just extraordinary operators being given a platform and then using it to do whatever it is that they wanted to do af- like, that's, that was part of the dream always.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
It's working. Um-
- CRCamille Ricketts
Yeah. Well, I'm very... I'm thrilled because now people are learning so much from you.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Yeah. It's an, it's an inspiration for where we're... when I started too. Just like, "I wish I could be as good as the First Round Review." And the stuff just keeps coming and coming. It's, it's amazing. And I know other folks run it now. I don't know if they wanna be named.
- CRCamille Ricketts
Yeah.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
They like to be behind the scenes.
- CRCamille Ricketts
They do, but I'm gonna shout them out anyway because they do such an extraordinary job. (laughs) Yeah. I mean, Jessi Craig Shickman-
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Yeah.
- CRCamille Ricketts
... over there has been doing this now-
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Yes, Jessi.
- CRCamille Ricketts
... for longer than I did, um, and she is absolutely incredible and her team is extraordinary and I, I don't miss it every single time it comes out.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Yeah. I tried to thank her in my... I tried to thank her in my post. She's like, "Don't mention that, uh, I'm behind the scenes."
- CRCamille Ricketts
Oh. (laughs) Maybe I'll ask her. Maybe I'll ask her.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
No, sh- I'm sure. We have to coe- we have to give her some cred somehow.
- CRCamille Ricketts
Yeah. Absolutely. She deserves it.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
So, kind of zooming out. Content marketing-Maybe just to give some examples of just, like, what are some of the most impactful things you've been a part of that come from content, creating content? Whether it's Notion, First Round, anywhere else. What are some examples?
- 48:58 – 51:20
Examples of Camille’s most impactful content marketing
- CRCamille Ricketts
Yeah, I'll give a few examples. I mean, obviously First Round is a huge example, and so I'd be remiss in not going into some detail there. And truly, like, that was a, a team effort from the very beginning. So, I joined in 2013. And again, I was just so fortunate to work with a leader who believed in it from the very beginning. Josh Koppelman, who's the partner there, who was just, um, a massive supporter of mine. Finn Barnes on the partnership team. But then, particularly Brett Burson, who was running the platform team, which is where all of these value-added services sort of live. So, it was me and an events person and the talent person, and Brett just, like, gave us all of the runway, uh, and all of, sort of the belief and support that we needed. And he was really bullish on content, and really helped from the beginning, connecting me with incredible interview subjects. Because this whole thing, the only reason I think it survived and did as well as it did is that we were able to land a few really big names at the very beginning. And then, of course, that helps you down the road whenever you're trying to convince anyone else to do it, because you say, "So and so and so and so have already been featured." Um, so that, that was, I think, just a, a big point of, like, confidence and also, like, tactically for anyone out there thinking about it, if they can leverage whatever connections they have in that vein.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
I was, uh, at dinner with Brett yesterday.
- CRCamille Ricketts
Oh my God. (laughs)
- LRLenny Rachitsky
It was our first R-
- CRCamille Ricketts
What a guy, right?
- LRLenny Rachitsky
... first round event. What a guy. That guy's amazing. I'm a huge fan. He's built an incredible platform and, and program at First Round.
- CRCamille Ricketts
Yeah. And he's one of the people that I've learned the most from, certainly. But more specific to your question around what the content program was able to do there. Certainly Discovery of First Round. I think prior to that, it was k- it was a very successful VC fund, but I think we got in front of all kinds of people, particularly in non-traditional geographies or non-traditional founder types, or all of that. People who are inside large companies like Google, Apple, Amazon. Whenever we would look at our list of subscribers, we had a disproportionate number of email addresses within those companies that were clearly curious about the startup experience, and I think First Round Review was helpful in moving them more toward that mindset. And then them obviously understanding that First Round would be, like, a great first stop for them.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
What would you say is key to content being valuable? Like, so you're talking about the First Round Review became really effective for people learning about First
- 51:20 – 53:37
Content-market fit: how to determine the needs of your reader
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Round, working with First Round, Discovery of First Round. But it's not just content, it's, like, you just write some stuff and it works. It doesn't work that way?
- CRCamille Ricketts
Right. (laughs)
- LRLenny Rachitsky
What have you learned about just, what do you have to get right? You mentioned, like, have names people recognize. Is there anything else that you've learned over the years of just, like, "Here's what we need to get right," if you're trying to use content as a way to create discovery and awareness of your stuff?
- CRCamille Ricketts
This is something that I think we chatted about briefly, but the 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? What is 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, and is actually going to have that value?" So, I think, um, approaching content the way that you would a product in a lot of ways is a very instructive way to sort of start hashing out your strategy. Starting with your audience, understanding their big needs. You've heard this, I'm sure, and most of your audience has, but there's the vitamin versus painkiller sort of dichotomy, and painkillers always win. So, can your content be a, a painkiller? Can it help people, uh, out of situations that are causing them a lot of, uh, pain? Can it help people stop being so confused, or can it make them even feel less alone, uh, in their experience? Like, that was a big one for First Round Review, is helping operators share failures or suboptimal situations in the spirit of helping many other people feel like that was normalized, and that, you know, the experiences they were having weren't as dire as maybe they had thought.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
I love that. It connects so much with the way I think about writing. I, I use the jobs to be done framework a little bit here, where I'm just like-
- CRCamille Ricketts
Yes.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
... "What, what job am I doing when I'm writing a post?" And, uh, you tell me if this makes sense to you, but I feel like there's kind of four jobs to be done of a newsletter. Either help people make money... There's, like, newsletters, "Here's how to invest, here's how to buy Bitcoin and when." Help people make money and entertain people. There's, like,
- 53:37 – 57:02
Content categories and the time it takes to create top-notch content
- LRLenny Rachitsky
you know, a lot of funny things, memes and cartoons and things like that. Help people get better at their work or life, which is the category we're in. And then inform people, like news.
- CRCamille Ricketts
Yes. Like, what they didn't know before, yeah.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Yeah. And it feels like you got to do really well, you got to pick which bucket you're in. And let me know if you can think of any others, 'cause this is the four that I always come back to. And then pick your bucket and then it's, be the best at that thing in your category.
- CRCamille Ricketts
Yes.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
The way I think about it.
- CRCamille Ricketts
I love that. I love that listing out of those. And also the acknowledgement that there are emotional jobs to be done, that they're not just utilitarian-
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mm-hmm.
- CRCamille Ricketts
... jobs to be done. It's not just, "You didn't know this before and now you do," but it's like, "You felt this way before, and now you don't, or you do." And I think that that's underestimated, so I love that you called out, like, entertaining people, 'cause we're all working in an industry where it's w- it's wonderful to interact with some of that sparkle and levity. So, I, I love that approach.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
And something else that goes unsaid, I think, in, in the way you talked about this, is just putting in the time to make it really high quality. If you look at a First Round post, like, how much time would you say goes into every, in the typical First Round Review post?
- CRCamille Ricketts
Oh, gosh.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
(laughs)
- CRCamille Ricketts
Here's where I'm gonna shout out my writing partner at First Round, Sean Young, who was there with me for most of my time there, and he and I would always, always talk about this. But it would take, like...... eight hours-
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mm-hmm.
- CRCamille Ricketts
... to just write the thing.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Yeah, yeah.
- CRCamille Ricketts
And that's after you had done all of the prep work of, like, making sure that your interviewee was feeling really anchored and understanding a topic that you were both really excited about, and making sure you were mining, like, all of the tactical gems from that, that conversation. Uh, and then you would start writing and that would be another eight hours. I don't know if that's your experience, but-
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Yeah.
- CRCamille Ricketts
... it certainly was ours.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Very similar. I, I generally, I don't time myself, but I feel like the median time to write a post for me is about 10 hours. So that's-
- CRCamille Ricketts
Yeah.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
... a lot. And that's, I think, the key that a lot of people don't think about. One is they don't have the time, and two, they don't realize they should spend this much time because the bar is so high for content on the internet, as we all know.
- CRCamille Ricketts
Yes.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
There's so much stuff out there. And so to get above that noise, you have to really make it really good, and that just takes time. And I find this really strong correlation between the time it takes me to write a post and how well it does. It's, like, very highly correlated.
- CRCamille Ricketts
Yes.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
And the advantage folks like, say, the First Round you have and I have is that I do this full time and there's, like, a team doing this. And so people that are doing-
- CRCamille Ricketts
Yeah.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
... this on the side, it's much harder 'cause they don't have that time.
- CRCamille Ricketts
It is. I end up admiring those people a lot where I'm like, "How are you doing that?"
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Yeah, they're sacrificing something.
- CRCamille Ricketts
Yeah, but truly that's, that's, it's a very shared experience with you. And I think that a lot of that was-
- 57:02 – 1:01:35
The future of comms and how the press helped Notion grow
- LRLenny Rachitsky
that you don't need to think about comms and press and PR as much, because now you can go direct, you can have a newsletter, you can write, you can tweet, you can LinkedIn. Do you feel like that is where the future is going for founder press and comms and things like that? Or do you think you still need to have a really strong comms, press PR org within your company?
- CRCamille Ricketts
That's a great question, 'cause I think that there's been... Just a lot of change in this space over the last five years, and certainly very strong opinions from all over the ecosystem. I'm a big believer in comms, and I don't just say that because I used to be (laughs) a journalist or I used to work in comms, but I think that there are very few and far between incredible megaphones for what it is that you or your company is doing, where you get to reach such a breadth of people with that stamp of credibility and notice. Like, how do you get somebody to say, "Hey, this is really something you should pay attention to"? Obviously, I support, like, all of the owned media efforts that are really working and bubbling up. And I, like I said, influencer, I think, is going to be, like, a massive shift in how we discover things. But maintaining a wonderful relationship with the press, uh, being straightforward, being that brand that is going to be accessible, I really think that that pays off. And just to give you one example, uh, David Pierce, who I think is one of the best working journalists in tech today, he's at The Verge now, uh, he was r- covering personal tech for the Wall Street Journal early on at Notion and published a story that said, "This is the one work life productivity app that you'll ever need." And that was Notion's big break. Like, truly, if you look back at the graphs, like, that made a demonstrable difference. And I've seen that happen time and time again. And one of my, sort of, uh, other efforts at First Round was helping companies in the portfolio figure out how to DIY comm strategies. And I saw this again and again that the companies that did get stories that really told, you know, their mission, it made a big difference for just discovery awareness, the number of people who wanted to be involved with them as candidates, as investors, as customers.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
This gives me a new post idea of just what are the big breaks of companies. Like, what was the moment where they kind of started taking off? Note to self.
- CRCamille Ricketts
Yeah. Yes. I mean, the other big thing for Notion was Product Hunt. I wanna give them
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Oh, okay.
- CRCamille Ricketts
... big thanks on that one as well.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
So posting on Product Hunt, that was a big deal for Notion? Huh.
- CRCamille Ricketts
It was, and it remains a big deal. If you go on (laughs) Product Hunt and you type in Notion, you'll see just how many templates have been-
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Oh, wow.
- CRCamille Ricketts
... able to get noted because of Product Hunt.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
So it's the templates being posted, but then also, like, the launch of Notion on Product Hunt?
- CRCamille Ricketts
Yes.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mm.
- CRCamille Ricketts
And Notion 2.0, and then whenever we would have, like, a major sort of productized launch.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Wow. That's awesome, man.
- CRCamille Ricketts
Notion AI very recently for them, which couldn't be more exciting.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Yeah, I have access to that. I've been playing around. It's awesome. Maybe a last question along these lines. I was thinking about the founders that you've worked with. So on the one hand, you have Elon, who is very, uh, direct in hand- on Twitter, there's his audience, and then Ivan feels much less so and more kind of under the radar and doesn't love tweeting a lot, and then for certain views somewhere in the middle. Do you have any thoughts on how much a founder should invest in say, tweeting and going and communicating to the direct to folk? Or is it more just whatever the founder is, their personality, just go, go with that?
- CRCamille Ricketts
I really do think it's about personality and what feels authentic, you know? Like, I think that so much of a founder's strength comes from leaning into where they know that they, they love to work, what they know about themselves. Uh, and I think that one of the biggest mistakes you can make on social media is giving yourself a quota that you have to hit-
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mm-hmm.
- CRCamille Ricketts
... and say like, "I have to say X number of scintillating things every week on these platforms." We've just seen so much more traction, even from like the main Notion accounts when we're a little bit more reserved and we wait until we have something to say that has value.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Awesome.Any last closing thoughts before we get to our very exciting lightning round?
- CRCamille Ricketts
No. (laughs) Closing thoughts, no, this was a wonderful conversation. Thank you so much for letting me share. Truly, I, I also wanna make sure I'm giving a lot of credit away from all the people that I mentioned throughout. It was all just a major team effort, and I've, I've gotten very, very lucky to work with the best people.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Awesome. I will try to link to all of the people you mentioned in our show notes. We try to do that every time.
- CRCamille Ricketts
That'd be good.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
So, it'll be a long show notes. And we're not done yet. We've reached our very exciting lightning round. I'm gonna ask you-
- CRCamille Ricketts
Yes.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
... six questions real quick, whatever comes to mind. We'll go through it pretty fast. That sound good?
- CRCamille Ricketts
Yeah. We'll see
- 1:01:35 – 1:07:35
Lightning round
- CRCamille Ricketts
how it goes.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Let's go, no pressure. What are two to three books that you recommend most, that you've recommended most to other people?
- CRCamille Ricketts
Obviously Awesome by April Dunford. If you're looking to position your company, I don't know if you've read it, but it is, like, a step-by-step guide. It's like 100 pages long.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
I've read it.
- CRCamille Ricketts
It has every s-
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Sh- she's done a guest post on my newsletter. She's been on the podcast. So, all over it.
- CRCamille Ricketts
Oh, that's fantastic. She's-
- LRLenny Rachitsky
She's amazing.
- CRCamille Ricketts
... she's incredible.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Yep.
- CRCamille Ricketts
Yes. Oh, gosh, I'm gonna have a hard time coming up with two other books that have had that sizable of an impact.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
We can keep it to one too. It's all good.
- CRCamille Ricketts
Can we keep it to one?
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Yes.
- CRCamille Ricketts
(laughs)
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Just the one. All you need. What's a favorite other podcast that you listen to other than the one you're on currently?
- CRCamille Ricketts
I mean, I love your podcast. Um...
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Thank you.
- CRCamille Ricketts
Harry Stubbings never ceases to amaze me. We've gone on, uh, at Notion a, a couple of times, and I just really appreciate his approach to mining a lot of incredible information and unexpected stuff.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Harry Stubbings is the godfather of this podcast, because I did his podcast, and at the end of it, privately, he's like, "Lenny, you need to do a podcast, you idiot. Why are you not doing a podcast?" And that got me over the hump, and that's, look at us now. So yeah, huge shout-out to Harry.
- CRCamille Ricketts
I love all of these connections that exist.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mm-hmm.
- CRCamille Ricketts
That's wonderful.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Yeah. Next question, favorite recent movie or TV show that you've loved?
- CRCamille Ricketts
Oh, gosh. Recent. So, I went to go see Tár, which I know is going to be, like, not everybody's cup of tea. But it was just incredible to watch this performance from Cate Blanchett. Like, she learned German. She learned how to be a credible conductor of a major symphony orchestra. Like, if you wanna see a bravura performance, that's the one to see. Um, and then recent television show I'm watching, Fleishman Is in Trouble. I love the book, and I just think that the detail and texture of that show is super well done.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Also, my wife and I have been watching that, and it's awesome. Last episode was less, less exciting, so I'm curious where it all goes. But I'm, I'm watching.
- CRCamille Ricketts
Agree. But every time Claire Danes is onscreen, I'm like, I'm riveted.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
(laughs) Same.
- CRCamille Ricketts
Yeah.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Favorite interview question that you like to ask folks, either when you're inter- uh, interviewing at a place, hiring? Anything that comes to mind.
Episode duration: 1:07:35
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