Exclusive: Notion Names First Board Of Directors In Key Step Toward IPO

Notion reached a decade in operation and unicorn status with no board. Then its founders assembled one from first principles. Here's how.

Notion co-founder Akshay Kothari calls building a board a “fun game” that startups can apply to exec searches, too. Credit: Notion

If you could pick any dream team board of directors, what team who would you choose?

For two years, Notion’s co-founders have quietly asked themselves that question. An ‘Avengers’ style lineup of top startup unicorn CEOs? They considered it. A more Hall Of Fame mindset of former bosses and mentors like LinkedIn’s ex-CEO Jeff Weiner? They explored that, too.

Few – if any – startups in Silicon Valley history have grown as big as Notion, or for as long, without some semblance of a board. But by virtue of a quirk of its own fundraising history and an intellectual internal leadership style, it’s the position Notion found itself in even after more than a decade in operation, and as its valuation reached $11 billion.

But to go public, you need a board. And after a long, gradual process, Notion is unveiling its board for the first time – and talking about the process, and lessons learned, with Upstarts exclusively.

The full Notion board director lineup:

• Ivan Zhao, Notion’s co-founder and CEO

• Jonathan Chadwick, former CFO and COO of VMware

• Christopher Payne, former president of DoorDash

• Gretchen Howard, former COO of Robinhood

• Patrick Hsu, co-founder of the Arc Institute

• Pat Grady, partner and co-steward at Sequoia

“We’ve been slowly adding people the way you’d go and recruit an executive team,” says Notion co-founder and COO Akshay Kothari. “If the executive team covers different parts of running a business, you can map to that, and also have a coach or mentor for each of those executives themselves.”

You can see that map – and the three board committees mandatory for a company to be approved by the SEC for a public offering – in the mix. Chadwick’s served as audit chair on the boards of Samsara and Zoom, and served on the audit committee for Confluent and Stripe; he’s intended to work closely with Notion’s CFO.

Payne, known as ‘CP,’ helped scale DoorDash and serves on the boards of Faire and Robinhood; he can work closely with Kothari in product, as well as with Notion’s CRO. Howard helped scale Robinhood on its own IPO journey; she lines up with Notion’s chief people officer.

Hsu and Grady are the wildcards – not because they’re short on credentials, but because Hsu’s research at Stanford and with the Arc Institute is in another area of AI – generative biology – than Notion’s agents and collaboration tools. He’s intended to help Notion adopt AI – and adapt to its cutting edge – across teams. Then there’s Grady, a VC at Sequoia. Notion opted to voluntarily bring him on because of his market expertise working with companies like ServiceNow, Snowflake and Zoom.

As a group, they’re a less radical mix than Notion might have immediately sought. But its unusual process to get there – and its lessons in leveraging fellow tech leaders, like why CEOs might not make a good director – is worth any startup’s attention, even if it doesn’t have the luxury to start from scratch.

“How you recruit the right complementary skillset, it’s a fun game,” Kothari says. “Think about the mix, rather than the individuals.”

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