David Tibbitts joined Notion at the end of 2018. In this interview he looks back on his first year answering support requests, explains how the community fueled the app’s expansion, describes the inside story of the Notion AI launch and the reasons behind shutting down Notion Mail — and shares his view of where the product is headed.
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- You arrived at Notion in late 2018 with an offer that mentioned “marketing and support.” What was the company like back then?
- Notion’s growth was long driven by its community. How did a product that appealed largely to power users begin to win over IT leaders and big enterprises?
- Notion AI was shown in November 2022, just weeks before ChatGPT became widely known. What led to that bet?
- Why did Notion decide to discontinue Notion Mail recently?
- Where do you expect Notion to be in three to five years?
David Tibbitts joined Notion at the tail end of 2018, a few months after the release of Notion 2.0. He was employee number ten and today leads product marketing for AI and core product areas. For BDM he retraces Notion’s journey — from community-driven traction to the decision to sunset Notion Mail — and pulls back the curtain on the early days of Notion AI, before offering his perspective on the product’s future.
You joined Notion at the end of 2018 with a role described as “marketing and support.” What did the company look like then?
Notion had just shipped version 2.0 roughly six months prior to my start. That release was a turning point: after years of tinkering, the product finally seemed to fit what users wanted.
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I walked into a company that had suddenly taken off, and to be frank, it was struggling to keep up with demand.
Personally, I wanted to do creative work — storytelling, visual design, and marketing. When I discussed that with Ivan Zhao and Akshay Kothari, they were encouraging but blunt: the support inbox was completely overwhelmed. Some of our most valuable customers were waiting a week for replies to billing questions, refund requests, or simple help using features. People were just looking for basic guidance on how to make Notion work for them.
The ask was simple: “You’ll have creative freedom eventually, but for the first twelve months, can you spend time in the trenches closing support tickets?”
Looking back, that period in support was pivotal. If I were building a company, I’d make new hires spend time handling support tickets — even if only for a month. It forces you to master the product and to really understand users: which terms confuse them, which features delight, where they stumble, and what they repeatedly request.
The community has long driven Notion’s growth. How did a tool focused on power users learn to gain traction with IT and large organizations?
From the outside, many people assume Notion is built primarily for mass-market consumer use. That perception makes sense — there’s an enormous amount of beginner-friendly content and tutorials on YouTube, and that grassroots enthusiasm is wonderful.
Internally, however, we’ve always thought of Notion as software made of building blocks, like Lego.
Our goal is to let people assemble their own solutions. Crucially, though, our product roadmap has consistently prioritized B2B building blocks intended for teams. That focus has been there from the start. What’s been remarkable is how people take those team-oriented pieces and use them for personal projects — plant watering trackers, Dungeons & Dragons campaign pages, or wedding planning — which spreads awareness and fuels word-of-mouth growth.
Many of those personal users later become internal champions within their companies.
Talk to almost any organization that uses Notion across hundreds of employees and you’ll usually hear the same story: someone within the company — “Steve,” for instance — fell in love with Notion and evangelized it until the team adopted it. Early on, this was an intuition rather than something backed by data. We made a conscious investment in community because we believed these individual enthusiasts would carry Notion into their workplaces. Over time, the numbers confirmed that hypothesis.
A significant share of people start on a free plan for personal reasons and later migrate to a work email or expand their use for team-focused workflows.
Notion AI was introduced in November 2022, just before ChatGPT exploded in popularity. What inspired that move?
For many years Notion ran an annual all-hands retreat where everyone worldwide came together. We haven’t done that recently — the company is larger now and the logistics and cost would be substantial — but when we were a few hundred people we gathered in places like Cancún. Those trips built camaraderie and also freed up the founders from the normal cadence of meetings.
During one of those retreats, Ivan and Simon Last got early access to GPT-4. They hid away from the team and started experimenting: “What happens if we wire this model into Notion’s editor?” They literally stayed behind at the hotel after the rest of the company left, surviving on hotel tacos and bottled water as they prototyped.
When everyone reconnected on Slack, Ivan had uploaded a short demo and written: “I think there’s something here.”
We integrated the model into Notion and instantly saw many use cases: content generation, rewriting and editing, search and question answering — possibilities that blew our minds.
At the time we also had to be careful and pragmatic: this wasn’t a company-wide pivot. The founders decided to create a small, focused team of five to ten people to explore the idea in private alpha. The rest of the company continued on its existing roadmap. In hindsight that cautious, experimental approach was a good instinct.
Why was Notion Mail recently shut down?
That was a tough call. We liked Mail and our users did too. One issue with mature software companies is feature sprawl: after a decade or more of building, you accumulate many features and not every one finds product-market fit. Over time the product can become a tangled set of tools that don’t all work perfectly.
For me, shutting down Notion Mail was an example of leadership willing to make hard choices. We tried something ambitious and invested in it, but it didn’t reach the level of usage we hoped for. The market fit just wasn’t there. Rather than continuing to maintain a product that wasn’t resonating, the team decided to reallocate those engineering resources, time, and attention to areas that users are asking us to improve. There are many other parts of Notion that deserve that focus more.
Where do you see Notion in three to five years?
I often think about what motivates someone to sign up for Notion. They arrive because a friend or coworker raves about it, or they’ve watched tutorial videos and finally create an account. That moment of signup is similar to joining a gym: you imagine a future version of yourself who’s more organized, productive, and in control — just as gym-goers imagine a healthier, fitter self.
But there’s a gap between intention and action. At a gym you face unfamiliar equipment and the whole thing can feel overwhelming; suddenly your imagined future self seems distant. Notion is similar: you open a blank workspace, and without guidance the blank slate can be intimidating.
My hope for Notion in the next two to five years is that it becomes less passive and more proactive.
Rather than being a gym that leaves everything up to the user, I want Notion to act more like a personal coach that helps you stick to your plans. You’d describe where you want to be in six months, and the product would actively support that journey. It might proactively nudge you about overdue tasks or offer steps to move a project forward. Ultimately, the role of Notion should be to help users become that improved version of themselves they pictured when they first signed up.
David Tibbitts, Product Marketing, AI & Core, Notion
David Tibbitts is Notion’s product marketing manager with responsibility for AI initiatives. Previously an account executive at Yelp and Vivino, he joined Notion at the end of 2018, initially working on customer support before moving into marketing. He was the company’s tenth employee and its first product marketing lead.
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Jordan Park writes in-depth reviews and editorial opinion pieces for Touch Reviews. With a background in UI/UX design, Jordan offers a unique perspective on device usability and user experience across smartphones, tablets, and mobile software.