Keep your team as small as your ambition allows

With fewer people in the organization, things work better. That's the big realization that most people never discover.

I want the company to almost be like this dehydrated entity. Every hire is like a little bit of water, and we only go back and hire someone when we're back to being dehydrated.

Really, the only answer is just to keep the team super small. That's what WhatsApp did, that's what Instagram did, that's what Linear is doing right now.

Unfortunately, we've seen a lot in the news lately with a lot of tech companies letting go of some really talented people, and that is, I feel like just created bloated organizations.

We internally help other people and understand this. Internally we use the metaphor that Notion's a small bus. The bus, the smaller the bus, it's easier to turn corners, easier to accelerate, easier to maneuver.

Ivan is explaining Notion's internal metric called "talent density" which tracks revenue per employee rather than headcount, creating what he calls a "positive feedback loop" for attracting talent.

We don't try to track number of people but we try to track how talent-dense, revenue per employee we are. And people want to work with either more talented people. So it's a positive company group.

If I were to start a company and had to change the way I think about starting that company, I would be even leaner than I would've made it before. I've been amazed with just how much the team is able to accomplish with a small group.

Be the smallest company we can be to satisfy our ambitions. If I told you, 'I'm going to build an autonomous vehicle,' and I said our team is 10 people, you should rightfully say, 'You're not serious.'