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India is currently the second biggest market for LinkedIn globally. With a user-base of over 35 million, the country is of great strategic importance for the career-oriented platform. 
 
“There’s still a lot of room for us to grow. Our vision is to create economic opportunities across the world, and that vision couldn’t be truer in India. One of the biggest issues here is the skill gap”, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/searchresult.cms?query=LinkedIn+India&amp;sortorder=effectivedate">LinkedIn India</a> Head <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/searchresult.cms?query=Akshay+Kothari&amp;sortorder=effectivedate">Akshay Kothari</a> says. He claims a lot of LinkedIn’s product innovation and optimization happens out of its India office in Bengaluru. 
 
“There are teams here that are building platforms to be used globally. All of the work we do around e-mail notifications, push notifications, spam and search verticals are done here”, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/searchresult.cms?query=Akshay+Kothari&amp;sortorder=effectivedate">Kothari</a> told Business Insider in an exclusive interview. 
 
On the India product side, the company has already started optimizing the portal to make it better suited for India. Co-founder <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/searchresult.cms?query=Allen+Blue&amp;sortorder=effectivedate">Blue</a> says it’s not always about adding but intelligently subtracting stuff. 
 
“Our new user registration is now optimized for slower network connectivity. We’re also producing localized content. We have an India Editor who curates content. That way the overall quality has improved a lot”, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/searchresult.cms?query=Allen+Blue&amp;sortorder=effectivedate">Blue</a> says. 
 
The company has not announced any expansion plans, but claims they’re ‘not discounting the option, and constantly evaluating opportunities.’

Exclusive: LinkedIn’s Co-Founder
Allen Blue and India Head Akshay Kothari talk about their plans for India

<a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/Jeff-Weiner-alongside-Indian-Linkedin-team-announces-three-new-offerings-for-India/articleshow/54289587.cms">LinkedIn recently unveiled three new products for the Indian market. </a>While it is encouraging to see that <keyword id="28120" type="CITY" weightage="100" keywordseo="Linkedin">LinkedIn</keyword> currently has more than 37 million members in India making it the second-largest and one of the fast-growing markets for the company globally, it is more exciting to see that the country hosts the company’s only other R&amp;D center outside of the U.S. 
 <keyword id="299066" type="PERSON" weightage="100" keywordseo="Jeff-Weiner">Jeff Weiner</keyword>, CEO &amp; Co-Founder, LinkedIn, landed in <keyword id="6354321" type="CITY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Bengaluru">Bengaluru</keyword>, India’s <keyword id="6357722" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="silicon-valley">silicon valley</keyword> yesterday and said that after meeting his Indian employees, he wanted to take them back to the actual Silicon Valley with him, which wouldn’t have been the case some years back. 
 
Jeff thinks that <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/Byju-opens-up-about-meeting-Chan-Zuckerberg-initiative-international-plans-and-how-he-chooses-teachers-for-the-app-/articleshow/54250709.cms">the Indian startup ecosystem is thriving</a>, ’I have been closely been following the people, stories about the <keyword id="6362513" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="Startups">startups</keyword> here. To see the high energy here is remarkable. The government deserves a lot of credit for creating the right environment which is attracting investment from all over the world to encourage the spirit of entrepreneurship.’ 
 Both Jeff and <keyword id="323918" type="PERSON" weightage="100" keywordseo="Akshay-Kothari">Akshay Kothari</keyword>, India Manger &amp; product head <keyword id="278010" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="LinkedIn-India">Linkedin India</keyword> feel that the Indian government has had a huge role to play in this change of dynamics. With Startup India and Digital India, people are getting the right kind of opportunities with the help of technology. With these three new initiatives, they wish to accelerate growth for the human resources in India. 
 
<a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/LinkedIn-launches-three-new-features-/articleshow/54293727.cms">ALSO READ: LinkedIn wants you to get your dream job, no matter what your circumstances are</a> 
 
Akshay is a man whom Jeff hand-picked after acquiring his startup Pulse, in 2013. Pulse, which was a mobile application that enabled users to create personalized news feeds, now is integrated into LinkedIn. While Akshay, an Indian got an immense exposure in the Valley, many start-ups have not scaled to such heights. 
 
‘I miss Silicon Valley. That was my home for almost a decade. While things in India are picking up for startups, they’re still behind compared to the US in terms of administrative issues. I remember starting out my company, Pulse with all incorporation, tax-filing etc. done within 24 hours in the valley. I never had to worry about such issues afterward. Startups in India cannot say the same,” says Akshay. 
“While things have become faster and easier for Indian startups, it is important to make everything smoother to match up to developed countries,” he adds, when asked about what he misses the most about silicon valley. 
 
So while LinkedIn tries to help start-ups get the right talent, the Indian government still might have to get them to the right platform, which is in the making.

LinkedIn’s Co-Founder Jeff Weiner and India Head, Akshay
Kothari see quality talent sprouting in the country

<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image">Notion</div></div></div><ul class="summary-list"><li>For the buzzy <keyword id="6356323" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="enterprise">enterprise</keyword> startup <a href="https://www.notion.so/">Notion</a>, one of the trickiest parts of running its profitable, high-growth business has been politely turning down meetings with would-be investors. </li><li>"We're not anti-VC," Notion CEO Ivan Zhao told Business Insider in February. "It's more about helping us focus on product and less on meetings."</li><li>That's why it came as a surprise that Notion recently raised a $10 million "angel round" at an $800 million valuation. </li><li>Here's why Notion - which has been obsessive over staying lean and growing intentionally - decided to raise right now. It has to do with the financial structure of the company, as well as a desire to give three individuals who have been "remarkably helpful" to Notion the opportunity to invest, says its COO.</li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/prime?module=article&amp;area=summary">Click here for more BI Prime stories.</a></li></ul>For the buzzy enterprise startup <a href="https://www.notion.so/">Notion</a>, one of the trickiest parts of running its high-growth, profitable business has been how to politely avoid coffee meetings with would-be investors. In fact, in February, Notion CEO Ivan Zhao told Business Insider that the company decided against listing its new office address on Google Maps so that perspective VCs wouldn't come knocking - something that happened regularly at its previous workplace."We're not anti-VC," Zhao said at the time. "It's more about helping us focus on product and less on meetings."That's why when <a href="https://www.theinformation.com/articles/collaboration-app-notion-labs-hits-800-million-valuation-in-new-funding">The Information broke the news</a> this week that Notion - an "all-in-one workplace" that acts as a replacement for documents, wikis, and other task management tools - was raising a new funding round, it came as something of a surprise. Doubly so, that the company was raising a relatively modest $10 million (in what it calls an "angel round") at a relatively high valuation of $800 million.Notion's ethos since its inception over six years ago has been to grow its product, and its team, thoughtfully. In fact, in an interview with Notion's COO Akshay Kothari on Friday, the head operator told Business Insider the startup's small team, which now numbers 25 in total, had been a key to its success. "Staying small is not just because it sounds nice," Kothari said. "Staying small is actually helpful for us to move fast." Kothari also said that for "several months now," Notion - which reportedly has over one million registered users - has been profitable. So why raise now? <h2>Notion's reasons for raising </h2>Kothari said the reasons were mostly practical.Early on, Notion had given its investors convertible notes - a form of debt financing that act similarly to loans, often used by early stage startups - and those notes actually needed to be converted. Some of them, Kothari said, carried interest and so the team wanted to "close those out." The team also wanted to give three individuals who have been "remarkably helpful" to Notion the opportunity to invest, Kothari said. The $10 million "angel round" was entirely comprised of investments from those three: Daniel Gross (former partner at Y Combinator), Lachy Groom (Head of Stripe Issuing), and Elad Gil (a self-proclaimed "<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/eladgil/">startup helper</a>"). Groom and Gil were previous investors in Notion. For Gross, this was his first investment in the company. Read more: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/notion-has-vc-knocking-on-its-doors-to-invest-2019-2">This enterprise software startup has VCs literally knocking on its doors to invest, but for now, it's not interested</a><h2>Hiring for growth</h2>Beyond sharing the goods with those who have been good to them, Kothari said the funding would be used to hire for roles that have become a necessity as Notion's customers become larger and larger. Some, like the messaging platform Intercom and Hearst Media, have over one-thousand users, and in those cases, Notion wants to have more hands-on account management. Also, thus far, the company has never used paid marketing, like Google or Facebook ads, to gain new customers. But part of the raise, Kothari said, will be used to experiment with paid acquisition channels. When asked if growing its operations teams and venturing into paid advertising will compromise the company's almost-obsessiveness over staying lean and growing intentionally, Kothari said: "It's a worry that I've had myself." "We're not looking to hire a sales army here," Kothari said. "We're thinking about it very much from a systems perspective. We feel good about the way we're building products. We feel good about how we have community and support. One of the things we're investing in on the marketing side and sales side is to continue to have that systems approach in building these teams out." As for how Notion settled on its $800 million valuation, Kothari told us that part of it was to avoid the "craze" that inevitably comes from reaching unicorn status, which comes with a valuation of $1 billion or more. The head operator also said his team considered the valuations of other, comparable software-as-a-service companies - especially Zoom and Slack, which recently went public. Regarding how such massive valuation could come from an "angel round," Kothari downplayed the importance of such titles. "Some of the names of these rounds," Kothari said. "Seeds have become pre-seeds. Pre-seeds have become something else. I guess it should be called a $10 million round with three individuals who have been deeply helpful." <div class="margin-top"> <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/hidden-benefits-amazon-prime-power-user-2017-7">7 lesser-known benefits of Amazon Prime</a></h3> <div> </div> </div>

Notion, the profitable startup that had to go to great lengths to avoid aggressive VCs, explains why it chose now to raise $10 million at an $800 million valuation

India is the second biggest market for professional networking platform LinkedIn, which is banking on it to drive innovation, while also creating localised and specific content for its 35 million Indian members. 
 ET got in touch with LinkedIn’s new country manager <keyword id="323918" type="PERSON" weightage="100" keywordseo="Akshay-Kothari">Akshay Kothari</keyword>, who applauded the research and development team at their Bengaluru office for LinkedIn’s global offerings, like spam checks and email and mobile notifications. 
 
Talking about the user base, he said that their vision is to create economic opportunities for all professionals, similar to what the country is trying to do. If that can be executed well, they would be able to impact the country both economically and socially. 
 
As of now, LinkedIn is trying to create the world's first economic graph, so that the world economy can be digitally mapped. By connecting different skills in the form of nodes, people can be connected to opportunities. 
 
Talking of the increasing graph of Indian users, which now stands 35 million strong, he said that they had 3.5 million Indian users in 2009, which means that they have grown 10 times in seven years, making it the second biggest market after the US. 
 Going further, <keyword id="278010" type="COMPANY" weightage="100" keywordseo="LinkedIn-India">LinkedIn India</keyword>, from 2009 to 2012, worked more as a sales organisation selling to customers, but it was in 2012 that an R&amp;D was built, and an amazing engineering group is now building platforms here. The Bengaluru office innovates on detecting and decreasing spam, sending email notifications etc. 
 
He added that especially over the last four months, LinkedIn has been trying to build products and features and customise their work for Indians, like launching the new mobile app, moving from an email interface to a messaging interface. 
 
This has also increased the number of jobs available on the platform over the last year. 
 
<a href="http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/photo/50450427.cms">Image source</a>

LinkedIn is creating world's first economic graph to digitally map the global economy, says Akshay Kothari

In the era of increasing automation, the demand for skilled workers remains at an all time high across sectors in the country. <keyword id="28120" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="linkedin">LinkedIn</keyword> has announced its partnership with <keyword id="5277690" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="ilfs-skills-development-corporation-limited">IL&amp;FS Skills Development Corporation Limited</keyword> to help up skill blue-collar workers and job seekers in the sector. IL&amp;FS Skills is India’s leading vocational and employability training company whose aim is to train four million people by 2022 in manufacturing, agriculture, services, engineering and construction sectors. The company currently has a placements network of 1000+ employers and provides Sector Skills Councils (SSC) certification.The Indian government has a target to train over 400 million people in India in different skills by 2022. With LinkedIn, IL&amp;FS has devised a digital vocational training program that provides a vocational skilling ecosystem which includes the LinkedIn platform and helps bring the offline blue-collar workers online enabling them to access opportunities and training courses simultaneously.

 

 

 

 <div type="embedgroup"> <div type="Article" hostid="261" msid="60002730" title="Your next customer care call to Amazon might be hosted by a working-from-home mother" rank="1.0" kind="RELATED" publishDate="Aug 10, 2017, 3:18 PM" mstype="2" mssubtype="0"></div></div>








Skill with LinkedIn India This partnership is an initiative by LinkedIn to support the Indian government’s ‘Skill India’ mission and also expand its growing Indian member-base. India is the second biggest market for LinkedIn after the U.S. In India, some states have labour shortages and others have labour surplus which makes job placements challenging. <keyword id="1770138" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="allen-blue">Allen Blue</keyword>, Co-founder, LinkedIn told Business Insider, “Employers on the LinkedIn platform hire across management levels and while LinkedIn is known for discovering great white-collar jobs, there is a need for high skilled blue collar workers. This is also an opportunity for us to work with employers who are hiring across the skills spectrum. ” <keyword id="323918" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="akshay-kothari">Akshay Kothari</keyword>, Country Manager and Head of Product, LinkedIn India said that this was an attempt to expand the LinkedIn Placements platform and as they expand across the employment sector, they will incorporate local languages starting with Hindi. <div type="embedgroup"> <div type="Article" hostid="261" msid="59887416" title="Entry-level jobs could soon pay Rs. 18000 all across India and that could be a problem" rank="1.0" kind="RELATED" publishDate="Aug 02, 2017, 11:14 PM" mstype="2" mssubtype="0"></div></div>








 The course of time Under this partnership, IL&amp;FS will design and provide the skilling modules and training while LinkedIn will help the students cover the last mile from up-skilling to getting a job using the platform. LinkedIn has designed a separate interface for the students where they are able to create a profile, access learning content, build their network by connecting with classmates, seniors and instructors and get a job and the instruction is in a Hindi voice-over. The program starts this month at IL&amp;FS Skills Development Centres across India with the initial batch of 400 job-seekers looking for careers in hospitality. A single batch will undergo 45 days of training and LinkedIn aims to expand it to ten batches in 120 days.

Here’s why LinkedIn is training blue collar workers in India

<ul class="summary-list"><li>In a not-so-distant future, every app will have an invisible layer of artificial intelligence.</li><li>Developers are linking arms with OpenAI to access the large language models powering their apps.</li></ul>OpenAI's artificial intelligence technology is now baked into <a href="https://openai.com/blog/gpt-3-apps" target="_blank" rel="noopener">hundreds</a> of apps, making it one of the key levers that help companies and their developers be more productive.The latest company utilizing the company's large language models is Superhuman, an <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/email-app-superhuman-has-finally-arrived-on-microsoft-outlook-2022-5">email app</a> with a <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/superhuman-review-fast-email-app-versus-gmail-2020-4">cultish</a> following. It just released a <a href="https://blog.superhuman.com/superhuman-ai/">writing assistant</a> built on OpenAI's chatbot ChatGPT, that can draft emails from short prompts, clean up spelling and grammar, and even rewrite messages in the sender's "voice," based on their past emails. Superhuman started testing the offering last week, and it's now available to a private beta group."I think we're on the cusp of a huge transformation," <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-startup-superhuman-raised-75-million-from-tiger-global-ivp-2021-8">Rahul Vohra</a>, the founder and CEO of Superhuman, told Insider. "And in terms of how I would measure this, this is — without exaggeration — on par with the smartphone and the internet itself. We're going to see everything change."The collaboration <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/sam-altman-openai-chatgpt-worldcoin-helion-future-tech-2023-4">hints at a not-too-distant future</a> where much of the software people use has an invisible layer of machine intelligence. Some companies are already doing just that. The <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/duolingo-employees-in-office-3-set-days-when-they-return-2021-5">language learning app</a> Duolingo lets users <a href="https://blog.duolingo.com/duolingo-max/">role-play</a> with a chatbot. The <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2023/04/04/ai-powered-search-engine-perplexity-ai-lands-26m-launches-ios-app/">search engine</a> Perplexity responds to questions in plain language, so the user doesn't have to open eight links to find an answer. The startup Jasper whips up <a href="https://affiliate.insider.com?h=acae2f6ea0e1b9a6ab90ff726344c95aca3e731eb4526d5a7a615781f743bdcb&amp;postID=644ff923aa8499669907d7d0&amp;site=bi&amp;u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theinformation.com%2Farticles%2Fthe-best-little-unicorn-in-texas-jasper-was-winning-the-ai-race-then-chatgpt-blew-up-the-whole-game">marketing copy</a> in a flash. Each relies on vendors including OpenAI to power its capabilities.OpenAI's flagship products are large language models, which are, in simplest terms, systems that can learn from processing huge amounts of data and respond to basic prompts. In 2020, the company released its first commercial offering: a tool that lets developers bake its models in their own products. There are now apps for wordsmithing emails, replying to customers, and surfing the web, all usings its models. "For the moment, AI products on the market are essentially just white-labeled versions of ChatGPT," the journalist Casey Newton <a href="https://www.theverge.com/23623495/ai-profits-winners-losers-openai-notion-snapchat" target="_blank" rel="noopener">wrote</a>.<div type="image" title="sam altman speaking on stage" height="1400" width="1866" msid="99969133" hostid="261"></div>OpenAI has its tentacles in some of the most prominent companies to come out of the Valley, ranging from Snap to Instacart to Shopify and charges a fee for its service.Software developers could build the infrastructure themselves, but doing so can take years of development, a rare source of <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/tech-companies-raid-top-university-campuses-rare-artificial-intelligence-talent-2023-4">engineering talent</a>, and <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/openai-ceo-sam-altman-the-age-of-giant-ai-models-is-already-over/">many millions</a> of dollars in computing costs. Instead, many rent a model from a third-party provider, just like they pay Amazon Web Services to store data and Stripe to process payments.That's what employees of the buzzy <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/notion-investment-memo-for-startup-replace-pitch-deck-2021-9">workspace app</a> Notion did. Two of the founders, Ivan Zhao and Simon Last, slapped together a prototype for a writing assistant that could help people write, brainstorm, edit, and summarize their notes with one keystroke. It released the tool in a <a href="https://www.notion.so/blog/introducing-notion-ai">private alpha</a> only a few weeks later. The feature came together so fast, according to Akshay Kothari, the third cofounder and chief operating officer, because Notion hadn't done the grunt work of training a large language model itself. It culled tools from third parties such as OpenAI and Anthropic and folded them into Notion's app. This allowed the company to focus on what it does best: building elegant products that delight people."We found ourselves lucky to be able to partner with OpenAI," Kothari told Insider, "partly because they showed the world what's possible and maybe sort of inspired it."

OpenAI has its tentacles in hundreds of companies. Here's how it's making them more productive.

Index VenturesSarah Cannon is an early-stage investor at Index Ventures.<ul class="summary-list"><li>Notion, a productivity startup aiming to unseat Google Drive and Microsoft Office, announced a $50 million funding round on Wednesday that valued it at $2 billion at a time when many startups are struggling to gain funding or are going out of business entirely.</li><li>Index Ventures led the round and partner Sarah Cannon was instrumental in convincing the skeptical founders to take a large amount of funding from a single venture firm, which they had previously avoided doing. </li><li>She won over cofounder and CEO Ivan Zhao with a shared appreciation of art, specifically Dadaist Marcel Duchamp.</li><li>The latest fundraise is a boon for early investors since their stake has <a href="https://carta.com/blog/what-is-stock-dilution/">less dilution</a> than is typical at this stage.</li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/?hprecirc-bullet">Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories</a>.</li></ul>Startups are facing the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/investor-advice-for-startups-during-coronavirus-outbreak-2020-3">biggest crisis in a generation</a> as the coronavirus wreaks havoc on the global economy. Still, not every business is flailing: Productivity startup Notion just closed a new $50 million round of financing at a $2 billion valuation. The whole process, from the initial email to the public announcement on Wednesday, took about two weeks - with <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/01/technology/notion-startup-fund-raising.html">less than two days</a> between when the parties agreed on terms and the deal was signed, - and saw Notion's valuation jump 150% over its latest round. The startup, which aims to unseat Google Drive and Microsoft Office with cloud software to help people - especially remote teams - work more efficiently, had previously only raised small amounts of funding from many individual investors in what VCs typically refer to as "party rounds." For its latest funding, though, it broke tradition and signed on Index Ventures as the lead investor. Notion's 33-year-old cofounder and chief executive, Ivan Zhao, told Business Insider that the company didn't need to raise money. It's already profitable, he said, and <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/notion-ceo-explains-how-he-raised-50-million-during-pandemic-2020-4">the funding was simply meant to reassure customers</a> and employees that it has enough runway to weather the current economic uncertainty."Right now so many companies are doing layoffs," Zhao said on a call Thursday. "Our customers want a company that is stable that will stick around for a long time." For a select group of new investors, the deal brings to a close a years-long chase. Here's the backstory of how a small group of venture investors won over the notoriously VC-shy startup. <h2>The art of the deal</h2>After Sarah Cannon joined Index Ventures in 2018, she became a board observer at Slack and started researching other early-stage productivity startups. She stumbled on Notion casually, but knew right away it was special. "The first time I saw the product, I was like, 'This is it,'" Cannon told Business Insider. As she started reaching out to the startup's handful of seed investors, it became clear that investing - let alone leading a round - was out of the question. The handful of other investors, which included Sequoia Capital and First Round, made it very clear that Zhao and his cofounder Akshay Kothari were not interested in taking gobs of funding from the Valley's vast network of venture capitalists. Still, Cannon added Notion to the top of her whiteboarded list of "global convictions." A colleague at the firm described Notion as her "white whale.""I wasn't giving up," Cannon said. She started plotting ways to convince the company to at least meet with her. She found out Zhao was an artist, so decided to try to convince him to attend a friend's gallery show in San Francisco. She delivered the invitation to Notion's well-hidden office in the city, complete with a postcard of artwork by Dadaist Marcel Duchamp.Zhou was a no-show the night of the event, but Cannon remained determined, taking inspiration from Duchamp's work. "I wrote them this letter about why the product was so good. You know, Marcel Duchamp is my favorite artist because he reduces it down to the fundamentals, and questions what art can be. That's what they did with Notion," she said. "I am very interested in art in my life and I had not realized that I could combine my love for art and economics, but this was it." It took weeks for Cannon to hear back, but when she finally did she began offering her expertise to the team over email. She introduced key hires, provided strategic guidance gleaned from her roughly ten months with Slack, and essentially became what she describes as a "shadow board member." Over the months she fed the founders advice, she only brought up investing once. Kothari said he would call her if and when that became a possibility. <h2>A whirlwind week for Notion and Index Ventures</h2>That day finally came on Tuesday, March 17, as the grim reality of the coronavirus crisis had finally started sinking in across the United States. Kothari emailed Cannon, asking for a meeting the next morning. It wasn't an uncommon occurrence for their relationship, but once Cannon was on the phone, Kothari conferenced Zhou in, and she realized that this was it. "I knew if it would happen, it would be like this," Cannon said.She sent a memo detailing the investment to the other partners at Index. Many had met Kothari at a meeting months earlier, but none had met Zhou. Both agreed to go over data and metrics in a pitch meeting on Zoom.By Friday, Index and Notion had agreed on terms. Although it may have looked like a quick turnaround to outsiders, Cannon and Kothari had been negotiating and discussing the terms non-stop. The deal closed another week later, in what Cannon quipped might be a record for the investing community."I think there are a limited set of exceptional businesses, and if you are fortunate enough to invest in those companies you have to pursue the opportunity when it is available," Cannon said. "We had to be ready. The right time was when Notion was open to raising."Mark Goldberg, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/venture-capitalist-job-title-cut-2020-3">another partner at Index</a> who joined around the same time as Cannon, said it's not unusual for the firm to spend so much time getting to know a company before there's an opportunity to invest. That way, it can move fast when the round starts to come together and investors are scrambling to get in."The idea is, if we get that call and we have to make a decision in 36 hours, we've already lost," Goldberg said. "There's no way that we're going to be able to make the timeline."The biggest point of contention among the firm's partners, Cannon said, was whether the valuation and market opportunity made sense given the current economic uncertainty. Could the firm justify leading such a large round when some businesses were seeing a 90% decline in revenue? Would there be a market for Notion when employees headed back to offices? When the markets shook out and what could be an entirely new economic reality became clear?"This was certainly the hardest possible time because we are heading into a recession and there's so much uncertainty," Cannon said. "To do a transaction in that market, the bar was higher. If I hadn't been talking about it for years, I don't think it would've happened."Notion is still on top of Cannon's "global convictions" list, partly because she's been sheltering in place with the rest of California's Bay Area and left her whiteboard in the office, but also as a reminder that her work with the company is just starting."I was doing the best I could from the outside, but now it's like my number one priority for the next quarter and many years after," Cannon said.<h2>A boon for early investors</h2>While new investors like Cannon are clearly thrilled, the latest fundraise may be even better news for early backers.Notion's latest fundraise sold off only 2% of the company, and because the early backers had only put in a small amount of money for a small percentage of ownership, their stake has <a href="https://carta.com/blog/what-is-stock-dilution/">less dilution</a> than is typical at this stage.Naval Ravikant, a startup investor and the cofounder of AngelList, wrote a check into Notion's seed round in 2013. The company wouldn't launch its product publicly until 2016."I was a seed investor in Uber, and I got diluted ten ways to Sunday," he said. "That company raised $30 billion over its lifetime. What's Notion going to raise? It's going to raise like $100 million total, and of that, $97 million they didn't need but it was on their terms. The stake that I bought at the beginning is almost going to be the stake at the end."Ravikant and the other investors that Business Insider talked to declined to discloses the startup's total current funding. Pitchbook estimates it at $70.85 million. "For a seed investor, the return is beautiful," Ravikant said. He expects that for the bigger funds that come in later and "the people who need to deploy massive amounts of capital" Notion is "bad news."While Ravikant describes Notion as "the future," the company's own prospects weren't always so obvious.Aydin Senkut, an early Google employee who started his own venture capital firm, Felicis Ventures, met Zhao through a mutual acquaintance in 2013. The founder of Inkling, a company Senkut had previously invested in, described Zhao as his "best engineer" who had just left to start his own company. After their first meeting, Senkut said he was blown away. "He was literally like both a product mastermind and a true artist," Senkut told Business Insider. He invested in the startup's seed round that year. Senkut credits the product's popularity to its elegant, "no-code" design. The user doesn't need to have any programming skills in order to customize "templates" of documents, checklists, calendars, and databases."You're using really complex software, but you don't even realize all that complexity because it's behind a beautiful user interface," said Senkut. His firm did not participate in the recent fundraise that valued the startup at $2 billion, though Senkut said Thursday that Felicis is still vying to get in, sending an email to the company stating that it "would very much like to follow up on this round." <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/unemployment-numbers-coronavirus-economy-layoffs-2020-3">3.3 million Americans filed for unemployment - and an economist predicts it could be far worse than the Great Recession</a></h3>

VCs dish on why they backed Notion, the productivity startup that just raised $50 million at a $2 billion valuation during a market meltdown

It seems <keyword id="6355103" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="100" keywordseo="social">social</keyword> networking giants cannot keep their eyes off Indian innovators. Professional networking site <keyword id="28120" type="CITY" weightage="80" keywordseo="Linkedin">LinkedIn</keyword> has been acquiring Indian-origin companies for a couple of years now. And now <keyword id="2006517" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="social-media-leader">social media leader</keyword> <keyword id="6354576" type="CITY" weightage="100" keywordseo="Facebook">Facebook</keyword> has scooped up Bangalore-based tech start-up <keyword id="1959708" type="COMPANY" weightage="100" keywordseo="Little-Eye-Labs">Little Eye Labs</keyword> for an undisclosed amount. It is the first Indian company acquired by Facebook. But the takeover has not come as a surprise as media reports were rife about the proposed acquisition for over a month now. Although the financials have not been disclosed, a TechCrunch report earlier pegged it at $10-15 million. 
 So what does this Indian company do in the first place? Founded in 2012 by five tech professionals – <keyword id="2006528" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Giridhar-Murthy">Giridhar Murthy</keyword>, <keyword id="1960854" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Kumar-Rangarajan">Kumar Rangarajan</keyword> (also the CEO of the company), <keyword id="2006529" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Satyam-Kandula">Satyam Kandula</keyword>, <keyword id="2006530" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Lakshman-Kakkirala">Lakshman Kakkirala</keyword> and <keyword id="1182160" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Aditya-Kulkarni">Aditya Kulkarni</keyword> – Little Eye Labs develops performance analysis and monitoring tools for <keyword id="6355645" type="COMPANY" weightage="100" keywordseo="android">Android</keyword> apps (2.3 or later versions). The company had released the first official version of the tool in April 2013. The tool not only provides critical insight into an <keyword id="2006532" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Apps-key-performance">app’s key performance</keyword> (such as power usage, data usage, memory consumption, etc.), but also helps developers <keyword id="70866" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="analyse">analyse</keyword> those issues contextually – so that quick-fix and hassle-free solutions could be worked out. 
 Prior to starting up Little Eye Labs, Murthy worked with Apple; Rangarajan was at <keyword id="10875" type="CITY" weightage="60" keywordseo="IBM">IBM</keyword> and <keyword id="6367983" type="CITY" weightage="60" keywordseo="HP">HP</keyword> while Kakkirala worked with IBM and <keyword id="6363100" type="CITY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Yahoo">Yahoo</keyword>. 
 
The seven-member-strong Indian tech firm has confirmed the acquisition in a <a href="http://www.littleeye.co/transition.php">statement</a> posted on the site and says that the entire team will now move to Facebook’s headquarters in <keyword id="266145" type="CITY" weightage="100" keywordseo="MENLO-PARK">Menlo Park</keyword>, <keyword id="2379" type="CITY" weightage="100" keywordseo="California">California</keyword> from where they can “leverage Facebook’s world-class infrastructure and help improve performance of their already awesome apps. For us, this is an opportunity to make an impact on the more than 1 billion people who use Facebook.” 
 
The company has, however, assured its current customers that they won’t be left in the lurch and there will be further information on plans to offer a free version of Little Eye until June 30, 2014. 
 The start-up has already secured seed capital from <keyword id="1642294" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="GSF-Superangels">GSF Superangels</keyword> and also from <keyword id="1910025" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Ventureeast-Tenet-Fund">VentureEast Tenet Fund</keyword>. According to an earlier report by Business Standard, the firm raised an investment between $100,000 and $200,000 from GSF. 
 Interestingly, professional networking site LinkedIn is also getting aggressive about Indian-origin companies and acquired <keyword id="1037643" type="COMPANY" weightage="80" keywordseo="SlideShare">SlideShare</keyword> in 2012 for $119 million. SlideShare is a presentation-sharing site founded by India-born <keyword id="791652" type="PERSON" weightage="80" keywordseo="Rashmi-Sinha">Rashmi Sinha</keyword>. Last year, too, LinkedIn acquired <keyword id="72069" type="COMPANY" weightage="100" keywordseo="pulse">Pulse</keyword>, the popular newsreader for Web and <keyword id="6354485" type="CITY" weightage="100" keywordseo="mobile">mobile</keyword>. The transaction was valued at $90 million in stock and cash. Interestingly, Pulse was founded in 2010 by <keyword id="323918" type="PERSON" weightage="80" keywordseo="Akshay-Kothari">Akshay Kothari</keyword> and <keyword id="276931" type="PERSON" weightage="80" keywordseo="Ankit-Gupta">Ankit Gupta</keyword> while they were still students at <keyword id="101399" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="Stanford-University">Stanford University</keyword>. The service started out as an <keyword id="600351" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="80" keywordseo="iPad-app">iPad app</keyword>, but quickly expanded to other platforms, including the Web. Just before the acquisition, it also started to dip its toes into social by adding a number of social features to its apps. 
 
Although Facebook has acquired a purely tech company, let’s not forget that it is all about evaluating the performance of Android apps. So it may not be wrong to assume that FB is eyeing a more enhanced mobile experience at every level – a similar thing LinkedIn is trying to achieve through its Pulse app. This time, the writing is definitely on the wall – the future is going to be social and mobile.

Facebook Acquires
An Indian Start-Up For The First Time

NotionNotion's leadership team includes Ivan Zhao, cofounder and CEO; Camille Ricketts, head of marketing; Lillie Martin, customer success manager; and David Tibbitts, product marketer.<ul class="summary-list"><li>Hot Silicon Valley startup Notion shocked the tech world yesterday when it announced it had raised $50 million at a $2 billion valuation on Wednesday, in the middle of the pandemic that is causing mass layoffs at other companies.</li><li>Notion CEO tells Business Insider that he didn't need the money. Notion is profitable, he says, and the remote work mandates have improved his business.</li><li>But he and is cofounder decided that a healthy headline-making investment would help him reassure his growing customer base that Notion was stable and would remain so for years, no matter the economy.</li><li>He called up a VC that had been hoping to buy a stake, Index Ventures Sarah Cannon, and had won his good graces by helping him with things like recruiting.</li><li>Two days and a handful of Zoom meetings later, he had term sheet in hand that was everything he hoped for and nothing he didn't.</li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/?hprecirc-bullet">Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories</a>.</li></ul>As the coronavirus pandemic has forced the world to work from home, Silicon Valley startup Notion swung into action.Under the direction of its young, twenty-something CEO Ivan Zhao, Notion quickly added a bunch of new features for remote workers, like the ability to see notes typed in realtime and improved notifications, and saw its usage in China triple, and grow by 50% in Italy and South Korea, Zhao told Business Insider.Notion is profitable, he said, so the rise in usage meant the business was doing more than ok, and he didn't need to raise money to sustain the growth.And yet, Zhao and his founder Akshay Kothari, COO, also made a decision that shocked the close-knit San Francisco startup world. They decided to do another round of fund raising right now, in the middle of the pandemic.So they called up a VC who has been pursuing them for a good year, Sarah Cannon at Index Ventures, and in two days they got the term sheet: $50 million at a $2 billion valuation. The deal was conducted via Zoom meetings with partners, which included a pitch about their goals, and the usual due diligence on the business.Index VenturesSarah Cannon, Index VenturesThe term sheet was everything Zhao and Kothari wanted and nothing it didn't. Notion sold off only 2% of the company."The dilution was very minimal. We didn't give up any control," he said, and the raise didn't alter its ability to provide shares to employees, even as it increases hiring."We don't need the $50 million. We're still profitable," he said. While his business is growing, even if the uncertain economy tanked it Notion would be fine, he said. "Even if we lost half our business we'd be alright."He said the funding was strictly about perception. "Right now so many companies are doing layoffs. Our customers want a company that is stable that will stick around for a long time." The investment gives nervous customers the reassurance that if they depend on Notion, it's got the resources right now, in the bank, to last a decade, Zhao said.By Silicon Valley standards, Notion has hardly accepted any venture investment. It took a small seed round at around $2 million when it launched in 2016 and then, not another penny until it <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/notion-coo-akshay-kothari-funding-valuation-2019-7">raised $10 million in mid 2019</a> from three angel investors at an $800 million valuation. Its investors in that round were Daniel Gross (former partner at Y Combinator), Lachy Groom (Head of Stripe Issuing), and Elad Gil (cofounder of Color Genomics, formerly of Twitter and a very active angel investor).That's a 150% leap in valuation in about 8 months. VCs have been pounding on Notion's doors for years, trying to buy a stake of the startup which makes an online software suite that combines documents, collaboration, task management, database and allows anyone to customize without programming skills.That's because Notion's founders decided early on to get and stay profitable.In its early history, after Notion was founded in 2016, the startup stumbled with a poorly built product and had to lay off all its staff. That experience stuck with Zhao.His philosophy: It's better to be stay small and nimble so he can react quickly to changing conditions than to try to predict the future. For example, it took his team about a week to roll out a bunch of remote work features last month."We can be more in sync, move quicker. That's a better effect in a macro-uncertainty climate," he says. His focus on being nimble and profitable is the secret to how he raised $50 million in this climate. As to why he chose Index's Cannon: she's been wooing Notion by making herself useful, such as helping him hire, he said. Zhao is now focused on hiring, especially in sales, and to build a 'go-t0-market team," he says. The company employs about 30 people now and has a couple of dozen jobs open. Remembering how painful it was to layoff his staff years ago, he's especially open to recommendations from other startup founders trying to find jobs for great people they have to let go.<ul class="read-more-links"><li>Now read: </li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/homemade-mask-using-hydro-knit-shop-towel-filters-better-2020-4">Using blue shop towels in homemade face masks can filter particles 2x to 3x better than cotton, three clothing designers discover after testing dozens of fabrics</a></li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/all-remote-company-cameo-thrives-thanks-to-covid-19-2020-3">'It's like survivor's guilt', says a CEO of a remote-work software startup that is thriving thanks to COVID-19</a></li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-handle-working-from-home-20-year-expert">6 tips to make anyone more successful at remote work, from a reporter who's been doing it for 20 years</a></li></ul> <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/what-its-like-travel-during-coronavirus-outbreak-planes-airports-virus-2020-3">Here's what it's like to travel during the coronavirus outbreak</a></h3>

You Searched For "akshay kothari" and got 9 results

Exclusive: LinkedIn’s Co-Founder Allen Blue and India Head Akshay Kothari talk about their plans for India

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LinkedIn’s Co-Founder Jeff Weiner and India Head, Akshay Kothari see quality talent sprouting in the country

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Notion, the profitable startup that had to go to great lengths to avoid aggressive VCs, explains why it chose now to raise $10 million at an $800 million valuation

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LinkedIn is creating world's first economic graph to digitally map the global economy, says Akshay Kothari

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Here’s why LinkedIn is training blue collar workers in India

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OpenAI has its tentacles in hundreds of companies. Here's how it's making them more productive.

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VCs dish on why they backed Notion, the productivity startup that just raised $50 million at a $2 billion valuation during a market meltdown

Megan Hernbroth,Melia Russell

Facebook Acquires An Indian Start-Up For The First Time

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The CEO of hot Silicon Valley startup Notion tells us how he just raised $50 million at a $2 billion valuation in the middle of the pandemic

Julie Bort

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