intros should feel like a stretch before the workout. today’s stretch: the “community economy” is back in the spotlight. venture circles are buzzing about whether SaaS companies can still buy loyalty or if they need to grow it the way Notion did—through templates, consultants, and ambassadors.

we’ll get into that below. but think of this as the meta-trend: products aren’t just tools anymore, they’re economies. and the founders who figure that out first usually don’t need to outspend anyone.

estimated read time: 3 minutes.

see you inside — AC

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While most SaaS companies fight for customers with traditional sales and marketing, Notion created something unprecedented: an entire economy where their most passionate users make six-figure incomes selling templates, courses, and consulting services around their product.

From creators like Thomas Frank generating $1 million in revenue from just two templates to Easlo earning $500,000+ selling Notion products, they’ve built an ecosystem where customer success literally creates customer careers. The result? A $10 billion valuation powered not by paid ads, but by 35+ million users who evangelize the product because their livelihoods depend on it.

But here’s what’s wild: it started accidentally. In 2018, Ben Lang was just a superfan who built a website to share Notion setups. Today, he’s proof that Notion doesn’t just acquire customers—they identify champions, hire them, and turn their passion into profit engines for the entire community.

Notion’s contrarian thesis: Don’t just build a product, build an economy.

Strategy Playbook: Create customer-driven economic ecosystems where loyalty generates revenue.

The strategic playbook boiled down to 5x key takeaways

1. Build an economic infrastructure, not just a user base

Notion didn’t just create software—they engineered an entire economic ecosystem where their most passionate users can build sustainable businesses around the platform.

The Template Economy: Thomas Frank initially used Notion to plan YouTube videos and then started experimenting with creating templates. By 2022, selling just two Notion templates—”Creator’s Companion” and “Ultimate Brain”—he generated $1 million in revenue. Easlo, a well-known creator in the Notion community, has earned over $500,000 from template sales.

But these aren’t isolated success stories. Creators like Easlo earn up to $400k by creating high-value notion templates for their audience, and many Notion creators average between $1,000 and $3,000/month by selling templates.

The genius here: Notion created a marketplace where their users’ creativity becomes a revenue stream. Every template sold validates the platform’s flexibility while creating evangelists who have skin in the game.

The Consultant Certification Program: As Ben Lang (former Head of Community) described: “We had seen a couple folks in our community who were starting to onboard companies to notion and Creating services around it… Essentially almost a whole industry of, you know, I think there’s probably 60, 70 plus people who are certified now.”

These experts operate in 17 languages across 20 countries. But here’s the key insight: By making these consultants part of the Notion community, they now offer a full service of trained and passionate customer success-like folks helping people experience the platform—with low cost to Notion.

Notion essentially outsourced customer onboarding and training to their most passionate users, who now make their living implementing Notion for enterprise clients.

The Ambassador Network: Notion’s Ambassador program—a global community of 300+ Notion enthusiasts across the globe that helps to run or moderate Notion-related groups, discussions and events. Today they have about 200+ ambassadors across 23 countries.

The selection criteria was brilliant: Ben prioritized geography and a fan’s knowledge and passion for the platform when it came to appointing ambassadors. Importantly, the decision was made to not remunerate and to create a vetting process that looked for examples of community building expertise.

Why no payment? Because true advocates are motivated by passion and community building skills, not money. This created genuine evangelism rather than purchased endorsements.

2. Scale community through systematic enablement

Notion didn’t try to control their community—they systematically enabled it to flourish globally through infrastructure and funding.

Global Event Infrastructure: Notion uses Tremendous to scale in-person community events by providing grants to members for event expenses. Members use the money to run panels, groups, workshops, and gatherings across dozens of countries.

The scale is staggering: according to community reports, in February alone, there were 41 Notion community-led events—more than one every day all over the world, entirely self-organized.

Switching from manual processes to Tremendous helped Notion scale its in-person community events program 5x. Students host creative Notion boba meetups with branded Notion boba cups and put together Notion workshops.

Multi-Platform Community Ecosystem: The result is dozens of different types of community groups hosted all over the world in 50+ languages. There are community member-organized groups on Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, LinkedIn, Slack, Discord, Clubhouse, and other apps and community platforms.

The genius move: Each community is moderated and run by fellow community members from the ambassador program. Notion doesn’t try to own or control these communities—they just support the leaders.

Its members speak 50+ languages, making it impossible for Notion to directly manage all communities. But that’s actually a feature, not a bug. When Notion launched a localized app in Korea, community members handled all the press interviews, with ambassadors answering questions for 8,000 people live during press interviews, acting as an extension of the company.

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3. Turn product evangelism into career advancement

Notion has mastered the ultimate loyalty hack: making their most passionate users financially dependent on the platform’s success.

The Hire-Your-Evangelists Strategy: Ben Lang’s journey exemplifies this approach. As he described: “Before I joined Notion I was a super-fan. I was living in New York, working part-time for a few startups. I built a website where people could share their Notion setups. I started a Facebook group for Notion users. Then I emailed [co-founder and CEO] Ivan Zhao to ask about the API. He wrote back inviting me to hang out when he was in New York, and it turned into a job interview.”

This wasn’t coincidence—it was strategy. Lang later reflected: “I saw the long-term value in what an energized and supported community could do for Notion because I was a part of it myself.”

Creator Career Transformation: Even after leaving Notion, former employees continue promoting the platform through their entrepreneurial success. Ben Lang left Notion in 2023 and made headlines with a “relationship template” called Couple’s Home Base that he’d created for himself and his wife. After weeks of social media buzz, thousands of paying customers downloaded it.

The Network Effect Multiplier: The community strategy was deliberate. As Lang described: “We asked ourselves, ‘Could we create this group of top-tier advocates who can spread Notion exponentially?’ We thought that if we could bring all of these people together and connect them more closely to the Notion team, maybe they would inspire each other and encourage even more people to get involved with the product.”

4. Capture the next generation through campus programs

Notion recognized that creating loyalty in students would pay dividends for decades as they entered the workforce.

Campus Leaders Program: The Notion Campus Leaders Program enables students around the world to share and teach Notion at their universities, while building strong Notion communities on campus.

Full stop in awe of our first cohort of Notion Campus Leaders – in one semester they’ve exceeded all of our wildest dreams for what this program could be.

Student Organization Strategy: Notion is now free for volunteer student organizations globally. Student organizations at select universities can apply to receive a free Notion Plus plan, unlocking the full power of collaboration and work in Notion.

The insight: Student groups often struggle with organization. As members of the Texas Venture Group at the University of Texas, Austin noted: “We didn’t have a single internal source-of-truth for our information, so it was hard for us to work together. Notion has unlocked major growth for our organization, especially since we don’t have any funding.”

Template Collections by Students: Everything you need for back to school, made by Notion Campus Leaders around the world – from course planning to budgeting, and journaling to club running.

The long-term play: Students who organize their entire college experience in Notion carry that habit into their professional careers, becoming organic advocates within their future companies.

5. Master platform-native influencer marketing

Instead of traditional advertising, Notion pioneered authentic influencer partnerships that feel like genuine recommendations rather than sponsored content.

The TikTok Revolution: With over 80,000 videos, #Notion hit 1 billion views on TikTok back in September, which is an astonishing feat for a SaaS product on the platform.

Lexie Barnhorn, Notion’s Head of Social and Influencer Marketing, leveraged her experience from beauty brands to pioneer B2B influencer marketing: “A lot of people think that B2B needs to be a buttoned-up briefcase persona.” Instead, she created content that was relatable and authentic.

Creator-First Partnerships: Ben Lang, when he was at Notion, discovered the potential early: “A few months into working at Notion, I came across a couple of YouTubers talking about how they were using Notion in their videos… I was curious if they would be interested in publishing full reviews on how they used Notion.”

The key insight: These partnerships performed better when the creator used Notion themselves. The videos felt much more authentic; it hardly came off as a sponsored post.

Multi-Platform Strategy:

The Viral Loop Effect: The community strategy created compound growth: as more partnerships went live, new users would discover the community page and look for ways to get involved. Particularly in new regions, they’d see more people signing up for community programs. This became an incredibly powerful flywheel, driving awareness, new users, community growth, and more influencers.

The Strategic Coherence

The Accidental Beginning: It’s hard to believe now, with tens of millions of users and a $10B valuation to its name, but back in 2015, Notion was teetering dangerously on the edge of a cliff. The startup had raised some funding from angels (and an early check from First Round) a couple of years prior but had failed to capture much attention and burned through most of its cash.

The turnaround came through community-led growth: Camille Ricketts, the first member of the marketing team at Notion, noticed a bunch of tweets about how people are falling in love with the product. Notion fans on Twitter were resonating with such tweets and connecting with each other.

The Product-Led Growth Foundation: By 2023, Notion had over 30 million users globally, with approximately 4 million paying subscribers. Current ARR: Notion’s estimated ARR is around $567 million.

The PLG metrics that matter:

The Bottom-Up Philosophy: Notion believes the bottom-up approach contributes to their success. By embracing the voice of the customer, they’ve created a model where users see themselves not just as customers, but as Notion members.

Every community project is derived from within the community itself, and Notion’s role is to foster these ideas and bring visibility to them.

The Competitive Moat

Why This Strategy is Hard to Copy:

The Bottom Line

Notion’s strategy represents a fundamental reframe of SaaS growth. Instead of optimizing for customer acquisition cost and lifetime value, they optimized for customer economic empowerment and community value creation.

This works because they solved a core challenge in software loyalty: how to make customers financially dependent on your success without making them feel exploited. By creating genuine economic opportunities for their most passionate users, they built relationships that transcend typical vendor dynamics.

A telltale sign of a community set up for success is when the brand and the builders are thriving symbiotically. Notion exemplifies this by not just being a 10 billion dollar startup but an economy in its own right.

The numbers prove it works: 35+ million users, $10 billion valuation, and an entire ecosystem where creators like Easlo earn up to $400k by creating high-value notion templates for their audience while many other creators report earning between $1,000 and $3,000 per month.

But perhaps most importantly, they’ve created something unprecedented: a business model where customer loyalty is literally profitable to maintain. Students organize their college experience in Notion, carry that habit into their careers, advocate for it at their companies, and sometimes even make their living creating Notion content and services.

The approach requires authentic product flexibility, genuine community passion, patient capital willing to invest in long-term relationship building, and perhaps most critically, a product that enables creativity rather than just consumption. But for companies that can execute it authentically, the result is customer loyalty that’s economically self-reinforcing.

In an increasingly crowded SaaS landscape, Notion’s bet on community-led economics might be the most sustainable competitive advantage of all: customers who can’t afford to leave because their businesses depend on your success.

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See you next Monday.