Mick Hodgins, GM EMEA at Notion, on scaling Notion in Europe and building with AI

0:00Hello and welcome back to the Scaling Europe show. I'm Seb Johnson. I'm here with Mick. Mick is the reasonably newly appointed GM for EMEA from Notion. Thank you for joining me, Mick. Hi, Seb. Thanks for having me. Delighted to be here with you. Look, before we kick off, can you just talk a bit about your role, what it means to be the GM across EMEA from Notion? Yeah, sure. Look, I'm recently in the role, so I'm trying to work it out as I go. But I'm ultimately responsible for all go-to-market functions and motions across EMEA. I'm also the de facto side league for Arno EMEA HQ here in Dublin.

0:38So we've got over 120 people here. We cover all sort of functions. So that's the role. My responsibility is to really help us grow the business in EMEA and to help Notion drive towards its new goals and objectives. So I'm very excited. And it's a great product. It's something I use. I plan my life on Notion. So I'm very familiar with it and it's a great tool. Before we get into Notion, your role, your responsibilities, all that kind of great stuff, I saw on your LinkedIn that you had a career break for a year. You were at Google for a long time. Then you had a career break before joining Notion.

1:11I wanted you to ask, what were some of the highlights from that career break? Wow, highlights. Well, look, first of all, not having to get out of bed early in the morning was an incredible highlight. I think, you know, when you've been running fast for decades and building your career, you really just don't get enough time to relax and to take some time for yourself, for your family. So the highlight for me was that spending time with my family. I've got two daughters at home and my wife, Nicole, you know, like we've had this opportunity to go and do a little bit of traveling together. We've had opportunities to spend time with our parents together, which was really, really important for us.

1:52So, yeah, that was amazing. I also, from a professional perspective, I took some time to just learn a little bit about AI. and it was really central to me making a decision to go back in and to take a role with Notion. We're in the middle of this like crazy technology transformation, really, really world changing, societal changing. And I figured I better, you know, try and be on the inside looking out in terms of trying to learn about that and trying to understand that. I did a diploma in AI for business in University College Dublin, which was really valuable for me. and I had an opportunity then to do a little bit of consulting, to spend some time talking to startups, talking to scale-ups, just helping them with their GTM strategy.

2:36So, you know, despite the fact that I took quite a bit of time off, a year out is quite a lot of time to be out of the game, I did fill my time with family and some very sort of flexible work and it was fantastic, really amazing. Sounds amazing. It sounds like you were busy. And I want to get into Notion. You know, you were at Google for, I think it was 13 years, an amazing stint of your career was spent there. You had this career break and now you've joined Notion, which is like an amazing tech company, but a very different scale and size to what you're used to at Google. So I guess I wanted to ask, what about Notion excited you?

3:14Well, let me just take a little step back. I think, you know, Google for me was an incredible period. Like I was really proud to work at Google. So I felt it was there during really the golden growth years of online advertising. You know, you get this opportunity to work with an iconic brand. You get to work with some and learn from some really, really smart people. It was brilliant. But I did want to do something different. I needed some time to think about it, to be perfectly honest. But a sword in my mind knew that I wanted to get back into building something that maybe had a little bit more hustle, a bit more entrepreneurial than my last few years in Google, where I was working for a really amazing but very big, big tech organization.

3:58And I think during the break and during the time off, I realized that I loved that hustle of building. But I didn't want to go and do it on my own. I wanted to be part of a team, to be part of a group that was out there solving problems, good people being a little bit disruptive. So it took me a while to get my head around what that role looked like. And I assure you, I took about six months really casting a really wide net to talk to a lot of people and find that new opportunity. And then I was introduced to Notion at the start of 2025, referred in for a conversation from an ex-colleague in Google, Aidan, who's now working with Anthropic.

4:36And it was really just exactly what I was looking for. I want to admit I didn't know a lot about Notion before I had the opportunity to engage with the leadership team here. But it ticked a few boxes for me. First and foremost, really well-run company. Notion has more cash in the bank now than it's raised. And the mission really, really sort of resonated with me. I'm not a coder, but I like to tinker. I've always been a tinkerer. So the opportunity to use Notion to go and build something interesting that was no code was really, really, really exciting for me. Great tech, really good building blocks.

5:13When I started playing with Notion AI, I'll be honest, it just blew me away. Understanding the power of context and the power of collaboration in a workspace and how that informed AI and how it informed agentic AI and autonomous AI, it really, really just blew me away. and then everybody I met through this entire process which is fantastic so you know people are the front door into the culture of an organization and I met a lot of people who have felt like yeah I could go for a bite to eat with these people we could go and have a glass of wine we could hang out together I really really enjoyed the buzz and really just enjoyed that sort of that sense of unity and sense of purpose but also most importantly I think for me there's a lot of white space to move into when you just look at the growth opportunity like the collaboration and productivity software market up until about a year ago probably had a time of about 30 to 40 billion dollars by 2029 2030 but if you sprinkle in a bit of agentic ai and you sprinkle in the opportunity with autonomous workflows this is a 100x opportunity like we are going into a space that is is going to fundamentally change every aspect of of technology of society, of our daily lives.

6:29And that also presents great, great commercial opportunity. So Notion just like hit me right between the eyes as an opportunity that I just couldn't turn down. That's amazing. You know, you've mentioned some of the stuff that Notion is doing within AI. It's obviously betting big on AI and building, implementing AI into the tool throughout the whole tool. Can you touch on what that journey has been like and what excited you so much about the stuff in AI that Notion is doing? Yeah, and look, working in Google, I got to see the early iterations of Gemini. I had an opportunity to work on a bunch of different cross-functional products, which were very much focused on how Google could inject Gemini into workflows.

7:14So I had a pretty good understanding when I stepped out of Google as to what this AI thing looked like. I, as I said, took an opportunity to skill up and to learn a little bit more of what was happening in the ecosystem around Gemini so that I could round out my knowledge. Notion's story is interesting because the business was very, very early to generate of AI. I think Ivan and the founders realized early doors that AI really fit perfectly with how Notion is built. and I was surprised when I joined to hear that Notion AI was in private alpha in November 2022 which was two weeks before chat GPT-3 exploded on the scene.

7:56But also from you know conversations with product teams it looks that the company's been really rapidly iterating on new features as the technology has evolved. Notion's got AI capabilities from content generation through to enterprise search obviously ai meeting notes which is sort of a flagship product and an excellent market leading product and also a lot of capability around deep research it's it's this sort of glue or engine that powers all of notions flexible building blocks and the journey has been interesting for me because i i arrived in at the end of july start of august and then in september notion launches notion agents which are effectively like personalized ai team mates that sit directly into the notion workspace so you sort of go and assign tasks to those agents and they go out and do the work for you and now it's just been a whirlwind for me like so getting my head around notion agents how i can use that for myself and also use that on my business and now we're working towards custom agents which are are coming soon so you're going to be able as an individual or a team to create these incredible custom fully automated agents right in your workspace.

9:08So you go from having a couple of teammates to pretty much as many teammates that you need to run your business. And think about like a weekly reporting agent or something that I use myself in my business or in my day-to-day, a task automation agent which just looks across all of my connected workspaces across a lot of my connected tools and gives me a list of the things that I need to do and things that I need to delegate to other people within the organization. So it's just been this crazy, chaotic whirlwind for me. I'm trying to then understand the evolution of Notion. Notion 1.0 started out with people working in Notion docs.

9:51And, you know, Seb, you're probably really, really familiar with the early iterations of that product. Then 2.0 was the evolution of the Notion database, which, again, for me, I found this just an incredible, incredible opportunity, the ability to build within databases and to have that relational database structure and flexibility. And that was a big step forward for me in my own learning. But then we're now building out Notion 3.0, where Notion's just going to do the work for you. And when I talked to the founders, They've been doing this stuff for like 10 years. It's like this classic, you know, overnight success that took 10 to 12 years to get right.

10:30They built all this incredible scaffolding that now is allowing AI agents to do the work for you. But you are still the builder. You are still the individual or team that provides creativity and vision to move things forward. So, like for me, it's just an exciting time to be in the business. really really excited to to be working with a company that is is launching the first true agent for knowledge work and for knowledge workers and and i think the impact for me and the impact for teams you know companies are using chatbots and they're buying chatbots that individuals use but notion is really the first knowledge work property that i think is going to transform teamwork transforming with context transforming it with collaboration with tools that sit into the the with ai that sits into the tools that you already use in your collaboration space it's it's mind-blowing absolutely mind-blowing i mean you're just talking about this i'm looking at my own notion thinking god i need to use more of this like i think i'm i'm i'm not making the most of like notion 2.0 let alone the ai stuff i need to be i need to be getting the most out of it because i use it for everything like i said but i'm definitely not using it as much as i should be um and i always want to touch on like notion across europe so you know you are in dublin that's sort of the hq the european hq uh there's also the news i think in september about three new hubs so i think it's paris uh london was it berlin or munich um um munich yeah that was it paris london munich you've opened three new offices across europe can you talk a bit more about you know the the rationale behind opening these new offices and i guess the overall ambition for notion in europe yeah look you know for your for your listeners we opened three new offices three new hubs in the last quarter so again you know i land in a mere four and a half months and like you're opening three new offices it's it's a crazy pace so So London, Paris and Munich, why?

12:32Three largest economies in Europe, home to some of the biggest brands in Europe. Pretty amazing startup ecosystems, really, really good talent pools. We got this, you know, incredible EMEA HQ in Dublin and we've been serving our EMEA customers out of that regional HQ. 120 people here since opening in 2021. But if you want to win Europe and you want to move up market, bigger customers, more complex brands, particularly in the enterprise space. You've got to have boots on the ground and you've got to have local teams that are available to customers and are hungry to go out and build in the ecosystem.

13:11So that's why we've gone to those markets, the three largest economies, the economies with the biggest opportunities, but also those cities will provide us with, I suppose, a beachhead for further expansion into Europe in the coming years. we're really excited about where we can take this business and we're really excited about becoming like the collaboration and ai connected workspace of choice for innovative companies and enduring companies all across europe and that's that's what we want to do we want to build we want to grow our footprint and we want to ensure that that notion is able to to deliver with i suppose with a bunch a different European axis on accents on our promise of building beautiful tools for your life's work.

13:57And what's the strategy? What's the go-to-market plan? How are you going to, you know, you've got these hubs set up. And as you say, the three biggest economies across Europe, you know, I think my interaction with Notion has always been like startup programs. And, you know, when I started my own, when I started scaling Europe, it was like the first tool I signed up to because it's just, you know, it's got great stuff and great packages for early stage founders. and it always felt like that was their strategy was get early stage and then people just stick right and they stay throughout their journey as they grow and they share it with their teammates and it expands like that you mentioned they're kind of moving up market into enterprise are you now targeting more large traditional organizations that aren't so tech focused what's the uh what's the go-to-market strategy to to capture more of the european market yeah look the interesting thing for notion is that notion has always been an international company so 80 percent of notions users are outside of the US.

14:50So we've always had this incredible footprint that goes way beyond the Americas and way beyond that sort of domestic market. But if you just take a step back and just think about what Notion offers, connected AI workspace so that teams can create, they can collaborate, they can communicate, they can build amazing tools, they can get rid of this SaaS sprawl that has been plaguing the industry, I think, for the last five years. Our mission is to ensure that irrespective of the size of company, that we can help them consolidate tools and build an AI. So that means that it doesn't matter if you're a small founder or if you're an international business that's enduring and is a huge brand in the manufacturing space, you're going to face all of these problems.

15:39You've got this challenge of busy work. So how do you defray and eliminate that busy work. You can do that with Notion. That's the mission. That's the value. It's always been the mission and it's always been the value statement. And the business has grown really, really strong. There's no doubt about it. It's incredible for me that we are not just servicing some of the most innovative companies in the startup space, in the scale-up space. We do business with Mr. L.A.I., Quanto, Parloa. These are our customers, as you've said, that just grow with us. And suddenly they go from being, you know, tech interesting forward businesses to really, really big technology businesses that have got a footprint in ecosystems where they're being disruptive and they're growing apace.

16:27But we're also doing business with enduring brands and established brands at the top end, like Volvo Cars. Also over in our APAC region, for example, with Toyota. We also work with Accor, the hotel group in France. So the interesting thing for us is that, yes, our strategy is to move up market, but moving up market with more of a sales-led emphasis to ensure that we accelerate that mid-market and enterprise adoption. So that means admin great features. It means better security, better governance. It means addressing data sovereignty with AI's data centers that we've repping up recently in Frankfurt.

17:10We just want to make sure that we can bring the power of Notion, not only to those startups who are going from 0 to 100 million ARR in a year, but also to the established companies who can benefit from our transformation. And the way for us to do that is to continue to build great products and to continue to ensure that we solve problems for our customers. Amazing. That makes total sense. And of course, we're running out of time, but I wanted to ask, you know, as someone who is relatively new to Notion in the role, but also new to it as a tool, what has been the number one or maybe one or two things that you use or that you play with that you have found the most beneficial to sort of managing your own work?

17:53Look, it's a great question, right? Because every time I open Notion, I'm finding something new to go and play with and and i think that that flexibility is the most wonderful thing about the product but it can also be a challenge let me be brutally honest and one of the reasons i've been brought in is to try and understand how we can build you know better lego boxes as ivan would say as opposed to lego blocks so that we can solve for specific use cases but the two things that have been like absolutely game-changing for me i use notion ai all the time it's my go-to right so whether or not it's the uh the standard notion agent which allows me to navigate the workspaces that i'm using or a couple of the custom agents that i've built and i'm not a technical guy i'm not a coder to just help me sort of streamline some of the busy work or displace busy work in my day-to-day and then the other thing for me is i've never really used connected workspaces in the way in which they were intended.

18:56And the ability to, you know, not have to set like crazy levels of permissions once you've got everybody organized within a workspace for your team, a workspace for the company, has really been sort of game changing for me as well. It's like finding that one place to collaborate in this new world of work where people just want to sit down and build on documents and, you know, connect in the right type of data points within one very simple, very beautiful space that's easy to navigate. So they're the two key areas for me and the areas that I've been using extensively. Well, thank you so much for joining me and you've inspired me.

19:35I'm going to go so much deeper in my own Notion workspace because I definitely feel like I'm leaving good opportunities on the table to either automate things or do better collaboration. I'm still using Google Sheets for some things and actually it just seems daft. so yeah I'm going to bring it all over but Mick thank you so much for taking the time to chat I've really enjoyed it yeah likewise thanks Seb and you know keep playing with the product like you'd be surprised what else it's going to deliver for you well thank you